Queyras - Lemon Hound

LEMON HOUND

SINA QUEYRAS

copyright Sina Queyras, 2006 first edition

This epub edition published in 2010. Electronic ISBN 978 1 77056 127 4.

Published with the assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit Program and the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program.

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA

CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Queyras, Sina, 1963

Lemon hound / Sina Queyras. -- 1st ed.

Poems.

ISBN-13: 978-1-55245-167-0

ISBN-10: 1-55245-167-4

I. Title.

PS8583.U3414l44 2006 C811.6 C2006-901135-4

As for the mot juste, you are quite wrong. Style is a very simple matter; it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you cant use the wrong words.

Virginia Woolf

Loons Virginia. Open sky. Waves of trees. Dizzying trees. Pine and balsam: a billion party picks. Roads shoot off, paved, unpaved, trail, tundra, trapline, blue lines of rivers and lakes all the way to the Hudson Bay. She scans possible routes while you change shoes, prepare to hike up Asheham Hill with Pinker. Freezing and unfreezing. Trees shrinking. Even the shape of the lakes appears frozen. Red pine, white pine: tall with uneven branches of varying lengths. Slightly taller with uneven branches of varying lengths. Pipe cleaners, deeper and deeper green. Lake and lake and lake: Deer, Poplar Hill, North Spirit, Wunnumin, Summer Beaver, Mir-like in muskeg. And rivers: Severn, Fawn, Pipestone, Asheweig: their magnet pull north. She grips the wheel, chain-smoking from Clayoquot through the wests fuming neon huddles. Macadam miles, navigation of geographic land mines. Lakeless, loonless, somehow Canadian and mute to all this: red pine, white pine, black spruce, black ash, trembling aspen, balsam fir, white birch, white spruce, but which is which? Balsam poplar, tamarack they all look the same from the window. Jack pines feed on fire, she reads, and wonders if this is all second growth. Has this whole land been mowed? Are these forest fringes? Tender scars hidden for drive-by viewing: big trees scarce as whales. A campground beckons. She surfaces, inflates the tent, the dog marking all four corners before they walk to the dark pine lake, crouch on the Canadian Shield and stare at their reflection. She leans close and a rush of pine penetrates. She will enter into, finally tongue this idea of who she is. A thunder of feet upends, her whole head submerges, eyes open in the green and black pine water. Atwood Lake: it has leapt up, throttled her, left her an X in the landscape. Stare and stare, as a loon circles, dives, pregnant with itself: flap and flap, black and white, every ounce of its white-banded neck muscling. Stand and shake, the desert of her lungs wanting to turn herself inside out. The loon calls. Tremulous, it taps into her spine. It calls again. Her chest vibrates with it: a sad Icelander drunk with sagas, lost on a waveless lake in northern Manitoba, yodelling into the night, a rogue alarm clock ha-ha-hoo-oo-ooing. It is cold where she is going, Virginia, though she cannot imagine how cold just yet, nor how far she will go; at this moment she still believes things occur in increments. Partial. She sees your pale feet at the waters edge and suddenly the rocks are scalloped, the trees manicured. Is this altogether too much nature for you? You who entered it so completely? You pull a cigarette out and she offers you a light. You sit smoking. All night the loon calls, but you are both silent. You are both so polite, waiting.

What is nature.

Nature is what is

but is nature natural.

No not as natural as that.

Gertrude Stein

She is feeling brisk at the heel. She loves feeling brisk at the heel. She is feeling brisk at the heel and rivering her thumbs. She is at the edge of cool. She runs her thumbs along the hinge of river. She loves running her thumbs along the hinge of river. She feels river. She feels thumb. She is brisk and thumbing. She is numb and loving. She is feeling loving. She is feeling loving about feeling. She loves feeling about loving. She loves feeling about feeling. She loves feeling about feeling loving. Her loving feels. Her loving loves rivers. She is feeling loving about rivers. She loves feeling loving about rivers. She is feeling rivers about loving feeling. She rivers about loving. She rivers about feeling. She rivers about the hinges of rivers. Her feelings hinge. She hinges about feelings. She hinges about feeling the river of hinges. She is feeling thumbs. She loves feeling about her thumbs. She is feeling about her thumbs as she rivers her feelings. Her thumbs river. Her feelings cool. She feels cool rivering her thumbs. She feels her thumbs hinge the river and cooling she thumbs. She loves feeling that her thumbs hinge the river. She thumbs numb love.

Who is more numb? Who feels more numb about love? Who thumbs love? Who is numb about thumbing love? Who is more brisk, more river than hinge? Who is under water? Who loves being under water? Who is feeling swift and hinging under water, thumbless and numb in love? Who has wings? Who is mourning? Who is exactly how small they must be? Who is loss of action? Who has walked the Brooklyn Bridge? Who is turning forty and hingeless? Who is turning fifty and numb? Who is willing to bear? Who sees themselves a river? Who floats? Who eddies? Whose back is scraped? Whose knees bleed? Whose breasts ache? Who has a mouthful of water? Who knows the shape of rocks? Who sees the sun as wavelength? Who smells like trout? Whose spine flexes waterfalls? Who has been sixteen? Who is molten? Who is smoothed over? Who has not forgiven? Who has wet feet? Who has walked the river? Who has good drainage? Who has stubbed a toe on a rock? Who has felt granite on tooth? Who has seen the flash of red bellies? Who has eaten trout? Who has felt a bear paw? Who flirts with the snouts of wolves? Who is always fresh? Who is surface and depth? Who has walked the turnpike? Who is exactly how big they must be? Who has snagged the comma of mouth? Who understands trespassing? Who has not felt the earth under foot? Who knows the river bottom? Who of us is not hooked?

The river flows through the town. The river flows through the town and breaks up at the bridge. The river flows through the town slowly. The river is the fastest thing in town. The river is not confined to town. The river is townless, yet the river is town, for without the river there is no town. Without the river there are no riverbanks. Without the river there is no mill. Without the river there are no bridges. Without the river roads go on. Without the river foundations crack. Without the river fishermen turn to drink. Without the river old women cannot cry. Without the river no one is married. Without the river fossils soar. Without the river emerald and sage. Without the river lyrics are homeless. Without the river June never comes. Without the river mirrorless, the sky mourns. Without the river deer go deaf. Without the river leaves thirst. Without the river bear lose their teeth. Without the river beak, paw, soil, feather. Without the river the mountains shy. Without the river the ducks pass in the air, days climb one on another. Without the river children cannot learn how to count. Without the river there are no wings. Without the river nothing passes. Without the river stillness. Without the river trees turn away. Without the river the sun is angry. Without the river the land is seamless. Without the river it breaks apart. Without the river fish walk. Without the river rocks scurry. Without the river the town pulls up its skirt. Without the river bear and cougar nod into the earths elbow, sleep.