publishing poetry only
 


Monday's Poem

 

Powell River poet Allan Brown has had work on the Monday's Poem site since 2004. His twentieth volume, an on-line chapbook titled Sentences, will appear with Coracle Press of Montreal later this month.

"Which I Is I?" was published in slightly different form in Frames of Silence (Seraphim Editions (2005).

Link: Seraphim Editions




© 2008 Allan Brown


Which I Is I?

My new lover,
whose name is the same as mine,
is listening to
the water the rocks
the sound of water on rocks.

        am I incoherent? very
well then, I am incoherent.
I am loose, I contain losings.

I will show you Allan
speaking and what Allan says; but
recognize please that he
is not contained in nor
the content of this saying;
neither what I am, but what when
this is written I will
have been

                (or something like) though
I'll have to take the rest
of my skin off for that.

Or that place sometimes in a poem
when the almost balance, a couple
of bits askew, but the slant of it
as — "Hi there! d'you still remember
me?" — slinks a step closer,
the little toes stretching till
cannot be seen much longer between
the leaf, the shadow on the leaf

                                          Or
maybe the old farter simply ran out
of words;

             but not quite
repeating the bits and pits
(or maybe that man
going mad in that field
painting his crows) because
there's nothing, or anyway
not much else other than

                                    "You just
don't get it," she snickers, "do you?"

Or was it the other why?