publishing poetry only
 


Monday's Poem



Photo by Joan P. Johnson

Vaughan Chapman writes in Surrey BC, where she can frequently be found throwing a ball for her dog, especially during the summer months. Most recently, her work appears in Contemporary Verse 2, Quills Canadian Poetry Magazine, and emerge 2006. She is a graduate of The Writer's Studio at SFU and continues to meet with two of the fine writers she met there: Shana Myara and Sarah K. Turner.

 




© 2008 Vaughan Chapman


untitled (summer)

the rabbit
young beneath the cedars
where the dog stands

too long
   and breath

at the thing

on its side

eye open
haunch gashed
so many bees

at the sweetness of the fall

   cold
this heat of August day


She wrote this poem because the evening after her dog found a dead rabbit behind the house, a neighbour barricaded himself inside his home and by morning had killed himself despite the efforts of a swarm of armed police to talk him out of it. Either of these events would have haunted her; together something had to take form.