Sundress, Fortress

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THE POST-APOCALYPTIC OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY ENTRY FOR RACCOON

A Middle Eastern dish with little to no raisins.
An island off Easter Island.
A transplanted organ that was stored at room temperature.
A shot in the dark.
A kind of parasol that Venus flytraps you.
A vintage clown car.
A Gatling-type gun that will only fire on immediate relatives.
A sexual position favoured by the limbless.
A widow that rekindles old flames every other year.
A tepid lavender bath.
A virgin standing in the shadow of a falling piano.
The shy negotiation of leaves.
The angelical term for a supermodel’s soul.
A Thai steamship that disappeared while on routine patrol.

DODGE DART

I bought the car on sweet time. The farm
was sure to follow. The rear-view washing
its face in its hands as the whirl road
unrolled. The side-views are gosling wing nubs.
My girl Tonda on the backbench
of this shatterproof sea lion tromped
and taking the long way to Sault Ste. Marie.
The mind, a somersault unable to unravel.
Summer a time when hour-glass girls
arrange roadside wreaths between
the desperate restaurants. The road
remade for us upon our approach,
the coniferous part and reseal
after our passing, the mind splashes.
Tonda’s buzzer goes when
a dead cedar marsh appears.
And if trees weren’t preoccupied
with darting and infilling they’d correct
young Tonda: People don’t really mean
the woods, she sighs as she dabs
her brow in the rear-view,
the route buttoning up
behind us, They just say
let’s go to the woods.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CARL LINNAEUS, 300 YEARS OLD*

Linnaeus was only 154 cm tall.
But he cut an impressive figure
when clad in his Sami costume,
as he did when he proposed to Sara Lisa.
Furthermore, he had beautiful eyes.
Linnaeus was the first European
to successfully cultivate bananas.
He managed this while living in Holland.
Linnaeus claimed that the forbidden fruit
Eve offered Adam in the Garden of Sweden
was a banana. Linnaeus wrote texts
that were easy to understand. Linnaeus’
speculations became bolder as he became older.
For example: he speculated that swallows
spent the winter at the bottom of lakes.
Maybe he was in a hurry to explain things.

*This is a found poem that has been slightly altered from the
pamphlet of the same name.

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