Poems

A few recent Slam-style poems:

Rotary Poem

Echo

A few poems from past projects:

no match for the movement of sidewalks from No Match for the Movement of Sidewalks and Circling Syllable
the long distance runner fromCircling Syllable (audio CD/film) and Crystal Garden (anthology)
fragments of how zero traveled from Stigma: Poems for Dance Theatre
The Storytellers from No Match for the Movement of Sidewalks

no match for the movement of sidewalks

She was a girl, maybe fourteen, fifteen. Anyway, maybe ten, eleven. You know how it is these days. Girls getting their periods at seven, eight. All those preservatives slamming into their pituitaries from birth onwards, curling up at home in their ovaries. She clung to that loaf like as if it were her own kid. At her age even, grammar mistakes and all. Her jaw at work on huge hunks, fast like as if she were consuming it. Her own kid I mean. Don't want anyone to see. Fast like as if she had a mirror, silent obedient pigeon, speaker of truth, perched on her shoulder. Right hand of God, her brain, spitting her a gluttonous reflection from the sunken cheeks of her glowing horizons. And then flew off. Fly away, way off.

>She trailed a long green stem from her heel. At the end, the past life of a yellow flower. Bowed down, at rest, asleep, a flower. I walked on, it was only a moment. Distant sound of HEV train slamming its doors. She rounded a corner, falling curtains her eyes. My eyes predicting the future. Curtains down. No match for the movement of sidewalks.

from No Match for the Movement of Sidewalks (Hawkweed Press, Smiths Falls, 2001)
and Circling Syllable (CD, Anyolehoo Records 2001; Film, Demolid 2002)

the long distance runner

iiiiiiii'mmmmm
a hundred miles an hour baby
don't slow me down i never get to my point

i'm a babbling traveler circling syllable stabber
wading wonder on a puddle-soaked toothpick

iiiiiii'm
a toying with a token o' chance

a glutton-for-trudging tank o' ten-toned indecision
treading fast in a bone-dry spittoon
i'm a fuming frontal a forecasted disaster
prying peanuts
from the nutshell of a promise

a six-bit soldier spear-weary flea flying
arse-pinned spinning sidetracked
to the sky

i'm a drawn down dragged up dangling
convex reflection
forcing fractal
through the keyhole
of a question

a spoiled ballot
silicone tablet
triple-axled gadget cranking
cog-wheeled n curtained to the door

i'm a quilted quotient
partly potent
sequence-churning
motion-slitting
headway freelong goneway
furthermore

i'm a dawn-issue nuisance
recollecting loose ends
shittin gabber
two-cent tagger
fortifying
toe-nail tying
chore

i tell you

i'm a hundred miles an hour baby
don't slow me down because i never
get to my point

from Circling Syllable (CD: Anyolehoo Records, 2001; film: Demolid Multimedia, 2002)
and in English with Hungarian translation by Gábor Gyukics in
Crystal Garden: An Anthology of Canadian Contemporary Poetry (Budapest, 2001)

fragments of how zero traveled

i am reaching like mesh
a textured transparency
sifting through these fragments:

stock
air
abacus
counting lines
chiseled in bone and shadow
shaping solstices in sand

numbers
slung in stirrups sent
traveling the centuries
on caravan

1,2,3,4,5,6,7, 8, 9,

spectators dizzy
with confusion, glee
casting rods
come up
with echo, kelp
tiny maps of planets
carved in wax

and zero
a coveted shell
an encased cathedral
a secret wheel
spinning braille on skin
a sutra for walking on water

i rest my ear
on this crazed mathematical removal
wings wrapped round the knees
caked hard in mud

1,2,3,4,5,6, 7, 8, 9,

i am waiting for voice to return
a fragment of rhythm
magnitudes of infinity
a single sentence to the lungs

and nothing
traveling
deeper toward the undertow

from Stigma: Poems for Dance Theatre
read by Susannah York for The Shamans theatre production 'Stigma'
Budapest International Spring Festival 2003

The Storytellers

The old women on the bench in the village
Outside the front gate
Wait for the neighbour to come by
Or by some eternity
She is already there
They have been talking on this plank of wood already
For three hours
Small talk weaving the mythological era
En route to iconography
The old guys smoke through thick chatter
And waking sleep in company
Punctuated by long pauses for deep breathing

(July 2001, Bukovac, Serbia)

from No Match for the Movement of Sidewalks
Hawkweed Press, Smiths Falls, 2001

All poems Copyright Heather Hermant. No text may be reproduced without permission of the author

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