Transmitter and Receiver
Copyright © Raoul Fernandes, 2015
all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright, the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency, www.accesscopyright.ca, [email protected].
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library and archives canada cataloguing in publication
Fernandes, Raoul, 1978-, author
Transmitter and receiver : poems / by Raoul Fernandes.
Poems.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-0-88971-309-3 (pbk.).--ISBN 978-0-88971-046-7 (html)
I. Title.
PS8611.E749T73 2015 C811’.6 C2015-901128-0
C2015-901129-9
For Megan
By Way of Explanation
You have this thing you can only explain
by driving me out to the port at night
to watch the towering cranes moving containers
from ship to train. Or we go skipping stones
across the mirror of the lake, a ghost ship
in a bottle of blue Bombay gin by your side.
I have this thing I can only explain to you
by showing you a pile of computer hardware
chucked into the ravine. We hike down there
and blackberry vines grab our clothes as if to say,
Stop, wait, I want to tell you something too.
You have an old photograph you keep in your
bedside drawer. I have this song I learned
on my guitar. By way of clarification, you send
me a YouTube video of a tornado filmed up close
from a parked car. Or a live-stream from a public
camera whose view is obscured by red leaves.
I cut you a key to this room, this door.
There’s this thing. A dictionary being consumed
by fire. The two of us standing in front of a Rothko
until time starts again. A mixtape that is primarily
about the clicks and hums between songs. What if
we walk there instead of driving? What if we just drive,
without a destination? There’s this thing I’ve always
wanted to talk about with someone. Now
with you here, with you listening, with all
the antennae raised, I no longer have to.
The Goodnight Skirt
Permission to use that snowball
you’ve been keeping in the freezer
since 1998. For a poem? she asks.
What else? I say. I’ll trade you, she says
for that thing your mom said
at the park. What was it?
“God, that mallard’s being a real douchebag”?
Yes, that one. Deal, I say. Okay, how about
the Korean boy who walks past
our house late at night, singing
“Moon River”? Oh, you can use that, I say,
I wouldn’t even know what
to do with it. But there is something else.
I’ve been wanting to write about
the black skirt we’ve been using to cover
the lovebird’s cage. The goodnight skirt.
In exchange, I’ll let you have
our drunken mailman, the tailless tabby,
and I’ll throw in the broken grandfather clock
we found in the forest. One more, she says.
Last night, I say. The whole night.
She considers for a while, then,
Okay, that’s fair. But I really had something going
with that lovebird. All right, I say, write it
anyway. If it’s more beautiful than mine,
it’s yours.
Bioluminescence
Walking through the sensor gate at the public library
after a heavy reading, you fear the alarm
will go off from what is held in your mind.
You reassure yourself with the thought that no matter
how fuzzy it gets in the wire-tangled AV room,
you are still lunch, with possible leftovers,
for that wolf and her cubs. You have to imagine
the wolf and her cubs, obviously, but it helps.
When it comes down to it, it’s completely dark
just a few millimetres beneath the skin, no matter
how real the flickers on your nerve endings feel,
what with this strong coffee, this pulsing sky. You remind
yourself deep-sea life forms have evolved bioluminescence
for practical, not spiritual, reasons. Lunch, leftovers, etc.
Wooden chairs are real and tangible,
which is why philosophers and poets are always
referring to them, holding onto them, when hovering