Eleventh Sketch of a Poem I will not have Written

Stephen Collis

        Perhaps the greatest transgression possible under
        neoliberal capitalism is to stand very still—Anne Boyer
 
 
I told myself
be revolution
was more like joining
or finding
or waiting a long time some stretch of road no traffic
but the heat of broken concrete / you know?
 
It doesn’t have to be all
storm of bricks and fire
lawyers and bankers strung
from their shingles
bodies swinging etc.
/ could there be a stillness
in revolution /
could there be a place where
turning
fast
we were like
breaking out from inside
still inside reading
/ letters of blood and fire /
loaded not yet sprung
from stillness when
you put the book down
and light that cocktail / cock arm / throw
 
doesn’t have to be
stillness like
getting away from the mess
of class and conflict
just the stillness
of bodies joining the mass
which starts to turn once
those stillnesses mesh
like teeth of gears biting
/ sorry / that’s so analog /
me: how many egg mcmuffins
do you think could fit
in a kangaroo’s pouch?
Interviewer: I meant questions
about the job
 
 
 
Stephen Collis’s many books of poetry include The Commons (Talon Books 2008; 2014), On the Material (Talon Books 2010—awarded the BC Book Prize for Poetry), DECOMP (with Jordan Scott—Coach House 2013), and Once in Blockadia (Talon Books 2016—nominated for the George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature). He has also written two books of literary criticism, on poets Susan Howe and Phyllis Webb, a book of essays on the Occupy Movement, and a novel. Almost Islands is a forthcoming memoir, and a long poem, Sketch of a Poem I Will Not Have Written, is in progress. He lives near Vancouver, on unceded Coast Salish Territory, and teaches poetry and poetics at Simon Fraser University.