Kootenay Group

David Martin

This outcrop chops logic:
a blender of interbedded
shale and silt smuggled in
glacial meal is exhumed
by clastic talking cures.
Hairpinning rube-seams
fist bump mudstone squatters
chugging oh-two brews,
while boho aspens snort
coal to cook up a scree
of showboating fancy-Dans.
En route to a cirque’s scoop,
a lamp house stockpiles slag.
Moss maps cement’s nap,
reclaiming dimpled vugs:                                    
sphagnum beards hum here.



David Martin works as a literacy instructor in Calgary and as an organizer for the Single Onion Poetry Series. His first collection, Tar Swan (NeWest Press, 2018), was a finalist for the Raymond Souster Award and the City of Calgary W. O. Mitchell Book Prize. David’s work has been awarded the CBC Poetry Prize, shortlisted for the Vallum Award for Poetry and PRISM international’s poetry contest, and has appeared in numerous journals across Canada.