ditch,

Kim Goldberg is a poet, journalist and author of six books. Her poems have appeared in The Capilano Review, Geist, Prairie Fire, Rampike, Tesseracts, Istanbul Literary Review and elsewhere. Her first poetry collection, Ride Backwards on Dragon (Leaf Press, 2007), was short-listed for Canada’s Lampert Memorial Award for poetry. Her latest collection, RED ZONE (Pig Squash Press, 2009), is a verse map of Nanaimo’s homeless population. The book has been adopted as a literature course text at Vancouver Island University. Kim lives in Nanaimo, BC, where approximately 300 people sleep on the streets each night. Visit: http://pigsquash.wordpress.com/

from RED ZONE
 
squat
 
 
tchook kuh kuh
tchook kuh kuh
tchook kuh kuh
tchook kuh kuh
 
this tangled tideline
of wads
of knotted waste
of life’s amalgam
of brasjeansplasticbagskleenexsweatersexplodedtampons
empty lighters jackets missing arms
socks absent shoes
shoes absent laces
this spewed up snake of thriftstore flotsam washing from room
to room to room in windowsmashed freight depot
fronting dockside railyard
 
tchook kuh kuh
tchook kuh kuh
tchook kuh kuh
tchook kuh kuh
 
these wads of damp
of done for
of gone
of lives tied off tied up tied out of sight
of anonymous lumpenkind
 
 
   S
NAM
   V
   E
 
 
thalo blue spray bleeding
down concrete blocks
surrounded by outline of cross

 
 
WE TRYED AND LOST
ARE LIFES
 
 
more thalo blue bookended by cartoon syringes
the real ones scattered across dead sea
of scuffed linoleum (startled fingerlings flushed
from broken shadows)
 
tchook kuh kuh
tchook kuh kuh
tchook kuh kuh
tchook kuh kuh
 
the red zone
didn’t work
 
they just came here instead
across esplanade
to jack wads into their flattened arteries and
thalo blue veins ripping
the nictitating membrane off the eyes
of the rest of us
 
tchook kuh kuh
tchook kuh kuh
tchook kuh kuh
tchook kuh kuh
 
take my photo and I’ll chop your head off and
chuck it in the snowbank ya fuckin bitch!
I shot flotsam instead
 
 
KEEP OUT
I AM FELING REALY BAD
 
 
cardboard sign on blanket door
small slip of privacy
for photocopy nook
a shrouded tenant in each cell
15? 20?
desk drawers upside down in
paper tidepools file cabinets tipped
dreams tossed on slag heap above highline
every starfish drying to stardust
moon ceasing to pump leaving ebb
without flow
 
the red zone
didn’t work
 
plywood is the cheapest fix
to seal this hive by sunday when the well flossed
public surges to scenic waterfront for shipboard tour of
coastal renaissance the largest double
ender in the world
free cookiescoffeephoto with six foot seagull in
captains uniform
 
the plywood
didn’t work
 
it is time for new thinking
lets strap them to flatcars and keep them rolling forever
through rat maze of catacombs left over from
coalmining days   YES
our empty subterranean guts
will safeguard our precious minutemen of cultural
decay
must keep them invisible
untouchable
incurable
eternal
 
tchook kuh kuh
tchook kuh kuh
tchook kuh kuh
tchook kuh kuh
 
 
*  *  *

by Kim Goldberg

September 2009, ISBN 978-0-9783223-7-3

150 pages, 60+ photos

 $18.95

available from Pig Squash Press: http://pigsquash.wordpress.com/