Conjunctions:75 Dispatches from Solitude

Three Poems
The following is a selected text from “Three Poems” by Colin Channer, first published in Conjunctions:75, Dispatches from Solitude.

 


Bubble

Love from another time beneath me
in that new white cube house, mouth-water
from my brother’s lip a dollop on my arm;

and the bed irks when he fidgets 
in the wait-for-signal from the gap
between floor tiles and the ground;

not “the grounds”. . . ground . . . house bottom,
hush wilderness where short
unpainted pylons bear our house,

moral interstice of lizards, worms
and insects—where with keyholes
in our milk teeth we go crawling

with jook sticks to kill;
but not today, not now, not in this
drowsy interval, not with bellied

dog beneath us filled with pups;
expectant anguish, feels like advent
service at St. Mary’s or the held-in

glee on card nights near Christmas
when big people leave red punch
with anise to the ferns and tip to mum’s

barracks and we hear the rip of tape
in plastic sleigh beds getting pulled,
and we guess at gifts;

so, me and Gary sleepy-tangled-up this morning,
birth funk rising from the privates
of the house; peeny-wally dust makes

helix in the light the louvers plane;
the pregnant dog sounds settled in the place
where she belongs, the crawly gap,

our dim far-fetching range,
and in bed my mind gallops,
my chewed fingers work, names coming

as I pick tufts from the blue chenille
we cover with, our inner sky, thought bubble,
holder of our wishes, gases, pissings,

bun crumbs, Milo, condensed milk,
the drowsy pleasure of being above new
life as it’s ushered in not lost on me,

not lost because it’s just too big to grasp;
this is six-year-old bare love,
just adorable distress as each

pup imagined is named, my mind alert
for big dog bray or jostle, or a sightless
infant chirp, and now it comes!

newborn’s here-in-wonder cry on waking in an outtabelly underworld;
the next sound comes to mind still

       when I think efficient
       one growl all slaughtered runts,
       and every time I hear the sound

       and every time I hear the sound
       and every time I hear the sound
       the sound the sound the sound . . .

 

Colin Channer’s most recent book is the poetry collection Providential (Akashic Books). Born in Jamaica, and raised there and in New York, he teaches at Brown University.

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March 27, 2024
On my day off, I drove my aging father to his death in the quaint town he had frequented after the navy when he was bouncing between jobs. On the phone, two nights before the fated trip, was the first I had heard him speak of this place. Though I believed him, doubts soon set in, and I wondered whether his claim was a phantom of his condition.
March 20, 2024
Christmas Night lies bitter cold and silent over the capital, and all life seems frozen. Even the wind is still, and the stars flicker like minuscule fires that strive to keep life going. 
March 13, 2024
Ariadne struck the mast

Enraged. She     couldn’t sail, no

One had ever bothered to


Teach her, but the ship wouldn’t

Be still.     She had awoken

To find Thesus dead, his crew


Dead,     and at first she had felt

Relief.