Angela Carr

/Canada

(Canada). Carr`s first book of poetry, Ropewalk was published in 2006, her second, The Rose Concordance is forthcoming in fall, 2009. She contributed to the symposium Translating Translating Montréal (2007), interviewed a number of contemporary Canadian poets for Matrix magazine, and more recently for Open Letter (Canadian literary journals). She lives in Montréal, where she makes her living as a translator.

Poems

/ Of running, of the core

how running dryly from complicity
running dryly with fragile limbs
nothing runs more beautifully than instinct
no one runs more beautifully
to poverty when running yields
runners, these aspects, leaves in her hair.
can you fashion such a beautiful runner?
my heart races
it appears softly enough
presumably slows your running
the running of our voices changes nothing
how the smell runs into me
running and the smell of your body
i say running when i mean to say bodies
the bodies of our voices change nothing

how bodies dryly from complicity
bodies dryly with fragile limbs
nothing bodies more beautifully than instinct
no one bodies more beautifully
poverty for whom bodies cede
bodies, these aspects, leaves in her hair.
can you fashion such a beautiful body?
my heart races
it appears softly enough
presumably slows your body
the bodies of our voices change nothing
how the smell embodies me
bodies and the smell of you running
i say bodies when i mean to say running
the running of our voices changes nothing

/ Of the many

What if a final s were to elide the text? Slipping into non-being, slipping off the very end. If it were fragile. As it fell to the pavement, a glass s cracking.
In time, plants grow around the shards of this s. One of them, a solid tree, breaks through the fragmented curve of the s, transforms it into topsoil.

The s had a story, but she was lost in time. The elision of time. Splinters the very touch. This idea of authenticity drawn from the writer like a splinter/ this idea of authenticity splintered for the writer/ this idea of the writer/ this idea of convected heat/ of fingers/ of her mechanistic body/ of ideas splintered and wedged in her body
The cycle of elision and broken ease, accepted and rejected sensuality. If I were to write a whole sentence, would it be to redeem?
When we bring a glass s outside and dare it to break. When we are undone/ eased/ these illusions

/ Of the middle

Our language with no body, nor less breath running.
Our language less in motion than motion.
Our tongues between properties, dividing,
nipples, the centrelanguage, heartbeat.
By the middle of September I had no body,
I was centrelanguage dividing the missing heartbeat,
my heartbeat, from the present.
By the middle of September I had no property, no body.
By the middle.
I bled language until I had no body.
Between our properties dividing turnips
from snow in the cold bare
vicinity of our language.
By the middle of winter
our story was less motion, language bled from me.
By the middle, I was missing
dividing months from the human
language with no body
honeycombs
frozen
honed
shhhh
but
I cannot breathe nor run with this less language.

I bled language until I had no body.
Bled between turnips and snow
Bled the cold bare language.
By the middle
Our story was less
Language had bled from me
So our story was less.I bled language until I had no body.
Bled between turnips and snow
Bled the cold bare language.
By the middle
Our story was less
Language had bled from me
So our story was less.