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NUISANCE. BRAVE.
By Jordan Scott
Jordan Scott is the author of Silt (nominated for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize), Blert, and Decomp (a collaboration with Stephen Collis and the ecosphere of British Columbia). Blert, which explores the poetics of stuttering, was adapted into a short film for Bravo! and was the subject of an online interactive documentary commissioned by the National Film Board of Canada. Jordan lives in Port Moody, BC.
NUISANCE
A shell finds
the woods
untamed head
in a piece
of light
recalls
the mouths, the violets
red mouth violence, the wolves
the fish, red mouth toys.
That what touches
never stops that
never body
within a body, hole
in sense reswallowing
nature to our throats.
I’m exhumanistically, sorry.
My crown of teeth, my dazzled teeth
scatter necklace as in Skeena leaps
from I to genera, blood to
taxonomy dwelts
quiet rivers be
quiet bodies;
I’m all esophageal; instinct arrives as a mountain.
And I am here as a necessary walk away from sleep
as woods are warm stages under nations
as little treasure I wish to keep:
anguish portal; nurselogs.
Moving forward into blue overhead.
There, there, in disrepair.
There, there. I said it:
and praise words
with no intention
whatsoever to stop.
I’m all esophageal; instinct is falling dogs like sails
of cloth dogs falling
unthinkable till
the end running out
of voice and hissing
musculature sans
skeleton sans
bodies there’s
still airspace
there’s still
bodies on their backs
in rows, in ranks
in exploded view:
dog-ear anything
that’s vacant
red and
skin anthill
hunger is
background
speech is
reddish eye
color lost
bodies.
Pasture women, children too.
Folk absence; mythologically missing.
Glow-worms
for absence from
sun portage
to grid search
what bodies
full pity soil
what currents do
a floating body.
Leaf women, children too
are luxurious
strewn forests
lost in the woods of myself.
I will go on and try to avoid revenge.
This is a new county, fields
endless but visible behind
every field.
There there, I said it:
the earth seems the bodies’ insides
all blood relational
and paralyzingly lunar
when who is the kind of people we speak for
are understudy, internodal and interleaved centuries ago.
I imagine blood as being what a void would do
as meaning bloodhounds
unsome idiom of
disgrace
full animal
bones
of gods
and detritus and
leftover remains
of maybeings
outside the Costco or other pavilions
they’ve gone over
landscape and found that
things get missing; shit happens.
In other words, chunks of chalk.
In other words, endless fields are galleries of beings.
In other words, I’m for the children but the problem is structural.
I’m all masterminded shareability; instinct is luxury
dew-points, crisp interjecta
quiet, cuneiform
pure is sleeping air.
Is erasure, yes. But it’s only atmospheric.
Only quietive, platelet
elegies thread a person
hanging like a wisp of straw
dog faces of a dream
or some black water
for the moment, say Hazlitt sleeping
blather of crimson umbicular tress.
Let us follow desire; it deteriorates.
It’s always the little ones first
as text stuffed within digressive episodes.
A body repockets itself.
Tits and teeth to floor as a system of waves; these familiar positions
one long sentence
will last only a moment.
We’re in a history of moments.
TEXT SEXTANT SYNTAX ASHTRAY
I call it, the more our bloods warm, the more languages touch some unleavened dough
then light biscuits and cream with ground almonds.
Cinnamon eloquence; guilt clinamen.
Even the desires were stupefied.
It’s a landslide, out there
if the eye comes, gushing.
If the I were the documents read:
disinterested dysentery; mini is malnutrition.
Even desire was like, what!?
The river as an open belly; the lot an enormous tongue.
RECALL REKILL RELAUNCH, language
as only chest kept
language is non body
not lexicon and no mouth is
beyond premeditation.
Even desire opened-up slightly; stupefied lures
the mouths, the violets
red mouth violence, the wolves
the fish, red mouth toys.
Like each of them transience and dust. And arrhythmia too is chest noise of trapped
swallows of what whole words and don’t. Of what is hidden would remain hidden = what is lost would not return = what is distorted does not undistort.
It is a trap: this land, the dead, surviving.
Said again, witness is autodivisible.
Whiteness is documents.
The word begins with a crime
this poem; my little lips
breed tense into another body.
Ashen I semantics in a gush, say, Similkameen.
Of what is urged but not
sung hormonic
rivers god a levee
before poems.
I puke or evoke. An advent made to me.
This nature of harmony that loves to hide
off land
bent head
off words
sorry, off sound
and sound is
moving survival.
And sound is
missing abuse.
Even desire was hunting; watch desire replant the woods.
THE DELIGHTS OF REASEMBLING
a forestry of good intentions.
SPICE FORREST – MILLION SCENTS – ITS ENTRAILS
Even the desires were stupefied.
I genera before fucktterance, say, some Nechako for a make-believe alphabet laid
serenely white. This blanket statement: my body, is to give it a rest already.
Phonology, I am sleeping.
Murals and intentions like animal bodies weighing outlines, weighing hiding places.
I dark until teeth as brilliant as eyes. My dazzling teeth.
In short, they presuscitate.
I’m alchemically, sorry.
And this is the day
when erasure feels less threatened with abandonment.
Ache poems; blood acres.
I ace in the hole of a stolen everything
sonorous geodecimals; unbrilliant earth
sans risk
sad poems
find in copying that anguish is certitude
is the body as always the body of another
sacrament bombshells; bivalvular sucking.
Even desire became a system of waves, as in the Nass, right to the end
where history becomes a fable
singing to the nerves: NATURE IS LABORATORY.
Unthinkingly grammatical; unwillingly pigfarms.
Yours truly,
Packed-in on a trail from within.
The women and babies; the magic or science.
Even desire was a little sleepy.
Like all operations these days.
Pixilated groanology
windows and their blossoms
torso parasails
glittering like thirst.
The little ones, if a door opens to the sun
are unhinged hummingbirds’
colored hearing
the mouths, the violets
red mouth violence, the wolves,
the fish, red mouth toys.
Or Crayola Chinooks
in the middle of a blue
like words before drowning
talcum surrender; women woven thereof.
Finally, I think the horde is a poem
for words for eating crow.
Too tomb; too echo; too young
after all
sensate horror
STORY IS NOTHING.
BRAVE
And anguish sometimes
never stops forest
puzzle and sand
draws to itself
our tides and
sentimental itis
almost said
don’t wash away
a sound - soul would
imitate a field
skin smell of
lighting and clouds
drifting atmosphere
small bones
miraculously
singing back
gallop stars
and swan
their vertigo
as if I press my ear
hard against all
blood laced
in text glitter
form arbor
rhythm creatures
Showed me the holes
in everything
Night
like a column
never whole again
hidden light
as if a shard
within a wave
is a form of forgiveness
but can’t make a single sound
I’m here for
indexical roe
crumbs bygone
pastoral eyes
come back
all the way
dis color
head full
absorptive
culture ilium
ill but
all words
waiting in the mouths, the violets
red mouth violence, the wolves
the fish, red mouth toys.
Gleam departure
dew gleam waiting
then gone
heavy steps
making sure of rivers
turn to come
foliage of sphere
frenulum foils
gyrate luminous
eat that empty sky
one star solemn in
empty sky
songs seem
to stir
songs of black spaces
or stars held in suspense
waiting dawn or robins
wait to sing
to slip cheeks
close near backs
and fern
spines in
a little bit of rain
filled moon
and eyes
filled with suspense
without anyone seeing
thin itinerant hearts
through some muscle
then reminder of whatever
forms need
reforming
Like all the ancestors
we have in our bodies
Wrung tongue
wrong, language
it’s sometimes not
a mouth but
small gasp
forest effortless
in spine image
nation heart
like a whale knotting
more commotion
than form of collapse
more reckoning
tracks from
behind
I know
the holes I have
nibble shade shallot
hung distance
small empty nouns
discover that speech
is never simply single
but co-pastels
coo-membrane
thirst for startle
and stare out rubble
ways to meet
an opening
in mist-morning
monoglot noon
now to swoon
foreground waste
here, aporias
for doze wild
value creep wild
to live in
this world
with closure
as if books and
bodies close
tidelines
waiting its
water folding
off surety prowls
lounge out whole
mouth to touch plaything
you, history and
grass in twists
of light and
words, free
certainty.
This poem was commissioned by Simon Fraser University's Centre for Dialogue in honour of Chief Robert Joseph, recipient of the 2014 Jack P. Blaney Award for Dialogue, and was originally presented at Vancouver Public Library as part of the City of Vancouver's Year of Reconciliation.