National Poetry Month : Conyer Clayton,

 
 

 

False spring

 

Whoever said winter is cruel forgot
about the thawing temperature of ice. What's held
onto until it's ready to be absorbed. Forgotten 

olive oil in a pan filling the kitchen with smoke.
A little blue bag of shit pedestalled on a snowbank.
Winter gives us time to tidy up, offers warnings 

in the small rivers of melt pooling at the end of the drive
where you neglected to clear the storm drain again.
My nephew said all the houses here are dirty, because 

he has never seen snow. Winter hasn't marked his calendar
with a bird's return. The flowers at the front of the house
bloom first because there's nothing to block the sun. 

The same kindness in heat as in cold, smoke
refusing to exit the room. The garbage men steadfastly
try to empty the compost bin even though 

it's frozen solid. Clockwork, the world.
Ticking, like love. My reflection in the ice is pale
and invisible to everyone but me.

 

 

Conyer Clayton is a writer, musician, editor, and gymnastics coach living on unceded Algonquin Anishinaabe land. Her debut collection, We Shed Our Skin Like Dynamite (Guernica Editions, 2020), won an Ottawa Book Award and was a Relit Award finalist. She's released 2 albums and many chapbooks; recently, Holy Disorder of Being (forthcoming with Gap Riot Press, 2022) by VII, of which she is a member. Her second book, But the sun, and the ships, and the fish, and the waves (A Feed Dog Book, Anvil Press) is forthcoming June 2022.