Lyric pathography for Sudbury, Ontario

i.
The town smells like a yuppie garbage day,
artisanal and yeasty. It pairs well
with the basement wine that coats
your throat: acidic, glutinous, and wistful.

You weave a chain of rusty daisies
at the playground near the creek
clogged with fluorescent silt. Inhale
the sulphurous tang it belches up.

ii.
The lightness of your swiss-cheese bones
is not enough to fly, not yet. Both sourdough
and cancer stats are rising in this kitchen.

I spill tea over yesterday’s stale crumbs.
We watch them swell like lymphocytes
and read in them the pattern of our likeness.

Pray with me: recite the names of lakes
from which our tap water is drawn.

iii.
We drive past rolling shattercones
while you try not to fracture. Rain
here corrodes the edges of your car,
corrodes the edges of your patience.

As a bone-witch, I’m no use to you.
Bones that may shift beneath my hands
do not regain their lost opacity.

I couldn’t even heal myself, dashing
my elbows on the rocks to cleanse
us all of what has seeped in through our skin.

iv.
We make such solipsisms on these rare,
hop-seasoned nights. We swaddle newborn
lambs and nurse them from our bottles,
curse their innocence, their tabula rasa

immune systems. Tipsy nurturers, we tally
parts per million nickeling their bloodstreams
as they grow. We can’t be healed of love

for landscapes. Let’s drink until my drunk body
mistakens home for poison, closes up my throat.
Let’s drink until your body overgrows this place.