Issue 41: Spring 2018

Subaruminant

The bison in Montana judged us / like well-upholstered X-ray machines

The bison in Montana judged us
like well-upholstered X-ray machines. We left
them behind. Over Michigan the sky

finally adjusted its glasses. Céline held visage
for three whole toll booth measures. Industrial
sci-fi rain and your wrist fixing

the rear-view mirror with my face in it.
Some other things we left behind: my beard
in a little gold sink in Chicago. Your nana

cracking a Coors Light by a green lake. Ohio.
Olivia and her broken clavicle. Her minimum-wage
job setting off avalanches at dawn

so tourists can ski safely down with mirrored
orange worlds strapped to their faces. An American
one-dollar bill I used as a band-aid.

Your mother. A plant of basil. The nervous
tic where I only blink the eye farthest from you.
Other things of course but now you are asleep.

Your face against a pillow shaped
like a nuclear mushroom. Your headlamp
still lit on your forehead. A book in your lap

about blackholes or blackberries. I can’t see.
Pittsburgh darkening ahead and invisible foxes.
Wake up. Wake up. I can’t believe your eyes. 

About the author

Dominique Bernier-Cormier’s first book, Correspondent, was published by icehouse (Goose Lane) in 2018. He received The Fiddlehead’s Prize for Best Poem in 2017, and his work has been shortlisted for the Montreal International Poetry Prize, ARC’s Poem of the Year Award, and CV2’s Young Buck Poetry Prize. He is an editor for Rahila’s Ghost Press and dreams in neither French nor English.