Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Tuesday poem #156 : Renée Sarojini Saklikar : Informant: The Belt of Venus



We met that young boy living porch-side, mercy
who worked, those people foragers. It were
inside Rentalsman, after the first Catastrophe
boy, insisting: to gaze in love prefigures
honey-locust, angel mushrooms, all his finds
dew surrounded tender orchard trees, pear-gold
apple, enough gaze to kill, asking why,
he cried: my love is strong enough to make
longing, one look filled, enough to wither
jealous rain who takes the wind away, drenched
other places unseen and we, in drought
I loved the honey locust and it died
the pear and apple tree, too.
His cracked lips, his bruised skin, after silence—


Blinded, his palms turned upward, life-lines cut
Help me, I want to see again—shadows


obligatory, whispered the INVESTIGATOR


Renée Sarojini Saklikar writes thecanadaproject, a life-long poem chronicle that includes poetry, fiction, and essays. Work from the project is widely published in journals, anthologies and chapbooks. The first completed book from thecanadaproject is children of air india, un/authorized exhibits and interjections, (Nightwood Editions, 2013) winner of the 2014 Canadian Authors Association Award for poetry and a finalist for the 2014 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Award. Trained as a lawyer at the University of British Columbia, with a degree in English Literature, Renée was called to the British Columbia Bar in 1991.  A graduate of The Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University, Renée is currently a mentor and instructor for the university and co-founder of a new poetry reading series, Lunch Poems at SFU. In September 2015, with acclaimed author Wayde Compton, Renée co-edited The Revolving City: 51 Poems and the Stories Behind Them (Anvil Press/SFU Public Square). Renée serves as an advocate on the national council of The Writer’s Union of Canada and is at work on the second volume of thecanadaproject, excerpts of which can be found in the journals Eleven Eleven, The Capilano Review and online at DUSIE and The Rusty Toque.  Renée is working on a sequence of bee poems based on her collaboration with well-known biologist, Dr. Mark Winston.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

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