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Klara du Plessis :: Three poems


Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing seen

The flower has been dying
silently beside me for days now.
Softly unburdening itself.
If I were to touch it ever so lightly
all the petals would be upset
and topple like the last bit of drink
in my mug all over the papers
on my desk. This slightly generic
image happens to me
on a Sunday morning, gently,
a homage to days taken off
in the past, the cotton shirt stuck
over my head in the act of pealing
it from my skin. Fetching
is a synonym for beauty.
Driving over to the pick-up point
to fetch an instant of attraction.
Becoming is also a synonym
for beauty. To burgeon,
to longingly cling to the act
of a future self. As syntax erodes
around you


East Plateau, Montreal
December 31, 2016

When last was cornucopia
a sign of decadence?
Domesticated horny,
baskets brimming, divers
reclining legumes
lisping along that rattan lip,
the most lethargic still
lifes in existence. I walk
across the Christmas cake
ganache pedestrian walkway
whittling at a potential poetic
line.

This scrappy escarpment which calls itself the city.

Shocks of wheat sweat out
display window condensation;
nymphs butter radiant flanks
with a hedonist’s red tint;
and the row of ingrown trees
assigned to vibrancy
advise the ethical urge
of carpe diem


Artichoke at heart

The Mediterranean assumption, edible
buds on the precipice of flowering,
rendered an awkward blond peroxide in brine

like sunsets somehow limited to summer,
at least where I reside, the sudden pink pop
of street threshold latitudes once the sun

eventually shines. Sitting outside in the heat
of art, asphyxiating on intellect and excess
sensitivity, eating tapas that never satiate, 

flex the fruit, essential muscle of the heart’s
swollen oscillation, pump and choke
of something resembling substance



Klara du Plessis is a Montreal-based poet and critic. Her chapbook, Wax Lyrical—shortlisted for the bpNichol Chapbook Award—was released from Anstruther Press, 2015; a debut collection, Ekke, is forthcoming from Palimpsest Press, 2018. Poems have recently appeared in Asymptote, Canthius, CV2, LRC, PRISM, among others. She curates the Resonance Reading Series, writes reviews for The Montreal Review of Books, and is the editor for carte blanche magazine.

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where is the river :: a poetry experiment is a bi-monthly poetry journal open to a variety of aesthetics, forms and experiences, with a preference towards showcasing work by emerging writers. There is no single path, nor any single way. Founded in September 2017. Edited by Kiefer JD Logan.