AND JUST LIKE THAT THERE’S A PLACE ❋ Emily Wood

There’s a mount pleasant in every canadian town
in every place I have my hands in my pockets
your mouth turned up as we walk
down the conveyor belt concrete
you tuck yourself into bed
and that thing you do with
your face feels like a penny
on the sidewalk of everywhere
it feels like extinction
or the weird place you
have in your chest for all
of time to settle
like a snake coiled into a fist
like every bit of matter
picking it all up again
I can’t tell you what it
is but the tectonic plates
we stand on move with
every single silence of
this night we walk in and
out of forever
like a gift from God
in the photocopier

And you are among the recycling
And you become civic despondency, having stood all day in the sun.

And you are a procedural search executed with care
And you are the even wearing of the quay

And you are framed by my moral urge and the moral urges of others
And you are not a neutral instrument.

And it is true that we do not know what you do when you are off work
And the car chuffing to no one

And I believe that you suffer.
To have been abusive and to be contextualizing is lover’s work—
And we said meet us at the skate park if you’re coming at all tonight.

*Note: The line “And you are not a neutral instrument” is taken from ‘Wooden Houses’ by Lisa Robertson, 2009.