introducing: Goose and Frankie,

These two young gentlemen (who will be four months old tomorrow) entered our household last Saturday afternoon. We'd been pondering new cats for a while, our young ladies preferring one each, in part so they wouldn't fight over a single one, and so the kittens could entertain each other during school-days. After the loss of our Lemonade more than a year ago [see my obituary for him here], the household was finally ready to be able to move forward (there was talk at one point of attempting to get Lemonade "a friend," but we never quite got there). Again, the kitten-proofing (lots of stuff getting knocked over) and the sunroom door closed (until potentially poisonous plants can be re-housed). Again, the attention to litter and water and brushing and food.

These "chaos gremlins" (as Christine refers to them) are a curious Highland Lynx/Siamese blend, and lap-cats (at least so far), very different than our skittish and moody Lemonade. As well, as Lemonade, both kittens are polydactyl, with multiple extra toes (and accompanying claws) all over their wee padded feet. It took longer than I would have thought for the young ladies to land on names (and refusing any of the ridiculous names I offered: "Captain Marzipan!" "Peaches!" "President Eisenhower!" etc). Aoife finally chose "Goose" for her kitten, after our recent Captain Marvel (2019) watch [Aoife and I have been doing an entire MCU watch, having watched twenty-five movies-to-date in order of their release, as well as the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, Ms. Marvel (which I knew she'd really like) and WandaVision, with more to come]. Rose has landed on "Frankie," a name she claims she "just likes," but it makes me think of Frankie Goes To Hollywood, of course. "Frankie says Relax," I tell them, and the boy agrees. Although Rose had earlier attempted "My Melody," a Hello Kitty reference we weren't convinced by (when naming pets or children, one has to be able to land on a name one can yell), but made me think of this song from my youth (one I was actually surprised Christine didn't know), which I hadn't realized was by a Toronto band. Are all my references from 1980s pop? Possibly.

Lemonade (August 21, 2011 – December 5, 2024)

Our beloved cat, Lemonade, who turned thirteen this past August, collapsed the other night in clear distress. I rushed him to the Emergency Vet Clinic not ten minutes away, but he passed within five or six minutes of landing. What the hell happened? I was still filling out paperwork. At home and throughout the car ride he was howling, howled, in a way that seemed frightening; collapsed on our bedroom floor and drooling, unable to move.

Not even enough time for the Veterinary assistant to bring me into the room. It was the suddenness, more than anything else. An emotional whiplash. He’s actively dying, they said. His heart or a clot, although they were able to medicate him for a bit of relief. Do you want to go in with him, even as a further interrupted, saying it was already too late. I signed my name to a form. Christine, still at home, attempted to comfort our distraught children, upending their bedtime. Aoife, who chose to remain home from school the next day, as she couldn’t stop crying. Rose, who chose to go, so she could talk it out with her friends.

It was somewhere in the fall of 2011 that Christine told me that she wanted either a baby or a dog or a cat or a flower. It was a list I found startling, as we were neither married nor engaged at that point (nor had any of that been discussed), a year into living together in a third-storey walk-up in Centretown. God sakes: a baby? In that moment, I had no idea if she was serious. A cat, I thought, seemed easy enough. A flower might be the wrong answer, although she did list it. Heading over to the Humane Society off Hunt Club Road, we chanced upon a kitten on a high perch, amusing himself by startling his peers by dropping down on them. This is the one. We selected this rakish black-and-white bundle known to the staff as “Pepe,” so named as he reminded the staff of the cartoon skunk from Warner Bros. cartoons. Beyond the cultural implications, we didn’t think he looked like a Pepé.

Lemonade. He looked, I thought, like a Lemonade. Four months old, we officially fostered for a bit until he had run through some medication for a stomach issue, before we could fully adopt him. His stomach issue persisted, providing a variety of medicated food attempts before one would settle, and then, re-settle. Lemonade: the kitten who pounced on us in the middle of the night, later scratch at the closed bedroom door at all hours, pulling up carpet. We eventually placed a plastic car liner underneath the door, to protect the floor of our McLeod Street apartment. He was an indoor cat, unable to be out without leash (which he barely tolerated). We watched him fall off the couch, we certainly weren’t about to let him roam around outside by himself. We allowed him to wander (accompanied) a bit at Sainte-Adèle, preferring the comfort of bushes than the open space of the yard.

He was a polydactyl, attending extra toes on every foot, the way his paws attempting flies looked like two catcher’s mitts on either side of any errant black speck. He caught the rare fly that snuck into the house, which we appreciated, but he ate them, which we thought was quite gross. You’re gross, Lemonade. Soon after he arrived, I composed a short sequence of poems that appeared in my Centretown collection, A halt, which is empty (2019): “Lemonade, polydactyl (or, / the cat with twenty-two toes,),” a title that played off Michael Ondaatje’s classic The Man with Seven Toes (1971). They told us that to declaw a cat would be inhumane, and it eventually meant we had to take him to the vet for trimming, otherwise his nails would catch on our carpet, and we were too likely to be scratched. As my piece begins:

this new kitten;                        bone-cleave,
            hindrance; to de-claw

 

is to pick out bone; inhumane,

they tell us,

                        [see the full poem here]

Can one of you feed your brother, I would ask our young ladies. With three daughters, he was my only boy. Aoife used to argue, pointing out that he wasn’t really their brother, and he was adopted. I would point out that I, too, was adopted. Does that make me any less family to my parents, my sister? The idea eventually took root, Aoife announcing to teachers and classmates that she had three siblings, including a brother, who was actually a cat. It counts, certainly. Aoife, who would lay her head on Lemonade’s back as he rested on our bed. Rose would regularly come through and pet him, attempting to get him to pay her attention as well.

During pandemic, as he required tooth extraction, I sat in a parking lot in Ottawa’s east end awaiting the results of his follow-up appointment. He and I were the same age, then. His extraction cost enough that we began to refer to him as our second car, and the poem I sketched out in that parking lot became “Summer, pandemic,” a piece forthcoming in the book of sentences (2025): “This body as a means // to dialogue, and his teeth held / in synaptic space. From this lone parking lot // in Ottawa’s east end, veterinarian staff report his outbursts, frustrated // at their prodding. He is such / a mood.” [see the full poem here]

He was temperamental, skittish. Always acting as though, if we were both walking within the same room, I was clearly there to murder him, somehow. He’d scatter. He wished to remain in our orbit, but often too far for us to reach or to pet. Kitten Lemonade, who would jump up and set his head and front paws on my shoulder whenever I sat down, something he outgrew by the time we were on Alta Vista, but he was never a lap-cat. He would sit near, often on his own blanket-space on the couch, or, eventually, in the bedroom with Christine, held there through two different maternity leaves, or through her recovery stretch since her 2019 stroke. He kept good company. Lemonade attended her days, often complaining when she wasn’t home, attempting to herd anyone else into that empty space. “I know a little language of my cat,” Robert Duncan wrote, to open “A little language,” a poem that rests in Ground Work: Before the War (1984), “though Dante says / that animals have no need of speech and Nature / abhors the superfluous.” He communicated what he needed, the past few years more vocal in his requirements for attention, food. Cats, they say, who predominantly speak aloud to communicate with humans, and less so with each other.

He was our constant, between Christine and I; one of our first marks or measures of permanence, more important to our household than I could have first imagined. Our young ladies had known him their whole lives, this meandering cat who sniffed around during their baby and toddler stretches, remaining just out of reach. Marge Piercy, as part of her poem “The cat’s song” from Mars & Her Children (1992), wrote: “My emotions are pure as salt crystals and as hard.” Lemonade, on his part, required us, but he required his distance, offering our young ladies a patience far more than with us, although there was the rare time he would snap if they crossed him. Never a scratch but a warning. He understood, it would seem, their difference.

Responding to my social media notification on his passing, someone offered the poem “from Jubilate Agno” by English poet Christopher Smart (1722-1771), a link from the Poetry Foundation website. The excerpt, at least, composed for his “Cat Jeoffry,” filled with reverence and Christian ardor, and this small couplet that makes the point perfectly:

For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest.
For there is nothing brisker than his life when in motion.

 

(another) weekend in sainte-adele,

We spent the bulk of the long weekend, again, at Christine's mother's wee cottage, nestled in the hills and the wood an hour or so north of Montreal. Christine worked on preparing our fall Chaudiere titles for the printer, I worked on an interview or three, and Rose toddled about, including a bout we went off into Sainte-Adele proper for ice cream and wandering. Lemonade, of course, slept. How different these trips are from, seemingly, not that long ago (here; here) when Christine would work days on the main floor, and I would work days in the basement, meeting up for evening dinner and drinks and conversation. Will those days ever come round again? Perhaps a small version of such, as Rose grows; perhaps in another five or six years.

We might have been up a few weeks ago, but Christine worries this might be our last for the year (despite being only our second time up), given the tenants take over on November 1st. Between her mother and brother caught up in the election, and some of our October, we are most likely skipping Thanksgiving. Might there be another chance? We just don't (yet) know.

And then there was the thunderstorm on Sunday night, that flicked at the electricity and satellite, interrupting our evening stories and internet. The whole building in black, as the rain pounded down on the rooftop and deck. The occasional flash of the whole world, lit sudden and blue.

But I managed no photos of that.

Canada Day in Sainte-Adèle

We’ve been at Christine’s mother’s cottage at Sainte-Adèle since Friday night, enjoying a longish and quiet weekend. Christine and I have been picking at our collaboration again, getting some good work done on the manuscript in preparation for our reading at the In/Words Reading Series on July 31^st (we're even, as we speak now, working on the chapbook for the event). We spend the days quietly working in our respective corners, and meet up for dinner, and various evening activities. With the nice weather, there’s even the opportunity to sit an afternoon reading on the deck.

Still: I know, we’re missing David Scrimshaw’s awesome brunch, and various invitations/opportunities to hang about The Carleton Tavern.

I spent about a day listening to nothing but Townes Van Zandt; where the hell have I been? (I feel like the last one to make it to the party, and most of the beer is long, long gone.) Eventually shifted from there to Justin Townes Earle. Some really powerful stuff, and more than a couple of pieces I've set aside to attempt to learn how to play. How did I then end up at Snow Patrol?

Ongoing notes: late late June, 2013

[evil sleepy Lemonade, sleeping upon his new perch, across on my black jacket]

I presume you’ve been properly checking out the above/ground press, Chaudiere Books, ottawa poetry newsletter and dusie blogs for their various updates? I don’t always have space to tell you everything here (I mean, really). But watch for an upcoming reading by Jessica Smith, Amanda Earl and Marilyn Irwin on July 13 as part of The Factory Reading Series, and another collaborative reading by myself and Christine McNair (our second annual, after last year’s appearance at The Dusty Owl Reading Series) at the In/Words Reading Series on July 31st.

Philadelphia PA: Some of the most attractive chapbooks I’ve seen out of the United States have to be Brian Teare’s Albion Books, the most recent of which, the first volume of the fifth series, is a double-binding, including Rachel Moritz’ “ELEMENTARY RITUALS” alongside Juliet Patterson’s “DIRGE.” There doesn’t seem to be any obvious reason why these two texts are paired, perhaps the authors are collaborators or close friends, writing poems in tandem? Or simply the editor/publisher has joined the two. 

The first bridges were probably made by nature—something as simple as a log fallen across a stream.

The original base of the word, bruw, or ‘log-road.’

Through the window you think of these words standing in the blunt arms of morning: stage, landing, gangway.

*

Your father was found hanging from a concrete footbridge

a few miles from your childhood home. The bridge

twenty-seven feet high, stretched over a busy thoroughfare, linking

a golf course and a wooded park. (“DIRGE”)

Juliet Patterson’s striking sequence “DIRGE” works through a meditation on the death of her father (or, the narrator’s father; since I know nothing about Patterson, one should never presume) from suicide. Her “DIRGE” scrapes out the heart in long, languid lines. Why haven’t I heard of Juliet Patterson before this? On the other side of the same chapbook, Rachel Moritz’s “ELEMENTARY RITUALS” is another small meditative work, composed out of six longer poems that stretch the loveliest lines that take up small spaces but a large attention. Her rituals, one might say, are startlingly precise, one that is the perfect blend of lyric language and absolute clarity:

In a clearing between loss and literal day-

light, his frame stood empty.

Kudzu trailing the base foundation.

Gutters bedded in leaves.

We passed a threshold the key given

us at the funeral parlor            from his pocket, his wallet,

his coat.

Nevertheless, stirring lights how oddly they flared, as if

shy of inhabitants.

Then it was done, going through an event

so event became abstracted.

Further titles forthcoming in the fifth series include works by Frank Sherlock (5.2), Jean Valentine (5.3) and CA Conrad (5.4).

Mt Pleasant ON: From kemeny babineau’s Laurel Reed Books comes CHORTLING AMERICAN SHOW GOO: thirty three poems by Toronto poet, editor and small press publisher Daniel f. Bradley (2012). Bradley has been an active writer and small press enthusiast for years, author of numerous small press publications going back two decades, including publications by curvd h&z, BookThug, tapt, Outland, Produce Press, above/ground press and many, many others. Given his years of publication, it might be interesting to see someone attempt to wrestle with his years of output for the sake of either an essay on his ongoing work, or a selected poems, to get a sense of just what he has accomplished over the years, through dozens of small-run missives. The opening poem to the collection nearly gives a description of what follows, asking the question of what this might be, as though the author is learning through the same process as the potential reader:

i suppose i could hot wire this thing

flat bread their is no escape

perfect for your boneless

wings failed

your highness you were right

you were right about me

i love my loll pop separated

at the feet almost

empty ignition switch

light reflecting metallic

what’s this all about

everything in a bag

that feeds me a secret

life

The sequence of pieces that make up the untitled poems of CHORTLING AMERICAN SHOW GOO: thirty three poems feel akin to the poems of American poet Kate Greenstreet for their fragmented structure and collage-aspect that accumulate into something larger, yet difficult to articulate, as the form itself is less static than constantly shifting. As Nic Coivert writes in his review of the collection (included inside the back of the chapbook) from Canadian Poetry Previews Magazine, “These poems are like smashed dreams.” Bradley’s poems also have a dark edge of surrealism, perhaps one more abstract and less of the obvious humour than others in the informal “Toronto surrealists” group, whether Lillian Necakov, Stuart Ross or Gary Barwin. In some of the pieces, there’s something of the single line-breath, as though they’re meant to be read quickly, without break.

three thousand an hour upgrade your family

back into the vault the new death toll

in bad taste this is cronyism all the way

more comedy who grew my soup good bye

horse pills transformation my bathroom of

freedom scurrying people panic setting in

stories of survival washed away telling

the tale twisted areas scrap the idea more

more that not the bottom line two hundred

thousand homes and worth the cost who’s

ruining the economy he broke the door

good old fashion hard work all back

to back snow

Lincoln NE/Portland OR: To understand how much I enjoyed American poet Matthew Rohrer’s small chapbook A SHIP LOADED WITH SEQUINS HAS GONE DOWN (Dkembe Press, 2013), you have to experience the first poem I did in the collection:

He wrote amazing poems because he

was fucking a wizard. This perspective

mutilated all his expectations

and he was naked. The wizard threw him

a small thin towel to cover himself with.

I’m sitting in a small bar in Brooklyn

discussing his next move: surely his wife

will climb the pyramid and leap off it

because she is a butterfly. He is

everywhere down there, in the air. Inside

a tiny black bean. It’s not necessary

to live like this, we decide. We crumble

into our highballs, the city outside

consumes things like an enormous creature. (“SONNET”)

In Rohrer’s six-poem chapbook, four of which are three-sonnet pieces, each titled “SONNET,” that twist the language of the first piece into the second two section, re-working the lines of the first to create entirely different poems with the same language, as here, the second part of the three-part “SONNET” (the first part is quoted just above):

I’m sitting in a small bar in Brooklyn

because she is a butterfly. He is

into our highballs. The city outside

mutilated all his expectations

to live like this, we decide. We crumble

everywhere down there, in the air. Inside

he wrote amazing poems because he

will climb the pyramid & leap off it.

Discussing his next move: surely his wife

was fucking a wizard. This perspective

consumes things like an enormous creature.

And he was naked. The wizard threw him

A tiny black bean. It’s not necessary.

a small thin towel to cover himself with.

Bookending the collection are two longer poems, each composed with short phrases that complete a single, fragmented, seemingly-endless and confused sentence, endlessly continuing. Throughout the poems here, is Rohrer attempting to shock, startle or confound? These poems require a shift in perception and perspective, one that playfully pokes at expectation and collision.

I answer Jonathan Ball's "What are you working on right now?"

Winnipeg writer, editor and filmmaker Jonathan Ball has been working a series lately on his blog, "What are you working on right now?" Since so few ever seem to ask me such a question, I was excited to be able to take part, with my response now posted on his site (along with a photograph of what my desk looked like a particular morning back in May, around the time I discovered that Lemonade sometimes sleeps there...). Thanks, Jonathan!

I've been working on fiction lately and too busy to write reviews, so here's another photo of Lemonade, our cat,

rob and Christine both interviewed at Canadian Poets Petting Cats

Evan Munday interviewed us both individually (mine here, and Christine's here) on writing, poetry and our Lemonade, on his Canadian Poets Petting Cats. Thanks, Evan! And the poem referenced in my interview is available as a chapbook through Grey Borders Books, here.

Another weekend in Sainte-Adele (with Lemonade

After the small press fair on Friday and Saturday, we left town on Canada Day for two nights in the Laurentian Hills, slipping out into Christine’s mother’s cottage in Sainte-Adele. Between the SOCIAL, various readings and small press book fair stuff, it feels as though we’ve had far too many events lately, escaping into the hills simply to breathe. Simply to breathe, except with cat in tow, a weekend Christine thought Lemonade should come along. Two and a half hours in the car, he was breathing shallow, uncertain if the heat or anxiety (probably both). We stopped for hamburgers at a chip truck (who, as we know, always have the best hamburgers) somewhere along highway 17, most likely Clarence-Rockland. Off the highway so the cat could breathe again, by a convenience store/gas station called Oops, and logo of a squirrel scrambling for nuts. Really? Their whole business model is one of poor planning?

Once at the cottage, Lemonade sniffed for hours, running running running to see what he could see, poking through all the corners. An indoor cat, we let him run outside on the harness; I know, how can a harness not be seen as offensive? But there you go. He didn’t care for the open space, kept running back to the house. The texture of the lawn confused him.

Christine worked on various things, but mostly breathing; I worked on a review or two, an article or two, a short story and even an interview, up soon at Canadian Poets Petting Cats. I wanted us to get some work done on our collaboration, since we’re reading from it soon at Dusty Owl (and producing a small chapbook of such), but there wasn’t enough time (we really need to come back, already).

All the while, listening to Warren Zevon and Momus. It was that kind of weekend.

Recently, those nice people at Grey Borders Books produced a chapbook of this poem, for the Niagara Literary Arts Festival, in an edition of fifty copies. They’re already long gone.

Lemonade, polydactyl (or,

                        the cat with twenty-two toes,)

                        Maps on the soles of their feet.

                                    Michael Ondaatje, The Man with Seven Toes

1.

this new kitten;                                    bone-cleave,

            hindrance; to de-claw

is to pick out bone; inhumane,

they tell us,

                                    , litter-box, his smile

round, rounded; sprouted,

only then, begin

white snowshoe, mitten-toed,

2.

congenital abnormality                        tree-flesh,

thumb cat, six-fingered

combinations of anywhere                         from four

to seven toes per paw; a fallen crayon,

one hour out of twenty-four,

                                    at variable speed,

3.

commonly found on front paws only

            fur-speed;           sleeps,

sleeps; tears through the house,

Hemingway-cut           sentence-short,

spread wide, from Boston

                        , sleeps in unknown corners

ship-cats, ported trade; their offspring saw

the world

4.

in Key West, Florida,              fifty cats

                        or more; sub-genre,

descend                       misplaced, neither

holy, Roman, empire,

this, our cat-house; Lemonade,

some sailors considered them         extreme

good luck           ; below deck,

            tilts his collared head,