Scott Jackshaw, Stigmata

  

Some Theories of Atonement

In the planetary scar tissue where I follow you in our last
days together, where we sacrifice the clots of lawn, where
we do not become god but take on its bodies, in our body,
where we expose ourselves, in our body, which like our sex is
secret to us, in the plenary of flip-fucking, an experiment in
reading, in our therapy for root rot, the scriptures where you
learn to abuse, in our body, where we index the earth’s pores,
in our body, which is consumption.

The full-length poetry debut by Edmonton-based poet, scholar and editor Scott Jackshaw is Stigmata (Vancouver BC: Talonbooks, 2025), an expansive long poem across five sections of lyric stagger, staccato and extended gestures. “something must be put into phrases,” begins the poem “Reparation,” “leans into my distant splinter, a door / prolapses, I spoil my crust with dirt // with the water stains on my ceiling, lamp full of moths / bending floor of my desire [.]” Across a tapestry of gestures, examinations and explorations, Jackshaw’s lyric multitudes include an element of the monologue, of performance, blending the divine, desire and the profane across a meditative and performative theology of action and interaction. Composing a narrative line of point and counterpoint, Jackshaw’s moments ping against each other, offering a book composed with opening and closing poems, two cluster-sections of lyrics, and a further lyric sequence, the title poem, held at mid-point. As the ten-part title sequence opens: “In the episteme of grief many worlds will resemble a thread. I go down on a local prophet. As the spirit moves I’m carried along with his breath.” I’m quite fascinated by Jacksaw’s use of the lyric “I” in these poems, something they speak directly to as part of the “Notes” at the back of the collection:

I wanted the “I” in these poems to be something stranger than a confessant. Not a speaker but a garburator. For some time I kept quiet, knowing that the imperative to speak would only bind me to the logic of a church, therapist, or market. At the same time, “I” wanted to speak, “I” needed to scream, “I” had to break up the quiet, even if I knew that my speech would be no less imposed than my silence. I began with the words of others. I didn’t want to believe in property but couldn’t shake my guilt. If not for guilt, would there be any difference between bibliography and confession?

In Christian mysticism, the stigmata links back to the nail-wounds on the body of the crucified Christ, the mark seen as one’s mystical union with Christ’s suffering, but also referring to any physical mark or sign of a particular disease or suffering. Through Jackshaw, the mark and moments of physicality in their extended thought-clusters and prose sequences a theology conjoined with sexuality, offering a lyric intermingling terrible sex and “the cult of the wound,” noise and grief, confession and prayer, writing, in the opening poem, “The Mystical Theology”: “I made a list of bright red holes.” The poems, Jackson’s lyrics, point and counterpoint, offering an ebb and flow declarative gestures, composing a book-length residue, both tender and profane, of what happens, what is possible and the residue that remains, after all of the happening has subsided. Further on, in the same opening poem:

Those who bore the holes in their bodies were most often women or having borne them became women. 

The name was vast and minuscule, wide and restricted, eloquent and concise.

I recalled the homosexual formula: I am my mother, my mother is me. 

My lips were a prosthesis for feeling. For all feeling that was not feeling.

I found it hard to keep the holes clean and wondered if the holy women also struggled to wash their hands.