“National Poetry Month” #13: Christine McNair

A FOOL’S GRACE

bed me with lavender
tattoo some cuneiform

abjad into cardiac vessels
hot cut radiance blister

packed, a two-for-one offer
of woad bled over bit lip,

wrinkled stems pollinate
broken umbrellas, debride

torn silk back into lovers’
spit, pacify capillaries

but just let go:
release my feckless heart
full punch to the ticker

Taken from Christine McNair’s 2012 book Conflict, a book of “high frequency syntax” & “kinetic sonic flux” that interweaves ghosts, bad communication, the uncanny & the archival.

CHRISTINE McNAIR’S work has appeared in sundry literary journals including CV2, The Antigonish Review, Prairie Fire, Arc, Descant, and Poetry is Dead. She won second prize in the Atlantic Canadian Writing Competition, an honourable mention in the Eden Mills Literary Competition, and was shortlisted for the 2010 Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. She is one of the hosts of CKCU’s Literary Landscapes program and works as a book conservator in Ottawa. Conflict is her first book.