“National Poetry Month” #16: David Dowker & Christine Stewart

a breach (amphibrach)

object ache*

each abject

stratification
collapses in
the culmination
which brings us to
the apex of
the inverse aversion,
spiritualized app-
liances hap-
hazardly rap-
tured, tri-
geminal peripherals
vibrate or gesticulate,
a squip quinty or
cryogene plasmate,
cryptic inarticulate
acetate say golgi
embodiment raised
inchoate waferthin
instrumentality

be that as it may

_______________________
* The object is allegorical under the gaze of the melancholic.

The above poem comes from Virtualis: Topologies of the Unreal by David Dowker & Christine Stewart. Full of writing tuned into the terrestrial spectacle, Virtualis is a poetic investigation of melancholia and the baroque.

DAVID DOWKER was born in Kingston, Ontario but has lived most of his life in Toronto. He was the editor of The Alterran Poetry Assemblage, and his first book, Machine Language, was published in 2010.

CHRISTINE STEWART lives on the North Saskatchewan River. She works at the University of Alberta and the Learning Centre in downtown Edmonton. Publications include from Taxonomy, Pessoa’s July: or the months of astonishments and The Trees of Periphery. The Humanist is forthcoming.