Night Became Years

Jason Stefanik

• Publisher: Coach House Books
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781770565401
• Topic: Literatur
• Subtopic: Kanadische Poesie

Night Became Years is poetry in the sauntering tradition of the flâneur. Stefanik loafers his way over sacred geography and explores his own mixed heritage through the lexicon of Elizabethan canting language. Comparing the terminology of fifteenth-­century English beggar vernacular with a contemporary Canadian inner­-city worldview, the poems in Night Became Years unfold as separate entities while at the same time forming a larger narrative on the possibilities of poetry today and the nature of mixed­-blood identity.

Patricio, or c. Pater-cove, c. the Fifteenth Rank of the Canting Tribe, stroling Priests that Marry under a Hedge without Gospel or Common-prayer Book, the Couple standing on each side a Dead Beast, are bid to Live together till Death them do’s Part, so shaking Hands, the Wedding is ended; also any Minister, or Parson.

Muscle Memory

I can’t guess, Tina, what you think. Can’t guess what we’ll do next.

Think I know it’s nothing. Now you’re in the South of France

downloading my email to your PalmPilot.

My reply to your wry, unsigned hoof-you-in-the-gut

e-postcard of a grain elevator getting off in August

nowhere near Marseille.

Fourteen times, the behaviourists say, to condition a human.

You can feel our muscle memory break down, I’m sure.

The change in field from where we are today,

so far we’ve come, from 7-Eleven under awning, green halogen.

Kinda nerds. Your crotch of bubblegum jeans a hot-spurred V

at my hip, while we gargled Fizz Pop,

our Slurpees hyped with vodka hops, and petting limits

in public places, those kerchiefed Marseillians

never dreamed or downloaded.

When it nearly started, when we were young

but hooded-up kids, straight from date site to chatline,

off to warehouse roller rink,

raving hard till the sunny-sides at truck-stop dinettes.

Time and space of such dingy and less dignified public places,

than canopied cafes with decanters of aperitif.

Nowhere near where we are today, where our muscle memory

can’t feel for what’s ahead. Here comes my unsigned e-postcard

of bleached white cliffs embossing Dover Beach.

Gaming Commission

Inner-city bingo hall, chinchilla mink abounds.

With the sisters of the Willow Goddess, we chase

the crier in an X-pattern with soft daubs. How hapless

the mumbling that snakes the tinsel banners, suppresses

our doubtful looks while an usher audits a card.

Never hers. Never mine. In a hoar-crusted

modular transit shed, our faces stalled

with hypostasis off the tundra wind,

our ghostwriting eyes behind oversized shades,

our mood’s anemic blue. Until we’re back in our room,

back home without any pentacles in our lives,

snared by the royal bondage of our loss,

as the whip kisses x x x ’s down the length of the spine,

saying, ‘Mea culpa, we chase clean lucre for once,

fuck you, Matthew Arnold, oh fuck you.’

Orst at Wedding Socials

Don’t let his paisley baby-blue suit fool you

or get tricked by the sophisticated tint

of his Wayfarers – when Cousin Orst flashes cufflinks,

you should know by the time the cops show

he’ll confirm why everyone hates him.

You’ll see the teary-eyed bride pleading in a mic

for everyone to pipe down, but everyone will guess

she means Orst, the doltish brute I’m stuck beside,

always driving around with his crewcut buddies,

as they pick fights and pretend they’re ignorant

to kindness of others with their deranged squints.

They’re the dicks at the door without any tickets,

so don’t pretend you won’t see it happening;

Orst never tires of demanding for a man

to hit him first. You may espy his coiffed shine

with peeping watch chain, or the turquoise cross

in his tufting chest hair, but when the emcee blares

‘I Knew the Bride When She used to Rock ’n’ Roll,’

he’ll stare out in the Quaalude delirium

of George Jones shifting gears. As lights flick on

you’ll witness the silvery jughead looping

hammerfists (naked of his rhinestone blazer,

in just a bloody wifebeater on the dance floor)

to prove he’s still the bull’s horns at sixty-four.

But when he outruns the sirens later,

and we’re behind his shed, hidden in the pines,

when he hugs me and tells me nobody loves him,

the blubbery crybaby I can’t help but hold.

Visiting Cross Lake

A linchpin pulled from the temperate. Winter detonated

like an upturned snowglobe. I can’t tip my visor in crazed adoration,

but I’m giddy at the prospect of love with her again.

Today I feel forgiven, the dross washed from my Cossack

atrocities; I feel the cold reverb of autumn deepen

with a numbing, humbling assonance of northwind.

Her favour I’ll prescribe as holy, and prove by deeds

her deification; her presence I’ll meet on a bowed knee

before my sudden erasure in a snowstorm.

Hard

Practically a single mom.

My baby’s daddy is basically a bum,

without any beer or time to chip in.

I wish he’d pull before he comes.

I was a hot girl in tight white pants behind the mall

eating Tiger-Tiger ice cream.

If he wasn’t such a pussy he’d try his hand at crime,

but my baby’s daddy is not the kind

who could spend time in the Pen.

When he goes for smokes he’d better run –

if they catch him on the corner they’re going to roll him

for the meth they loaned his hoodlum mom.

I wish he wouldn’t let our son hold his gun.

I can’t wait to get drunk after the baby is born.

He took our money for diapers and Pablum

and put it on Pro-Line. Our living room coffee table

he put into pawn. He could never get a loan,

and that pay-as-you-go-phone, he never turns on.

He says he’ll slap me when he doesn’t like my tone,

but I could boot his scrawny ass back to Pukatawagan.

Resource Rights

I date a hot Inuit gal from Tuk

and I hate how she dates a porter

named Coco at a remote lake

the summers she caters

for nickel prospectors. She’s tricked

by Coco and his Bible sermons,

his dark rum, his slippery prophecies,

his maudlin trapline blessings,

how – his latest – he talked down

a kid with FAS who stole a paddle

and killed another kid’s dad.

In town she avoids me, and should

I track her, she says I don’t know

about rapture, no chance I limbo

as low as her Coco.

I’ve heard German engineers,

core-sampling for Schlumberger,

get friendly with her, once

she met with a Mexican

custodial night crew

contracted by Talisman.

If I could get her sober, I should

tell her I talked to a pastor.

I pray she forgets Coco,

but in case I can’t reach her

I’ll appeal to the Crown

to demand she settle down.

For Marina Tsvetaeva

Foreknow the night,

my honeyed dram,

that black chert

and clay bank.

To the hairpins

and resplendent narcotic

of your jewels

I smile inward salutes,

so nice to be offsite

for four days.

Our altar is earth

and mankind sacrifice

while the union turns

scabrous: building Hydro Pole

Two, those big-talkers

are always the bigges...