Exhibit

Paul Zits

• Publisher: University of Calgary Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781773850689
• eBook ISBN: 9781773850702
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Canadian Poetry
• Index: Literature

Margaret is unlike other women: her hands bark, she speaks Hawaiian Punch, and she can often be seen prodding at stars with sticks. And sometimes she is the happiest woman in the world: a pillow with a pillowcase. Her brother, Alex, feels pleasant enough, except that his parts are made of wood, and that a bunch of his hair is electrified. And then there are the gun-shot wounds to his head and chest. On this final ailment, Margaret may have had a hand.

In the winter of 1926, Margaret McPhail went on trial for the murder of Alex, and throughout, maintained her innocence. Exhibit, more than a poetic retelling of her trial, chronicles the path to a verdict, misstep by misstep. Brother and sister become somewhat knotted aberrations, grotesqueries that are at times monstrous and at others quite stunning, at times sickly and at others impressive in their strength.

Folded into these poems, helping to give them their current, at times strange and potent vision, are cuts from a broad variety of sources, including, to name only a few, interviews with Catherine Robbe-Grillet and Eileen Myles, English and Russian fairy tales, and articles on the history of feminist film.

exhibit
“C”

Q. You thought it was a shot, didn’t you?
A. No, i thought it was the wind

and the wind shot the muscle of the cloud’s arm off and the cloud’s right breast. and shot a hole in its back. and the wind shot the chimneys out of the chandeliers. fired off its six-shooter at the moon. one bullet hit the side of the moon’s head and just split the skin. next place the wind shot a hole in the moon, just between the top of its shoulder and its heart. and the next place it was shot was through the wrist. the wind shot at the moon with rifles just like it was takin’ a walk, till the wind shot it down. the wind shot a hole in its intestines. so they say that if it ate solid foods too early, its intestines would break again.

the sun burst through the clouds above the shack, and some children caught drops of rain that rolled off the roof. the trees were filled with robins that looked like flowers among the branches.

the wind was shoulder-to-shoulder with its guns and shot a hole in the clouds and then the wind, it just ran right through the hole.

Q. You found him on the floor?
Q. You had to step across his body to get into the room?

i thought he was crying and went to ask him what was the trouble,

but it was with one eye he wept unceasingly,

while with the other he laughed.

his left leg like a man hanging out the window of a stagecoach with the wind in his face. and the right like a man in his dressing gown and pyjamas clutching a bottle of milk.

his arms were his arms and his rifle was his rifle but the veins that stiffened his folded arms were like miniature straws. like drinking straws that are hollow but stiff.

his open eyes were scattered like broken glass underneath the kitchen table. a criss-cross pattern of adhesive tape on the panes. behind his eyes cats stared at the pigeons walking around on the dusty paths.

i stepped over him and caught my foot.

It was matter first

there was no blood when i first saw him, not on his clothes or body. he was bleeding at the mouth afterward,

a stream of red bees pouring from the swarm

pouring out their gladness, pouring from the throat

where i held a vibrating fork, over his mouth like an empty

fruit-jar

he couldn’t speak but he could exhale stroke-scribbles and loop-scribbles and circle-scribbles;

then a movement that reached out and looped freely and then

contracted into a knot;

then hand-writing in sweeping curves with ribbon-like patterns;

then a bear, that had ears, more and more and bigger and bigger—and legs, lots of them, and it ran with them;

then a self-portrait: the arms and neck heavily shaded, there was an interminable double row of buttons irrelevantly placed down one side, and a pocket over the breast area;

then a lively maritime scene: a sailor drinking and hiccupping; another yelling dlog, dlog, having discovered a treasure chest. meanwhile, a swordfish pointing at the submerged part of the hull.

all this took place under a smiling sun;

upon noticing a similarity between his scribble and a bird i added two vertical lines for legs

he was bleeding at the mouth afterward,

but not when i first saw him.

A. i felt to see whether his hands were warm. i tried to keep him alive

His hands had lost their snow coats. She burnt her finger on the inside of Alex’s lip. on Alex’s tongue she felt the belly of a dog, the stiff, cold belly of a dog. She felt the stiff leg of a dog. She had been breaking apple stems.

She felt the eyes had stupid expressions. So she placed tin foil in the eye sockets and gave them a partial water bath, by means of a small watering can. The stars began to tremble against them as on a dark sky and the pupils shattered into a hundred grains of wheat.

Alex’s cheeks were red from the exercise. She fanned away frigorific rays. She turned his hair inwards. She blackened his bottom. She imagined his brain like clothes warmed from the sun burning through a suitcase.

Alex became the fur of several delicate animals. A rising moon with no features, and in the wrong part of the sky. A traffic cone. A rotten sunset. She felt confined in a metallic vessel. She felt the freezing slats of a bench on her bottom.

A paisley woman

7. A woman in a paisley dress is twisted/guided to screen right by a second woman in a paisley dress; this 16 second shot flows uninterrupted with the came...

Table of contents

• exhibit“A”
• exhibit“B”
• exhibit“C”
• exhibit“D”
• exhibit“E”