Dislocation

BY JORDAN MOUNTEER

Out here you are as far from other people

as the city will permit. Tide’s fluidic compost

like halitosis kicked up along the shore’s

receding gum line. The sloppy chug of waves

lip smacking cement pylons becomes a nervous tic,

enough to make you irritable for what it implies

about the usual awkward response to a diagnosis:

Dysthymia. So clinically Greek you almost laugh.

When a friend asks, you resort to Wikipedia.

It is easier than describing sadness

as oceanic: breakers slugging interference

down an infinite timeline in one direction.

Or, like October, as a foregone conclusion.

It isn’t until you wander back to catch a bus

and notice starlings nested under the eaves

of a Korean grocery, divebombing pedestrians

who have no interest in their naked chicks –

the stupidity of birds acting out an evolutionary script.

Attraction becomes little more than sheer refusal

of extinction. Forms of survivability. Everything seems

to parallel the never-ending task of getting by.

Midday showers accelerate on schedule

while complete strangers huddle together

under Plexiglas shelters. There is a heavying inside.

An excess of love or sadness bleeds

into the many dark angles of your bones in song.

Just that. A harp of nerves, aching.

Jordan Mounteer’s poems have appeared in Canadian and American publications and have won or been shortlisted for a number of awards. His first book, liminal, came out with SonoNis Press in 2017.