Canadian Multiculturalism

Basically a work in progress,

a frame for the globe daily conjured in the mail

and a sun that never arrives, or never arises,

or maybe no one comes.

Maybe no one suspects coherence

enough to manage nobility anymore:

maybe coming under attack is as benign as it has

been professed to being, but Trinidad

to Tobago is still a leap of proportions

too big for one imagination, one noun, one un.

Answer: congratulate yourself on being or not

being neoliberal, the I in globalization,

taking the are from First Nations, the most

vehement proponent of your own ideals

liberates yourself with a key that enchains

and the Governing General’s sleight in hand

illuminates the colour of race

blindness: raceness, capitalism and the illusion of

disguise in the solitudes; sedatives make nice sediment,

cemeteries.

Forget the economy of absent history.

Forget the evolution of protecting the fragile discourse.

The core of Canadian Canadians in a culture where

easy understandings is the desire to repeat failed attempts.

Expose yourself to your country,

be an in and of itself,

negatively recognize

fantasy of lack of undecidability as ability. It erects itself,

it erects you,

it grudgingly gives itself away.

Perhaps we should be embracing it,

perform performative anxiety,

we must bite it, and not just Canadians.

In nothing but her bra and

layers and layers of underwear,

the lacy script of her scars,

a man in the drifting soul of

a woman’s mother the person’s protagonist is not

in fact telling the story. A child of many limps,

of performing

commas and adjectives,

dozing on sundried parentheses.

In the process, her never male fear at the edge of

the village

flames across the sky where she keeps her skin;

the real monster is a chalky apple

shining like a soldier’s cigarette lighter,

advancing like

the ultraviolet dusk, cropping new crops.

Disavow, disadominate, discuss

words have little genuine interest.