The Ends of the Earth Page 4

  3. Castaway

  dear sailor the wind rushes through this day, a long series of gestures, but the sky is blue electric. i eat mangos that have fallen from trees, can’t bear to pick the fruit away from its perceived destiny. i cast the stones out to you, a signifier of my intentions, as my hands drip with mango juice, my lips stained a pulpy red. we take the world into ourselves in so many ways, dear sailor, with the breath line of language, the wind an ellipsis on our tongues.

  4. Castaway

  dear sailor i have been blown further south where green birds flutter around my head like a crown. the chorus of light here reminds me of you, calm on your high sea. the moment approaches as thoughts of you unfurling sails rise and drift with the lightest of clouds.

  5. Castaway

  dear sailor i wonder what pleasures you imagine discovering across the terrain of my body. i could write that my chest heaves in anticipation of your tongue at the back of my neck, but i might mean something else. for i am, indeed, alone dear sailor, while all hands are on deck on your windswept ship.

  6. Castaway

  i have set sail, one hour in north america and already i’m angry, my ship delayed for hours. i need your beach to keep me calm, the sound of water as deep as your voice, so far away now. i feel completely adrift.

  7. Castaway

  dear sailor here the trees are red-orange and leaves the size of plates fall onto this cold beach, the sand wet and hard. i want to translate your pain into beauty, want to inhale your longing and keep it safe within me. we are alone in this, but who is more connected than a sailor and a castaway. you are a territory of heightened imaginings, a space where anything is possible.

  8. Castaway

  dear sailor it was not my intention to appease you, merely to say that the space of longing is exquisite and that constructing desire in language is magical and in that we are lucky. i can write that i want to run my tongue along the lithe edges of your body, taste the salt of your hidden skin, bite the sand grains at the side of your neck and make you feel me reading your body electric. i can conjure the wetness of the rain here as it runs between my breasts and even further. the tide is full. we are already together.

  9. Castaway

  dear sailor your words are blown over on a blustery gale, but now the sun is coming through so i know it’s you. i don’t need you to inhabit me. i aspire to something lighter, like desire free from obligation. i want to float away until i come and become what i am meant to be. i want to create you too with my tongue until you rise into what you could be with all messages finally received.

  CASTAWAY: CONTEMPORARY I

  economics push adrift today responsible for your/our own demise

  you sell your/our time to pay the ridiculously expensive rent

  sailing here is configured stupidly no rush of wind on your/our face today

  phone calls will instead reveal the seventeen percent interest rate for which you/we qualify

  the brink of bank accounts which add up to barely enough today flinging numeros

  aesthetic splatter patterns of the newly loved form surrender what art could be

  your/our big payout comes washing ashore but recedes almost as quickly as it came

  wow that blue bottle was so pretty before it broke the top first and then the rest

  the lights form a kind of fire to signal a festive hopefulness here or to show

  how the light could get in if you/we wrote it that way here for a day or so airy and perfectly pinned down

  CASTAWAY: CONTEMPORARY II

  so sailor you/we arrive on the digital wind

  sunset sailboat photos imagine salt feted

  pleasure some dangling epic reunion

  the intention to pursue and voila

  you/we wash up on this particular beach

  your/our myriad skills some dance of welcome

  local satiation rituals sparkle across smooth

  weathered skin you/we know that beauty now

  exists in the recognition of this long awaited

  event formerly figured as rescue but now

  merely the most ordinary of happy endings

  knots so easily fastened it takes your/our breath

  up into the ether again to hover and then push

  forth to the outer space you/we always dreamed

  of touching

  PERPETUAL

  time keeps moving

  motion matters in

  moments of discontent

  spin makes the difference

  so lightly you/we continue

  to shine off the rocks of this

  particular island figured

  as a phone booth where

  the phone never stops ringing

  and it’s always good news

  you/we got it! you/we won it!

  you/we finally did it! you/we

  were at least nominated!

  inevitable saturation fails to

  bliss us out completely

  so you/we continue

  hello you/we say again

  anticipation and reception

  align and the desire side

  of the curve slips and so

  it gushes forth without end

  PERPETUAL OCEAN

  le spirale c’est ça

  fluid eddy reigns

  dynamic onslaught

  vast directionals like

  whispers over texting

  i hail you pressing into

  glass screens this stream

  without end because you/we

  always text goodnight at least

  treble as far as the eye can see

  so much blue even bluer than real

  today the ocean looks like a photograph

  as it spins HD articulation better than it sounds

  you crash here again a fire burning heat

  swirling around your lovely head curls ring

  pillowcases such comfort embedded in a sofa

  light rain perpetually falling tonight gold eyes close

  and you fall (or are pulled) in

  A CRITIQUE OF THE APOCALYPSE: CODA

  nothing much happened

  some jellyfish washed ashore

  some birds fell from the sky

  a bear rode a garbage truck downtown

  tsunamis’ debris washed ashore (earlier than expected)

  a tsunami-shaped cloud rolled across the Alabama sky

  attention spans dropped

  capitalism was “literally” critiqued

  the protestor was the person of that year

  Jeff Wall made some more everyday surrealism

  someone proposed a sarcastic font

  trash lands grew, plastic continued to particle oceans

  a new habitable-zone planet was confirmed

  making Another Earth seem prescient

  if 600 years ahead of its time (did people care less?)

  you/we misunderstood things, were easily embarrassed

  developing brashness as a stance, but still seeking

  a way to proceed, propelled to a bench by a waterway

  the trace of your/our palms, hugging the fog

  and finding love at the end of it all.

  THE ENDS OF THE EARTH: CODA

  On Midway Atoll albatross

  feed plastic to their young

  what looks like food leaves

  carcasses riddled with trash

  among the saddest things

  on earth discovered via Twitter

  RT @djweir RT @newfoundbrand RT This is the most disturbing thing I’ve seen in a long time:
http://bit.ly/4cGoDg

  REFERENCES

  Baudrillard, Jean. “Telemorphosis” in CRTL [SPACE]. Thomas Y. Levin, Ursula Frohne, and Peter Weibel, eds. Karlsruhe: Center for Art and Media, 2002.

  Bixby, Jerome. “It’s a Good Life.” Science Fiction Hall of Fame.

  Derksen, Jeff. “How High Is the City, How Deep Is Our Love.” Fillip. http://fillip.ca/content/how-high-is-the-city-how-deep-is-our-love

  Jordan, Chris. “Midway Message from the Gyre,” October 2009.

  http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=11

  Randolph, Jeanne. The Ethics of Luxury. Toronto: YYZ Books, 2007.

  Sterling, Bruce. “The Ends of the Earth.” Wired. Issue 12.04 April 2004.

  NOTES

  page numbers refer to the print edition

  Page 24: http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2011/09/12/3314107.htm

  Page 26: http://www.newstatesman.com/scitech/2011/08/silicon-valley-computer

  Page 28: http://flavorwire.com/197252/shocking-photos-of-mozambiques-trash-land

  Page 29: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2011/09/20/dime-store-alchemy-joseph-cornell/

  Page 32: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/video/2011/oct/05/artist-pipilotti-rist-eyeball-massage-video

  Page 41: http://io9.com/5401749/seven-ways-the-world-could-end-in-2012

  Page 42: http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2011/10/7-billion-population

  Page 98: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/7009056027/

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thank you especially to Michael Holmes and ECW Press for maintaining this poetic relationship for these thirteen (lucky) years. Thank you to the Canada Council for the Arts for giving me time and space to pursue this work. Thank you to my sons, Brennan and Blake, for ongoing hilarity and love mixed together. Thank you to Nomados Press for publishing part of this work as a lovely chapbook and for ongoing support for me and my work on porches, in cafes, and with wine. Thank you to my amazing writing communities in Canada and Australia. Thank you to the editors and collectives of literary journals who have published some of this work including West Coast Line, Capilano Review, Matrix, Poetry Is Dead, Another Lost Shark, Famous Reporter (Tasmania) and The Stylus Review (Queensland). And finally, thank you to Damon, who came at the end and transformed it into a beginning.

  JACQUELINE TURNER has previously published three books of poetry with ECW: Seven Into Even (2006), Careful (2003), and Into the Fold (2000). She reviews for the Georgia Straight and lectures at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. She was the inaugural poet-in-residence at the Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts in Brisbane, Australia, and an artist-in-residence at Gorge Cottage in Launceston, Tasmania.

  Copyright © Jacqueline Turner, 2013

  Published by ECW Press

  2120 Queen Street East, Suite 200, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4E 1E2

  416-694-3348 / info@ecwpress.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any process — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the prior written permission of the copyright owners and ECW Press. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Turner, Jacqueline, 1965–

  The ends of the earth / Jacqueline Turner.

  Poems.

  ISBN 978-1-77041-114-2

  Also issued as: 978-1-77090-369-2 (PDF); 978-1-77090-370-8 (EPUB)

  I. Title.

  PS8589.U7476E64 2013 C811'.6 C2012-907515-9

  Editor for the press: Michael Holmes

  Cover design: Natalie Olsen

  Cover images: jõni / photocase.com

  Author photo: Sarah Porritt

  Typesetting and production: Carolyn McNeillie

  The publication of The Ends of the Earth has been generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada, and by the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities, and the contribution of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit. The marketing of this book was made possible with the support of the Ontario Media Development Corporation.