Poetry By Jim Trainer

        Tim Vrtiska CC



CANADIAN GIRL

the night I met you the cops took
a mentally ill man to the pavement
dogpiling him, each taking an arm
with the third one waving cars through
at the café a woman in line in front of me
videotaped herself telling the staff
she was a sovereign being
you were the only one in there reading
but put your book in your bag
and we got out of there,
walked round the capitol
with armed staties’ talkies
crackling with crickets in the dark grass
we climbed 7th at the top of the hill
slewed club beats and overwrought bass
wrecked in the city air
at my place you unrolled a giant map
from your bag and lay on it
looking up at me like you wanted to be kissed
I pushed the glass doors wide
as the sirens died down
and lay with you there
feeling the hot migration between us
pulling you in and taking me there.

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SEQUESTRANT

every time I left you I found me
and now I can’t leave and I’m lost
it was perfect poetry—your hair blown
like Patti Smith, refineries rising
behind you higher than the moon
the charm of youth is never knowing
what a fool you are
and wicked middle-age only the reservation
to never be foolish again
the cold spring makes me think of you
but everything does
there’s toms in the high weed
wincing at me with no difference
between disgust and disregard
the fire station’s lit up
brighter than the dusk
I pass these bougie people like a ghost
I make it in put up my own lights
slide open the glass doors let the cold
in like a welcome pain
I’m glad of the past and
underwhelmed on the future
the present at the desk breaking
to smoke and let
another night chelate and unspool
my lonely weight
pry you from me and all love.

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Jim Trainer is a poet, publisher, writer and performer.  He blogs at Going For the Throat, has been a columnist for Into The Void magazine and contributes to Music, Movies&Hoops.  As a proponent of personal journalism Trainer reports on the inner life while writing about recovery, mental health and the creative process.  Trainer publishes one letterpressed and perfectly bound-by-hand collection of poetry, and sometimes prose, every year through Yellow Lark Press.  STRIDE is his 8th. Trainer is the progenitor of Stand Up Tragedy™ and performs regularly throughout the world.

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