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Cameron Anstee



Cameron Anstee lives in Ottawa and runs Apt. 9 Press (apt9press.wordpress.com). Recent work appears in Peter F. Yacht Club and in five chapbooks from In/Words Press, including Releasing Symmetry (2009). He won the Lillian I. Found Award (Carleton University) in 2008, and this year he won the inaugural 2009 Tree Origami Crane Poetry Contest, for the following poem, soon to be published in Water Upsets Stone, forthcoming from The Emergency Response Unit.

First Law

A body maintains its state of rest 
or motion in a straight line unless acted on 
by an external force.
     —Isaac Newton, Three Laws of Motion

	/

an act of describing old days
an act of reference

& we locate our spin 
we have been standing this whole time

branches refuse leaves
carry less weight in to winter

but lengthen in ground to upset foundations
poured for brick, how water upsets stone

I am not sure where to locate the tree
or when
	
	/

in the ice storm a tree hung
its glass to the tops of our cars

I don't remember the trees before '98
as though the storm's linger knows no thing of origin

my whole life then
half my life now

	/

history impressing

shovel down to the drive & 
bury the earlier work

the plough cutting away in sheets
baring strata

a larger mountain in cross-section
small crumbling in the air

	/

snow evenly	sheering

			the open 
refusing gravity

& tiny seasons where grass continues

bricks contracting toward their empty spaces

	/

surface tension above
the glass lip

a fluid coherence
of small matter

pulling inward & swollen

held

	/

body is energy is body

want no distinctions
no thing between skin

the energy produced
by the movements of a substance's

atoms

it is cold out
but our room is very warm

it is cold out
our room is warm

	/

you stand
all the air moves

	/

resolve the bend of light
into spectrums

play gravity with snow
play water in eaves

the sun our only gauge of size
		& more size

gravitational potential 
			& falling & falling, kinesis

my mass, & your mass
				I'll orbit

	/

I examine your body, & then mine
a construction other than clear angles

nothing to match corners, only movements
white where skin reaches, & removes

we met in a long kiss
& newly arranged those things we carried

	/

where the energy is
before falling

I remember where I was standing
when you kissed me

	/



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