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 / |