Nick Power

BOOTLEG (A CENTO)

except for myself and an old man in the bulk food aisle
and maybe my ex-wife coming across a field
and the other woman from my dream
I’m homeless in my own home awakening on a borrowed raft
a savage pianist playing in my head

outside a cicada rends the air like a manic machine
I fear what I hear
until I peak through the keyhole
a grand opening that throws my idea of far and near out the window
it’s like that old TV game show where the announcer says ‘what the studio audience doesn’t know is…’
I don’t know, you see
I’m almost as innocent as a horse

Do I really have to go out there?

real spring accumulating
surfaces already having shapes
whales moving in pods, vast arias of love
about to be arrested for excessive public prayer

and for once I do not regret the passage of time



Nick Power has published in Descant, bywords.ca, leafpress.ca and ottawater.com. His recent chapbook, No Poems, from Battered Press is part of a series of five-line poems based on Japanese tanka. You can find more of his poetry at gesturepress.wordpress.com. Nick works as a psychotherapist in Toronto.