Drift: Poems

by Kevin Connolly

What happens at the very moment when thought moves from the banal and everyday into the oblique and odd? In drift, Kevin Connolly investigates this mysterious mental realm that all of us tend to find ourselves in from time to time. Examining the moment when one thought collides into another, Connolly incorporates into his poems such witty, joyous ideas as a meditation on the business end of a sea cucumber and a world in which disfigured historical celebrities are left to wander the consumer grid. Constantly juxtaposing opposites to delightful effect, drift meanders into, in Connolley's own words, a place where "what starts the heart stops the world."

Genres: Poetry, Canada

85 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2005

Reviews

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a lake
in the scene above my body
no one dares to touch -
a question, a rumour
clothed in throaty silence.

From where I sit
drowning in the garden,
I can see my fingers
fish-hooked by its
briar of stars.

- Finger Lake, pg. 24

* * *

I can't see the widow in the garden -
black scarf glaring out the sun

I don't recall the swam of fish -
garish mouths, little gasps of mud

I've forgotten the dice-box of thumbs -
their flight, fret and clatter down the hall

I've stopped thinking of the sea of thought -
weak peaks, flotsam in the swells

I can't remember that particular grey light
(you know the one)

that lingers on the pavement and
keeps the day from warming

- Lapse, pg. 36

* * *

You are the toy delivered at daybreak,
conundrum to a storm of check marks,

and still, so familiar to me
this bale of regret
I have strawdogged . . .

Cordwood, filibuster,
young love caught under the porch
with the chamois and the millionaire

A class of oafs
can set the terms more finely
than any time-share Nero

But when I put up my fiddle, the
moon dawdles on my cheekbones -
all those plump hours tractoring back

- So Familiar, after Darrell Gray, pg. 66