Spotlight Poem #3: "Tough and rumble" by Alice Burdick

Tough and rumble

A view of waves & breaks,

sword into fog. A child in a seat

talks to a child in another seat.

The bicyclist drops a bag of paper

lanterns and they roll through the intersection at dusk,

little white globes of light.

Some people are scared of custard tarts.

Tan nightingale, star on rotation.

The lake laked in sideways waves,

train a view of metal with people

on the hurtle. A strong wind makes

a squirrel leap at double-speed.

Roofs are compromised. The daily grind

is a casual understanding of personal space.

People say it’s impossible

to live where they live,

but they also live there.

By Alice Burdick

ALICE BURDICK is the author of four full-length poetry collections, Simple Master, Flutter, Holler, and Book of Short Sentences. Deportment: The Poetry of Alice Burdick, a book of selected poems, came out in November 2018 from Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Her work has also appeared in many chapbooks, broadsides, folios, magazines, journals, and anthologies. She co-owns an independent bookstore in Lunenburg called Lexicon Books.

Chris Banks

Website

Chris Banks is a Canadian poet and author of six collections of poems with Deepfake Serenade from Nightwood Editions forthcoming in Fall 2021. His first full-length collection, Bonfires, was awarded the Jack Chalmers Award for poetry by the Canadian Authors’ Association in 2004. Bonfires was also a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Award for best first book of poetry in Canada. His poetry has appeared in The New Quarterly, Arc Magazine, The Antigonish Review, Event, The Malahat Review, GRIFFEL, American Poetry Journal, Prism International, among other publications. He lives and writes in Waterloo, Ontario.