The HyperTexts

Jesse Anger



Jesse Anger is a poet, musician and audio engineer. His poetry has appeared in Island Mists (an anthology of contemporary Canadian poetry), Shot Glass, Soundzine, The Fib Review and Lucid Rhythms. His interests include graffiti, stringed instruments and juggling. He attends Concordia University in Montreal where he lives with his girlfriend and newborn son Aryeh.



Bi-focal

When we were young
the world was small.

A few long blocks
and that was all.

But now the world
is smaller still—

a mote in a beam
by the window sill.



Inspiritus

Spirits thin out through the air,
lurking where the lamplight glows.
I wait: a late night passenger.

Empty platform. Phantom train—
trouble on the tracks again.
Dead wind's shroud, a flawed man's breath,

the specter of exhaled regret
clearly hung upon the night,
refracted in the halide light,

rising like a eulogy,
catching on the limbs of trees,
hung in rags. And over me—

The coldest night of winter hums.
I feel my bones and blood and flesh.
I see a ghost in every breath.

Originally published in Shot Glass



Bonechime

We've all got bones under our skin—
skeletons within.

Nakedness deceives as much
as mirror-masks and such.

Disguised by soft intonation,
under conversations

pitched light, lie these restless bones,
my own. A broken home,

a silence quickened in the room.
The cold window moon.

My inner space, the keep of fear,
the ringing in my ear.

Wired to the naval wheel,
under towed, pitched and reeled

and spindled down into the hold—
God, these bones are old.

The cold reply resurfaces,
the skull-hollow thing

that seeks to void, and sucks to dine—
The still-born alive.

Here is where it all begins.
Exhume them. Hang them in

rings. String them into chimes.
Remember them sometimes.

Originally published in Soundzine



Evening Bird

An evening blue,
you sink into.

A lone songbird
gets no reply.

I scribble
to decodify,

not loneliness—
but near the edge

a long sad note
bends at the bridge.

A deeper sound.
The clouds lapis.

A silent pause.
A roaring jet,

no reply
no regret.



Sympathies

A cello bowed and dark sienna tulips
are moods.

Balsam creeps and hangs in the humid air.
A spice.

The mighty green and sour brine of seas
are prayer.

The red rock near the road and wind-shaped pines
are home.

A raven with a whitened wing at noon alights.
A shadow.

The broad-winged hawk that dives sheer from the wire
is waking.

Slow escalators crawling from the lowest tracks
are dreams.

The weight that swells the round of brushed eyelids
is lilac.



The Spirit Fisher

A Heron in the rushes
spreads his slow blue wings
which sound out in the air
like match-struck gasoline.

My bone voices go whispering—
that Heron in the rushes
is wisdom wading shallows
round the river's edge.

An Onondagan choir
sings octaves in my blood.
The Heron, in a rush
of windless stirring, above.

The spirit fisher drives
the dry-brushed pastel dusk,
the drummers' voices higher.
Herons never rush.

Originally published in Lucid Rhythms



Lynx

More of a spirit than a cat—
distilled wilderness
stalks among the stunted pines;
hunter in the mists.

Underneath snow-rounded boughs,
steps mercurial
seldom trace the shape of sound,
light, ethereal.

Predator of essences,
your amber eyes, fierce
as fire, swiftly, effortlessly
sweeping as they pierce ...

Ghost-cat of the boreal,
seeing and unseen
hunts a subtler prey, by feel
along the edge of dream.

Originally published in Lucid Rhythms

The HyperTexts