Ali Pinkney

Montreal-based publishing entity Metatron is guest editing Everyday Genius this month. We'll be featuring excerpts from our new fall catalog as well as Canadian writers we like. Today's author is the wonderful Ali Pinkney.

Peal, Chime, Toll

Des piments verts—And keep the bed unmade you will like it

like that—the wicker bottom chair and there’s a highway

in our favour with a cheap ride and there are tall lights, a set
of wet eyes at the airport she

smoked on the platform; a woman named Anita rants there
in the grey dusk and you thought, “fuck

yeah lady with a cigarette, the whole world is nothing with-
out him” and ran back. the crux of a neck

worm-woodless on the sugar cubes, canada; there is a place
you are banned from: a fat dude in
     a tennis ball green shirt and a six point star—Des
piments verts.

And keep the bed unmade, you will like it like that; an un-
manned buyer’s card and a booze-bot; a

chair on westmount’s major walker street, a bad pair of faux
crocodile loafers, they’re shiny black;

useless buckles; his non-pockets, what did you like so much
about your psychiatrist in the snow belt?

that special connection? “i liked her because she was pretty.
she was very pretty
And she loved me.”—There is

a foggy town; a house at the end of a secret lane that i am
terrified of there is

a jig to be done in front of the harpsichords a wish and there
are wet eyes on the highway,

so keep the bed unmade you will like it like that the wicker
bottom chair is in our favour

for a cheap ride and there are tall lights at all en routes it is
grey dusk sometimes it goes pitch black

Tampion (Metatron, 2014) is Ali Pinkney's first collection of poetry. She lives in Montreal.