Roland Pemberton

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 rapper, DJ and poet Roland Pemberton.

White House

I was caught up in a dream
It was a procession of blonde girls
Circling me as if posied and rosied
Their game made for a canopy of trees
And as I sat there on the jungle floor, I awoke with a start

Amazonian envoy with bow and arrow breast
I am the savage approximation
Fanning you with a giant cartoon leaf
Banned from the reclaimed Moroccan café
While people swing at each other on Vine

Here, diaphanous shells litter the earth
Mollusks made winged by experience
They thrive through nature’s reversal
The flares ring out over the Oued Bouskoura
And I wait for you to look in my direction

I can see you from that specific distance
Where one cannot tell if someone is coming or going    
I peacock around obsidian kids
Surrounded by someone's charcoal efforts 
Elliptical under the cleaved rainforest moon

You smoke your regional hash
As your Augustinian desires are made blacker
By the very hour of their unveiling
Wading through the sullen edge-marking marsh
I can see our colourworld in full bloom

Roland Pemberton was born in Edmonton. He records and produces music as Cadence Weapon. His albums Breaking Kayfabe and Hope In Dirt City were shortlisted for the Polaris Music Prize and he served as Edmonton’s Poet Laureate from 2009 to 2011. Magnetic Days (Metatron, 2014) is his first collection of poems. He lives in Montreal.