Past Tree Appearances
In Print
David Seymour
David Seymour’s first book of poetry, Inter Alia , (Brick Books, 2005) was nominated for the 2005 Gerald Lampert Award. His work was recently selected for the inaugural Best Canadian Poetry in English 2008. His poetry, reviews and essays have also appeared in The Fiddlehead, The Malahat Review, Arc, Prism International, and Precipice, among others. David lives in Toronto and is currently at work on his second and third books.
From David Seymour
Vertebrate
Something ungulate was slain somehow, stumbled
in the tangled brome and popped a knee, tried climbing
higher ground to lick an entry wound too late,
run down by early hominids who'd come trampling through
the kill-site, threatened, ill-fed. Or, untagged, unowned,
picked off by joyless locals from the road and left for dead.
Carcass gone, a pulse of nutrient for the soil, lying long
enough for bones to string a necklace in the overgrowth,
their own cairn, until we humped up the unfarmed ridge
and they detonated underfoot. What with my spurned
hips and joints, there's no justifying stooping low,
near to fours, to investigate and learn, unclasp one pearl:
size a fist, heft a hand-grenade. Now it haunches
specimen on the desk, like a plaster counterfeit beside
the Zippo, a few ballpoints, and doesn't do a thing
while I adjust the lumbar cant of my office chair.
There. That's fine, as far as I'm concerned.
