Ron Romanowski is a Labour Studies alumnus of the University of Manitoba. His four previous poetry collections include Insurrection (2009), a tribute to the strikers of the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike, on the occasion of their strike’s ninetieth anniversary. His new collection, Incantations from the Republic of Fire, will be launched at the MayWorks Festival of Labour and the Arts May 2, 2013.


Collage is a Healing After the Cuts
After Bonnie Marin’s exhibition, What are you Scared of?, at the University of Manitoba’s School of Art Gallery

Scissors, and glue sticks we wielded, colours
of paper: white, blue or red, back to white,
piles of lettered pieces promising adventure:
abundance, shreds like shards, one after
the other, fitted, each puzzling its way. Finally
with an artifact, in-hand excitement of
what does it say, what message did chance—
like a lottery—sprinkle upon its passing?


Run-on Sentence
After “Run!”, paper collage, by Bonnie Marin

I smell books before I read them
I want them to inhabit me but
it’s still not enough it’s not enough
even if they weigh a lot and I have
to juggle them home so I sit down
at the keyboard and start to peck
like the rooster that the neighbor
once had who had only half a crow
at sunrise how sad we all were when
they took him away when the breeze
blows through my open window I
can hear a dream and I struggle to
include it even if it doesn’t fit but
when the I see a picture done by an
artist and I know that she has already
chosen what has to be there it’s all
about what‘s not there the theorists tell
us but I can’t help looking and wondering
examining where a bridge leads or where
a rope is strung from is that boy a saint?


Let’s Call Her the New Eve
After Shhh…, paper collage, by Bonnie Marin

She is indifferent Death, this fall quite spectacular,
but Death has seen them all.
Past the Genesee Hotel, we do see: Genesis,
A New One whether we want it or not
and this one will have quite a big bang.
As Eve falls is she more terrified, or embarrassed?
Mother might have taught, don’t lift your skirts
unless you really want attention: the bad kind,
skirts and garters and high heels whizzing past,
and what’s in that clutch: something to pay
for her crossing, or has all that been arranged?
This is some story, that will belong to generations,
that will change in the telling as usual:
we will mourn the passing of our Eve
(we will have to listen to her shrieking),
where is God when you need her?
Perhaps at the last second, it doesn’t take long
they say, it has been written, amen.


The Shushing
After Shhh…, paper collage, by Bonnie Marin

Of history
Of individual memory and
Anecdote
Terror-filled
A one-time thing
Caught for all
Registered in light
Witnessed only by
Windows
Vulnerability
Private trauma
Hotel eviction?
Defenestration?
And its result

To be imagined
Assembled
In the mind
From what
Has been given
The pictorial of
Light and dark
That must mean

So much
More than
Just shape


Your House is a Border Against the Threat of the World
After “I have something to tell you”, paper collage, by Bonnie Marin

Did you see that? Billie in a flood
Holding his breath? I wondered where
He had gone. Don’t fret it looks like
He’s having fun. What’s with the gun
Sally? Can you imagine the weight of
Water? The weight of water in our world
In the world of baseball, the ’64 World Series,
Nothing can be as serious. We’re

Okay here for now but someone may visit
Come down the stairs with Billie in
His arms. Is this your boy? We couldn’t
Revive him. Found him at the bottom
All tangled up in weeds and old trucks;
No one has cleaned the pool for a long time.


A Theology for a Pinpoint Suspension
After Hanging by a Thread, paper collage, by Bonnie Marin

Hopefully she should be exactly where he’d left her
Thought the Almighty as he searched his realm,
But everywhere he looked
She was not to be found

He tried to recall the shapes of the forces that held her
Which ones ran east, and which ran west,
When the sun stood at the ninth hour
He faced north
And gazed out over the captive hemispheres

It might have been spring when he had left her
Yes, he seemed to recall, that was when he had placed her

In that position of savior
That so suited her:

Slick shoes, ankles chained
Her body smelling of fear, her tears

When he thought back
It was her tears
That he remembered best, those tiny details
That made her stand out from the mass
Perfectly tied, neatly hung, in tears

One of his existence’s greatest pleasures
The long search
For the special one

That would stick in a memory
That recalled everything, almost