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Phil Hall
Phil Hall’s poetry has been nominated for the Griffin Poetry Prize & the Governor General's Award. Among his many titles are Old Enemy Juice (1988), The Unsaid (1992), & Hearthedral – A Folk-Hermetic (1996). He has taught writing at York University, Ryerson Polytechnical University, Seneca College, George Brown College, and elsewhere. He has been poet-in-residence at Sage Hill Writing Experience (Sask.), The Pierre Berton House (Dawson City, Yukon), & elsewhere. His most recent books of poems are White Porcupine (2007), The Little Seamstress (2010) & Killdeer (2011). He is a member of the Writers’ Union of Canada, and lives near Perth, Ontario.
From Phil Hall
Level
My complex friendship
with this oak table
from this pine chair / conducted
is to smear anxious focus upon
these radiant equilibrium wolds
honed questless / grain to pulse
to try to widen down into
an affirming prudence
to revere & help sound
our one measure
A Widower
Out from the blinding swells
of sunflowers & the tight rows of young fig trees
heavy women drift
to shout drunk his old name
to laugh & cant their gowns aside shoving
each other into rude song
his wife is playing cribbage in the nude in the dark
with talons in her wet hair
& here come these overblown bitches
why not just pork it to them they bend over pull themselves
apart blatant caterwauling
no he would preach the astringencies of romance
sober them with flaky ballads
pretend he is marble until he is marble
he turns away into his profile
white-eyed & ravenous they divest him
his battered wing-on-a-strap flung hard into
dripping cliff-roots
