Sketch

every time i run around the corner
i find footprints in the concrete where i’ve been
but i keep running     it’s my purpose in life
and the footprints keep following me

somebody offered me myself on a popsicle stick
with a rope around my neck
now i run with myself hanging over my chest
and i’m never lonely

	sit sagging in my armchair     charcoal in my hand
	making marks on a piece of used paper
	until the marks each get up and run away
	walk around the corner     over the footprints
	this is good     it makes the paper empty
	i can sit here     making marks     forever

from Yew Nork (2014)

Snow

i was stuck in a room with
imagination like a top hat
and across the street saw a bookstore i’d last seen
almost forty years ago on the other coast

	hello     i’d like to buy
	the snows of yesteryear
	i came all the way from medieval france for that
	and the guy behind the counter looks at me says
	did i know you in college?
	this bookstore was in toronto     anyway
	not the village or telegraph avenue
	i can hear cars like lungs
	passing behind his voice

and the glow     of winged bicycles on the wall
sometimes age needs wheels
i really want that book     i really do
i know the snow i’ve crunched through to get here
sometimes a street is just real enough
and you’re on it

from Yew Nork (2014)

The Dictator's Taste in Art

visited the history museum today
and ate all the paintings
now have a gutache the cooks in my armies
could never take credit for

now it’s time to occupy another museum
make it a museum of cheeseburgers
turn the temperature up to where i like it
drool every time i smell the stench

visited the paintings    credit    credit
ate all the gutache    the cooks    the history
the never    the now    the time i like it
now it’s time to turn the temperature up to cheeseburgers
to occupy the drool    today    today
i smell the stench    up where    i like it

Written August 31, 2025