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    This Cockeyed World
    This Cockeyed World
    This Cockeyed World
    Ebook114 pages46 minutes

    This Cockeyed World

    By Jim Christy

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    About this ebook

    COCKEYED: askew, crooked, intoxicated, absurd; marked by bends or angles; incongruous, not straight. In other words, Jim Christy, Canada's most iconoclastic and irreverent poet, views this cockeyed world the way it is; not only with 20/20 but x-ray vision and often through laughter and tears.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGuernica
    Release dateOct 1, 2013
    ISBN9781550717181
    This Cockeyed World
    Author

    Jim Christy

    Born in Richmond, Virginia on July 14, 1945, Jim Christy grew up in South Philadelphia, a tough area featured in his autobiographical novel Streethearts. Christy came to Canada in October of 1968, to evade the Vietnam war draft. He's travelled the world extensively, is a prolific author and artist. Christy is now a Canadian citizen.

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      Book preview

      This Cockeyed World - Jim Christy

      This Cockeyed World

      Jim Christy

      GUERNICA

      TORONTO – BUFFALO – BERKELEY – LANCASTER (U.K.) 2013

      Contents

      Title

      End of the World Airfield

      Heading North

      ‘Couver Blues

      I Had Ears

      Girl on the seashore

      The Heart of the World

      Head From Mata Hari

      The Viking’s Mother

      Tomorrow is Forever

      Ready or Not

      This Cockeyed World

      Lost Channel Road

      Strong Arm

      Young at Heart

      Mute and Staring

      You and Your Stuff

      Jim the Drifter

      Crypto-zoology

      The Writerly Life

      Crossroads

      Freemantle

      The Juras

      Knife Fighter

      Archie Marries Veronica

      Tucumcari Roadhouse

      List of Contributors

      The Lady on Radio Road

      A Hundred Acres and Some Kind of Fool

      Strip Bar Haiku

      Funny Old Memory

      Wooden Indians

      Camilo’s Bitch

      And Let the Games End

      Early Music

      Even-Toed Ungulates

      Bus Ride

      One Gaunt White man

      Where to, Zoe?

      Our First Night at the Buchan

      Big Nicky

      Greenberg’s Drugstore

      Another Round

      Runagate Again

      Tiger Man

      Afternoon of the Blind Man

      Guardalavaca Night

      Forests

      About Jim Christy’s Previous ColleCtions

      End of the World Airfield

      Seven planes, all sizes, spread

      Over the tarmac after

      The storm, like birds

      On a white cashmere overcoat.

      Undercarriages yellow

      Or red, like spoonbills, white-

      Tailed kites and ivory gulls.

      There’s a snowy owl and a common

      Tern. One woodcock come out

      Of a wood of glass trees. The closest,

      Like a pelican, must be

      A cargo plane. It’s so quiet

      You could hear a parachute

      Open. Pilots all gone.

      Mechanics vanished. Attendants

      Wheeled away long ago.

      There’s no one in the tower.

      I’m alone between

      Arrivals and Departures,

      Next to the coffee machine. It might

      Be the end of the world. I

      Hear it tell me angels

      Have made snow angels

      On the runway.

      Heading North

      I’m headed for Northern Ontario. Nobody’ll

      Think to look for me there. They’ll check

      The old familiar southern places they think

      My heart still embraces but where I usually

      Just got run out of town, or dropped

      At the outskirts out beyond the empty multi-

      Plex and the last nail salon with an: And don’t come back.

      Atta wa pis kat not Sarawak.

      No one’ll recognize me under all those

      Clothes, I’ll be just another Yo-ne-gis

      With an icicle hanging from his nose.

      My lips will look like a frozen river

      Reflecting the grey blue sky.

      Things have gotten too hot

      In Furnace Falls and I just

      Get the blues in Mississippi Station.

      I remember the time in Ompah,

      Outside the general store when the guitar

      Fell on my head and woke me up. I’ll

      Pass through Tichbourne and claim

      To be someone else. You’re up there

      Somewhere, I know.

      I’ll find you and take you to Maskara,

      Buy you a diamond from DeBeers after

      You paint your big brown eyes. I want

      To see how you look lying

      On a Bear Skin Lake. I’m older

      Than you but eager and I’ll

      Prove it in Summer Beaver.

      Ours will be a Marathon love, we’ll

      Write our names on the Chalk River

      And wake up Ati ko kan pledging Our troth with Caribou bone beats

      On mastodon tusks.

      Webequie

      Mosonee

      Moose Factory

      Let’s visit the birds

      On Akimiski

      We’ll ride sweet coltsfeet

      Along the ice roads, be rash,

      Make love behind the leather leaf.

      You’ll whisper:

      WuhnumminWuhnummin

      And tenderly I will sigh:

      Kitchenuh may koosib

      How will that sound at Ear Falls?

      Nearby’s the Long Legged River

      They named after you. Yes,

      It calls to me north of Kaba baka.

      We’ll make camp on the shores of

      The big water, you’ll say you’re

      Rescuing the name from an old

      English captain, call it after me:

      Jim Bay. Let’s take the dogs

      To Fort Albany, get blankets for

      Our antlers. We’ll grow old in a lodge

      Of skins, paint symbols on the hides:

      The sun, the moon, the moose and

      Wolverine, animal

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