Kitz Willman - The Slingshot Shuffle

People painted houses with their family crests
Bleached the stove
And made sure that the table was set
One spoon for each soul
One glass and one bowl
A solitary herring overhead
Watched milk turn to sleet in the street
Radiation in the bread
Boarded-up the threshold
The door told of our glory
Mnemonic portal to our story
Took it right off the hinges
Took the bangs off the fringes
Of the village
No, she didn’t even flinch
Morotcycle journey all night
Couldn’t catch a flight
The sky looked like a burnt-out Lite-Brite
Kept close to the shoulder
Family photos in a folder
Smell the motor odour
The air got colder as we sobered
Moose scream and the elk’s blood curdles
Treat each village like a hurdle
Steeple chase
Deep pool
Vicious puddles
Adidas duffle
Dog without muzzles doin the slingshot shuffle
Sirens
Unbridled violence
We extracted all the copper wirings
In the family home
Paint the crest on stone
We saved each nail for the onion dome
“Shevchenko had actually spoken inadvertently of the autocrat in his poems
He refused to retract
The government really wished to be lenient if he would only be good and confess.”

Hid the memory cards in my under arm
Hefty conscience
Hid the camera to save the optics
Hot van like the tropic of cancer
Giant dancer in small spurts
Never camped in no damn yurts
I’ll sleep in the Sienna
Texting you in Vienna
Placenta buried under trees
Easter eggs hidden like deeds
Travelled westward from the Black Sea
Zero meat but a lot of candy cane beets
Never Eat Shredded Wheat
In a Quetico campsite
Lakefront
Shake junt
Snake hunt
Coaches wanted me to fake the punt
And paint the Pinto purple
Treat the O-line like a hurdle
Sans spikes
City bidding on stolen bikes
Norco narcs
K2 canines and the like
Stayed at a union campsite
Helped fix a trailer on the motorbike
Stanley Cup camper invite
Celebrate with white wine
Wife on webcam ahead of her time
Sault Ste Marie on the Canadian side
Anishinaabe territory
Older than Moses
Didn’t notice the Roses
People lose their smell with high dosage of that plutonium potion
“The gloomy autocracy now pronounces his doom
A sort of living death
The provisal that he should not be allowed either to write or to paint