Boutique Townships
Townships’snowy strips scintillating grey
with cigarette butts, demarcating pigeon zones
where dangling denticles dance, dip,
pester into panoramas like the old-time
bustle of a Jewish hat shop, old sign intact
over a cutting novelty business’s
novelty ribbon.
Semi-retired and wanting counters, fine
fooding, beer-cheesing, spreading packages
by hand handed back across creaky
boards fronting false over stony creek
peninsulas with two heritage bldgs.,
a creamery and potato skins.
But maybe go easy on the cheese.
Towns showcasing town squares,
tatted baristas revealing concealed tapestries
behind baked-good grease grown from jamborees,
strengthened with sodium packets, pepperoni sticks.
Flying back to some centre through swooning
suburban widows,seeing how fast centripetal
hipsters were pitching, banging afield,
scattered among steeples beyond bleachers.
Carl Watts is a PhD candidate in English at Queen’s University. His debut chapbook, REISSUE, was published by Frog Hollow Press in late 2016.His poetry has also appeared in The Best Canadian Poetry 2014, CV2, Grain, and other journals, and he was a finalist for The Malahat Review’s2017 Open Season Award. He has also published scholarly articles and reviews in journals such as Canadian Literature, Canadian Poetry, Studies in Canadian Literature, and The Winnipeg Review.