SurVision Magazine

Unspoken Words


3. You feel a full moon in a windowless room. You feel a full moon on a foggy morning. Hermit crab feels a full moon, as do earthworm, ant. Over-thinking makes the moon go away, be careful.

7. On the road today I see, apropos of nothing, a mashed cabbage. In the yard beside, a dog collar cone, the kind you get at the vet so they won't rip out their stitches. You, with your indigo lips and swaying skirt watch a little girl play bouncy ball five six seven. Ants follow their highway up the sides of the office building, like children who compete on sports day, all so invested in meaningless wins as grown-ups shield them from sunstroke and try to engage in conversation the little girl who smells like pee.

5. You walk among the tall thin pillars, drift around the triangles, touch the soft enamelled surfaces, curious fingers feel the imperceptible joins between layers of white and black and yellow. Calm, very calm, you move slow to the next, smooth and shiny. You're tempted to lick one. The light is soft easy, your feet are in milk, music so quiet you think you can't hear it. There are no circles.

1. Sometimes I speak in pastels. My friends and my family expect red arbutus or shadows to fall from my mouth but I like to change it up. They tell me persimmons, I reply cotton candy.




The Third Turtle


The third turtle stole all the knives
and the whole high hummingday

continued all stay long despite
the boom
          bram kram
                    kaslam
of the train track man
despite the hours
                    flowers
                              flat powers
of the sword envy man

the sun dripped fears
the clouds ripped
          in twos and     fours and
little bitty bits
until the flecks
                    flocks
                              flacks
flattened over the blue

where I found a room

& you





Trap Kit


And how shall we lay it down tonight

          closely composed reciprocal
                    violence perhaps

taut
          force
                    wild
tolls

          flash of brass

whirling nylon tips

or shall we caress
          each other with
                    thrums     moans
            glimmers
                    skin on skin
                                     click     hush
and the boom boom boom
                                     as if
                                            in the next room

how shall we lay it down tonight?





KB Nelson is from Canada. A graduate of Simon Fraser University's Southbank writing program, she has lived in Ontario, Yukon, Alberta, New Brunswick and New Zealand, and is now based in Greater Vancouver. She writes poetry and short fiction, and has won awards in both. Her haiku have appeared in Icebox, her poems in local anthologies. In 2017, she was the recipient of the Cedric Literary Award for poetry.