Lucía M. Polis The Poetry of

In Raskol’nikov’s first dream
he goes to his little brother’s grave.
He crosses himself, kneels before it,
kisses it.

              Holding his father’s hand
he passes by the kabák,
where they're all drunk, singing.
There, hitched to the heavy cart,

stands a gaunt nag, one score years
of age. They laugh at her, shout “Lash ’er!”
as Mikolka calls up one more lout
to her back.


                  “In the head! In the eyes!”—
they sing out, beat, whip her hard.
John Yossarian runs to her. He
won’t heed father, the elders.

John, he can only hold her.
Kissing her eyes, her muzzle, bloodied.
Unreal city! What’s left to him
but to wonder the Seven Hills

and watch the district’s iniquities,
its wanton frailties, its
lies and filth. As he stumbles
on Italian cobbles,


Alan Œdipuses / Lears
six steeds just because Dick can’t
make it with Jane (Judy? Joan?).
(God gives a lascivious moan.)

Robert Ross tries to open
the barn; Robert Ross tries to
keep them from harm; Robert Ross
can’t save the horses, and burns.

Evening sky creeps over town like plague
overripe. Caught in her freezing car,
the poet holds herself close, wipes off
her left eye, and then the right; then, types.

The street is dark
and the houses quiet,
supplicant voices
long gone.
The roses stand so still—
time too stands still, irredeemable;
it does not care
to know when
the almond bush blooms. . . .

My neighbour,
he greets me with his
hands; his eyes hold
fondly his dog
(she is silent).
She watches us with great care.
There is no burning bush—
just here, beside our two homes,
a comprehension
      at last. . . .

Nothing
is going to happen tonight.
My flesh
pandiculates.
I can no longer hear
at my back
a treacherous crack
of some tight seam; just here, at dusk I
watch happy boys
drift over the grass,

their eyes
filled with candy and
October dreams.

Since ancient past of times of old,
We have been numerously told
The rules for vestments to be worn
When one is dead or one is born

The boys then only light-blue had;
In frilly pink the girls were clad.
In youth, I thought this colour schism
Was taken straight from Communism.

the poet makes
the poet hard
to live

It is high noon in Baghdad.
To her empty living room,
Cappelbaum quietly hums,

    Sleep Country Ca-na-DA!
    Why buy a mattress
    a—nywhere else? ❇ding❇


When she closes her eyes,
Cappelbaum thinks she can hear
echoes of distant times:

    (Double your pleasure, double your fun—)
    Wait . . . what do you mean
    Barq’s has bite? When she


opens her eyes, she can hear
the zuhr from the muezzins’
duelling calls.

They are loud,
these voices,
and piercingly clear:

    Taste the rainbow!
    Roll up the rim to win!
    It’s the beer out here.

Returning to Granville, the debut poetry collection (inspired by Michael Turner’s Kingsway) that she had self-published in 2005, Lucía M. Polis retraces her steps back to a time when her own life and growth as a poet became entwined with one of Vancouver’s main thoroughfares (and all the places it took her). In reimagining her collection, Lucía invites you to board the number 10 bus at the southern confluence of intersections where Southwest Marine Drive becomes Granville Street; to make stops (and poems) along the way—pausing, diverting, looping back; and to arrive at the waters of Vancouver Harbour, changed.

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It is now half past midnight in
die Eidgenossenschaft.

The birds are sleeping;
the bees are sleeping;
and nobody mourns.

The city drifts
past soft purple clouds.


And here, in The Harbour City,
honk horns; it’s half past three.

The cars are rushing;
they’re so very loud;
they want to be free.


For now, sound asleep in your bed;
’til dawn, neither alive

nor dead; but a third
secret thing, your breath
buffets wrens; turns leaves

in eaves; chases away the clouds;
falls and rises again.