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    How to Avoid Huge Ships
    How to Avoid Huge Ships
    How to Avoid Huge Ships
    Ebook92 pages1 hour

    How to Avoid Huge Ships

    By Julie Bruck

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    About this ebook

    Both “grave and brave, serious and hilarious”—new poems from a Governor General’s Award–winning poet.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrick Books
    Release dateSep 1, 2018
    ISBN9781771314862
    How to Avoid Huge Ships
    Author

    Julie Bruck

    Julie Bruck is the author of two previous books, The End of Travel (1999), and The Woman Downstairs (1993). Her recent work has appeared in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Maisonneuve, The Malahat Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review and The Walrus, among other publications. A Montreal native, she lives in San Francisco with her husband and daughter.

    Read more from Julie Bruck

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      Book preview

      How to Avoid Huge Ships - Julie Bruck

      Acknowledgements

      I. Maps

      to the bridge

      Eighteen or nineteen, unshaven,

      with backpack, he stops me

      on the quiet park trail, asks

      where can I send him that’s

      more secluded. Is there a place

      where no one goes? We’re alone

      on the path, and I’m trained

      to give him anything he wants.

      Walk west, I say, towards the ocean.

      It’s only a mile, maybe two,

      hoping that’s the end of it.

      Can you repeat that? he asks.

      Finally I retrieve my hands

      from deep fleece pockets

      and point. There, go down the hill.

      Keep walking. See those woods?

      That’s west. He thanks me, turns

      away. While the rest of us keep

      following designated trails in our

      branded athletic shoes, measuring

      what remains of an afternoon, light

      pokes accusatory fingers into every

      crevice: someone’s son walks west,

      gaining on the Golden Gate Bridge

      where so many beautiful boys fly.

      I may have drawn this one a map.

      dominion protection™

      The name had an air of the Raj about it,

      but the system was what my mother called

      the contact points on every door and window.

      Disarming meant dialing from the kitchen phone,

      giving the receptionist a spoken code, part name, part

      digits (simply, our phone number: WEllington three

      four six oh oh). They must have hated accounts like ours,

      with pot-fuelled, latchkey teens whose sole incoming

      focus was the refrigerator, who were usually found

      combing the Frost Free shelves, startled, mouths

      full of frozen cake by the time police arrived.

      And it’s curious to think, as apparently no one did

      circa 1969, that the person speaking numbers into

      the black receiver might have had a knife to the throat.

      But this was the Dominion of Canada, self-governing

      nation of the Commonwealth, when dusk was dusk,

      not the twilight of empire, and a call duly

      disconnected the circuits until everyone was home

      for the night, to be reset by the last to bed.

      Then wind would start to roil the tallest

      maples swamping the house, leaves brushing

      even the third-floor panes before sighing

      into place at dawn. And when daylight broke

      and poured across the wide lawns, the Italian

      gardeners were already there, eating bagged

      breakfasts on the tailgates of their trucks, while

      up and down the street, systems were silenced,

      and men with their briefcases set forth.

      by ninety-eight

      I’d never seen him lie in the grass.

      There was wrought iron furniture

      with yellow sailcloth cushions to

      put out every summer morning,

      pack in before the evening dew.

      He had successfully avoided grass,

      despite the years of summer hours

      devoted to lawn maintenance.

      He always left the root of each weed:

      they grew back fast as he pulled them.

      He threw his cuttings in the firepit

      where he also tossed plastics, glass,

      aerosol cans, half-empty tins

      of paint thinner and turpentine,

      causing only small explosions.

      For ninety-eight years, my father

      was above grass. He owned things:

      acres, hectares, complications.

      He never wanted to be grass,

      or simplified.

      his certainty

      In his ninth decade, my father left my mother for a more congenial

      situation—an only slightly younger woman, who happened

      to be a friend to them both. Everyone was supposed to be happy.

      Happy as when my

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