“BEAUTY AT A PROPER DISTANCE \ IN SONG” by nancy viva davis halifax
Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “BEAUTY AT A PROPER DISTANCE \ IN SONG” by nancy viva davis halifax.
BEAUTY AT A PROPER DISTANCE \ IN SONG i
By nancy viva davis halifax
what a small thought it takes is a small part of the thought Wittgenstein had & i can’t remember how
much of the treatise i read maybe i finished the biography by Ray – ? could be his first or last name but
recommended by a woman maybe K who told me it was a great read & there is a small thought
somewhere wishin’ for all those passed years & the women who sat beside & with me lives taken with
daughters & dogs & death & dinner i pluck a chin whisker so fine no one but me would ever notice ‘cept
my fingers would turn to it over the day til they tore it from its root Suzy Lake let her chin whiskers grow
singin’ a mouth bright with red lipstick & i count each of her whiskers mourn my pluckin’ that small
thought about bein’ a woman how it is to live with children with sons with daughters with histories to be
filled torn beauty full
i Suzy Lake \ series of self-portraits \ beauty at a proper distance \ in song \ 2002
Copyright © nancy viva davis halifax
Previously published in act normal (Hugh MacLennan Poetry Series McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023).
nancy viva davis halifax is a white, queer, mad, crip settler and artist born on the North shore of New Brunswick on Mi’gma’gi terriory. their writing has been published in literary and academic journals. halifax’s praxis also uses embroidery & other forms of handwork as a social practice & response to the frenetic pace of life ruled by extractive, neoliberal and capitalist politics. both her first collection, hook, and her second, act normal, were published in the Hugh McLennan Poetry series, MQUP.
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