Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Saturday Nights Out to the Roys’” by Cory Lavender.

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Saturday Nights Out to the Roys’

By Cory Lavender

Crib board on the kitchen table, they partner up and it’s

15-2 and a pair is 4. I peek over Dad’s shoulder

when Hee-Haw breaks, lean the rocker in as they shuffle

cut, deal and flip the top card face up. Toss the crib

crap, play till that’s a go. Then it’s a show of hands

the count and leapfrog forward. Up against the Sandman

I’m hoping not to get skunked, white stripe down my back

with a 15-2, 15-4 and a point for the one-eyed Jack

lulled by the flutter of his Grammy Roy’s shuffle

skip of pegs round the drill-pitted hardwood. They play

till it’s past time to head. Whole drive home, I tally no antlers

tilt back to sleep in the back seat, fade to 15-2, 15-4, 15-6

and a pair is 8. Dad’s at the wheel, eyes peeled

for whitetails. I’m a 15-point buck crossing a moonlit field.

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Copyright © Cory Lavender

Previously published in Come One Thing Another (Gaspereau Press, 2024).

Cory Lavender is a poet of African Nova Scotian and European descent living in Mi’kma’ki. His full-length collection of poems, Come One Thing Another, came out with Gaspereau Press in the fall of 2024. His work has appeared in journals such as Grain, Prairie Fire, Riddle Fence, and The Fiddlehead, and in Watch Your Head: Writers and Artists Respond to the Climate Crisis (Coach House Press, 2020). He currently sits on the board of directors of the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia and lives in Gunning Cove, on Nova Scotia’s south shore.

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