Poetry Pause x Poetry in Union: Dani Couture – Transit in Mercury

February 7, 2020

Dani Couture will be one of many amazing poets available to create custom, in-the-moment poems at the League’s Poetry In Union event on February 14, 2020. Find out more about Poetry In Union

Poem author: Dani Couture Poem title: Transit in Mercury Poem: The freckle on my sister’s hazel iris replicates the May transit of Mercury across our sun. Every thirteen or thirty-three years, orbits line up to make theory believable to the layman splayed out on Earth like a poor man’s star made of lesser dust. For a span of hours she becomes a universe. And yet, I have no sister. She would have smoked and blown blue out windows, into exhaust vents. Our DNA flickering like ancient Christmas lights that eventually burn down the house. Her hand, the one I held before somersaulting back into a black pool of anaesthetic, waking corrected into her security. Or the night our father left, and I held hers. Pressed into life like a fiver for a favour to be called in later, at forty-two my sister taught me to drive. I leaned over and held the still-warm wheel while she put up her hands as if surrendering to greater authority. Only ever heir to her absence, I tried to sister my mother, another’s sister, a stranger, a man, air. So when I say I miss you, it’s not to you, but through to the palm trees on the throw pillow that are not actual palms. But I enjoy the idea of their shade when the sun hits them right. End of Poem. Copyright © Dani Couture Dani Couture is the author of several collections of poetry and a novel. Couture’s work has been nominated for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry and Pat Lowther Memorial Award, received an honour of distinction from the Writers’ Trust of Canada’s Dayne Ogilvie Prize for Emerging LGBTQ Writers, and won the ReLit Award for Poetry. Her latest book is Listen Before Transmit (Wolsak & Wynn 2018).