Up at the usual workaday hour (0700, nautical time)
In the midst of your August timeout, you imbibe
Your morning coffee with additives:
vodka
Kahlua
cream
instead
of milk
Feel yourself off-kilter, as if
An ocean of drink had arrived in waves
At an overworked brain—currently so
Overplayed that the ship’s clock of it
Sticks on alarm mode: WONK WONK WONK WONK
Turn the damn’ thing off and retry
Normalcy (now hours in the offing)—
Who gave you leave to take the dinghy
Of short-term freedom so hellishly far
From its customary port? (“Yes, port”
Says the daze brain, dangerously adrift:
“You shall drink port next, for its sheer
vomitous novelty”)
SOS
Carolyn Hoople Creed is an Associate Professor of English Literature and Creative Writing on the Thompson campus of Manitoba’s University College of the North. Her poetry has recently appeared in The Windsor Review, Lake, and The Global Poetry Anthology (Vehicule Press, 2011); both poetry and prose are featured in Poet to Poet (Guernica Editions), launched in November 2012, as well as in English Quarterly, May, 2013. The montrealpoetryprize.com website, which carries an MP3 of the author reading “Morel-Floored Forest,” is the best online site on which to peruse Carolyn Hoople Creed’s work and profile.
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