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beer & the lazarus eye
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blind. talk post-game was that i’d got him: the corner of
my blocker: leathered him shut in one eye. that
he’d deserved it. but blind? my capacity for violence is almost (most
times) non-existent -- save for this once: that instance of collision:
penalty’s killing heat and the cool streaming of what
some might name a national pride (responsible, in my opinion,
for most hockey fights) meeting like fronts. like systems
of weather; acquainting as forces so keen that they register for us only
in temperature and later explode into the visual, the
destructive, like lightning. all that caught me, seized my right
arm, like a feebly constructed barn (by chance girdered and shingled
in place -- in the face of an unpredictable storm or other act
of god) and whipped it about and around and damn near through
that guy’s eye after he sticked me post-whistle. save
for just that, my record’s unblemished; a clean sheet. but
blind? no. later that week in the rinky breath-against-morning
glass haze and sweat of a bar (not hospital, not
feeling his way along and across the length of a street or park), i saw
him: eyes all doubly beer (not coke) bottle thick: his gaze a still
sepia reminder; stigmata. and he saw me -- so
from respective benches we tipped our ills down throats,
swallowed; ate of our icy covenant. held it in dumb hands to see.
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Writer
Bio
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matt robinson lives, writes, works, and studies in Fredericton, NB. Winner of the 1999 Petra Kenney Memorial International Poetry Prize and the 2001 Alfred G. Bailey Prize, he is a PhD student in Atlantic Canadian Literature at The University of New Brunswick. He also teaches creative writing workshops and is an active participant in the “Writers in the Schools” programs of both the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia and the Writers’ Federation of New Brunswick. His first collection of poetry, A Ruckus of Awkward Stacking (Insomniac Press, 2000), was short-listed for The Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and The ReLit Award for Poetry. His second book, how we play at it: a list, is forthcoming in 2003 from ECW Press. His work has been featured on both radio and television, and in a number of anthologies, as well as in over fifty Canadian, American, British, and Australian journals. He is on the editorial board of The Fiddlehead and is the NB/PEI Representative for The League of Canadian Poets.
unb_matt@hotmail.com
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Other
Pedestal Published Works
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