E Martin Nolan
The bus leans around the freeway’s on-ramp, which encircles a lawn. There are many young trees. There’s a sign, says, “Trees by Such and Such Credit Union.” Bullshit. The trees are by the credit union? Those trees are by themselves. It’s not like they’re growing out of the credit union. Can you imagine? You go into your trusted, non-scamming credit union, and they’re like, “actually, we’re a bunch of trees now, and your savings account is part of the mushroom network growing under this bunch of trees near an off-ramp in Windsor.” Such and Such Credit Union, you are not those trees, those trees aren’t by you....
Cover Image by Pat Butler
So many in Ontario are dead. This trip, it’s plain.
Each dead ash tree now has a name. Doom.
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In the borer’s wide wake, the dead speak to me.
Dead Ash Beside the 401
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I’m dead and free and for a tree
in a human world to want life is stubborn.
Dying City (Park) Ash
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Fuck slacklines, some bullshit pantomime.
You act like it’s a past time, not an act of fashion.
Whoops, there’s people nearby in the crowded park
and they cheered, weird, you managed not to fart
or fall—what a thrill! And then all the people chill
relaxed now and impressed. Oh, prince of Bellwoods,
man-bunned knight of very low tightrope walks...
Dead City Ash Stump
Cut four feet from where my trunk
emerges from the planter box
left my dead brain half here
so I come through your speaker box
half cut-down, no semblance of my crown,
my bark all cut away to show the paths
the beetles made to bring me down...