COURAGE UNDERGROUND

By Julie Roorda

The poems in Courage Underground burrow beneath the skin to examine the relationship between consciousness and body. They penetrate hidden emotions contained by vital organs; they enter the sensibilities of lower order creatures and characters of the mythic underworld. The journey elicits new perspectives on loss and alienation that are both hilarious and startling. "Beating boldly at the centre of Courage Underground, Julie Roorda's provocative new volume of poetry, is the very root of courage: heart. It is a broken heart, a generous heart, a heart of hell and darkness, and ultimately a transplanted heart. I mean that literally. Roorda dares to use the actual idea of organ transplant to embody the emotions of love and loss. This is a poetry that shows us exactly what is vital about our vital organs, grisly yet ethereal - and subtly, sexily mysterious. Roorda forges poetry from its source: the underground core of feeling that fires imagination" - Molly Peacock. {Guernica Editions}

• Language: English
• Publisher: Guernica
• Release date: Jan 1, 2006
• ISBN: 9781550717556

Julie Roorda

Julie Roorda is the author of three volumes of poetry, a collection of stories, and a novel for young adults. Her fiction has appeared in periodicals across Canada including The Fiddlehead and The New Quarterly. Her story, “How to Tell if Your Frog is Dead,” was included in the 2014 Journey Prize Anthology. She lives in Toronto.

Book preview

JULIE ROORDA 

COURAGE UNDERGROUND

 ESSENTIAL POETS SERIES 149

GUERNICA 

Toronto – Buffalo – Lancaster (U.K.) 2006

FOR MY PARENTS

Contents

Part One: Elegy for a Vital Organ

Daylight Savings 

All I Ask 

Organ Trade in a Civilized Country

The Truth about Daughters

The Queen of Hell 

Spineless 

Geese Walking

Elegy for a Vital Organ

The Guardian Angel of Basement Apartments 

Earwig 

Gnats

Everything I regret persists in the form of a small animal 

Ladybug, Ladybug 

June Bugs 

The Memory Game 

Cicada 

Part Two: Enter the Bones

Seagulls 

Fine Dining 

Compost 

Chicken Feet Soup 

Value

Eating Crow

Praying Mantis 

Carrier Ants 

Broken-Hearted Looks on Love 

Swan Formation

Design

Threshold 

Part Three: The Real Meaning of Life

Extinction 

Caesura 

The Sculptor in Winter 

The Quality of Darkness 

Ode on a Lazy Eye 

Night Blindness 

Closer to Real  

The Pros and Cons of Ghosts 

Slow Letters

Relief 

Part Four: Out of Body

Hereafter 

Joy 

The Altruist 

PART I

ELEGY FOR A VITAL ORGAN

Daylight Savings

Though Penelope haggled a deal with time, 

weaving and unraveling,

a gentle balance which fostered hope 

and a lover’s unlikely return,

I would propose something more radical:

let’s have time flow fully in reverse, 

then see how generous we would be! 

We would fill the earth

with gifts of gold and precious jewels, 

salve each deep-down gouge with oil.

We would filter poison from our waterways 

through our own organs

to produce pristine bounty, milk and apples, 

for shipment to the country.

I would sell my clothes for pennies to Goodwill 

to be bundled off gratis to the poor in spirit.

A stranger at the coffee shop

would slip a wallet into my pocket, 

full of photos and business cards

of people I would be sure to meet. 

A lover I had never seen before

would throw open my door with a bang, 

find me in tears, want to know me.

Ah, there’s the crux,

the certainty of beginnings.

All I Ask

All I ask is divine intervention.

A disembodied hand upon the wall, 

not just a silent telephone call;

a Flood, not just a flooded basement.

We should never have stopped writing