The Sutler

By Michael Kenyon

In language at once simple and eloquent, Michael Kenyon's The Sutler charts a falling and a rising, taking the reader through the grief of a failing relationship to the emergence of new possibility. Each poem is a gentleness deeply felt; each embued with a compassion, an honesty both stark and unflinching. Kenyon’s prose has shown him to be a consummate craftsman, and these poems are proof that he is a remarkable poet.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brick Books
• Release date: Oct 15, 2005
• ISBN: 9781771310697

Michael Kenyon

Michael Kenyon is the author of numerous poetry collections and novels. His novel The Beautiful Children won the 2010 ReLit Award, and his work has been shortlisted for The Commonwealth Writers Prize and the National Magazine Awards. He divides his time between Vancouver and Pender Island, having in both places a therapeutic practice. 

Book preview

the Sutler

Also by Michael Kenyon

Fiction

Kleinberg (Oolichan Books)

Pinocchio’s Wife (Oberon)

Durable Tumblers (Oolichan Books)

Poetry

Rack of Lamb (Brick Books) (prose poems)

the Sutler

Michael Kenyon

Brick Books

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Kenyon, Michael, 1953 –

            The Sutler / Michael Kenyon.

Poems.

ISBN 1-894078-41-1

I. Title.

PS8571.E572S88 2005       C811’.54       C2005-900401-0

Copyright © Michael Kenyon

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts,

the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry

Development Program (BPIDP), and the Ontario Arts Council for

their support of our publishing program.

The cover painting is by Lorraine Thomson, Below Night,

acrylic on paper, 11.5 x 15.25, 1997.

The author’s photograph is by Lorraine Thomson.

Brick Books

Box 20081

431 Boler Road

London, Ontario

N6K 4G6

Canada

www.brickbooks.ca

This book is for Lorraine

Contents

The ice age

After the duel

I killed her, yes, and now the sun is bright. No

sign of yesterday’s crime. Scarcely

any beach, and that metre-deep in slick weed

whose surface is a carpet of flies

that rises with each sloppy step. So

this is what tomorrow is like.

We arrived in enough daylight to unpack

the Scotch and mark a path between the bed

and the table to the hot tub on the deck,

then we set aside our watches and

I split kindling and lit the fire while

she cut up potatoes and boiled water.

A short November day and heavy. Sun

a wide laser on the waves, the water fat,

brimming, the bay’s arms angled

not quite right, nothing to hold

properly what I committed in passion’s

name. Everything bulging with what’s hid.

A drink in the hot tub, another by the fire.

Every time we reached the point of saying

what we wanted we took hits from the bottle

or slipped under the rain and steam. We were

choosing weapons. I honed sex, she polished

the difference between life and death.

Down at the boat house at Point-No-Point

the last wind faint in the sunny cove. Sunny?

Blasted by sun, the surf white and the beach

knee-deep in foam from the night that roared so

two sets of inland tourists checked out

before dawn, terrified of the storm.

The place of the duel is always desolate:

food, whisky, talk, all done. The dance

is an old one, steps well rehearsed, though

the first cut’s a surprise. I play dead while

she wails and beats the air with her fists.

I’m a carapace, empty and upturned, and

her fury makes her careless. Along

the road in pitch black night I listen

to the trees hiss. The cabin’s too small

when I return, so full of smoke that

it’s