we are no longer the smart kids in class

By David Huebert

From the drunk tank to the graduate seminar, We Are No Longer The Smart Kids In Class asks what it means to think and be, play and learn, ride bikes and make love in a world of depleting resources, technological proliferation, and corroding ecosystems. This collection contemplates moustaches, mountains, and oceans from Halifax to Victoria, always wondering how poetry matters to the heaving, melting, masturbating world it dramatizes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Guernica Editions Inc
• Release date: Aug 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781550719581

David Huebert

David Huebert’s writing has won the CBC Short Story Prize, The Walrus Poetry Prize, and was a finalist for the 2020 Journey Prize. David’s fiction debut, Peninsula Sinking, won a Dartmouth Book Award, was shortlisted for the Alistair MacLeod Short Fiction Prize, and was runner-up for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award. David’s work has been published in magazines such as The Walrus, Maisonneuve, enRoute, and Canadian Notes & Queries, and anthologized in Best Canadian Stories and The Journey Prize Stories. David teaches literature and creative writing at The University of New Brunswick.

Book preview

we are

no longer

the smart

kids in

class

David Huebert

GUERNICA EDITIONS • FIRST POETS SERIES 14

TORONTO • BUFFALO • LANCASTER (U.K.)

2015

CONTENTS

to my manuscript in the slush pile

why our parents worked so hard

hearing rilke’s sonnets to orpheus

answering rilke’s sonnets to orpheus

to a beer-swillin’ poet

roland

christina

the porn we watched

ridiculous gods

in case you were wondering

ideal first date

alabama

carnival

saturated doze

pubic decorum

arriving at greenwood, greenwood station

reading bowering’s imaginary poems

what I will remember most about christmas 2011

a couple of bikes

cadaver on bloor street

black ice, crowsnest pass

elegy for a buick century

revenge of polyphemus

ruins walk, louisbourg

equine tide, sailors memorial walk

breaking

spring melt, fernie

sailor’s dictionary

impotence

fingernail clippings

radicals

murderer’s elegy

hypothesis

my social circle

the growth

the smart kids

life after twitter

without a door

twenty-four abandoned attempts

at the beginning of my first novel

shavings

notes

acknowledgements

about the author

copyright

for my early readers:

Elizabeth, Rachel, Ron

to my manuscript in the slush pile

I hope you are comfortable, and that your neighbours

are mediocre at best. I hope your margins are crisp

as the day I hit print and cradled you while you emerged,

still warm, from your noisy womb. I’ll never forget the

moment I wrapped the manila blanket over your shoulders

and lovingly snipped that excess length of packing tape.

I hope there has been no coffee spilled on you and that

you aren’t too close to the radiator. These days I’m sure

there’s no second-hand smoke, but I picture it nonetheless.

The editor is male — fifties, thick glasses, broom moustache.

He picks you up first thing in the morning, and as he reads

your name a smile crosses his lips — he already appreciates

your dry sense of humour and your understated brilliance.

He wets his index finger, turns the title page, and embarks.

why our parents worked so hard

You catch the spider

between a water glass

and a piece of paper.

You put it on the table.

It’s a big one, about the size

of a head of garlic.

It feels its way around the space,

soon