GAS Featured Poet: Bruce McRae

Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician, is a multiple Pushcart nominee with poems published in hundreds of magazines such as Poetry, Rattle and the North American Review. The winner of the 2020 Libretto prize and author of four poetry collections and seven chapbooks, his poems have been broadcast and performed globally.

Looking Back

Objects in the mirror

are closer than they appear.

Objects may appear to be subjective.

Objects in the mirror

travel at the speed of light.

Objects in the mirror

may appear or not appear.

Prone to mood swings,

they appear to be dispassionate

but only want what's best for you.

They've suffered greatly in your stead.

Objects in the mirror

may appear to be drunk

or on heavy medication.

They make foulmouthed and fiery execrations.

Objects in the mirror

reject their status and protest

the viewers's overarching reflections.

Objects in the mirror

stand for the human drive towards acquisition.

The mirror represents introspection.

The mirror manufactures distances.

That which is conceived creates conception.

Objects in the mirror

appear more handsome than they are.

They may appear sullen and jaded as well,

depending on your latitude and inclination.

Objects in the mirror don't exist.

There is no mirror.

Abandon your ego.

Keep looking ahead.

Drive faster.

        

 Sentence

This sentence will be short

and straight to the point.

This sentence will wander about,

a lamb loosed from its pasture,

curious, but shy, hungry, yet cautious.

This sentence doesn't know what

it's talking about and will throw in

a mention of the honeyguide bird

because no one is expecting it.

And this sentence is part of the whole.

Another sentence will follow it blindly,

hoping to make sense of itself,

attempting to fathom its purposes,

inevitably failing the collective.

And why is this sentence

in the form of a question?

The penultimate sentence feigns a reply.

The last sentence, always enigmatic,

turns toward the bottom of the page

and refuses to tell you the truth,

the whole truth, and nothing like the truth.

                                   The Last Christmas

                                    It's Christmas morning

and the wind has stopped

its constant jabbering,

the sea lying in late

after a year of god-looking

and revving the planet.

Children have freed themselves

from the webbing of their beds

and are quietly screaming

(you mustn't wake the dead).

Outside, the back end of darkness

shudders in its long coat.

You can smell the blizzards in its hair.

A mouthful tastes of old Decembers.

Christmas morning and a single star

is all that remains

of the ruckus in heaven.

The angel at the top of the tree

is unaware that she's been raptured

and continues sleeping.

Somewhere they're ringing bells

and lighting scented candles,

but here, in the forest of the heart,

the trees are huddled with snowfall.

Aching for summer they number the winds

on their various journeys.

A cathedral, a colosseum,

the forest is waiting for a second god

to shake the world out of its slumber.

Christmas morning and its quiet

as a Jesuit graveyard in a snowstorm.

I have given you the gifts

of salt and cellars, meadows of seagrass,

a sullen winter.

And I have given you the gifts

of kismet, librettos, animals.

I have carefully wrapped and bowed

a box containing other boxes

You asked for a labyrinth and mazes.

You wanted a world that's peace-riven

and a balm for your spectral longing.

A dime store Santa, all I've given you

is your mother's voice

and the glow of celestial kitchens.