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      Published with the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Coach House Books also acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book ­Publishing Tax Credit.

      LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

      Seymour, David, 1971-

       For display purposes only [electronic resource] / David Seymour.

       Poems.

       Electronic monograph in EPUB format.

       Issued also in print format.

      ISBN 978-1-77056-341-4

      I. Title.

      PS8637. E95 F67 2013 C811′.6 C2013-900223-5

      For Display Purposes Only is available as a print book: 978-1-55245-274-5

      1

       for Karen

      2

      ‘You climb a mountain

      leading seven men who look like you. They depend

       on you for their safety. You climb higher

       and higher until you are alone under a sun

       gone pale in altitude. You climb above birds

       and clouds. You are home in this atmosphere.’

      – Richard Hugo

      ‘From being to being an idea, nothing comes through that intact.’

      – Jay Hopler

      Wild Lines

      The best design survives

       a narrative compulsion

      Adhere to your personality and I

       guarantee prediction

      As you radiate I’ll collect you

       analyze your information

      When I tell you I love you

       you smile like

      Our old television advertising

       a clearer HD television

      There goes the apartment performing

       accurate impersonations again

      Our snuggly companion repetition

       returns with a difference

      Far more pleasurable

       than pity or reprieve

      Time is the classic dimension

       and chronic plot point

      We’ve hurt one another

       and haven’t been sorry

      I love you in the radiant sense

       of you emitting duration

      The best design dissolves

       into behaviour

      Our rooms, our bed, our windows

       and unused corners

      Bungled angles, disturbed dust

       bunnies and flakes of us

       Eyewitness Testimony

      The man who was killed died. The gun

       had gone ballistic in the parking lot. Up ’til then

       all he’d done was have nothing to lose.

       His hair was growing right out of his face.

      Earlier, from the precipitate sky, hail the size

       of golf balls pelted the clubhouse. Errant

       hail-sized golf balls shanked the clubhouse

       before the golfers ran for cover from the weather.

      This occurred. On the fringe of suburbs

       and their evident neighbouring. The cars

       remained parked in the lot where he fell,

       immobile necessary machinery.

      The woman at the scene sporting leopard-print

       spandex was way too realistic. She lacked

       conspicuous panty lines. Her description,

       though relevant, was weapon focused.

      The report from the shots fired was heard variably

       as a calendar sliding off a kitchen wall and the after-

       vacuum of implosion. With decibel fluctuation,

       distance and Doppler effect, reports varied.

      Between the houses backing onto the tenth green,

       aphids gathered all sounds within the 250-

       to 45,000-cycle range of their tympana

       and slept uninterviewed in the shade of hydrangea.

      The passing cab driver had the largest

       hippocampus among the onlookers, being

       the least lost. This was scientifically proven

       though need not be mentioned in the final.

      Others were directionless – what they saw

       they now knew had never not happened –

       wondering how they had arrived here,

       how here arrives. Post-storm light

      struck the police cruiser windshield,

       behaving as particles, or waves,

       depending. Even as testimonials

       hardened into notebook fact.

      Plausible rival hypotheses

       will arise in court. The incident

       began more suddenly than the victim

       expected, and will last much longer.

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