Powerpoint Presentation


What speckled disaster I tossed down my gold
throat last night, fluidly commending freaks
to anomalous lives, though I don’t know shit:

a mean little apocalypse I’ll be,
slapping cab hoods to turn out penniless neat
transvestites, cashless wigs in a black night:

but there’s a lecture about labour I’ll never
get over. What foamed empty glasses right
here loom, while I speak in my old man’s voice:

show me a daytime deadline, I will meet it.
Unrock fields, shovel shit, run the defenses;
this life, you work, no call-in-sick pretence.


Questions and Answers

What inspired “Powerpoint Presentation”?

I was not inspired to write it. ‘Powerpoint Presentation’ just accreted. There is no compulsion, or need, to write any given poem.

What poetic techniques did you use in “Powerpoint Presentation”?

A bit of high-low; you mix street and small talk with formal poetry’s solemn rhythm and bigger words, sometimes it’s successful.


This poem “Powerpoint Presentation” originally appeared in francophone / anglophone. Spec. issue of Canadian Literature 175 (Winter 2002): 18.

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