she tells me
get some Mela-
tonin at London
Drugs 16 different
brands & dosages on
the shelves empty sold-
out spots among them she
needs Extended Release 10 mg
o god an epidemic of sleeplessness
in our small neighbourhood our
neighbours’ brains & their
underactive pineal glands
blue & green screenlight
tricking their mentality
awake a lot of SAD-
ness afflicting us
mela from the Greek for
dark or black for our daily
calamities an industry gleans
the chemical bed of crystals over
which flows the inky river of night-
sleep a machine powders its sand into
10 mg capsules counts them into gleam-
ing white plastic bottles & seals them shut
♦
Maureen Hynes’s work has twice been included in Best Canadian Poems and longlisted for the CBC Canada Reads poetry award. Her book, Rough Skin (Wolsak and Wynn), won the League of Canadian Poets’ Gerald Lampert Award for best first book of poetry by a Canadian, and her fourth collection, The Poison Colour (Pedlar Press) was a finalist for the Raymond Souster and Pat Lowther Awards. She launched her most recent collection, Sotto Voce from Brick Books, in October 2019.
♦♦♦
Up Next:
“I am extra grumpy today and try to flip into stasis, a mode where useless time like this can be skipped.”
The Litter I See Project 