Asparagus

by Nelson Ball

Asparagus

I eat asparagus, I like
especially that it makes my pee

smell like stale cigarette butts
0in an unemptied ashtray.

I do not smoke, I stopped
more than ten years ago.

*

Canada Day Outreach

I don’t like the bang–bang fireworks
I hear throughout the evening.

It’s an insensitive activity, given
the havoc originating south of here

inflicted on humanity worldwide
by Americans with guns.

*

High School —1960

Doug was a whiz in math.
He tried to teach me but

I couldn’t grasp abstraction.
His next passion was setting

fire to his farts with
a cigarette lighter. The farts

of which he produced many, burned blue.
His top priority was to have sex with his girlfriend:
He described in minute detail
how he partially succeeded.

Finally he liked playing baseball.
Doug found employment compiling actuarial tables.

*

In The Wind

     to our nieces and nephews, especially the
     ash scatterers, Trisha and Dave Little

You dispersed Barbara’s ashes
on the west garden
of the Art Gallery of Ontario;

near the ferry terminal
at Toronto’s Harbourfront;

in Trisha’s rock garden
at her home in Saskatoon;

on Barbara’s name carved
in the boardwalk, worn thin by tourists’ feet
along the Kincardine lakefront;

and when the wind blows
Barbara is in the wind.

*

Pets

Snails
were Patricia Highsmith’s choice

hundreds
she fed them lettuce

carried
a head of lettuce
and snails
in her large purse.

Mine
are crickets

inside
my head, tinnitus —

I don’t
feed them.