What The Badger Said - Tom Cull (Baseline Press)

Today's book of poetry:

What The Badger Saw.  Tom Cull.  Baseline Press.  London, Ontario.  2013.

Karen Schindler is a small press Goddess and don't you forget it.  Baseline Press continues to produce not only books of unsurpassed beauty — Schindler keeps finding voices worth listening to, vibrant, articulate voices with unbridled potential.

Tom Cull isn't the first Baseline Press author to wow this reader and I hope he won't be the last.  What The Badger Saw is Cull's first book but these are seasoned poems.

Spring Brood

The cowbirds and grackles are back.

Iridescent blue in the sun,

their calls blat the belligerent optimism

of a throttled reed instrument.

There is something I quite like

about these birds.

My dad thought them ugly

and mean.

They bullied smaller birds

at the feeders—gentle wrens,

jaunty finches, charming tits.

The Brown-headed Cowbird gave

particular offense.

"Brood parasitic," it lays

its eggs in other birds' nests—

abandoning its charge

to unsuspecting foster parents

who incubate an impostor chick

that hatches early, grows quickly,

then murders its half-starved siblings

with mandible hook.

A proponent of unnatural selection

my dad could, at times, be found

wandering our property—eyes trained

on the trees, stepladder in one hand,

twelve gauge shot-gun in the other.

Finding a grackle nest, he'd climb

his ladder and perch precariously

on the last "not a step."

Placing the barrel of the gun directly

under the grassy basket, he'd fire.

I snapped a photo once.

Memento mori.

The point-blank range and bird-shot shells

ensured there was nothing

to clean up—not a baby beak,

not a glassy eye.

The next simply ceased.

I imagined the split second the cloud

of BB shots tore the nest into cubist

confusion, before all was pulverized

to dust.

I complained once, "You can't

decide which birds live and which

birds die."

Pushing his red cap up on his forehead

Dad paused, reloading,

"Yes, I can."

Above me now, three male cardinals

triangulate in a tree. Unmoved

by the beaky grackles mudding about below,

they watch a female in the bush—

catholic in their intentions.

It is too early for the orioles but they too

will soon appear and build

their pendulous houses in the maple

branches. Easy to love, these birds.

They flit like paintbrushes, pose

for photos, quicken spring's spring.

How must it have been for the baby

cowbirds growing up in such happy families?

I can't imagine.

I sometimes think of turning my dad's twelve gauge

on a nest of novice robins, fledgling

tanagers, baby buntings.

I think, "I will strike balance

across generations.

I will make things right."

Of course I don't;

I might, after all,

need a place

to drop

my 

egg.

...

Tom Cull has the Mark Twang story-teller in him.  These all too few narrative poems are page turning marvels.  You really can't wait to hear what Cull is going to say next.

Choosing The Animal Laureate

The Manatee is smug.

Standing at the lectern, book in flipper,

"Is it hot in here or is just me?" he asks,

turning nonchalantly to hang his suit jacket on the chair,

revealing as he does the propeller-shaped scar that runs

the length of his back. Please.

Panda refuses. She cannot bear it—

reading to a room of jaw-clenched heavy petters

snapping photos for Facebook updates,

voices in their cute-addled brains screaming,

"Widdle furry buddy is weading a poem. Yes she is.

YES. she. IS!"

The Blue Whales sent a wire. "All is lost" stop.

"In translation" stop. "Including this" stop.

The Donkeys renewed with Babstock.

Foxes? Signed with Hughes.

The Fish are mired in modernism.

House Cats are busy with the internet.

The Squirrel—too anecdotal.

Rabbit claims he is "post rabbit."

Skunk—too confessional.

The Hummingbird is a drunk.

Corporate Cattle are doping,

Organic Cattle are dying of happiness.

Apes can't get funding.

I won't tell you what the Badger said.

(He said, "Go fuck yourself.")

My good people,

it is the West African Lion we want—

the one from the Zanesville Zoo

who, along with

       seventeen fellow lions,

       two Grey Wolves,

       six Black Bears,

       two Grizzly Bears,

       one Baboon,

       three Mountain Lions,

       and eighteen Bengal Tigers,

was hunted down and killed

by the Ohio state police after the zoo-keep

freed his animals from their cages, this

just moments before he choose a gun

from his other prized collection

and shot himself dead.

Flown in from the Columbus Zoo,

Jack Hanna reported,

"It's like Noah's ark wrecking right here

in Zanesville, Ohio."

Our Lion laureate was the only animal

they tried to tranquilize.

He faltered momentarily as the drugs

hit home, but rallied and charged the vet

as bullets cut through his pelt.

Imagine him now, where I stand,

wearing Ray-Ban aviators,

picking his teeth with a sheriff's badge.

"Call me Mustafa," he says with a straight face.

He reads a villanelle, a few quiet haikus.

Taking questions about his poetic influences,

he quotes Breton— "The purest surrealist act

is walking into a crowd with a loaded gun

and firing into it randomly."

And Artaud—"Without an element of cruelty

at the root of every spectacle,

the theater is not possible.

In our present state of degeneration,

it is through the skin that metaphysics must be made

to re-enter our minds."

He cites the Dada Manifesto—

"I let the vowels fool around, I let the vowels

quite simply occur, as a cat meows..."

"I'm afraid our time is almost up," he says,

his r's beginning to roll, soft and deep.

"Before you go I'll share a sound

poem I've been working on."

He treads quietly to the back of the room.

"It's called, Feeding Time at the Zoo.

A collaborative poem," he says

as he bolts the door,

turning.

...

Last year I was privileged to read Suzannah Showler's most excellent chapbook,  Sucks To Be You, from Bardia Sinee's Odourless Press.  This year ECW published her first trade book, Failure to Thrive.  Fully realized, completely lovely book.  I expect no less from Tom Cull in the near future.

Tom Cull - London Poetry Open Mic Night - June 4, 2014

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tom Cull lives in London, Ontario, where he teaches, writes, and roams the Thames River.  He has Ph.D. in English Literature and has taught at Western University and Fanshawe College.  Tom is a workshop facilitator for the Poetry London Reading Series and has served as a judge for Poetry in Voice, the Poynt Award in Poetry, and Western University's USC Poetry Slam.  His poems has appeared on LTC buses and in newspapers, but are more regularly found in the inboxes of patient and gracious friends.  This is his first published collection of poems.

www.baselinepress.ca

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