#8 – Janvier / January 2026
Erín Moure
Autobiographemes
“However” is whose ache
day by day
Art in a kitchen
waving the steaming
plough
waving a steaming
towel
Artifice is simply
this
(referent)
(arduous)
…
She is awake now
One thing is key
Make sure nothing
sticks to the pans
Each time in a new kitchen
curing the steel
For the omelets
the fried eggs with lacy edges
Or for fish only
The style of it
Not feral
Poetry is feral
Above the stoves
a poetry book
open
The waiters shouting
The clang of doors
and plates
I’d shout back
Often
I am permitted to
return to a meadow
…
Now that’s feral
Early in my life
it was poetry or kitchens
kitchens or poetry
I loved both
I could not choose
The thick cotton jacket
White
with cotton toggles
(to survive the laundry)
keeps the heat out
strangely
…
In a kitchen I have a body
she said
In poetry I am not
so sure
….
Lamps lit in the street on the way home
Poetry or
restaurants
Both restore
Both, bouillons in Paris
whetting the knife
or tongue
The thick cotton!
Changing to a clean jacket
The way the blast of heat
can no long burn you,
wearing that jacket
Protects you
Poetry won’t protect you
Burns
…
I went then toward poetry.
….
All this in a cacophony of wheels
on rail
Shaking over iron switches
and heat kinks
Or winter heaters gone bad order
at switches
now
paralyzed by snow
I went then toward poetry
yet still wake up
thinking of cabbages oranges onions
Round beauties, colours
Me, servant to this beauty
this colour
these textures
seeds
even in dreams
among customers, later
They who sip
chew
chatter
Restaurant’s artifice
“to break bread”
simply desire
for good
…
And poetry?
I’m telling this with a sigh
Ages and ages hence
Two choices on a train, and then
The broken pillar of the wing
jags from the clotted shoulder
….
No more to use the sky forever
But look how
despite the vileness of prosperous men
The world is noble
not knowable
(“these roads”
express
adore’s proximity)
the noble is this
meadow
or
menu
proximity’s artifice
arduous in kitchens
…
d. t. v. o. p. m.
Today at times, now old
I regret
my choice
To leave the cutting of vegetable beings
the revelation of inner beauty
The public bouillons and fresh
jacket
The stance at the hot stoves
and steam
for poetry
I still feel most capable
in kitchens
amid such fruit and
memory
Each move effects another
The crowd nearby at
tables, laughing, riant·e·s
…
A life I gave up
before it took me
(to go then toward a
poem, so
feral in
present
longing
….
Remember. Speak. Stand, with them.
note: citational references to Robinson Jeffers, Robert Frost, Muriel Rukeyser
Montréal, 29 décembre 2025 — 2 janvier 2026