Poetry Month 2012: Kateri Lanthier - Small Hours

Kateri Lanthier was born in Toronto and has lived in St. Catharines, Sudbury and Kingston. She has a BA and MA in English from the University of Toronto. After working as an editor in educational publishing, she became a freelance writer for magazines, television, and the web, specializing in design, architecture, decorative arts and fine art. Her poetry has been published in literary journals and magazines in Canada, the United States, and England, including Descant, Grain, Matrix, The Antigonish Review, Acta Victoriana, The U.C. Review, The Greenfield Review, Saturday Night, Quarry, The Toronto Quarterly, Writing Women and London Magazine. Her first collection of poetry, Reporting from Night, was published by Iguana Books in December 2011. She lives in Toronto’s Beach neighborhood with her husband and three children.

Small Hours

I am Orpheus to my own Eurydice.
Look back and disappear.

Or, at 4 am, think of nothing
but Hour of the Wolf,

of Max von Sydow's sorrow-face,
the drowned boy's shoulder.

Nightingale, rooster, lark, owl.
Night hawks, morning folk.

The security guard nursing
the bouncer and the pilot.

Red-eyes weeping
for the hair of the dog.

My Baby Was Sick All Night
blues. A Delta classic.

I'll sing my scratches
on a--what's it?--telephone.

This heavy black hand-cranked
wallflower that toes the party line.

I do your birthmark inventory
just in case, just in the nick.

All sleep is a catnap.

I will never graduate from
The School of Late Clocks.

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