I dedicate this song
to the man I met 5 minutes ago
I dedicate this lung
to a bar full of blue smoke
I dedicate this liver
to the chronic wasting of beer
I dedicate this tube top
to breasts that would hold it up
I dedicate these teeth
to dentistry I couldn’t buy them
I dedicate this nervous
to nerves of steel it cleverly conceals
I dedicate me you they
couple in cowboy gear mullet with his own
CD this music this bar the land it sits on
this whole façade of trying to be
good voices, known lyrics, unseedy
bar, ungreedy owner smiling doing rounds
I dedicate every single thing attempting what
it isn’t to the obscure what it is
because the is feels left out
and forgotten, the handyman in the
computer tech the mute in the crooner the
shivering mess in the cool tie the
jackass in the niceguy the
child amassing marbles in the barkeep the
rock chick in the Dixie and the who am I
in the who I am not, pushed
under the surface by all other surfaces
and the playground instructor among
these structures saying don’t tell me who
started it so that we’ll try

Laurie Fuhr is a military brat currently stationed at Cold Lake, Alberta. Her writing appears in the anthologies evergreen: six new poets (Black Moss, 2002), Short Fuse: The Global Anthology of New Fusion Poetry (Rattapallax, 2002) and Shadowy Technicians: New Ottawa Poets (Broken Jaw Press, 2000), as well as various magazines on-and offline. She edits bloom oon, a cut-and-paste journal of Canadian surrealist writing.