By turns quirky, startling, earthy, and hope-filled, Micheline Maylor’s poems slip effortlessly through topics ranging from what we give up as we age to regrets for love that has passed, the interplay between the animal world and human thought, and the myths we append to ourselves and others. An expansive, conversational voice underscores the poet’s technical mastery as her subjects turn from love to hope to fearlessness. Maylor asks readers to perceive how we inhabit our selves, how words construct us. Little Wildheart is rich with challenge and surprise.
I check the box on the government forms: Caucasian. No box
for colonized, for the 1/16th bred. Just the double helix of my DNA,
my ability to sun-brown, and my own green-eyed children
of the voyageur, river visions still caught in their irises.
We’re born out of a long ago season.
Everyone is sure of place and race. Blood and semen
mixed in dirt and cervix, convex and enchanted by muskrat’s eerie smile,
dark truth furred and matted, stroked by a river paddle.
Let that long tooth bite now in the land of the race riots,
negro, and redskin, the underground railroad,
and the Indian village.
Let the name Pontiac take new form and hit the road,
the righteous mile where judgement and boundary blurs,
especially on matters of composition
blood, bone, and relations.
—from “Detroit Zoo bathroom 1977”
1 We are entirely flammable
2 Autobiography
3 Convergence
4 The lovers
5 Dissilience
6 Ten
8 In Saskatchewan, surrealism invades the silence
9 Rewind
11 Rust
12 Conscientious objectors
13 Polarity
14 Before the dark
15 Morning on the old reserve
16 Detroit Zoo bathroom 1977
17 Legend/agenda
18 Prayer of the agnostic
19 Constitution
20 Oh, by the way
21 Unrequited
22 Red sky at morning
23 The narrative
24 Three dogs and an old man
25 Almanac of the Douglas fir
26 Cormorants
27 Le deluge
28 For there are still such mysteries, and such advice
30 Consecrated grounds
31 Rapid eye movement
32 Ooh nom
34 About suffering
35 If you
36 No snow falls
37 Pupil
38 How to be in a garden
40 Fleece
41 Thorn apples
42 Dust
43 Another day of feminist perspective
44 Relativity
45 Reasons for learning cursive
46 I always wanted a tattoo
48 Of appreciation
49 Self portrait at 2:45 am
50 Firewall
51 Inclement
52 Dive
53 Evacuation
54 Mercurial
55 Citizenship of the broken heart
56 Fear of water
57 The chosen
58 Let free
59 Ordinary days
60 Drop of doom
62 There is no place that does not see you
63 Between the trees
64 Talisman pool
65 I’ve forgotten more than I knew
66 Free
67 Benediction
68 I bet you already knew
71 Acknowledgements