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Blockbuster Poem II

This week the 'Goddess of Blissful Ignorance' visits a Vancouver balcony.

Elizabeth Bachinsky 6 Aug 2010TheTyee.ca

Elizabeth Bachinsky is the author of three collections of poetry, Curio (BookThug, 2005), Home of Sudden Service (Nightwood, 2006), and God of Missed Connections (Nightwood, 2009). Her work was nominated for the Kobzar Literary Award in 2009, the Governor General's Award for Poetry in 2006 and the Bronwen Wallace Award in 2004, and has appeared in literary journals, anthologies, and on film in Canada, the United States, France, Ireland, England, and China. She is an instructor of creative writing at Douglas College in New Westminster where she is Poetry Editor for Event magazine. 
Condo balconies in Vancouver
High up in 'the dating community.' Photo courtesy of agaumont from Your BC: The Tyee's photo pool.

[Editor's Note: This is the second of 10 current Canadian 'blockbuster poems' running each Friday in The Tyee. Find out about the idea of the series and read the previous poem here.]

Goddess of Blissful Ignorance

By Elizabeth Bachinsky

And now all the neighbourhood students are drinking
expensive-ish beer on their balconies thinking of the javelin
toss love can be (at any age, but especially) when you're
young and wearing carefully purchased footwear and
accessories. One girl thinks one day I won't remember this
balcony, like tomorrow, while another's sure she's met
her future husband, an MBA from San Francisco and dear
god what's he doing in Canada what a boon for the dating
community (he's straight I mean thank god...) while next-
door neighbours lie in bed and wonder if it isn't time
to move out to the suburbs, maybe get a chunk of property,
have a kid. Trade one noise for another.

It's not that living in a city seems superfluous when you're
in it, but only that it's superfluous when you are out of it
and conversation's lacking everywhere in the end. Consider
this cluster of stargazer lilies.Seven blossoms for two dollars
at a Chinese grocery, but their perfume's too heady for such
a small room. It's four a.m. and the clubs are turning out
the young. Shame to put the blossoms on the balcony.

From God of Missed Connections, published by Nightwood Editions (c) 2009 [Tyee]

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