Tag Archives: Jack Pine sonnet

“Dirty Work,” a sonnet Heather Haley style

Post Canada Day, feeling pretty happy, relieved that I was born here, considering how brutal life is in so many other countries. We’ve got the basics down, just need to fine tune. Post Olympics, many people go on about how difficult it is for Canadians to be patriotic. I think we’d rather be quietly nationalistic, which is quintessentially Canadian in temperament. We don’t need to wear it on our sleeves or shoot bullets into the air.

I can’t rhyme to save my life! Actually, I can of course, but it’s just not in me. I don’t rhyme when I write songs either. Below be a sonnet, Heather Haley style, that I wrote for Geist‘s Jack Pine Sonnet contest:

Dirty Work

I am your golden jackal, shining, grinning.
I wield the flashlight, forge trails through night
blooming jasmine, metropolis serfdom.
I machete weed, ale induced panic.

In the morning you put on the jacket,
admit the thrills, hips, heat up our cunning.
Get to chopping. Onions, peppers, kindling.
Start the fire. Sweep. Brew the java. Rouse.

We share bacon, scrambled eggs and signal
amidst tender yanks. Shrieks! Gentle scuffles.
You entice me with mango juice. Pay day.
Poker. New jeans. A rumpus in the hay.

Ack! Your alarm! Restores smallness, inner priest
rising, freeing the calves we toiled to corral.