Poem by Jason Camlot

Jason Camlot (pictured) is a poet, singer-songwriter, and university lecturer based in Montreal, at Concordia University. His areas of interest include Victorian Literature and sound recording techniques, especially in the early days of the wax cylinder. I have much more to say about him, and will add more to this post later.

This is from his second collection, Attention All Typewriters!, from DC Books.

The Wind Divider

Träumend an der Schreibmaschin’saß die kleine Josephin’…--Gilbert and Profes

Hovered and swiveling behind the gray
cloth wall of her cubicle
divider, she has me seek into my drawer
for more than pencils. My rebel
typewriter girl who goes to the movies
alone soaring to screen
on the paper-clippèd wings
of my lighter /darker imagination.
Green ice-flashes of the Photostat machine
ignite her as St. Theresa in passion. She glides
past my station in white stockings
and Wallabees, red ones, like some devil nurse
prepared to I.V. the water cooler
with one scarlet ink cartridge.
Her hair black and shiny as trash bags
overstretched in their receptacles, so well groomed,
the best kept secretary, with airs, inviolable,
like a sadistic Veronica working in an office
just to spite Daddy. Or, my clean new American girl
as comfortable with Pitman as with Gregg,
tomboyish and undemanding, her fantasies
refillable, mine untold: (At the typewriter in a dream
Sits my little Josephine…/My longing tapped
upon her keys/But she will need more keys than these…)
Spied through loose-leaf
reinforcements, I can smell fresh duotang,
taste the gluestick like sorrow on my lips,
hear the dust of rubber erasers
falling like little blackened frowns,
feel her like a pocket full of Parker Posey.

by Jason Camlot