An Outdoor Education
Lengths of rope meant for lean-tos, for securing the corners of a tarp to tree trunks were used instead to hog-tie my beanpole body to a dried out birch during outdoor education class. Those other kids—friends of mine, I’d say still— started with my shins and wound the whiskered yellow nylon cord around and around until I squirmed, arms cinched to my side, papery white bark curling up the ass of my jeans. They doused my thighs in lighter fluid then traced the dark stain with the lick of a zippo flame until I became the first branch catching on a pyre. But the butane burned clean through to cotton threads that did not catch. I was left with nothing but heat rash. You have been the only thing to ever change me.
Who?
Curtis LeBlanc was born and raised in St. Albert, AB. In 2016, his poetry won the Readers' Choice Award in the Arc Poem of The Year Contest and was shortlisted for The Walrus Poetry Prize as well as CV2's Young Buck Poetry Prize. Good for Nothing (Anstruther Press, 2017) is his first chapbook. His first book-length collection will be published by Nightwood Editions in Spring of 2018.
What?
A chapbook! But why blather on about the thing when we can give you another poem???
When?
Arrived January 2017.
Where?
Book Launches: Coming at the end of April or early May at The Paper Hound in Vancouver. Date TBA - Be Prepared For Anything!
Purchases: From the Anstruther Press website. $10.
How?
Non-obligatory ocean chat.
The copyrights of all poems included in the series remain with their authors, and are reprinted with the permission of the publishers.
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