[ book excerpt: poetry ]
Evelyn Lau: “Cursing, Flailing”
“I believe a poet’s ‘job’ is to take great care with language, to craft something meaningful — it can be devastating, or it can celebrate a small thing of beauty. In my own work I often try to capture a fleeting moment/experience, or plumb the depths of a difficult emotion,” Vancouver-based Evelyn Lau said in a recent interview.
Included in Parade of Storms (Anvil Press), initially published in Geist magazine, and certainly “something meaningful,” “Cursing, Flailing” was also chosen by Mary Dalton for Best Canadian Poetry 2026 (Biblioasis, forthcoming November 18). Describing the poem as “a record of a post-pandemic road-trip” across the USA, Dalton finds in Lau’s words “a dystopian portrait of a nation wrapped in plastic, riddled with fear of nuclear war — a nation of tent cities, trailer parks, and bars, and, everywhere, chemical-laden food.”
The British Columbia Review would like to thank Evelyn Lau and Biblioasis for permission to reprint the poem.
Cursing, Flailing
The world is on the brink of nuclear war,
says a voice on the radio, near the border
between Oregon and California. Our first road trip
post-pandemic, and motel rooms groan with cold
even as plum blossoms line the freeway. In America
food mashes into sweet pablum
against the roofs of our mouths —
a stir of chemicals and enriched flour, pre-digested.
Ding-Dongs shaped like hockey pucks, corn chips
pushed through an extruder. 99 cents for a cup
of soda swill, small or X-large, so I cradle
a bucket-sized container of pop in my lap,
docile as a doped baby. Thanks to COVID
every plastic item comes wrapped in an extra film
of plastic, and turd-coloured rooms reek
of hospital-grade disinfectant. Praise to plastic straws
instead of paper tubes that disintegrate
in carbonation, leaving mush to slurp up!
Praise to the gleam of plastic cutlery,
its utility and malleability, its future journey adrift
for decades through miraculous oceans!
We unwrap burgers the size of our heads
while parked beside a tent city, gnaw gritty patties,
lick sauce dispensed in measured dollops.
On a beach between San Francisco and Santa Cruz
I crawl into a lean-to built by a homeless man
who will reclaim it at sunset. Will bombs
find us here? Only the ocean’s painful roar, the sound
of a million creatures dying. It seems a crime
to walk in America, the few pedestrians
stumbling out of trailer parks and bars
scanning for trouble and cursing, flailing.
The motel lobby sign says there’s a $100 fine
for using hair dye — it ruins the towels —
but everyone, the clerk says, wants to change
their identity. Young women pass me in the halls,
hoodies up, PJ bottoms flapping, slippers slapping.
I squat on a curb by the entrance — COVID stacked away
the lobby chairs — and guests ask, Ma’am, do you work here?
*
Evelyn Lau is the author of fifteen books, including poetry, nonfiction, and short story collections. [Editor’s note: BCR contributor Al Rempel reviewed Parade of Storms; Joe Enns reviewed Lau’s Cactus Gardens, and Grace Lau reviewed Pineapple Express.]
*
The British Columbia Review
Interim Editors: Trevor Marc Hughes (nonfiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction and poetry)
Publisher: Richard Mackie
Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.
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