{"id":16470,"date":"2023-05-06T06:27:55","date_gmt":"2023-05-06T01:27:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/?p=16470"},"modified":"2023-06-28T23:33:46","modified_gmt":"2023-06-28T18:33:46","slug":"pickup-fifty-two-by-david-barrick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/editorials\/pickup-fifty-two-by-david-barrick\/","title":{"rendered":"Pickup Fifty-Two by David Barrick"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
I am the man with nine fingers\nin a jar. The man who is one finger\nshort of a hand. The man who hides\na boy in his belly. The boy who won\u2019t go\nbelly up. The man who smiles too\nquickly, laughs at the wrong line of the joke.\nThe boy who swims with a torn dorsal fin.\nThe man who grasps a harpoon. The whale\nwho wishes he were a man. The whale whose vision\ndims the deeper he goes, who sees double.\nThe boy who keeps one man in the mirror, another\nin the woods out back. The woodshed becoming\na man at night. Padlocked golem, shivering\ntimbers. A sliver in the finger\nof the boy, his whole hand soaking\nin Epsom salts. His whole body a hand.\nThe boy who fingerpaints the face\nof a father in beach sand. The man who jolts\nawake in class, too big for his britches.\nThe boy who whittles the man down\nto a hatchet-faced king. The buzz\nof a card deck spraying the floor. The man grown\ntired of boy\u2019s games, his back too sore\nto bend over and pick up the mess, who confesses\nI am the boy<\/em>, rooted belly-deep, cutting\nthe deck and dealing again.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
\"All<\/figure>\n\n\n
Margo LaPierre on \u201cPickup Fifty-Two\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
This piece riffles through language and time with surprising, quiet horror and time-piercing introspection. A mythic quality suffuses the man, the hand, the mirror, the deck, the woods out back. Laconic yet iterative, this beguiling poem speaks playfully of age and holds its secrets like a sliver in the finger.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
Bios<\/h2>\n\n\n            
 \r\n                
\r\n                    \"David\r\n                <\/figure>\r\n                
\r\n                    
David Barrick<\/a><\/h3>\r\n                    
David Barrick<\/strong> is the author of the poetry collection\u00a0Nightlight<\/i>\u00a0(Palimpsest Press, 2022) as well as two chapbooks. His work appears (or is forthcoming) in\u00a0Grain, The Fiddlehead<\/i>,\u00a0Prairie Fire<\/i>,\u00a0Best Canadian Poetry\u00a0<\/i>2024,\u00a0<\/i>and other publications. He lives in London, ON, and is managing director of Antler River Poetry. [update provided in 2023]2<\/p>\r\n                <\/div>\r\n            <\/div>\r\n          <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I am the man with nine fingers in a jar. The man who is one finger short of a hand. The man who hides a boy in his belly. The boy who won\u2019t go belly up. The man who smiles too quickly, laughs at the wrong line of the joke. The boy who swims with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":16848,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"3289","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"16394,17284,16691,16965","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3289],"tags":[],"genre":[150],"publisher":[],"issue":[],"poet-in-residence":[],"series":[],"topic":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16470"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16470"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17029,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16470\/revisions\/17029"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16470"},{"taxonomy":"genre","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/genre?post=16470"},{"taxonomy":"publisher","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publisher?post=16470"},{"taxonomy":"issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue?post=16470"},{"taxonomy":"poet-in-residence","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/poet-in-residence?post=16470"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=16470"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=16470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}