Tara Borin: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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List of Duties in a Subarctic Dive Bar

 

If the temperature outside is twenty-five below

            or colder

leave all faucets running and flush the toilets

            hourly.

 

R. has a two-drink limit. A. likes a coaster. Remember,

            Mrs. O. takes a chilled pilsner glass

with her bottle of Blue. Never

            keep her waiting.

 

If someone reveals residential school horrors,

            listen with your whole body.

 

If a customer becomes unresponsive,

            and overdose is suspected,

 

call the nursing station, then administer the naloxone

            kept behind the bar.

Be sure to write everything down in the incident book.

            This is your therapy.

 

At the end of each shift, pour a kettle of boiling water

            into the ice well drain. It keeps down the bioslime.

 

Wrap your cash in the blue vinyl bag and feed it

            to the Snake.

 

You are entitled to one staff drink. Choose wisely.

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Tara Borin is a poet and writer living in the traditional territory of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in, Dawson City, Yukon. Their debut full-length poetry collection, The Pit, was published by Nightwood Editions in March 2021; their poetry has been anthologized in the League of Canadian Poets Feminist Caucus in Conversation chapbook (LCP Press, 2022), Resistance: Righteous Rage in the Age of #MeToo (University of Regina Press, 2021) and Best New Poets in Canada 2018 (Quattro Books), as well as published in various literary journals both online and in print. Tara is the 2022 winner of the BC and Yukon Book Prizes Borealis Prize: Commissioner of Yukon Award for Literary Contribution.

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      Emily Rapport, Wednesday Night, 30x40, aqua-oil on canvas, ca. 2004. Used by permission of the artist.   

Comments

[Bill Nevins]

Cheers! And hey tip your bar-server well. They work hard. Lovely poem!

[clarinda]

Wow, I knew a bartender's job as dispensary and listener was not easy, and I love this poem, and I offer a 100% tip to the barperson depicted here! Again, wow! Love the painting, too. thanks, all!

[Grace Cavalieri]

WOW I never knew this poet and the work is a total contribution to poetry.

[David Lehman]

I've always felt that "mixology" has much in common with the writng of poetry, and the bartender as depicted confirms my sense of the job as an alternative vocation. Great art, too.

[lally]

terrific poem and post

[Joan Retallack]

I love this spelled-out poetics of a Subarctic Dive Bar — its cliental and its wonderful, on-the-ball dispenser of recognition. Thanks to The Poet, once again!

[Don Berger]

Wonderful poem--I love its exactness and how the directions of the speaker stay loyal to the quotidian, the dailiness of the job, while also wonderfully rising into an artistic realm. This poem brings me into a world I wasn't a part of till it placed me in this subarctic room. A great pick Terence. Tara, really happy to find your work here.

[Terence Winch]

Thanks, Don. Great comment, as always.

[Nin Andrews]

WOW! I am definitely going to follow this Poet! Can't wait to read more of their work.

[Phyllis Rosenzweig]

Love the language and great match with the picture. I really want to fly up there and head for a bar. Thanks.

[Peter Kearney]

A slight change in the title could give you a subarctic Dove Bar, good cold ice cream. But a Dove Bar can also be a bar of soap. That kettle of boiling water could then help you work up a good lather.

[Emily Fragos]

Very cool poem. I've just discovered a wonderful new poet.