The Hobo / Undamaged / To Die Sober

A trio of poems from the masterly Phil Hall

Discordia does not, it turns out, hate everything. Every other week, we share a piece of new or gently-used work from an artist who's earned our respect. This week we offer a preview selection of poems from Phil Hall’s The Hobo, a new chapbook from Discordia Review Press coming this fall.

There is art that moves us, and there is art that moves with us. This is Fellow Travellers.

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The Hobo

 I never wrote my letters to you longhand     
always read over my typing & corrected in pen     
 maybe I’d add brief comments in pen too
but if there were too many typos or additions I’d retype the letter 
 I always used a carbon but never re-read the carbons     
they just stank up a drawer

 while typing I edited myself until I wasn’t myself
I’d always let the letter’s foraging give way to a poem’s poise    
 oh that’s a good phrase I’d think I can use that  
you had an address I had an address I pulled away 
 from the impromptu honesty you deserved
& the poetry that resulted was a bunch of lying crap     
 dirt wants dry / swamp wants dark / rock wants fur     
I want lung spell / do I ever 

 it haunts me what I didn’t say in my letters to you 
but I admired the tossed-off ardent ease of your replies    
 so here I am on my bike heading downtown when oh no
while as The Poet I agonized over even weather 
 dirt wants dry / no it doesn’t / swamp wants dark 
no it doesn’t / rock wants fur / no it doesn’t / only I want     

 then I was saved by Roy Kiyooka  
I think it was you who first recommended him to me 
 his Transcanada Letters always show which train to ride 
I am a hapless unappeased derelict hiatus he says
 as he drags our lost hands to an HP printer

the curve of an open book held face down to copy
 where the words in the gutters took the x-ray at a slant 
the letters smaller & crammed together down the unreadable spine
 lightning powdered plastic a cheap embalming of type
in archive infarction black zines I was a convert to impurity
 what we shorted came off on our hands     
that haven’t slept forever smell of ashtrays at a funeral
 if art wasn’t dirty & sloppy & quick it was a tenured snort
we pasted & stapled our carbon or pollen transfer    
 some books never closed properly again

these mornings I only write notes toward poems 
 passing voice scraps or seemingly journal bits         
if I am rash & muddled it is to honour your loose ear       
 this flooded gravel pit a dartless swamp a slur    
these moss-furred boulders in no throat 
 off trail an accidental mosaic    

dear atrophy diversions cut the anchor     
 not-in-pain tastes like hiding from communion
people in anguish & no more Simones 
 safe in my hideout I never wondered if my sister was OK 
I was seldom brave enough to really write to anyone 
 writing to no one is easier 
	
my first reader is my last aren’t you
 I am spoiled in this empty theatre
talking poetry to what has never swerved once 
 though it curves it curves
I will write badly giftless I am not afraid 
 of this immensity that is not desire  
talking poetry to fence rails 
 the moss on them hushes the dithyramb
I won’t be indoors ever again 
 my word ass won’t be wiped again 
talking poetry to the harsh allowances 
 unstoppable & without recourse

slapped-quiet & ongoing 
 the calculations leak a white rust  
the toy can’t find its gesture 
 the swamp has not paid good money
get off me memory get off me 
 folio get off me continuum

---

Undamaged

 When he had to wear a tie 
a bobby pin was his tie-clip 

 she took a bobby pin out of her hair 
it was oily & warm with her own warmth

 she used it to pin his tie to his shirt
& her hair fell over one ear 

 there would be food at the funeral
& drink to ruin his mood


 To hear them cannons jump back

& the machine guns     shroud-stitchers	

 any man who wouldn’t climb out of the earth right then 
was shot     by Oxford     as we called him

 our handsome young Sergeant Major


 Their ghost peed loudly at night & had no head
the mother’s name was Foily Schell

 she painted names & spotted fawns on truck doors 
they ripped the walls out of that old farm house

 searching for the bones of some murdered woman
if they reburied the bones proper 

 that ghost might leave them alone 
each fawn had Foily written small under its front hooves 

 in fancy lettering you had to get up close to read
my Uncle Alfie loved his dump truck 

 his full name was right there on the door 
surrounded by some real art

 Foily was my Aunt Wan’s sister  
Aunt Wan who later became a serious holy roller


 What is the stars?     What is the stars?

but a drunk standing on a chair     & reaching up
 while a banker in the audience coughs


You must learn the veil’s appeal to the light in you     Jay Wright


 I suspect that all these years have been 
mere packing 

 for a few moments early on 
& a time or two later
 
 when my panic stopped & I saw through 

it seems I had to be taught a lesson     over & over     
 wouldn’t learn it     took my lumps
 
but I did retain a few instances of seeing through
 so that now     undamaged & clear 

these moments     why these     stay with me 
 like torn out pages of belief	 
 
as if biology just for a second or two
 had let go of me      before grabbing me up in it again 

I have seen what not being here looks like      
 it’s lovely    

the rest is Grey’s Anatomy & surveys	

	
 In her ask an ark lifted from its blocks & floated free
it was empty but caulked well

 the tang of newly-planed pine filled me with destination 
yes I said yes of course


 Afflicted with words     each line 
also says     to be visible isn’t everything	

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To Die Sober

 It is not poetic or even grammatical to die sober     

it spells ambition wrong is not fiction no music swells

 an ash feeding on limestone is dead-felled by the ash borer    

its bark falls off grey a trace it is sundered & split for heat

 we found all the empties we threw in anger at the woods       

they glared at us each spring for years them green glass lips    

 if you didn’t drink yourself sick drunk most days 

hating yourself to find yourself by a passive violence

 then to die sober must seem a thin ambition to you 

but some bodies apprentice a long time to be just bodies

 the woods is or are or am cleared of shinola at last

to be woven among of with as one strand or thread write nest     

 fewer trees now bare the nests in them visible & empty

let me finish the dishes here then I’ll say night

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Editor’s Note: The fourth section of “Undamaged” quotes from Sean O’Casey’s play Juno and the Paycock (1924)—Captain Jack is drunk and reaching for the stars.

The second last section of “Undamaged” has been used in a video poem “Veils” by Fr. Lawrence Morey.

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PHIL HALL is from near Bobcaygeon, Ontario. He attended the University of Windsor, and began publishing poetry in 1973. His most recent books are *Vallejo's Marrow*, *The Green Rose* (with Steven Ross Smith), and *Devotion* (all in 2024). He has also recently published, with Margaret Miller, a children's book, *Searchers* (2025).

*Guthrie Clothing—the Poetry of Phil Hall* (2015) is available from Wilfrid Laurier University Press. His book of essay-poems, *Killdeer*, won the 2011 Governor General's Award for poetry in English, and Ontario's Trillium Book Award. He has been twice nominated for the Griffin Prize, and twice for the bpNichol Chapbook Award.

He is the founder of Flat Singles Press, and of the Page Lectures at Queen's University. He lives near Perth, Ontario.

Interested in being a Fellow Traveller? Email your poetry, prose, visual art, etc. to discordia.sucks@gmail.com. We pay (not much), and pieces are collected a few times a year in a small print edition.

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