Tuesday Poem - Tenants by Jon Paul Fiorentino

TENANTS

An odd dream

with only characters, no self. Yes, I am

aware it’s not interesting.

There were three men and one

woman in a shared apartment, itself

an odd dream.

Each of the tenants’ rooms was

decorated peculiarly, contained its own narrative

aware it’s not interesting.

The first was draped in pure simulacra –

the woman’s with wallpaper of a photocopied letter telling of

an odd dream.

in which the third was adorned with anachronistic

Xmas and the last with just one sad halogen placed

where it’s not interesting.

The simulacra slayed me – here was this man

with mad props of bed, books, art. Present in so little,

dreaming an odd dream

unaware it’s not interesting.

I have bumped into Jon Paul Fiorentino at the Queensland Poetry Festival twice! That's twice we have co-incided. And this time I picked up his excellent, droll book – Needs Improvement. You can invest in a copy from Coach House Books, Toronto, ON.

Jon Paul Fiorentino is the author of the novel Stripmalling, which

was shortlisted for the Paragraphe Hugh Maclennan Prize for Fiction,

and five previous poetry collections, in-cluding The Theory of the Loser

Class, which was shortlisted for the A. M. Klein Prize. His most recent

poetry collection, Indexical Elegies, won the 2010 CBC Book Club

‘Bookie’ Award for Best Book of Poetry. He lives in Montreal, where

he teaches writing at Concordia university and edits Matrix magazine.

http://www.jpfiorentino.com/