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Phillip Crymble
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the poet
Phillip Crymble, a physically disabled poet originally from Belfast, now lives in Atlantic Canada. He's a poetry editor at The Fiddlehead, and has had work published in Poetry Ireland Review, The Stinging Fly, The North, Magma, The London Magazine, The Irish Times, The Forward Book of Poetry 2017, Bad Lilies, Couplet Poetry, The Honest Ulsterman and elsewhere. Phillip's debut collection is Not Even Laughter.
the poems
North American Birds
A world is firstly made of names and labels —
what the nascent heart is desperate to possess.
For you, my son, the chickadees and finches
at the feeding table — nesting in the eaves
and calling each to each atop our backyard
maple — filled the empty spaces in your head.
Next came the illustrations — colour plates
you memorized by rote — the simple work
of saying like a spell — a song of invocation.
All winter long our little house made warm
by ornithophily — a reverence of words —
the age-old human dream of flight. These
days toy trucks and robots dance like planets
in your mind. Bird boy, must you leave
so soon — sit down with me and stay awhile.
Mealworm
Brought home
from school and cast aside —
discarded in the mud
room — left for me
to find by accident
weeks later. Confined
like one of Bluebeard’s
wives — interred
beneath a substrate
that the kids made
out of oats and sliced
up orange rinds —
the mealworm — newly
calcified — abides —
waits out its aftertime.
Forcing House
It never worked the way we planned. Our oil
furnace always ran too rich. The winter
days were damp, and though a grand, romantic
gesture, living by the sea was desperate.
Socks and underpants on radiators,
heating pipes — wet woollens, windows clouded
white. A forcing house of laundered clothes,
the boiler ticked and bubbled like amalgam
in a crucible. The jars of potted jam
and marmalade we kept in store. Mornings
were the worst of all — the lino kitchen floor
as cold as stone. Each day we trundled down
for tea and toast you checked the letter-box —
as if the news from home might warm us.
Publishing credits
North American Birds: The New Quarterly (Issue No. 123)
Mealworm: THE INDEX: A Quarterly Anthology of Prints
(Issue No. 6)
Forcing House: Michigan Quarterly Review
(Volume 46, Issue No. 1)
