Tina Cane
Rage and Ibuprofen
At the Jetty
Future Sonnet
Tina Cane
Tina Cane serves as poet laureate of Rhode Island and is the founder and director of Writers-in-the-Schools, RI, for which she works as a visiting poet. Tina is also an instructor with the writing community, Frequency Providence. Over the past twenty years, she has taught French, English, and creative writing in public and private schools throughout New York City and Rhode Island. Tina’s poems and translations have appeared in numerous journals including Spinning Jenny, Tupelo Quarterly, Cargo, Two Serious Ladies, The Literary Review, and Jubliat. Her work, The Fifth Thought, was published by Other Painters Press in 2008. She is also the author of Dear Elena: Letters for Elena Ferrante (Skillman Ave. Press, 2016), Once More With Feeling (Veliz Books, 2017) and Body of Work ( Veliz Books, 2019). Tina was the 2016 recipient for the Fellowship Merit Award in Poetry from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts. She lives outside of Providence, RI with her husband and their three children.
Tina Cane
Rage and Ibuprofen, and other poems
Rage and Ibuprofen
I know little about matters of practical application
it was being a waitress that taught me how to get along
that people want their food and want it now like everyone
my mind has regions
one for meat one for bread
one for caravans and tender age one for rage
and ibuprofen
plus a whole zone for listening
past the migraines to the dog whistles in the air faint toll
of cowards ringing across time history has to start somewhere
so, why not here? I ask
my class to write
a letter to Mr. Baldwin because time catches up
with kingdoms and crushes also because I miss him
one girl writes:
Dear James,
The most courageous thing
a person can be is a black woman.
Damn, son says the boy at the desk behind her
then we all sit in silence until the bell rings
At the Jetty
Water breaking over the jetty is water saying
fight if you must is the moon conversing with the sea
advice for life or advice in the case of an active shooter
sanctuary were I a gun sanctuary even at sea
I’d love an emergency as much as any tyrant
loves a crisis
better now to accept
that my phone is an asshole that my life has grown
monstrous with ease when the butcher told me
not to overthink the meat on Christmas Eve
I didn’t think too hard about the cut or the mess
of presents beneath the tree about presence or transcendence
I did reflect on Paradise though that town reduced to earth
which crews spent days sifting for remains for pain
in its most granular form
how every passion holds
clues to our vitality network names like Christ It’s Loud
or Anxiety & Trauma spawn a thousand laugh emojis including mine
as if remind us we’re alive and we’ll take it
every day is not the same but related or referred
like pain or giant babies we plod the earth hacking our way
towards freedom things that must be answered for
Orlando says
in Navajo a computer is called metal that thinks which gets to the root
of it for me how placebo means I please you how at my laptop sometimes
tears seep down into the motherboard to the mother lode to the whole mother
holding up half the sky
speak the names of those who were lost please
not the names of those who took them America is my home please
but not my metaphor not my body as an expression of dirt
the woods are full of police walking is reason enough
the margins of terror grow slim
and I survive
on an amazement of women secret transactions the rage
of all the maidens at once
lodestar bulwark subtlety of fools
Opera is the music in a movie of silence my son declares
as I buckle him if you put that in a bottle I swear I say
I will buy it
I will rest my case
Future Sonnet
I have no idea what it takes the past is what I remember
propulsion impersonates passion the future belongs to the fast
I try to take it slow so each word can travel to my ear
so I can hear what it is to be heard
I concede hearing is not listening
listening is not grasp that the last thing
I want may be the first thing I get
sometimes it takes
a trampoline with a net brown suede boots
and barrettes on a girl’s birthday list
to conjure up the future to fulfill
a wish to propel
it’s all going forward I know
our stories can only carry us so far
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Questions for the Author:
What are 2 - 3 books (regardless of genre) that you've read over the last year or less that really blew your hair back?
Kadijah Queen's I'm So Fine because smart and raw and tough and vulnerable.
Deborah Landau's Soft Targets because so spare and terrifying.
David Thomas Martinez's Hustle because--like a tattoo--it's beautiful, hurts a little, and stays with you.
Who is someone you admire who does work that you feel really benefits your “local” community, and what kind of work is it that they do?
Frequency Writers is a writing community run by too many people--past and present--to name, but they have been gathering people and facilitating writing, readings, and publications for years now. They have become an important fixture in the literary community and I am grateful they exist. I've taken and taught workshops with them and it's been wonderful to watch people, including myself, grow along with the organization.
I also admire Scott Lapham and his One Gun Gone project, which is an anti-violence initiative in Providence.
He does important work with youth around gun violence, art, and community.
What would be the worst “buy one get one free” sale of all time?
I once got a phone call informing me that I had "won" a burial plot in Queens. Cypress HIlls, I think.
It was a strange moment of dreadful elation. Despite not having never really won anything, I declined.
I think cemetery spots would be the worst "buy one get one free." Then, again they are expensive.
And we all hope to be buried next to someone, so maybe it's the ultimate deal?