The Number Ten Bus
lists through snow-damp streets.It hiccups, jolts. Cold air seeps throughsloppily jointed seams. We miss a stop,then another. Those left behind curse the wakeof slush. I hate it here, stuck, forcedto collaborate on the future. A mantries to sell me a rose, petals intricatewith aphids, tiny green bodiesforming a shifting embroidery.Woman’s work. Risk assessment, selling noas firm yet gentle self-effacement.Another missed stop. Lice love it here,all these scalps to redecorate. A toddleris absorbed into celestial upholstery.His father, desperate, searches the seatfor an entrance, probing frayed starsand seams, then pleading with mefor help. Woman’s work. Compassionand fabric warp and rematerializing children.Smiling, I shrug and pull the exit cord.Over the intercom the driver whispersmy name, coos it in a lullaby voice.Another missed stop. Another.Almost there, the driver sings, almost there,you silly sop, for once, just once,sit still and stop making everythingabout you and your unremarkable loss.
Feature Date
- November 3, 2023
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“The Number Ten Bus” from a CONTINUITY ERRORS: by Catriona Wright.
Published by Coach House Books on May 23, 2023.
Copyright © 2023 by Catriona Wright.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Catriona Wright’s most recent poetry collection, Continuity Errors, was published by Coach House Books in Spring 2023. She is also the author of the poetry collection Table Manners and the short story collection Difficult People. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Walrus, and Magma, and they have been anthologized in The Next Wave: An Anthology of 21st Century Canadian Poetry.
"Catriona Wright's Continuity Errors is a book of snaking moves and sneaking intellect, a book of style and fortitude and sass. Wright's always sharp and often eerie interrogations lead us through a world of cryptocurrency, grunt work, predictive policing, extinction, haute cuisine, billboard ads, smoke breaks, breast pumps; these are poems for our moment of onslaught and bewilderment that, having had the world forced down their throats, spit back." – Natalie Shapero
"These feminist poems include the serious and the absurd and interrogate our collective obsession with productivity and work instead of with care. Wright’s lyric, prose, and persona poems are all located within the domestic sphere of childbirth and child care, using different voices to explore these issues." – Cassandra Drudi, Quill & Quire '2023 Spring Poetry Preview'
"Capitalism, climate change, feminism and the gender binary — Catriona Wright’s Continuity Errors responds to these topics with dry humour and a vivid parade of aliens, robots, fae, and more though is still incredibly serious in its message." – Shaylyn Schwieg, CAROUSEL Magazine
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