{"id":5342,"date":"2026-01-19T01:47:02","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T01:47:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/?p=5342"},"modified":"2026-01-19T04:59:47","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T04:59:47","slug":"luke-sawczak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/luke-sawczak\/","title":{"rendered":"Luke Sawczak"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3>Surrender<\/h3>\n<p>Sweet sadness of surrender<br \/>\nwhen I know what you want<br \/>\nand you know what I want<\/p>\n<p>and I\u2019ve decided to give in<br \/>\nbefore you\u2019re finished arguing.<\/p>\n<p>I watch the thing coming<br \/>\na mile away, and anticipate<br \/>\nyour joy when it arrives.<\/p>\n<p>At last when you fall silent<br \/>\nI get to offer you the gift.<\/p>\n<p>To do so is a gift to me<br \/>\nas to anyone who loves.<\/p>\n<h3>Romance in Jerusalem 2<\/h3>\n<p><em>It\u2019s where we go, and what we do when we get there, that tells us who we are.<\/em><br \/>\n\u2014Joyce Carol Oates<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s a big difference between<br \/>\ngoing away from the person you love and going to them.<br \/>\nAnd the whole world reflects this difference.<br \/>\nIt can make the difference between Africa and Greece.<br \/>\nThis is the first time I\u2019ve had wine on a plane.<\/p>\n<p>She said you can\u2019t tell anything<br \/>\nabout someone by what toppings they put on a sub.<br \/>\nI said except what toppings they would put on a sub.<br \/>\nShe said she woke up mad this morning<br \/>\nbecause her memory of me is already crystallizing.<\/p>\n<p>Ever since I swam in that damn spring<br \/>\nmy phone\u2019s been locking and unlocking with free will.<br \/>\nToday I was befuddled at the front desk<br \/>\nafter returning my keys and Ivony\u2019s.<br \/>\nIt unlocked just long enough for me to call Caper.<\/p>\n<p>Of course I did call her, because she\u2019d called me<br \/>\nat six forty-five a.m.<br \/>\nShe said a phone goodbye was not a real goodbye.<br \/>\nNeither, I neglected to point out,<br \/>\nwas what we did last night.<\/p>\n<p>So I invaded her while she brushed her teeth.<br \/>\nI thanked her for being half of Jerusalem<br \/>\ninsofar as her claim on my memory.<br \/>\nIt\u2019s not a compliment, I said,<br \/>\nit\u2019s just a deed.<\/p>\n<p>I saw Ravenel a.k.a. Sandra at the airport.<br \/>\nFrom seven metres away we realized we had nothing to say.<br \/>\nAnd I watched them load my bags onto the plane,<br \/>\nlike some postmortem soul-floating-up experience,<br \/>\nobserved from inside a beautiful transparent snow.<\/p>\n<p>The path we travel, sings Kristina, takes us away,<br \/>\nand never back.<br \/>\nCaper said leaving hurt her less than me<br \/>\nbut what hurt was that it didn\u2019t hurt.<br \/>\nIn the morning she missed me more than she expected.<\/p>\n<p>If you weren\u2019t so damn intelligent<br \/>\nI\u2019d say make sure you know what you are doing.<br \/>\nBut you are intelligent,<br \/>\nand you know what you are doing,<br \/>\nand you know the risks involved.<\/p>\n<p>Still, I had this advice to offer her:<br \/>\nif you want to get some crying done,<br \/>\ngo up to apartment six nine one,<br \/>\nand contemplate the four closed doors.<br \/>\nYou can look at them like you look at ruins.<\/p>\n<p>No harm in that. And no harm will come to you,<br \/>\nnot here, while the early sunlight settles through<br \/>\nthe glass, and your glasses,<br \/>\nlands on our hands<br \/>\nand refuses even now to let the moment pass.<\/p>\n<h3>The spire<\/h3>\n<p>The spire turning in the air, describing like a compass\u2019 arm<br \/>\na burning circle, like a demon\u2019s magic symbol in the sand<br \/>\nthat, when complete, and with the right words whispered<br \/>\nin a language no one understands, will yield this end<br \/>\nfor which we\u2019ve laboured some two hundred years in light<br \/>\nthat feeds on precious disappearing darkness: a world<br \/>\nof rust and flame in forest and on mountaintop: this spire,<br \/>\nnow set up again, not as easily but with the same reward<br \/>\nthe child feels when the knocked-down castle is rebuilt,<br \/>\npoints upward, not to earth, because it ardently insists<br \/>\nthat \u2014 pillage what we will \u2014 we are creators still,<br \/>\nCreated; that the magic is not lost and past, the mystery<br \/>\nnot gone out of the world, because it comes from elsewhere;<br \/>\ncathedrals, stone or not, will not outlast their makers,<br \/>\nthe professions of their makers, being that they are eternal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Surrender Sweet sadness of surrender when I know what you want and you know what I want and I\u2019ve decided to give in before you\u2019re finished arguing. I watch the thing coming a mile away, and anticipate your joy when it arrives. At last when you fall silent I get to offer you the gift. To do so is a&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5352,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5342"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5355,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5342\/revisions\/5355"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}