Re: Report to the Council, cc The Huffer Foundation et al.

At last year’s prestigious Ho-Lit awards
I won the coveted Layton Medallion
(rhymes with ‘Canadian stallion’), now nestled
in my chest hair as I winter in Crete.

So, mes chères, not that you’re sleeping,
wondering which Doritos Collisions
will collide next, but you are well served –
I thank my editor, Minka, &c.

Hard at work on my mystery novel now:
Murder Most Murdersome, You Murder-Maker.
I’m hoping to wake one day to say, ‘It was
all a dream – those poplar-moon poems!’

The glare of my medallion, however, is real.
Real as the beatings administered behind
the Mont St-Antoine arena. Those beatings
were the worst of your very harsh winters.

David McGimpsey lives in Montreal and is the author of five collections of poetry including the recent Li'l Bastard (Coach House Books), which was named as one of the "books of the year" by both The Quill and Quire and The National Post and was nominated for the 2012 Governor General's Award for Poetry. David is a contributing editor for enRoute magazine, where he writes about sandwiches and travel, and he plays guitar and sings in the rock band Puggy Hammer. Named by the CBC as one of the “Top Ten English language poets in Canada” his work was also the subject of the recent book of essays Population Me: Essays on David McGimpsey (Palimpsest Press). David McGimpsey teaches creative writing and literature at Concordia University.