Robert Hilles
Set Matters
The summer rains
Come early to Khon Kaen and
Bring mosquitoes
They bite us all night
And in the morning
We wake with sizeable welts
You say that you wish
Mosquitoes were vegetarians
You say too that
Mosquitoes might
Eat blood
But aren’t hunters
Don’t kill
Only take a bit of blood
Never enough to harm
Their prey
Our love is the constant
That joins these days
A series of sets
We are exactly here.
About the Writer:
Robert Hilles lives on Salt Spring Island and has won the Governor General’s Award for Poetry for Cantos From A Small Room and his novel, Raising of Voices, won George Bugnet Award. His second novel, A Gradual Ruin, was published by Doubleday Canada and now is in paperback. His books have also been shortlisted for The Milton Acorn People’s Poetry Prize, The W.O. Mitchell/City of Calgary Prize, The Stephan Stephansson Award, and The Howard O’Hagan Award. He has published fifteen books of poetry, three works of fiction (including A Gradual Ruin) and two nonfiction books (Kissing the Smoke and Calling the Wild). His latest poetry books are Partake (2010) and Time Lapse (2012). He recently completed a short story collection called Little Pink Houses. His next poetry collection, Line, will appear in 2017. He is currently working on a novel set in Thailand tentatively called Our Silken Finery and a new poetry book called Critical Mass.
Image: “Untitled” by Firouzeh Bakhtiari, Tehran, Iran. Watercolor on canvas. No size specified. 2017. By permission.
