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Domestic Fuel
Erin Mouré's third collection of poetry confirmed her reputation as a major Canadian poet. She writes of the Canadian West, the railroad, the abrasions of love and politics, the miracle of words and ordinary places—with special emphasis on the hearts, minds, and voices of women.
- GenresPoetry
112 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1985
About the author
Erín Moure
78 books36 followersErín Moure is a transborder poet and translator of poetry and poetics. In Canada, the USA, and the UK (variously), she has published seventeen books of poetry, and several books of prose including a memoir and a book of short takes on translation. Her most recent book is Planetary Noise: Selected Poetry of Erín Moure (ed. Shannon Maguire, Wesleyan 2017). She is the translator or co-translator of seventeen books of poetry and three books of non-fiction (biopoetics) from French, Spanish, Galician, and Portuguese into English. Her translation of Wilson Bueno’s Paraguayan Sea (Nightboat, 2017) was a finalist for a 2018 Best Translated Book Award. She holds two honorary doctorates for her contributions to poetry and translation, from Brandon University in Canada and the Universidade de Vigo in Spain. She lives in Montreal.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 21, 2025
with a sense of brevity, mouré intuitively contextualizes the mundane. here, the domestic becomes a vehicle, weaving delicately through the dialectics of the public and the private, mapping the friction of intersubjective life. these poems glimpse into everyday scenes like looking out windows of a car on a highway. politicizing the intimacy of the ordinary: flashing lights, ambulances, spilled blood, gardening, surgery, dinners, and divorce — mouré ascertains that there is no such thing as personal.
January 26, 2022
One dream or another.
The belly fat bent over, a body poised on the lakeshore.
Sleep, industry!
Sleep, Ontario.
Your punch, cut & weld plants are sorry to be closing,
sorry to unemploy so many.
Your rivers crave the shut-down industry, knowing
the fish have empty, hurt mouths
& the water echoes with their thinking
Pulp & paper
Hydro power
The revolution is over!
There is no more sense in teaching it
in schools.
There is no more sense in teaching your children
to ear money, to desire cars or lawsuits
or expensive ease
Teach them to live on little, to take apart Chryslers
& boil them, to eat their shirt starch,
teach the unemployed to go south
& struggle
with guerrilla armies in the backyard of America,
teach them to stay home & stop electing
the CIA.
Sleep, Ontario.
Your industry has leaped out of its cradle &
lunged into its grave, without whining,
except in the Globe & Mail.
Sleep, industry.
Your people will go home & forget,
& wait for the seeds of their lives to burst open,
& speak to the rivers, & fish the brown water -
& leave you to dream alone, Ontario.
* * *
You who claim to pretend nothing
in your neediness.
Your ruse only works for awhile, then ends.
To pretend the heart
a palpable organ, for donation or transplant:
For months, when we walked or drank beer as friends,
or spoke of the fine glow of oranges,
took baths in sunlight, coffee, soft brown bread
I wore your heart in my chest
stubbornly,
pumped my own blood thru it into the air,
my chest delicate, touchy, angered
by the least sentiment.
My chest ate & ate to keep your heart alive,
the famished convert.
The heart is yours, I'll shovel it out of me.
I'd rather depend on my own.
You can't climb in & out of my chest, like a cupboard.
To you, a bowl of saliva!
A lettuce with flames!
No more!
Your heart is not Shakespeare.
I've thrown it out of me..
It's not a grenade!
* * *
Enough of secret wedded bliss!
My glands have stopped their wailing,
insistent as sirens, traffic pulled to the curb
as my desire flashed, high speed
passage of blue
When I look at my stereo it starts up
crazily, the mat under the record
spinning
Enough of this static.
I'm tired of your body coming over to mine
in its taxi & raincloud,
your cigarette smoke reeling down the wall,
tonight's newspaper unread
I'm sick of shaking your sad stains
out of the bedsheets,
sick of putting your sperm in me like money!
Or: I'm not sick, I'm happy.
To be free of you,
to dream,
to carry my own desire in me,
broken open, unwed, crow black, a drowned lake,
ocean-swell of gloom
* * *
This is a fear of no vocabulary
a world where things are speeches
where a car is a whole book
aluminum siding a framework
for history
where roses are grown to mean love, to sell love
where silence is an auto-da-fé
This is a fear of no word ever
of no word that does not
mean an object
a fear of microphones implanted
of words transmitted over distance
translation that talk of
boundaries, disputed over ideology,
as if a belief is protected
the more guns you sell
the more disenfranchised
the more advisors sent to administer foreign justice
language flushing out the guerrillas
Hollywood triumph & news
The power of speech empties our mouths
Even the heretic in his fiery skull
can't name the word
harsh as the presence we attend to
Its stutter, in him, is all we are,
to speak of
* * *
A certain level of noise, the ear's false anguish, period.
She is reading a book, to herself, the
noise of this.
Huge rustling shakes the trees.
The windows fall open & lunge three stories downward
in a pirouette, ready for suicide.
A man stands up before her,
for all his height he is no taller than her shoe.
It is the inventor of the hinge.
He wants her to praise him
for inventing it.
When she leans forward the noise of the book
blows him over.
He wants her to love him, that's all.
But he shuts her out, waving the god-damn
almighty
root of language.
For all his bellow, he is no more agile
than a verb.
For all his pirouette, he is no regeneration.
He is no earth & no smile.
When she leans her woman-being toward him, he is
no name.
She is her simple rustling, shakes him, utterly,
without syndical perfection,
without period
* * *
Those of us who fear the dancers,
the placement of mint
over the heart
The scent of the hands after the bread is made
Those who see the clay in bricks
who see bricks in hillsides
& mint in the far hill
We, yes, who hear the mothers speaking to their children,
& fathers to their fathers' graves,
who crave a space with no America
so that we can rest
We for whom the statue of Liberty faces inward
& claps
Our answer is the ducks calling in the rocks,
is the chicken walking behind a sweater,
is human always,
agape & easily entered,
the letter on the inside of a host of bread
Those of us who fear the dancers
know the dance is a bright window
of oxygen in the head
We who look out the window
sadly
see the dancers eat before they know they will be dancing,
on the ocean terrace of the tavern,
salt blown on their shoulders,
beneath the cedars
with their white, white inner wine
* * *
What the heart is is not enough.
That I can open it &
let you enter
an ocean so dense
you'll get the bends if you surface.
That you will be open to the love of every being:
I crave this,
it makes me possible, anarchic, calling
your attention,
your fingers' madness on my ear or soft neck,
the light on each side of your face, altered
as you speak to me
Oh speak to me
I have a friend who says the heart's
a shovel, do you believe this?
My heart is a wild muscle, that's all,
open as the ocean
at the end of the railway,
a cross-country line pulled by four engines
Whatever it is I don't care, it is not enough
unless you see it
unless I can make you
embrace & breathe it, its light that knows you,
unless you cry out in it, & swim
* * *
The pig eating out of the trough of a
man's head
A pig eating its master
A journalist drinking coffee, mortar
fallen at her door, she keeps
writing
The city is calm tonight
A salesman sells films, the injured smoke
their cigarettes
A tree rises toward the hill
Guns & belts
of cartridge-
shells
Seashells
Powder, metal casing, noun, noun,
death
In the sky, red with the smoke of buildings
afire in the north
Verb, verb says the sky
Step out of the farmhouse to smell it, forest fire at Loon Lake
Too far for meaning
Why keep
writing
You're safe here
* * *
1
Stoop of the bronchial body
in the red brick building
Philosophy
To use well what is
if it is little
Say only meaning & go on
The heart can't read possibility
sick & tired
hurts me
2
Shut up if I do skip words
I can't breathe
I can't stop
breathing
3
Little & sick again
a dressing gown with red cats
Billy & Kenny
my brothers
their voice at distance, high giggles
I hang onto them, home from school, unseen
Another day past
I want them to argue
so I'll hear them longer
before they're gone
screen door slammed again
4
Bricks the building block of language
Grew up learning it
My mother gave me words
from the torn linoleum where she stood
before the sink
Later she worked outside
against my father's wishes
She bought linoleum & a new sink
I don't recognize
I can't believe I learned to read
there
5
Short lines
mince words
Struggle to get up & pee again
hot body waiting to catch breath
in the greying hall
6
In the North I am where my life
solves with little pain
I think careful in my airless brain
communicate, try
Bloody Americas
who kill the witnesses, the mouths blown up
I can't breathe enough
to speak against human enemies
The armaments
If I'm sick
& don't say
Absolve me
7
In a far-off room
my family, eating dinner
The sound of their plates, mouths, evening
converse
My place empty
The windows of my bed
too high
The bricks darkening
Cool air outside, & family, & me
craving speech like all others
I want to grow up now
& breathe easy
Say it's worth it, kiddo
The belly fat bent over, a body poised on the lakeshore.
Sleep, industry!
Sleep, Ontario.
Your punch, cut & weld plants are sorry to be closing,
sorry to unemploy so many.
Your rivers crave the shut-down industry, knowing
the fish have empty, hurt mouths
& the water echoes with their thinking
Pulp & paper
Hydro power
The revolution is over!
There is no more sense in teaching it
in schools.
There is no more sense in teaching your children
to ear money, to desire cars or lawsuits
or expensive ease
Teach them to live on little, to take apart Chryslers
& boil them, to eat their shirt starch,
teach the unemployed to go south
& struggle
with guerrilla armies in the backyard of America,
teach them to stay home & stop electing
the CIA.
Sleep, Ontario.
Your industry has leaped out of its cradle &
lunged into its grave, without whining,
except in the Globe & Mail.
Sleep, industry.
Your people will go home & forget,
& wait for the seeds of their lives to burst open,
& speak to the rivers, & fish the brown water -
& leave you to dream alone, Ontario.
- Poem Rejected By The Globe & Mail, pg. 18
* * *
You who claim to pretend nothing
in your neediness.
Your ruse only works for awhile, then ends.
To pretend the heart
a palpable organ, for donation or transplant:
For months, when we walked or drank beer as friends,
or spoke of the fine glow of oranges,
took baths in sunlight, coffee, soft brown bread
I wore your heart in my chest
stubbornly,
pumped my own blood thru it into the air,
my chest delicate, touchy, angered
by the least sentiment.
My chest ate & ate to keep your heart alive,
the famished convert.
The heart is yours, I'll shovel it out of me.
I'd rather depend on my own.
You can't climb in & out of my chest, like a cupboard.
To you, a bowl of saliva!
A lettuce with flames!
No more!
Your heart is not Shakespeare.
I've thrown it out of me..
It's not a grenade!
- Fusillade, pg. 26
* * *
Enough of secret wedded bliss!
My glands have stopped their wailing,
insistent as sirens, traffic pulled to the curb
as my desire flashed, high speed
passage of blue
When I look at my stereo it starts up
crazily, the mat under the record
spinning
Enough of this static.
I'm tired of your body coming over to mine
in its taxi & raincloud,
your cigarette smoke reeling down the wall,
tonight's newspaper unread
I'm sick of shaking your sad stains
out of the bedsheets,
sick of putting your sperm in me like money!
Or: I'm not sick, I'm happy.
To be free of you,
to dream,
to carry my own desire in me,
broken open, unwed, crow black, a drowned lake,
ocean-swell of gloom
- Dawn Of The Unwed, pg. 34
* * *
This is a fear of no vocabulary
a world where things are speeches
where a car is a whole book
aluminum siding a framework
for history
where roses are grown to mean love, to sell love
where silence is an auto-da-fé
This is a fear of no word ever
of no word that does not
mean an object
a fear of microphones implanted
of words transmitted over distance
translation that talk of
boundaries, disputed over ideology,
as if a belief is protected
the more guns you sell
the more disenfranchised
the more advisors sent to administer foreign justice
language flushing out the guerrillas
Hollywood triumph & news
The power of speech empties our mouths
Even the heretic in his fiery skull
can't name the word
harsh as the presence we attend to
Its stutter, in him, is all we are,
to speak of
- The Words Mean What We Say, We Say, pg. 48
* * *
A certain level of noise, the ear's false anguish, period.
She is reading a book, to herself, the
noise of this.
Huge rustling shakes the trees.
The windows fall open & lunge three stories downward
in a pirouette, ready for suicide.
A man stands up before her,
for all his height he is no taller than her shoe.
It is the inventor of the hinge.
He wants her to praise him
for inventing it.
When she leans forward the noise of the book
blows him over.
He wants her to love him, that's all.
But he shuts her out, waving the god-damn
almighty
root of language.
For all his bellow, he is no more agile
than a verb.
For all his pirouette, he is no regeneration.
He is no earth & no smile.
When she leans her woman-being toward him, he is
no name.
She is her simple rustling, shakes him, utterly,
without syndical perfection,
without period
- Philosophy Of Language, pg. 54
* * *
Those of us who fear the dancers,
the placement of mint
over the heart
The scent of the hands after the bread is made
Those who see the clay in bricks
who see bricks in hillsides
& mint in the far hill
We, yes, who hear the mothers speaking to their children,
& fathers to their fathers' graves,
who crave a space with no America
so that we can rest
We for whom the statue of Liberty faces inward
& claps
Our answer is the ducks calling in the rocks,
is the chicken walking behind a sweater,
is human always,
agape & easily entered,
the letter on the inside of a host of bread
Those of us who fear the dancers
know the dance is a bright window
of oxygen in the head
We who look out the window
sadly
see the dancers eat before they know they will be dancing,
on the ocean terrace of the tavern,
salt blown on their shoulders,
beneath the cedars
with their white, white inner wine
- Visible Ordination, pg. 63
* * *
What the heart is is not enough.
That I can open it &
let you enter
an ocean so dense
you'll get the bends if you surface.
That you will be open to the love of every being:
I crave this,
it makes me possible, anarchic, calling
your attention,
your fingers' madness on my ear or soft neck,
the light on each side of your face, altered
as you speak to me
Oh speak to me
I have a friend who says the heart's
a shovel, do you believe this?
My heart is a wild muscle, that's all,
open as the ocean
at the end of the railway,
a cross-country line pulled by four engines
Whatever it is I don't care, it is not enough
unless you see it
unless I can make you
embrace & breathe it, its light that knows you,
unless you cry out in it, & swim
- Bends, pg. 76
* * *
The pig eating out of the trough of a
man's head
A pig eating its master
A journalist drinking coffee, mortar
fallen at her door, she keeps
writing
The city is calm tonight
A salesman sells films, the injured smoke
their cigarettes
A tree rises toward the hill
Guns & belts
of cartridge-
shells
Seashells
Powder, metal casing, noun, noun,
death
In the sky, red with the smoke of buildings
afire in the north
Verb, verb says the sky
Step out of the farmhouse to smell it, forest fire at Loon Lake
Too far for meaning
Why keep
writing
You're safe here
- Watching Newsreels At The Farm or Beirut From Westerose, pg. 87
* * *
1
Stoop of the bronchial body
in the red brick building
Philosophy
To use well what is
if it is little
Say only meaning & go on
The heart can't read possibility
sick & tired
hurts me
2
Shut up if I do skip words
I can't breathe
I can't stop
breathing
3
Little & sick again
a dressing gown with red cats
Billy & Kenny
my brothers
their voice at distance, high giggles
I hang onto them, home from school, unseen
Another day past
I want them to argue
so I'll hear them longer
before they're gone
screen door slammed again
4
Bricks the building block of language
Grew up learning it
My mother gave me words
from the torn linoleum where she stood
before the sink
Later she worked outside
against my father's wishes
She bought linoleum & a new sink
I don't recognize
I can't believe I learned to read
there
5
Short lines
mince words
Struggle to get up & pee again
hot body waiting to catch breath
in the greying hall
6
In the North I am where my life
solves with little pain
I think careful in my airless brain
communicate, try
Bloody Americas
who kill the witnesses, the mouths blown up
I can't breathe enough
to speak against human enemies
The armaments
If I'm sick
& don't say
Absolve me
7
In a far-off room
my family, eating dinner
The sound of their plates, mouths, evening
converse
My place empty
The windows of my bed
too high
The bricks darkening
Cool air outside, & family, & me
craving speech like all others
I want to grow up now
& breathe easy
Say it's worth it, kiddo
- Eight Tests For Breathing, pg. 104-
June 30, 2022
Acquired 1997
The Word, Montreal, Quebec
The Word, Montreal, Quebec
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews