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Poet Brecken Hancock. Hancock’s debut collection was published in April by Coach House Books.

In honour of National Poetry Month, Globe Books is pleased to bring you poems from some of the season's most exciting new collections.

WINTER, FRONTAL LOBE

Dark where Dad chops a hole.

Tunk. Dark hair blighted

by snow bees, his axe

trepanning the tarn's top.

Beneath what's frozen

slighted bodies blob up

from the din. Kraken, Leviathan,

the pail in my hand's a cauterized

aluminum stump.

Heave-ho to make the lake

gawp up at us. Heave again

to plunge the bucket

benthic deep.

Leave down the glum machine

(my arm-and-pail rocking-horse rig).

Winter's everywhere profusion.

Huddle over its sink:

head congested, festooned

with weeds. Mother is nuts.

The mind's an organ

of slush. Ahusha.

His axe can't cleave

this confusion.

Brecken Hancock

Winter, Frontal Lobe is excerpted from Brecken Hancock's debut, Broom Broom, published this month by Coach House Books.

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