Max Layton is the eldest son of poet Irving Layton, and was born in Montreal in 1946. Max left home when he was 16, and survived by working as everything from tobacco picker, logger, and auto mechanic to vice president of a bank and high school English teacher. He is the author of a novel and a collection of short stories. His second CD of original songs, 2 The Max, will be released in April. His first book of poems, When The Rapture Comes, will be published by Guernica Editions in September, 2012. He lives with his wife, Sharon, in Cheltenham, Ontario.
For more information about Max, go to www.maxlayton.com.
REMEMBERING
When the rapture comes, they’ll put
Humpty-Dumpty together again, along with
All the puzzles where the pieces
Didn’t fit – my parents, for instance
My own disastrous marriage
Not to mention the Jews of Auschwitz
Together with Hitler
Ukrainian kulaks and gulag zeks
Together with Stalin
Forty to sixty million Chinese
Together with Chairman Mao
Cambodians
Vietnamese boat people who never made it
The victims of 9/11
The sky a vast blue dome
With a gigantic crack in it
Shafts of silvery golden light
Beaming everybody up
Limbs hurtling towards
Their owners’ bodies
Severed arms, legs, heads
Van Gogh’s ear
Bits and pieces swirling all around us
The air thick with the blood of remembering
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