THE GOLDFISH
SMOTHER
AND THE MAKER-MODELER SLEEPS
VIVISECTION
SOWING PANGAEA
AUGURY IN TORONTO
NORTH OF A GREAT LAKE
IN EARLY AUGUST THE WELLS WENT DRY
FEED THE DEAD
NECTAR
ANNUALS
BOUND WITH FETTERS OF BRASS
KNOTS
MAKING APPLES
HIS OWN VINE AND TREE OR FIG FLOWER
CHICKADEE
THE GREEN LINE
ARARAT
STIGMA
GOLLIWOG
THE TRIAL
SIEVE FINGERS
FLOGGING
AU REVOIR
BLODEUEDD
DOGON FIGURE
CAUTERIZING EVE
CONCH
EFFEMINIZATION
FOOTPRINT
FUCHSIA
LOOSETRIFE
NAKED
PURGATORY
SNAP HER
A mass of hair and limbs buries her face
into a magnolia flower; three days ago
this tree was nothing but bones and desire.
A child pushes into a cupped hand.
A hand grasping towards the sky,
hungry for air and sun and warmth.
It is April and still snowing.
The forsythia, in a shock of yellow,
has come to Toronto’s defense,
attempting to drive back winter.
Mary Pickford (of 211 University Avenue),
a mass of hair and limbs, is desperate:
It is April and still snowing.
In a pet store, a goldfish’s glint
pulls at her eye, pulls at her hand–
pulls her towards its gilt, crescent body.
She is running down Bloor Street,
She is running with a dancing fish,
cupped between her hands;
she is running.
She slows in tandem with the fish,
Its fervent dancing has tapered to a hiccup.
Mary Pickford drops its limp and brilliant body,
a street car passes, a fish lies still and golden.
Mary shoves her nose towards stigma,
anther and odour. Seeking solace in a tree,
heavy with fleshy petals.
Insect wing lips and cracked heels, and
The desire to press my body against
Another, to drain its warmth, so that I can
Continue dredge dredge dredging.
I have swallowed many secrets.
As many as could fit in my gullet.
I am distended with secrets, un-
Digestible details that cling to my ribs.
Those remaining have been swaddled.
I will carry them away from this busy
Busy city, where the snow can never rest.
I will carry my smothered secrets towards
Silence: under bridges, between allies, through
the decaying industry of Southern Ontario, and
through forgotten reserves that are forgetting
their tongues, forgetting their secrets—
It’s time it’s time it’s time:
It must be winter.
The maker-modeler formed them from corn, but
Not us. The sun danced around the world a-
Hundred-hundred times before we were cast—cast
Both too early and yet too late—we were
Born of run-off, excess, and atrophy.
We were built by the same men who dissected
The sun. And we worshipped their magic with
The very same fervor of the corn-people
Who presented still murmuring hearts to
Chichen Itza.
There are no roosters here. No roosters to
Encourage the still steadfast sun. Still, he
Climbs over the lip of the colourless horizon,
gathering quick breaths over the yawning river—
He Climbs.
The money makers and movers mourn in
Black, despite the fact that: still, the sun climbs.
It is well known that roosters are maudlin
Creatures— gossiping to pass time. The men who hide
Their eyes and feign virginity have stripped
The sun. They have stripped the sun of his gold.
They have taken his lore, they have taken
Its voice.
The roosters have told us many secrets,
They have told us many myths, but they have
Not told us about the corn. Next to Chichen Itza
Men were buried with corn to sustain them;
They have grown roots while we waste in wait for
The boat-man.
Stretched thin like gum, you can see their
organs, complete with diagrams:
there’s the pancrease, and the gallbladder,
and the shy impotent appendix.
Mothers will take these organs when
cumbersome, and lay them out in
the sun to dry. Sometimes feral
cats snatch intestines. Sometimes
the homeless wear exorcized livers as
hats. The hospitals aren’t sterile any-
more. The surgeons no longer suture. The
herbs are impotent— they are without their magic.
And now, when laid out in the sun, they
do not dry, but rot. Modern mothers
plant their petunias in neat rows,
they cover rather than covet the earth.
It isn’t apple season. These apples
were reared by Pinochet. Carefully
cultivated in Chile’s furrowed brow.
It isn’t apple season—it’s time for
the rutabaga and radish to revel.
The snow presses down against the city
(the snow that loved the city before
R.C. Harris built an altar to worship
water). It has loved Toronto before
indiginous tongues forgot consonant
clusters. Before the snow loved the big smoke,
and before Tkaronto was suffocated,
the snow lusted after the lake.
These apples: cultivated in Chile’s
furrowed brow. It isn’t apple season:
the snow presses down, loving the place where
trees stand in the water. Today I watched
a man. I doubt anyone could match his
perfect pitch (even before the place where
trees stand in the water became Toronto).
No amount of rehearsing could rival
that languid launch. Today I studied—
A man abused by the seasons:
Winter had pulled at his eyes.
Spring had pinched at his cheeks.
Summer had prodded at his brow.
And autumn had beat at his heart.
The seasons had left him, the same way the
snow will leave Toronto for her other
lovers. The seasons had left him wrinkled
and gleeful— his accessory flesh fading.
These apples cultivated in Chile’s
furrowed brow had been exiled by the
supermarket junta to the half-rotten
dollar bin to be picked over by those
forgotten by seasons. It isn’t apple season.
These apples, reared by Pinochet, were culled
in Chile. I appraised the manner in
which he threw Eve’s temptation between
streetcar tracks. I assessed the way his knuckles
clenched with anticipation. Waiting.
Waiting for that big red brute to come and
splinter that apple across King street and
reveal the secrets.
Secrets that would come as the snow left.
The secrets lusted after by the snow.
The secrets suckling at the bottom of
lake Ontario. Secrets known to
the carp, but not the snow.
Sowing Pangaea
It started with our boats. They carried thread
Across the breach. They carried thread
While their crews and captains wasted and weathered.
They carried thread to darn Pangaea whole again.
Earth worms, fat and succulent, gathered for a baptism
Performed by a father on his son, helped reinforce the stitches.
These night crawlers are reprobates. Secret soil defilers,
They planted our needles deep in the earth.
They planted the needles between roots and rocks.
They refused to let the earth lie fallow,
And so they furrowed ditches for loosestrife
plucked from Ophelia’s water grave.
They pushed purple loosestrife into foreign soil hoping that
When the New World birthed her own Ophelia she would have
A proper burial. When the New World birthed Ophelia she was wiser:
Rather than picking poppies she plucked worms, fat and succulent.
Rather than purloining poppies Ophelia attempted to rip
The seams we had sewn between this world and the old.
This time her body would lay eternal and whole
As bodies did before the ships carried thread.
North of a Great Lake
The sky is very ominous
And the corn fields are whispering
(secrets of epic proportions).
The scarecrow sings:
Making toast by the fireside,
Nurse fell in the grate and died.
What makes the matter ten times worse,
The toast was burnt along with the nurse.
The crows scoff, the crows cough.
The susurrus of corn swallows the scarecrow.
The sky grew suspicious.
Then the sky grew jealous.
The ravens refused to share their secrets,
and so the once ominous sky began to rain.
And it rained, and rained
Till all the foreboding gathered.
It gathered between birch roots.
It gathered in ditches.
It gathered in furrows.
And it rained, and
The corn drank deeply.
The corn whispers.
The seagulls laugh and bathe.
The crows cough and count.
And the sky is light,
And the scarecrow: silent.
In Early August the Wells Went Dry
These lines were etched into the walls of the House of Poppaeus Sabinus.
These words were cosseted by Vesuvian ash while the city of Pompeii slept.
Do you listen, can you hear their breaths
Askew and staggered, almost a language—
Deaf to the whispers that ignored their own deaths?
Eschew the terrible loudness at silence’s edge.
If you felt the fires of love, mule driver.
Listen to the etched words. Press yourself into walls.
Christen them with your ears, your eyes, your tongue.
Imprison troths, strangle vowels. Suppress the thralls,
The division between man and stone— “Mule Driver!”
Mule driver, if you felt the fires of love,
would you make more haste to see Venus?
Composed some distance from her destination
I love a charming boy, I ask you
Goad the mules, lets go.
Juxtaposed against mules and men she
Disclosed her love at a waylay station
Take me to Pompeii—
Transposed never to decompose,
where love is sweet.
Thanks to that smoke pine tree
Recalled by young Pliny.
top
Feed The Dead
The year you died your peach tree bore
more fruit than it could hold. The year
you became intimate with the earth, your tree
knelt in near piety from the burden.
The knell called down from the top of the hill.
In the church’s lap children continue
to swing up, up, and back again as
the bell tolled, tolled, and told.
As peaches swell your tree grows buckle-kneed.
Soon those left to tend to trees’
buckling knees will remove the coverings
from mirrors and break bread with you.
The year you died your peach tree bore
more fruit than it could hold.
The year you died the knell told your secrets
easing the burden as you were once again
held by your mother.
Nectar
We cauterized the image of Nero
fiddling as Rome burned into ourselves.
Once the stench of burning scattered we
embroidered it into our imaginations,
but then forgot about Caligula’s
cacoethes for nectarines.
What a shame—
there was left of orange thread, too.
Caligula indulged in nectarines.
He despised the way his tongue felt
pressed against peach pelt. When fondling breasts
and choosing fruit he would leave
sticky thumbprints. Sticky bruises. Sticky kisses.
Caligula suckled on nectarines—corpulent
and firm—big as the sun setting over Gubbio
when August bleeds into September.
And there was orange thread.
And there is orange thread.
top
Annuals
Every word whispered is plucked from the speech stream.
The vowels are weighed and clamped:
their density established. Consonants are laid-out neatly
in rows: their limbs plucked off with rapture.
The shifts of your irises left, left, left
makes me chew my words, my cud, my words.
These syllables sit like stones in my larynx.
When they finally manage to emerge they are muffled
and muddled and I long to inhale them back in once again
and push push push them down.
Down past my insomniac heart—
past my volatile liver,
down to the bottom of my gullet.
Soon my heart will join those half-masticated morphemes.
It’s those left, left, right shifting eyes that have
yanked too hard on the tether that holds
my heart in place. The rope has become worn.
The weight of that anchor pulls and pulls and pulls.
And as you pluck and prod words,
I plot to steal this heart—
this insolent stubborn sleepless valve— and then eat it.
Let me stop chewing words.
Let me reach down into my larynx and past my
dormant syrinx and pick that still beating heart.
I’ll eat that heart—left ventricle then right.
Then tomorrow when your eyes look left, left,
right again there will be nothing to swing
like a pendulum in my chest– tolling;
there will be no more tolling, no more telling.
I’ve stolen that heart and eaten it with relish.
I will steal the pears from your mother’s pear tree
in broad day light. Just to taste them. Then, and
only then, my words will be light again.
Then, only then, your left-left-right eyes will
no longer be master of the knell. And
think of what I can plant there with all that
new space. Maybe gladiolas—or a
perennial—something sturdy like a hosta.
Broad and silent and sleepy.
top
Bound With Fetters of Brass
Scissors camouflaged into the back of a drawer
are sprung by still clumsy fingers. Under the dull yellow light
Delilah Harris cuts her fringe behind a closed door.
Scissors camouflaged into the back of a drawer
Snip until there isn’t a fringe anymore
Sally then giggles with guilt & delight.
Scissors camouflaged into the back of a drawer
are sprung by still clumsy fingers under the dull yellow light.
Delilah’s mum, Hazel Harris, had eaten her old name
and so bought a new name and forgot the old.
Mrs. Harris’ parties often received the highest acclaim—
Delilah’s mum, Hazel Harris, had eaten her old name,
And took up entertaining guests by feeding them Christ’s flesh without shame.
Her guests would drink Christ’s flesh in glasses rimmed with gold.
Delilah’s mum, Hazel Harris, had eaten her old name
and so bought a new name and forgot the old.
While downstairs they laughed, ate Christ’s flesh, and drank his blood,
Upstairs, under dull yellow light, Delilah hacked at hay coloured hair.
With guilt gnawing on her shadow and tears welling she sobbed a prayer
While downstairs they laughed, ate Christ’s flesh, and drank his blood.
She prayed that her mother would still call her ‘ little flower bud’.
O, but what would Mrs. Harris declare when she set eyes on the affair?
While downstairs they laughed, ate Christ’s flesh, and drank his blood,
Upstairs, under dull yellow light, Delilah hacked at hay coloured hair.
Stop eating Christ’s flesh. It’s high in carbohydrates.
top
Knots
The clock was of Teutonic origins.
I am adamant about this fact despite
the lack of empirical evidence.
Based on specious reasoning I have concluded:
that clock cannot be the product of native hands.
The pedantic hands that built you were not,
and could not, be the same hands that cut off
eel’s heads. Night after night after night
after night I am kept from dreams of
Governor Ferguson. Steeped in heat
I was finally granted admission;
the bureaucracy of sleep is a
mysterious force. Ferguson leaned over to
me while we ate stale Oreos & drank
dog rose tea & in something between
a whisper & mastication told me that:
If English was
good enough for both
Texas and Jesus Christ
It was good enough for me.
German hands push, pinch, prod, squeeze, tweet, and twinge.
The Governor is falling down the stairs.
The Governor is falling down the stairs.
The Germans pushed him and claimed that: he was
a casualty of unknotting the messy expanse of night.
top
Making Apples
The Tsoyaha are the children of the son.
Last night I dreamt. Philomela—
I dreamt of you last night
Philomela—we were in South Central
Oklahoma. Listening to Euchee elders
squabble over what Maggie’d actually do
if she won this week’s jackpot.
Philomela—do you remember;
do you remember the way the cauterizing
sun fell over half-urban sprawl and
how Magda, restrained by heat, could barely
twitch her limbs to discourage fat flies—
her eyes following swallows weaving
in and out, out and in of electric lace?
This is where you lean to me.
This is where you press your lips to my lips.
This is where you breathe words into me.
This is where you force words into me.
“The wire web
holds the sky
in place.”
Magdalene was her Christian name.
It was her second choice. She preferred
Irit. The nun in charge of names
insisted that ‘Irit’ was not the name of
Lot’s wife. The bible never named Lot’s wife.
But, if the girl insisted on this moment
of Genesis she could have ‘Salt’ as her
Christian name. The girl breathed a Euchee cuss.
The naming nun answered with a smile, pushed a needle
through her tongue and gifted her the name:
Magdalene.
Philomela—
This is where you leave me,
holding a half woven dream.
This is where your tongue becomes
Magdalene’s tongue, scarred
and thick in my mouth.
top
His Own Vine and Tree or Fig Flower
The glory of God: not found in the sky;
Nor in the portrait of naive Hydra,
bathing in the pitch sea next to that sly
Crater crow. No, God dwells in the umbra
Of grandeur— fresh figs cut open reveal
Flesh, skin and broken seed rings.
No, God’s smaller yet, lodging in plump peel:
A pupil sized wasp that has lost her wings
Forcing through the fig’s mouth, pollinating;
Blind and limbless the dance begins anew.
Flesh deep fig flowers and larvae are growing,
With greed-bead-eyes that crow begins to coo.
Despite all this splendour, Adam and Eve sew’d
fig leaves together and made coverings?
top
Chickadee
A bloated hand follows hosiery to a crease
which joins two lean legs. Muscles clench in
response, synapses echo, her head tilts —a smile—
the bottom lip tied back.
“My friend and I had a joke.”
“O?”
She had quit before we met. The first time
we finished she told me breathily ‘I wish I
still smoked, fuck;’ and I kissed her and we laughed,
we held each other naked and laughing.
“when we were out late and the birds started to sing
I would always tell her that ‘I wish I
had a gun.’ We would laugh.”
The heavy thumb presses down, just
left of the clit: it rocks back and forth,
forth and back—digging into muscle. A moan
buried under breaths shadows his self satisfied grunt.
“That one’s a chickadee—”
“You’re an ornithologist?”
She’s been a non-smoker longer than I have
been her husband. Her ash drops onto the cotton
sheets— fingers that’ve forgotten the rhythm—
the smell of ash and bleach gnaws at the silence
which I can’t help but perpetuate … at least
the cigarette is phallic.
“No, I learned about them from one of those
Protect Vermont’s Ecosystem commercials.”
A pair of smacking maws collapses on neatly
rouged lips—they respond. A stewardess refrains
from offering the occupied couple a beverage.
The lithe figure of callysto rises and drifts
down the aisle to a recently evacuated stall; trailed
by the plodding hunter, zeus.
“Is that a chickadee? The one that’s staring at me.”
An exhale of smoke joins the cacophony
of bird chatter. As each freckle of light fades
back into the pigment and grey stretches
over the horizon. Tracing the outline of her body
my eyes rest on her cigarette.
“No.”
“What was it?”
callysto stands on the closed shitter
with the posture of a heavy headed peony
in midsummer—petals spread and waiting.
“Fuck if I know.”
Ash drops into a bedside glass of tepid water,
disturbing bubbles— I taste the bitter pith:
jealous of her cigarette. Her lips smacking against the filter.
“What about that one? It sounded like chimes.”
The behemoth pushes himself in;
his extraneous rolls thunder and reverberate into the door
injunction with a heavy-moist-exhale, managing
to condemn her: OCCUPIED.
“… I only remember the chickadee’s call,
because she says her name—the narcissist—over and over again.
CHICKA DEE DEE DEE.
I hardly even know what she looks like.”
I think she is either watching the plane
force its way through the clouds or
ursa major as she grows faint.
top
THE GREEN LINE
shirt’s riding up, again, exposing
a naked onion belly to the harshhumming
of metro lights. here i don’t have
an audience, other than the harshhummingmetrolights.
as a result i begin to lose track of my
present character choice. the lights
are still there, watching— i pull
down my incorrigible outerskin (i believe
i asked a grade school teacher what
incorrigible meant, at one time— i believe
she told me it was what little boys
are. this memory may or may not
have been part of a book or
movie). hitler liked male architecture, no
curves. after building the große halle
did he plan on levelling the alps, just to
keep things balanced? at belzec
the jews got off the train. at charlevoix
metro station people got off the train
heading east. most, probably, went home,
it nearing two am and all. at lionel-groulx
i went east when i should of gone west,
and only stopped to notice three stops
too late. now, while most people have
probably gone home, i wait for godot
to come rescue me, in train form
preferably. just outside of berlin
there is monument to the jews
who got off the train. an empty platform
and an out-of-commission stretch
of railway, with countlessly countable jewish
names engraved onto the tracks. at belzec
the jews got off the train, and were asked to tie
their shoes together (to make them easier
to find later, they were told), and throw them into
pyramid pile. later-later, naked and aware that a
nazi would soon probably be wearing her shoes,
their shoes, jewish shoes, Sarah turned to her brother
Abraham and kissed his lips: “they never fitted you
properly, anyways,” she laughed
as the line began to get shorter and
the completely tiled room closer. a metro
employee in a uniform one or two sizes too small
trespasses the fourth wall, ‘je
m’excuse cherie, mais la dernier metro a
deja passé,’ she says, smiles, and ascends
the stairs. i sigh, collect my things,
adjust my incorrigible shirt (which
is probably one or two sizes too small), shove
my feet into awkward shoes and ascend
the stairs. in the showers as the tiles began to
press in against people and gas, people climbed
over each other, attempting to escape. when
the proctors went in, later-later-later, they
no longer stood in awe of the jewish testament
to a pharaoh longpassed. “every time,” mumbled one,
two nodded as three and four began to move bodies.
i. genesis
the flood came earlier than the weathermen
expected; the prophets predicted it first.
the maintenance-man left
a note under a scrap heap of once-used
baking trays and rotting pots to stress the fact
that there was a mouse problem and
the kitchen which could only comfortably fit
one person, the kitchen with the window stubbornly ajar
in february, was a communal, capital c, place.
ii. exodus
our generation: drunk on lethargy, like noah
after he planted his vineyards,
collapsed back onto appropriated lands.
and, with a crooked smile, noah maneuvered his penis
with sticky fingers, like a three year old in a bath tub;
while staring into a once indigo sky.
iii. leviticus
the rainbow wasn’t legally enforceable—
just an iridescent half-circle with a paler sibling inside it;
and a promise that there would never be another
flood, a flood,
a bloody
flood!
iv. numbers
the note, now decorated in grease spots and water stains,
still sits on the cluttered counter— three weeks have passed.
and i, stupidly empathetic, grow weak
as its every single word pulls at my eyes
like hooks. i turn on the water, twist the tap as far to
the left as it will let me, and finally throw a dollop of
soap over drowning dishes. ashes to ashes, and all that.
v. deuteronomy
i should have watched, i knew that there was a clog;
instead i hid my shame under an unwashed blanket and began
the mechanic motions of bringing myself to climax.
closer, closer, the water began to trickle, pant
pant, over the side of the sink, oh, oh, and started
kissing the floor, oh, yes, yes, until the floor drowned, ahhh.
enjoying the smell of my moisture, i close my eyes
and lean back into a sorry excuse for a pillow, and fall
into sleep listening to a murder’s cawing gossip.
vi. the book of malachi
it wasn’t the dove who found the olive leaf,
they got it wrong. it was the raven. o, fuck—
the water.
i
oh, and will— are you any good
in the sack? i was
just wondering a bit lately
because since that night
we held hands, for
no reason, i’ve had you in mind.
ii
i’ve been busy
seducing lilies,
that cost me enough to feed
a generic child in a third world country
for an extended period of time.
the florist forgot to remove the anthers.
iii
we finally happened,
and i didn’t
want to touch you.
stretched out like a modigliani
couple, on sheets that haven’t been washed
since the queen’s birthday, you won.
sunday morning the snow fell in clumps,
the last lily yawned, and
you told me i was beautiful.
iv
oh, and will— william, are you any good
at removing anthers? the florist forgot
and now the white tablecloth is stained.
v
“saturday was fun”,
said the boy with the whole name,
and patted me on the shoulder.
i have been forcing
myself to eat this
spinach salad i ordered
out of guilt. call it
rent
for staying in
your small café for
hours— attempting to
be a diligent student.
the roasted peppers: sailors on
a deck
of wilting spinach.
munch.crunch.gulp.
i started smoking, i smoke.
i started, me? yes.
breath.
the stained coffee cup
is my foreground. the salad
(to the side) and my
reflection watching me
from the window: the
backdrop.
here at the moonbean café
we are proud to support
our small, local & family-run
suppliers like Hewitt’s Dairy, Rowe Farm
Meats, Black River Juices, Olympia
Bakery
i started smoking.
around the table of drunks
people told stories of why—
they had started. that was
not today, it was colder
then.
i sit with my lukewarm coffee,
seven graceful gauloise as
company, replaying that night. i slip
out of present character.
i started smoking
because:
the topic changed. good thing
too, i feel obliged to share too
much. share too much of what
isn’t mine, that is. the conversation
drifted towards sex, as they often
do.
some starlet, maybe.
i’ve always admired
audrey hepburn’s grace.
everyone smoked back then.
i have invented too many
portions of my life.
it wasn’t quite raining, but it was close
enough. “it’s funny how a cigarette feels
so dirty but right when you hold it
with your mouth,” you said
and i smiled, and you opened the umbrella.
when i try to sleep i turn
up the radio, despite commercials,
to drown out the sound of my cugnot
breaths. it’s been like this for a few weeks,
i did go to the clinic, after downing a bottle
of no-name cough syrup in two days
(it didn’t do much, except taste like shit).
they told me the doctor could only see me
for one thing, and to choose which quickly.
there was a line.
i can’t sleep—exaggeration.
i over eat—underestimation.
i had a dream where i was joseph k.,
and they wouldn’t tell me what i’d done,
i’ve had the dream three times since.
they still won’t tell me. i’ve been crying a lot—
mum never said she loved me. half way through fucking
chris i got dry and he went limp. we sighed,
held each other and then both thought about his girlfriend.
her name means scent in arabic.
the doctor gave me a questionnaire to fill in:
are you experiencing low mood, feeling guilty loss
of libido, difficulty concentrating, trouble
falling asleep unintentional weight loss or
gainlossofenegeryguiltycryingpleasureyourmumdadaunt?
then as if pounding a gavel, signed a paper
diagnosing me depressed. we scheduled another
hearing for april 3rd. he wants to talk to me
about losing my aunt, to a generic form of cancer. last time
i saw shrink i was fourteen and left feeling—
(i had run away to alex’s (a twenty-six
year old i was fucking), he taught me
how to hold a cigarette in my mouth and smoke
at the same time. it felt so right, so) dirty.
i still sound like a steam engine.
autumn.
She passed away last week,
and all John had to say was
‘my mum said that you looked very
put together at the funeral.’
She died on Sunday, 11:32 am;
the doctor must have been wrestling
with the monolithic paper.
Called time of death five hours post mortem;
refusing to return lost time.
She’s grabbing at breaths,
I’m afraid that if I really hold
her limp hand, it will crumble.
When I was eight the priest gave me
a porcelain icon of the Virgin.
And his sandpaper voice told me:
‘Hold this when you are in need of the Lord’s help’.
When she was diagnosed I held that icon
everyday, wishing vague concepts of cancer away.
My grip progressively constricting with
Every unanswered prayer,
Until it broke into pieces and fell through my fingers.
summer.
When the doctors told her, she didn’t know
how to respond— a smile simply rippled across her lips.
She turned around for a moment, and
bit down, hard; then she faced them once more
“No,” she said
“they’re wrong. You’re wrong.” as if
correcting a fourth grader’s arithmetic.
And then she walked out, leaving them
looking blankly on.
When the doctors told her, everything
went silent, everything except the hum,
of florescent lights.
I imagine her looking up to see
what it exactly was invading that moment,
only to see the decorative black
splotches of dead flies against white lights.
And then she walked out, leaving the
doctors looking blankly on.
When the doctors told her, I wasn’t there.
The only thing I really know is that she left,
and bought a pair of a thousand dollar pearl earrings.
spring.
Grandma hasn’t erased the to-do list
on the blackboard behind her door, yet.
It is spring now, in the grocery stores
they are selling daffodils.
Thick, dripping clouds
smeared across a, nearly,
robin(egg)-blue sky.
If I were religious
I would picture God, the chef,
(draped in a “kiss the cook” apron)
taking a whisk covered
in freshly whipped cream,
flicking his wrist, with artistic finesse,
painting the sky (except the sun)
for my aesthetic pleasure.
Unfortunately I will have
to come to terms with
the fact that those puffs are
merely condensed water,
and God isn’t.
I would like to bottle this moment,
this feeling; and leave it to gather dust,
until I find that I miss the taste
of damp air, and the tickle of that last sunset.
[which was pathetic and gray]
Unfortunately this moment,
these brushes of skin, are ephemeral
and time, they say, “waits for no man.”
So, I am left only to capture this
in black and white;
which will grow yellow and be buried
under my future pile of tax receipts.
Let the years pull at my skin,
let them steal the gold from my hair;
just never let them take away my memories.
Shaped with creamy yellow broom,
delicate pink meadowsweet,
and soiled hands she was forced not to live
but to comply with the duties of wife
to a man who never desired her.
Shaped by filthy hands and
the sex organs of plants,
she sat in the dim kitchen watching
skin form over the stew
that had taken hours to make, as he
wined and dined with supple flesh
while she watched embers crumble.
It seemed only right when Goronwy came
with praises and promises of love,
to smile coyly and play along,
it was only fair.
Never to see or feel the warmth
and tickle of a beam of sun
against satin skin, was a price.
But to be rid of the qualms
that come with being human
was more than worth it.
As the wine is poured and the cubes of cheese circulate
in an attempt to cut the tension of people
sitting awkwardly in a too perfect room,
I look around trying to find something to interest me,
a book or a sculpture to ask my pleasant smiling host about.
If one is to sit awkwardly sipping wine
and stuffing cubes of cultured gruyere into one’s mouth
one will be not be invited back
into this world of too perfect people
in their pristine rooms.
Quickly, I must find something to jar this silence
before someone else takes the limelight.
Not the newspaper, not the carpet or the draperies.
Aha, I found it. A small wooden figurine sitting
atop an impressive book shelf with well aged
copies of Voltaire, Descartes, Nietzsche and others
who sit lonely like their wines,
aged to perfection but never opened.
She sees my fascination
and flashes her bleached teeth
as she recounts a tale
of how her husband got it
from an Indian Shaman
in British Colombia.
I smile.
I know that ebony figurine
is an African fertility carving—
clearly stripped of its magic
in this place.
The swooping swallows
had been replaced;
night like a thick charcoal line
had settled across the mountains
I’d heard about the ceremony before,
but this was my first time.
Cautiously I stood at the back
of the snaking line of
chatting children, while the first
golden tongues began to lick
the crackling palm leaves.
The bravest of them bounded over the fire
as it snatched at their heels.
Finally it was my turn,
mesmerized by the flames I began to bound—
it only took two steps for me to trip
over the folds of my skirt.
It was then that I realized that
I would be unable to jump,
and so would be tainted by sin
for another year.
Its husk is peeling,
like varnish off a worn bench.
The conch gathered dust on a shelf
in the solarium of my grandparents’ house
until Grandpa’s heart stopped.
The conk is gathering dust, again,
as it sits on my radiator.
I never asked Grandma where it came from,
but I bet it was a beautiful beach.
Not this sterile white beach
that you see in a Club Med ad;
but one with stones and weeds.
Its husk is peeling,
like varnish off a worn bench;
and I can’t help running my fingers
over its sharp lip and then
chipping away the dry skin,
bit by bit.
The trees have succumbed to
spring’s firm grip,
allowing lacy flowers
to decorate their awkward branches.
And a humming bird prods
willing apple blossoms
searching for the remaining sweet sips,
which have been forgotten
by the droves of bees.
What if I were to call
these frail flowers masculine?
Would this change the meaning and
make this image deeper,
more sexually charged?
Would supple petals become stiff,
and the hummingbird wince
when forced to swallow sour nectar?
Flowers are merely sex organs;
the sky splits open and
they crumble.
The vinyl hasn’t changed,
it’s still uncomfortable, sticky,
and has the lingering odour of people
(I will never know).
The motion— jerky— erratic.
The frosted windows— still fogging from human
heat, though the temptation to curl my hand
up, press it against the cool condensation,
then peel my warm fist— carefully— away, and
tickle fingertips across the cool surface
drawing awkward toes,
no longer draws me in.
There is no longer a need, nor is there space
for imprints of premature feet.
Do not try to deny me mortality
by placing dyed plastic fuchsia flowers
to show how much you have loved me.
Let them be real.
Let them rot.
LOOSESTRIFE:
A tribute to Elizabeth Siddal
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Slowly, she pulls on the heavy white gown,
which has grown damp and dull.
Her pale legs dip into the marble bathtub.
She stifles a hoarse cough,
as she lowers herself into the maze
of white layers that drift upwards
attempting to escape.
“You are truly her, dear,
down to the last detail,”
he whispers as his dark eyes travel
across her porcelain face,
and down to her rose coloured
nipples which peek through the
now off-white fabric.
Her wet tongue touches cracked lips, and
the craving begins to take hold.
“What flowers will I hold today?”
she questions, occupying her mind.
His muscular hand reaches towards her,
pushing her head down into the ice-cold water.
Her brittle hand reaches
as she gasps at air, and
red tendrils drift around,
threatening to garrotte her.
“Violets, crownet weeds and poppies, dear,”
he smiles as she struggles to breathe.
“I love you,” she says hoarsely,
and no one listens.
They’re almost here;
you can feel the tension.
It’s been mounting since the first day
that mound of snow in my back yard
began to melt: a mound so monstrous
that it needed to lean against the length
of my house’s brick belly
to heave up its great weight.
That was five weeks ago.
It’s not so much that I want the leaves
to come back(though it would be nice)—
it’s simply that the trees are tired of being naked
and you can tell.
Sequin flames dance across
the lupin fields rusting petals
with audacious movements.
The sinfully drab curtain-spectators sneer
as they roll cud around their Sahara mouths and tongues.
Dreaming of salivation they hiss at the distracting
monopoly of the now-crimson lupin.
Mommy, MOM-my I want
to sit in the carriage. I am
not too old! Ooh,
Super Sugar Blast Cereal,
can we get it please? Puh-leeze?
It was when the box was pushed
out of my hands and
I tumbled forward; that I saw them,
(almost, but not quite artistically)
stacked between the ice-chips, and
instead of a hundred unblinking eyes
I saw one, a snapper, wink.
Most fish found sandwiched
between florescent lights and ice-chips
have never swum against a current.
Annually the average Scottish fish farm
produces more nitrates than 3 million people.
(That’s about the population of Montreal.)
I bet that snapper was chortling
inside those scales coloured with red dye #14,
behind those idle eyes.
xenia larouge © copyright 2007-2011. all rights reserved.
