Spring-Heeled Jack

knew how to make an escape,
his booted leap from fence to cobblestone
flying through time—the less he is seen

the more legend he becomes. Bogeyman by dark,
super-hero by day—celebrated as an urban
fable, like today’s weather, clear

blue sky against red bricks of the building
across the street. It looks dependable, streaked
with thin clouds that shoulder

above us like a sheer cotton shirt draped
on the back of the man reaching out
for a lover that keeps walking away.

Underneath that pace, the earth remains
steady, dirt settled in concrete and heat.
Leaves are awakening, bodies from a long sleep,

stems stretching from fresh buds. Mid-day arches
like the back of an old woman
bending in her garden pulling quack grass

and dandelions from chives that have spread
along the fence under the crab apple tree.
She will stop every now and then,

put a hand on her crooked hip, smooth
grey hair from her brow, shade her eyes
with the palm of her right hand, peering

at the office across the street where
a younger woman plants her mind with work’s seeds—
emails, phone calls, sheets of white paper

bleached and trimmed into perfect squares,
like the room her imagination jumps from
when she gazes out the window.

How to Begin to Forget

After nine days I noticed
the ghost. Your coke

wedged to the back of the fridge.
I cracked the metal tab,

snapped the fingernail
that so recently poked you

in your left eye. It was the first time
I touched the tip

of the hand that emptied
eleven other cans. I sipped

dark liquid, streaking condensation
down the side, the sweet taste

on my lips. After seven days
I gathered my clothes, left

one blanket, one lamp,
and a hundred sheets

of blank paper. After
three days I watched

a movie, the plot of
new skills that reminded

me of the first ten hours
when I drank the last

of your cold beer,
my Moosehead belch

into the empty air of solitude,
the room where a statue stood

in a bare corner. He was missing
a hand, a wrist, so much

of an arm. After five hours
I studied the right side

of the blue couch for symptoms-
depression. After two

hours I stripped your name off
the door of the place you'd slept in—

ripped the tag in half,
tossed the small slip of paper in

to the garbage where it worked its way
underneath coffee grounds, a banana peel,

an orange rind that scented
those traces of you.

The Poem

made me do it, though in it’s defense it was
only developing, a potato sprouting
after months of resting in cold storage.

And, let’s be honest, this isn’t
confession in the way an admission
can be used in a court of law, the hammer

of a gavel pronouncing me guilty as charged.
Nor is it the kind of disclosure
where names will be written in the breakdown—

a general list of fault as the accumulation,
letter after letter, until we’re left worrying only
about the worst in ourselves. No, this

confession happens when your hands appear
cut off, hidden from my view
under my breasts and I begin to feel

the slight tremor of your right palm
shuddering along my chest’s scar,
my thin-membraned irregularity,

metal-barbed bites from so long ago.
You establish this movement by saying nothing,
your palm reading rows of lines—heart

line, head line while our tongues figure
it out, translate that moment into
seconds that tick against the inside

of what our mouths continue to sever,
our fear stuffed within us
as we continue to come clean.

Lurking!

Just to let you know, I'm here. Yes, lurking.

Might not write much. Hope to make some comments when I get time. Hope to have fun reading everyone on MayDay!

I'm in Regina. I'm doing my 5th tour of duty. I think.