Thirty-day pass: 3. Repetition

passing through stands of poplar,

shadow stripes lightdarklightdark

surprise of the train's lurch as I walk

down the aisle to the john

conductor strides through the coach

calling François! François!

boys across the aisle tease

little sister cries

father scolds

paperback pages flip

flip

What We Missed

Tuesday, 12th May Started early this morning and after marching to Mackintosh's, a distance of about 20 miles, we bivouacked for the night; and just at dark a scout rode in with news that our men that afternoon had charged Batoche and taken it, scattering the rebs. in all directions. The news was good indeed, but we felt we ought to have been there.

Almost two months
since I left home.
Paperwork botches and
lack of arms, equipment.
Train to Port Hope, then
to Kingston for our first
ragged parade. Snowstorm
in Fort Henry, training indoors:
then railing westward on steel tracks, broken
by marches. I'll never forget
sleeping in three feet of snow
when the tracks ended at Dalton,
or the 23 mile march across the ice
of Lake Superior: seven hours in a blinding
blizzard, over soft snow. Frigid sleigh rides,
moonlight marches in 30 below, the luxury
of a Pullman Sleeper. The hell
of prairie exposure; sleepy
steamer ride north on the river.

All this to guard supplies and hay,
and miss the final battle by half a day.
***
What We Saw
when we came out of the caves
blinded by sun and sudden silence:
our village over-run by soldiers.

Near the rifle pits, Damase Carrier, his leg
at right angle to his body, rope around his neck, still tied
to the tail of a horse grazing on a bush. He'd been dragged
around the field - they thought he was
Riel.

Calixte and Elzear:
Mme. Tourond kneeling
beside their broken bodies. Smoothing
their hair, bending soundless
to the ground.

Our grey-haired Elders who should have died
in their sleep, stretched before us bloodied
on the field.
Michel Trottier and Isidore Boyer.

Jose Vandal - 75 years old - both arms
broken when he came forth from the rifle
pit. His shirt bloomed roses from a bayonet.

One of the soldiers gave a salthard biscuit to my toddler.
One of the soldiers raped my dark-haired doe-eyed daughter.

Those who could
grabbed their children, turned to the banks and fled.
Those of us with nothing left
began to tend the dead.

Progressive Dinner

Rose sweet scent of bowl-sized peonies
in all shades of pink, magenta and wine
overflow the kitchen,
pitchers full of blooms
fill the table abundantly.
There is no room
for food.

Flowers will feed my senses
alert for a meal, eating instead
what has been cooked in the May rain,
finished by thunder, seasoned liberally
with alternating lighting and sunshine.

It is the feast of peonies,
another course
in the progression of perennials
bursting the lid off spring,
nourishment after a hard winter –

so hard I forgot the flowers,
so hard I forgot plantings over many years,
so hard the first crocus brought tears

as I faced a progression of memories,
the loss of one who reminded me
not to forget the nasturtiums.
They arrive jeweled with peppered petals,
I will eat their brilliance, find the fragile

taste of going forward once again.
The peonies will be gone
and the garden will still hold
memories and promise.

ritalin, a love story

1.

how do they do it, the mothers?
needles soar and dive, the whir of hands,

fingers buzz with joy. while you can only dream
of movement, drift, hunch and squint

bones plodding in the dark. somewhere
there's a mother who enjoys this, lies

beneath heaps of laundry, dirty dishes
mending with some twisted smile. recall

your career once more industrious
than your washing machine. recall

how your husbands hand's could cup
and grab. now you wear

his old shirts, invisible breasts
pressed like pancakes by the weight

of squirming children. your body,
this defeated thing the day drags

behind. you think: just one gulp,
the swish of liquid, two

spots
of grace.

Improper


Your name is teddy-bear huggable, goofball loveable,
bobbing buoyant on a page, jaunty in the mouth
I love to see it in your precise printing,
or arial bold in my inbox

But when I watch you lean through viscous din,
your lips brushing a bewildered ear,
I curse your mother, her cruel creativity

Two simple syllables, common everyday English,
bring panic to an unfamiliar tongue
So many nervous attempts swallowed
by small apologetic coughs
And spelling it doesn’t help

I’ve adapted your shrugged explanation: hippie parents
and try to remember how it has made you
singular, patient, unwilling to apologize
for anything beyond your control

Ceiling: Rain Storm

It rains on the roof: shingles, tar paper,
particle board, rafter. Bulbs of water,
brief at the slat: swell, gloss,
drop the second time since
cloud-like, unbecoming, they climbed
on hot elevating air to be made visible
in marriage to dust: to drift in threads, wisps,
bulbous happy pilings
from one point in time, to the next.
The front is always coming: press, temper,
rove the undulations of landscape:
form of droplet out of nimbus form.
It rains from the roof: gravity,
points of separation to ease through.
Drinkers: wood floor, damp air, surface dust.

Too much?

The succubus sucked
the sugar cane, what else
do succubi do
but suck? Sucked succulent
sugar juice. Stole
into the room unseen and sucked
the cane and faced the ceiling,
shrieking bloody sugary glee.
Sugar cube between the teeth for tea,
Russian-style slurping.
Delightful.
She swept up
and away, sweet and full,
sweet and wrinkled, laughing
at the flaccid sugar cane behind her.

Marching Orders

(The journal doesn't have entries every day, so I've been splitting this one up.)

Monday 11th May ...and tonight, Captain Bonnycastle in command of our two Companies received orders from the General to move forward at once and join the main body.

Family - I write one last letter
after my gear is packed.

At first light
we march towards the battle
we've listened to
three days, steady.

This is why I came.
I'm more than ready.

***

Shooting Stones and Nails

At Tourond's Coulee, we left
when it seemed time.
Too cold, wet, hungry

Started missing shots,
if bullets ran low: we'd go.
But we are dug in at Batoche

Twice they've tried to circle us around
Our families are nearby, hiding underground.
Now if we run out, we run away.

Riel's
miracle of Batoche:
if we live to see another day.
* * *
A mother
The hungry darkness,
close smell of earth.
Wounded join us: we
rarely use our candles
but for their care.

And the children after three days
all eyes become accustomed:
day and night the same color,
symphony of dirt-muffled guns
their lullaby.

Of the fearsome Gatling Gun,
the victim is but one.
Besides the priest's leg,
Jose's little son.
He was inside the house when it began.

Today Middleton's men
came as far as the cemetary: so close.
Then they turned back. I hope the ghosts
of our small village whispered in their ear.
Gave them more than our dying men and emptying guns to fear.

(five)

their love is cautious, is conditional
that belongs to saints
hiding behind religion
............they shield their tainted hearts
............and say They know God, because.

the girl is condemned for sins not hers
marked in the name of a merciless god
who loves them...................but not her

apple wine//Bree

Dearest, the night you proposed we sipped
apple wine on the narrow bridge

outside the college dorm. We thought our bodies
unstoppable, whooshing into the future,

our legs bare and dangling above the perfect chill
of April's bathwater. Do you remember?

Your arm around my bare shoulders like the curve
of a perfectly formed letter,

our impossible brilliance culminating
in that moment, that choosing

to be and to stay
happy. I think even the fish

were envious. My love, this morning
I folded, helped you upend

the suitcase in the hallway closet -
two weeks of shirts, a suit and tie. Tonight

I am alone and the house purrs
with cleanliness, but there remains one thing

in need of tidying. Tonight, love,
even the silverware went to bed

with a satisfying clink, but sleep is a stranger
I fail to encounter. I am the one

imperfect object in our spotless museum
and for once I want

to be touched. I miss the fibers
and the friction of your body, the look

you give before turning out the light.
Darling, when you come home we'll pick

apples from the tree in our backyard.
Oh let this be a pin prick, nothing more.

Quiet


So often there’s just the click and whoosh
of electric heat, small taps at a keyboard
and I catch myself frowning at the interruption
of your hardwood footstep-creak overhead

You say our house is too quiet,
in a way that makes it sound like my fault,
and I remind you I grew up in a home
still as a museum: clocks ticked, pages turned,
all sound absorbed by thick wall-to-wall
and antique furniture
No one sang along to the radio
or called room to room
We saved laughter for company

Your homes were filled with boys
and their rough-housing, Beatles records and bickering
And raised voices didn’t signal a fight –
hot tears and a car charging down the driveway –
just competition for a single mom’s attention

But now you’ve grown used to my kind of silence
I see you startle when the phone rings,
when a fork clatters on the counter
The heavy metal pound from the band next door
tenses your shoulders high as mine
And when Gary across the street
revs and revs and revs that rusted truck –
gas pedal to pavement and still he stalls it –
you also clench your teeth

There are times when quiet spooks me too,
just the two of us to fill all these rooms,
and I rearrange the pots and pans,
think of something to talk about

Poem for The Canada Council

I wish to apply for a grant to write some poems.
My theme is “poetry.” My approach is to have line breaks,
most of the time. Sometimes not. I don’t know. We’ll see.
I will be sure to write poems that are diverse and inclusive.
They will be on diverse topics.
They will include a wide variety of words.
Some examples of words I would like to use:
arrogant, crustacean, Peruvian, refrain;
offside, ivory, rubato, Rastafarian.
Sugar cane, succubus. Widow’s peak, sousaphone.
Monastery, rivalry, vivisection, coop.

You get the idea, Mr. Council.
I am particularly fond of the letter “v,”
a letter certainly deserving of more exposure in the publishing field.
I am including in my budget travel research funds to visit the best libraries in the world,
and call upon Seamus Heaney for tea,
and generally live life to the fullest.
“Life” is my secondary theme.
My tertiary theme is “thought.”
Please hurry Mr. Council.
I am having a fleeting moment of inspiration
right
now



-----
SO BUSY lately I haven't had time to read all the posts, and I missed posting on Sunday! Weekends might be a lost cause for me. Will try to catch up on reading tonight.

Ode to an overhead projector as Canada Goose

Goose-necked,
you hum & sigh, proselytize
but you know your limits

You will only go
so far
share so much.

You are tethered to your altar,
hungry, but you primly
only take what

you need. You are heavy
with brittle light. The word.
But you are also quite fond

of the letter. The law.
Broody, you have your minders
who name and number you,

who heft and carry you.
Your eye blinks slowly
but you are all alert glare

even as you let more
and more of your acolytes
in on the secret.

From an Epicurean Daughter

Because I harbour no desire for restraint, I went
downstairs to the fridge with a soup spoon this morning,
craving a soft sweet scoop of the almond cream
left over from last night’s chocolate torte before my sensible
helping of cereal, but the shelf was vacant,
the bowl turned upside down in the kitchen sink. I'm sure
that you, who savours sweets but favours
moderation, who refrains from licking crumbs
from your fingers, even at Mother's Day dinner
with the boys (who didn't), rinsed
the lingering fragrant peaks from the ceramic,
and will remind us all tonight that the cake tastes just fine
plain, will ask if I've made my dentist appointment.

But because we all grow tired of restraint, even you
(even yesterday, in the neighbour's yard—
your single guilty cigarette) I hope
that when you were the first one stirring
this morning, you crept down the stairs, stood
in the refrigerator’s yellow halo and polished
off the whole damn bowl
(to our upstairs alarm clocks ringing)
with your fingers.

letter to a young lover//Gabrielle

Imagine yourself limp, head thick
as a can of paint, bones

silent, still. When desire leaves
your body, hangs above you

like a ghost - will this want temper
your soul? Darling, I keep

your photograph, the petals
of one flawless rose curling

like a nerve under your touch.
But I refuse to undo

another button of your youth,
I will not undress

again these layers
of innocence. There will be time

to bury the traces of my skin,
the memory of my smell in the morning.

We all have to live
with our own loneliness

so please,
don't bother calling.

On inheriting my grandmother’s amber necklace

You are a fistful of half-sucked
jawbreakers, every one tried
by teeth
& expelled, the tongue lolling
sour at bad news.

You are a card of homely buttons
that never made it out of the sewing kit, balled up
& swallowed whole. You are the torn
shirt, the gaping threads after
the passion has cooled & someone
has to do the goddamn mending.

(You are the row of buttons on the floor.
You are rendered fat. Bits
of bone.)

You are a row of cloudy specimen jars
each with its bloody lump of cells
excized & floating. The body aches without question.
The body limps & bleeds. And we could have strung
a necklace with those gory
blasted beads
instead.

* * *

I'm sorry I've been absent so far from May Day. But I'm doing the School of Writing at CMU and I had several sun-lit stretches today in which to write. And so I began writing...

Checking into Chateau Laurier, 1:30 a.m.

Skulking criminals with a crime to find, we step

tentative across the threshold of a century.

The words do not thrill—“railway hotel,”

the spectre of a wooden platform and dusty sheets—

and thrill is not the word for this ceiling

where our guilty expressions search

for a deity to forgive us, for something.

Something classical drifts around.

Light and cheerful in a way that portends

rivers of blood gushing down the halls.

Empty, marble, echo.

Stop the suitcase squeak. Hush, wait,

for the murderous pin to drop.

Dear Trapper,

Why were you only a sidekick?

You had leading man chops – top notch chest-cutter,
robust frame under your yellow housecoat
and that goofy, toothy grin, that ragged tangle of curls
Toss a football around the dusty compound
and your bicep-pulse would draw nurses from the showers
Your bittersweet brown eyes deeper, darker against the bleach of scrubs,
must have caused a thousand dropped instruments

Always in Hawkeye’s shadow even though you were as tall,
as quick and exact with tongue or scalpel
Relegated to vice-president, runner-up, right hand man
or was it just that you weren’t so thirsty for attention,
didn’t need a spotlight to see your own worth?

I always appreciated your quiet, reliable grit,
the backbone it takes to be second banana

Yours truly.

So I forgive you
for the wheel-barrel full of gin
you drank, that balmy August night
behind the shed when you thought
no one was looking, you fingered
my blouse buttons and slopped
a wet kiss on my mouth.
Do you always drink that much
to muster courage?
I'm sure being a boozy lech
doesn't help. My point is,
I have no hard feelings
about your drunken shenanigans.
Sure you moved on, finding
a more pliable girl.
Only natural. I expect men
not to try too hard.
Why should they?
There are plenty of easy
laz-about Susans. Why work for it
if you don't have to?
See, the thing is - I liked you.
I was willing to go there, but not
like that. You, slurring words,
about to up-chuck your corn-dog
and Dorritos. But that is neither here
nor there, so many years ago,
I barely remember the details.
I just want you to know
I understand your reasons
for passing me by
to ruminate in richer pastures.
Why milk the cow,
when milk is so white and workaday?
Better to have it slaughtered.
De-skinned, eviscerated, then split
into primal cuts. Grill up
some choice prime rib steaks
with garlic to taste, and of course,
heavily oiled with extra virgin olive.
See, I get you.

Flickers

Of that single bed we shared in Taos,
a miracle we didn’t fall out. Waking at dawn
to flickers drilling poles, announcing their intentions
to all. We left the blinds up at night
to watch dawn streak across the field. The scarlet-
mustachioed male jerking his tail and giving chase.
The first kisses and what else before breakfast,
before you’d head home to compose. The half-notes
the keys made as I two-finger typed, stared out
at the flicker’s rollercoaster flight—
all the early doubts forgotten now.
As I nestle into your arm’s crook each night,
it's those woodpeckers I hear
inside your chest, drumming.

Second Day

Monday 11th May ....From couriers who pass occasionally we learn that our forces are attacking the rebel position at Batoche, but until now with little success.

I chafe to go to war.
Still at the edge - we've come so far.
Those marches through ice and snow
Sledge rides in 35 below
The soldier who jumped off the train
(50 miles from Matawa - evidently insane)
was the only who fled this fight.
The rest prepared: victory or a burial site.

Waiting, imagining, is the worst.

Few soldiers die unrehearsed.
* * *
In Our Defense
Yesterday we rained bullets on the Northcote.
A diversion, while Ferryman Alex Fisher
and Pascal Montour awaited the signal.

(The army had reinforced the sides of the steamer
with choice articles like Gabriel's pool table.)

We knocked the mast and smokestacks loose
By flexing the Batoche ferry cable.

It drifted away like a wing-shot duck.
That was yesterday's good luck.

We shot at their camp through the night.
Every ten minutes, a warning to sleep light.

Today Middleton shells the town.
Still we are dug in, they gain no ground.

Thirty-day pass: 2. Two days and a night

A lake!

Are those tamaracks?

Click.

Lake, trees, bog, trees, lake.

Trees. Water giving back sky's blue.

Trees give way to bog, trees again,

a clear lake.

Many lakes later we sleep, bodies rocking

in rhythm with the train.

Morning: red pine, jack pine, white pine.

Church spire, mist, tree-covered hills.

Grey, wind-stippled lake.

Sleep and wake. The camera

lies in your lap.

Trees. Different ones:

aspen, oak. And a lake,

a really big one.

We doze, wake. Sway

down the aisle. Not much left

in the snack bar. Not much

to do.

Forest dwindles.

We hardly notice,

you curled into yourself,

me with legs draped over armrests.

We can hardly lift our heads.

The Last Summer

Since infancy this house has held me
to the earth, a squat square
bell jar full of books and solid
furniture. My small feet have worn
grooves in the pavement
to the park, the school,
the bus stop, but have always returned
here, my tethered veins pulled
by my mother's cooking and concern.
Always these same elms on the boulevard
watch my failures on the same
themes: nerve and nurture, loving
what doesn't stay, summer,
autumn, but scatters
like dry leaves in their windy tumble
toward November, staying
too long myself, the house growing
unruly with the detritus of remaining
sedentary: the fur of dust on high shelves,
a whole drawer devoted to the mates
of missing socks and mittens,
a desk bloated with paper. But
I am coming loose
from this map of the familiar,
the regular, and I will
yank my feet from this prairie
yard's muddy soil, sell my books
for a plane ticket, and erase
myself like the memory of green
under the first snow,
all my words lifted
from this house,
these streets
and taking
flight.

your face, a flag

Your face in my sleep like a flag
marking the place I stopped,

turned, and smiled at you for the last time.
Hey, I meant it, one hand

on my ripening belly the other waving
the kind of wave you expect to see

again and again and again
until it crashes into you, a symphony of sighs,

your body laid down, breathless
beneath the weight of my goodbye. I meant it

I'm not
coming back. But I wake

every night to the sound of another man
talking in his sleep and it terrifies me. You know

he says my name sometimes,
he calls for me, calls me out

of the forest we used to call home. O,
your arms, those branches

from which I could see
the world - green, green, green.

It's different here
in the suburbs - no trees, only

hydro posts that stand like memorials
marking the death of human sight, their lines

stretch out like God's fingers; I swear
I can feel His fist tighten, His pulse

around my neck. Tonight I carry stones
to bed. I like to feel their rough surface mar

my manicured hands. They slide from my fingers
like water, like a name or a face I could never remember,

each one a reminder, a road back to you.
At night I am barefoot, I know

the meaning of explosions, how to sink
into the earth like death. I wake early

to the sound of home appliances.
As always, by morning

I'm lost.

Frank,

It wasn’t the North Koreans, the stingy supply clerks at HQ,
some leather-assed general miles from the front
You were the enemy – our enemy

In the war within the war, combat in the Swamp and Mess,
you fell for all the goofy ambushes, lost every battle of wits
but were saved by all those army boots you licked

You were a doctor for the money, the golf club prestige
but wouldn’t recognize your own lily liver on an X-ray

It’s taken years of loathing you to finally understand
the purpose you served: we need to hate

You made it easy, guilt-free, with your yes-man salutes,
your snivelling quibbles and your starchy manner
We laughed at your weekly comeuppance but imagined
a schoolyard bully, a fawning colleague, a prissy sister

I’ve tried not to see the human in you, not to admit what irritates most
are the traits I share: twitchy anxiety, cry baby tendencies,
tongue tied too tight to respond to any smart remark
And the way I must come off: fussy and humourless

But the difference is, Ferret-face, you deserved it

From.

Tracks

Reading the fresh stamps of pig tracks
in mud, the loops, diagonals, here
a mother and her calf, I wonder
can I trace my own path, straight
at times, then turning back, footfalls that led
to swamp, or suddenly stop
at the base of a tree trunk—
lifted by wings or jaws.

Can I spot the places I bedded down,
trees girdled in lean winter months
all the indigestibles: bones and fur coughed up,
tally the tactics of stealth, flight
that brought me safely here, heels
sinking their signatures into soft mud.

In the riverbanks

For three days we have been able to hear the guns at Batoche, about forty miles below us. The sound seems to follow the river banks. ...Our forces are attacking...at Batoche.

The river carries ghostly
reports from rifles. Nerves
are frayed: ears strain
to see if it draws closer.

At night, we sleep but light.
The shooting thins but
does not cease. Sentries
watch, with no release
in sight.

We are useful as one-winged butterflies.
I doze at night, unloaded gun across my thighs.
***
Dans les grottes

The gunfire is muffled
by the dirt.
We only see the men
when they've been hurt.

Batoche is where we make
our last stand.
Rifle pits, caves and graves:
we're held
by our land.

(four)

tulips dot McMillan
where yesterday raindrops
found only dirt and dry shoots
.............how did you keep your secret
.............till the very moment you burst open
.............yellow, orange, and red?
so doubtful was i of you
that i skulked into strangers’ gardens
for a feel of your velvet coats.

lying in the dark// Susan

I lost my love on the highway,

black pounding our bodies, squeezing

divergent landscapes - car,

road, dirt, skin - together so

tightly. We drove

an off-road vehicle but we were on-road

kind of people. I knew happiness then

the way a bird knows her young

in an instant. I loved him in the quiet

of the SUV. The smell of hard work

rinsed and settled on his skin, his cheeks

as soft and white as sleep. I drove,

one hand on the wheel, the other caressing

his inseams. Isn't it funny

how we are all afraid of the dark? Sure,

you can say you're not

but who believes you? I was wearing

a blue satin dress, strapless

to show off my pilates-arms, which he nibbled

as I gripped the wheel

and him. This is how love hits you:

like a late-night collision,

a chance encounter, a turn

you take to fast. Blood scattered

like the contents of a purse

across the pavement. My love

flew off into the night.

I shone:

my arms so tanned and lean,

my dress lit up by headlights.

I thought I was on fire. I cried

deep into that boomy sea of pitch and tar -

I'm not afraid of you.

I lied.

Flower

Only eat flowers when daddy says so.

Don’t trust me on edible plants,

bird identification, or Chicago style. I’m hopeless.

Don’t trust him on grocery shopping,

buttoning women’s clothing, or exchange of pleasantries.

Actually don’t trust me on those either.

I guess what I’m saying is: Trust No One,

a phrase you heard often and early,

Agents Mulder and Scully batting their eyelashes

on the complete DVD set trying to keep me

awake in the chair at 4 a.m.

Dandelions, he said—your dad, not Agent Mulder—

are completely useful plants. You can eat them all up,

once you dig and scrub up that ass-bastard root.

And he tried to feed you the petals, tiny strips

of that same delicate fibre better flowers make their

better petals of. You didn’t like it. Good on you.

Now, if you ever meet a poisoned apple,

or an evil stepmother,

you will know what to do.

Dear Radar,

You were the Korean War Cassandra, except that everyone believed
when you said Choppers. Incoming.
weary voice older than your Iowa innocence
You bore all that bad news on your skimpy frame

Today you’d be diagnosed with exhaustion, army fatigue
Bed beside the only phone, your sleep must have been piecemeal,
eyelids fluttering at all those midnight flash-lit sneaks
into medical records, liquor cabinets
And still you were up every morning to bungle the bugling

They stunted your growth: everyone’s younger brother, cuddly confidante
Your suspended childhood their link to the pristine,
before gore and grief numbed run-on days

Were you playing along – the teddy bear, grape Nehis
just part of a greenhorn schtick?
Because I know you were wise, even wily –
that Jeep you mailed home piece by careful piece –
though skittish around women

But when I imagine you stateside, after, you’re not anyone’s pet
You’re worldly, capable, standing taller in your small shoes

Sincerely.

Secrets of Motherhood

dedicated to all the mothers of 1885

1.
When the cervix stops dilating
The heart begins.

You will be stretched thin.
You will always be enough:
you will never be enough.

You will carry this hole inside you
always.

2.
Umbilical cord: the mother's end
never goes away. When cut, it
recoils invisibly back inside.
Constricts the breathing,
other times the heart.
Warp and weft of intuition.

The baby's end dries up.
Falls off.

3.
Uterus: the size of a grapefruit.
What you know in your gut.
Source of life, the Great
Mystery:

to bleed, and bleed, days on end,
and yet
not die.

This is how you are a mother.
Look what you can bear, and
still stand upright.

4.
Learn when to bear down with pain.
Learn when to just breathe.

Know it will ebb, but
never cease. What you have
started has no end.

You cannot be
undelivered.

Swimmers

At night our bodies separate
and come together again, the blue
blankets rolling, lapping
at our shifting limbs like waves.

I depart and return to the shore
of your body, my left leg
meeting your right, our rivery veins
tracing parallel tattoos up our calves.

Divided by sleep we find different
lovers and streets to walk down
before returning to the familiarity
of pancakes and coffee. Just before

you wake, I catch your eyes, darting
like fish in the ocean of REM sleep,
go still as you come to the surface.

Bathroom: Claw-foot

steam lifts up slick porcelain walls
off the dust-specked surface of water
bending every colour through such tiny prisms
into the general air of the one room yet to be cleaned

sleepy in the bath I fade out of solid state
dreaming a hundred rainbows all possible
you and you all rise as high
as the happy cool of the room allows

up through the hoop that hold the curtain
up wrap the bulb that makes day of night
up to the poorly painted ceiling
and there

like a balloon meets a pin
a drop again
to wake in the liquid gone tepid

First Entry

Toronto, Saturday, 28th March, 1885 Received late this evening...wire from Lt.-Col. A.T.H. Williams, that he had been authorized to raise a Battalion for service in the North West and directing me to join Captain Winslow at Millbrook and raise a Company from Cavan and Manvers.

Showed Mother the wire myself,
it seemed the thing.
She put it on the shelf;
pressed my hand, but didn't cling.

And mayhap she finds, one hopes,
comfort in the stripes I earned
drilling hard with scopes
and barrels in sun-soaked fields: I learned
the ropes.

School has been fulfilling,
- halfway done my law degree.
Summer next, God willing
----I'll be home and turning twenty-three.

But first, quelling a rebellion will be my lot:
Not the worst. And Mother took it sportingly, I thought.

*** yeh - slow news day :) ***

Louis Riel's First Girlfriend
Reads the papers in Montreal when her husband is gone to work.
Calls it self-defense, for Mother leaves articles out
when his name appears.

Her parents quick to end that courtship - young half-breed Turk
His priestly studies, French heritage and sincerity clouded
by his lineage. Her tears

have long since ceased on his behalf but sometimes
she wonders: would he have led

rebellions in two provinces, if they'd wed?

Poem for my poor hands

from blank to cat scratch blanket

greasy teenager’s to bone-dry post-birth

cracked creased crazy

bitch’s

----

I could go on but won't at present.

Dear Henry,

I still blanch at any mention of the Sea of Japan
Your primetime death the tragedy that dimmed my childhood,
taught me the word injustice, and its blood-bitter taste

I’ve chosen to remember you as you were,
an uneasy leader, itchy in uniform, in charge, in decision,
hiding that big heart under your fishing vest

You had your own wobbly way of making them fall in

Your replacement, Potter, a bureaucratic wonk,
didn’t have your laugh lines, your cornball command

I’ve long-since forgiven your infidelities,
all those whippet-thin nurses with their deft hands,
And I’m sure Lorraine has too.

Sayonara.

Thirty-day pass: 1. Departure

This is your final call.

Rush through the echoing rotunda,

trampling brass leaves into stone floor.

Backpacks bouncing on our shoulders.

All passengers should now be on board.

Shock of sunlight as the train leaves the station,

escapes the city, picks up speed.

You try buttons on a new camera,

I stare across sunflower fields.

We are farther east than we've ever been.

We hear there are lakes upon lakes, there are towns

like Sioux Lookout, Parry Sound.

Leaving the known landscape, Red River behind us,

we watch. Something new will jump out at us soon,

and we'll snap it with a quick Look!

and shutter click. Over and over,

all the way to the coast.

another good woman undressing//Bree

another good woman undressing
in a dimly-lit motel, fresh sheets by the hour;
sinning in pearls is still sinning.

she combs her auburn hair, watching
the window from the corner of the mirror for his jaguar,
another good woman undressing.

she unbuttons her chiffon blouse, fingering
the edge of skin where nipples rise like tiny flowers
(sinning in pearls is still sinning).

as expected, he arrives, heavy-breathed, apologizing,
he's eager to devour
another good woman undressing.

but interrupted by a motel maid changing
a light bulb, her post-seduction moment sours -
sinning in pearls is still sinning.

she's comforted by the signs of other women cheating,
they are always in need of a shower,
another good woman undressing.

she leaves the motel well-fucked, cursing
the maids self-righteous scour:
another good woman undressing,
sinning in pearls is still sinning.

Dear Hot Lips,

I suppose I should call you Major Houlihan,
or at least Margaret, but the truth is
you never quite commanded my respect
Even though I admire flinty ambition,
any woman with those army brass balls

It couldn’t have been easy to stand that high
and mighty ground when every joke was on you,
and no sisters to lean on in the officer’s mess

But Frank Burns? That quivering, chinless priss?
Was it your shared hard-on for rigid discipline
or his limp submission?

I’ve always hoped it was simple human need:
the comfort of any body when the shelling is close,
heavy choppers on the way

Still, there was a time I’d picture that olive drab turtleneck
clinging to my own some-day curves
And I still find a certain strident femininty
in snug green trousers and combat boots

But I wonder, was it enough for you – or did you wish
to hold that scalpel rather than slap it into a man’s gloved hand?

And I’m curious to know if you ever stroll instead of march,
unzip your face into genuine smile
Because that time Henry kissed you – full and sudden on the mouth –
I saw you let go of the wheel, just for a moment,
stunned by the thrill of freedom

Sincerely.

But the Rats Love It In Swift Current...

Tuesday, 21st April We have been drilling steadily since we came and are now in a fair condition to fight, if it should be necessary. The men, I think, are not sorry to leave this place (Swift Current), as there are only half a dozen houses here, besides the railway buildings, and it is a tiresome place to live.

West of Winnipeg, the ground was level
as the sea. After a day, Brandon
gave way to land slightly rolling.

Moose Jaw was the nicest site
for a town I'd seen since home.
When we got to Swift Current

a light rain and high winds
made camping disagreeable,
despite the shelter of a basin

surrounded by higher land.
The winds here are severe.
And I had to march the men

out of the Indian encampment
close by, where they all
fraternized as if on a pleasure trip.

If MacDonald had not had the luxury,
the speed of so many rails
none of us would be here on these barren prairie trails.

***

A Two Week Lull
Three days after we sent Middleton
packing, we lost the last two men
who had been slowly dying, their families
gathered round with rosaries and drawn faces.

Riel
still hopes for peace; he spent the entire
battle, arms spread like Moses,
praying for victory. He promises
a miracle - perhaps this two week

peace is just that. Word has come
back: many of the Cree deny to fight,
though individual warriors wander in
each night. They know that just the same

They will all be held in blame, if
our battle is lost out west.
Half-breeds doubly cursed,
Doubly blessed.

The winds rise. I've made my peace
-------with family, God, and gun.
Prayed good use of the 32 rounds
-------left of ammunition.

Katherine

A woman needs to feel the heavy pulse
of steel, the throb of bullets in a gun.
Protection always fails in fucking, bolts
come loosened under years of jerks. I've done
my time in psych wards slowly coming clean;
I've washed away the blood I drew in search
of happiness - some fake suburban dream.
I need a touch as soft as rain, I thirst
for pools of curves, a landscape fresh that flows
from my hip bone to hers. I lap such lakes!
While men don't knock, they enter even though
the door is closed, my woman knows to wait,
her fingers circling the lock. My skin,
these walls of longing, part to let her in.

Girl brushes doll’s impassable lips

First learn this:
imagining what is not there
pretending what you are not.

If it’s made of atoms, you will figure it out.
If you can stick your hand in it, whack your head on it,
put it in your mouth, or get your nose stuck to it in the cold.

If it’s not there, though, it’s worth working at.
You have a toothbrush, and a baby, and the baby
has no teeth, but you can brush them anyway.
Next step: loose the toothbrush.
Then the lips, then the baby. Ible as well as able.

I like to see this kind of initiative.
You’re such a hard worker!

That’s what I’m supposed to say these days. I read it on the Internet.
Never: you’re so smart,
because some day you won’t be smart enough
and you’ll assume mommy was wrong all along and actually you’re dumb.
I should know. This happened to me
in grad school, forced to employ
different-coloured paper clips
to prove my creativity.

Back to you though.
I’d recommend something tangible in-between tooth-brushings—
maybe carpentry or electrical work.
Electrons pulse so very tangibly they’ll burn your baby down.

Susan

Oh I'm so bad at this whole 'housewife thing,'
the cooking, cleaning, matching towels and sheets.
Sure, watch me drown in domesticity.
Just notify the hunky life guard - she'll
be here all week. I always count on men
to up and leave. My daughter sees my falls
in love, my spills in lust. Alone again,
it's just us two, she's perfect, almost all
I'll ever need. But who'll appreciate
my heaps of lingerie? The virgin, tart,
and even Lois Lane? It's sad: my waist's
ten times to small to match this bloated heart.
I'm sick of new beginnings, absent ends;
the road to love is slick with hairpin bends.

(trois)

Four, he turned
...............Four -
...............we pitched a tent in the back yard
...............and stared at the stars thru the tepee-like opening
...............Il me demande le nom de chaque étoile
...............et, comment loin sont-ils?
...............y sont ici, bonhomme
...............dans la tente avec nous
...............ce beau soir d’avril
.
At least, it's what i wished
when i wished upon a star tonight,
another moment or two
with the little boy who
turned four
.....sans moi
aujourd'hui.

Long Distance

It was a talky day,
all full of your kids’
move to Texas—
funny, them
all becoming nurses
now our own nurse
is gone.
Since Kay died …

Reaching out over –

I was gonna say wires,
but phones have none
these days –

touching the sister
we can, one at a time.

So good of you to be here
so long, staying months
through the decline and falls
of the fun one, the one
with four grown kids
and decades of hospital
hall miles on her
feet, a healing touch
right there except
when her body
mutinied and we
could only take turns
testing for our own
catastrophe.

You’re clean for now,
under intense observation
like all of us, so far
only two lost our beans –
kidney beans, a joke –
get it? What’s eating me?
No more of the same

I hope. Running out
of spare parts,
hoping the recipe for this
mess got lost in the months
since we took
our turn on the table –

not you, but me
and the other one. Two hit,
two missed. So we talk

and do the waiting over
and over again,

thanks to modern technology –
anything’s possible.

Bedroom: White-wash

Around the room various white cloth and wood,
paper, ceramic, suitcase - eyes pause long minutes

while marks appear. A new alphabet of knick and smudge
recorded in a dictionary of accidental bodies

in collision with furniture. All white surfaces
scuff with association.

Inside, tightened to a fist, my heart
pounds slow regulars against my inside bones

leaving marks of its own: finger print,
bruised plaster, the hole where the clock once hung.

From what I can decipher
everything is accounted for.

10pm


All those restless years of lying in bed
with newly-minted teeth, laughter
and the MASH theme rerunning up the stairs
A bedtime timeline that hived off the youngest child –
whispering spelling homework, petty playground anxieties,
into the hall-light half-dark

How I’d wish for the hot stab of an earache,
some small latenight affliction, to admit me
to that wonderland of big sisters and grown ups,
the bag of jujubes passed along the chesterfield
and Hawkeye and Hot Lips with their khaki slapstick

Even now I still hear the phantom:
da-daaaah de de de daah-daah
But there’s no 4077 on channel 12
only cheap Hollywood gossip, reality plastic surgery
There’s no magic left in 10pm, just weeknight ache,
the sticky littered sidewalk after a parade’s gone by

Cups

Like rabbits

what goes on in the dark of the cupboard above
where the pinhead mealymouthed hooks grasp not so tenderly
the handles—

Like cats too—

I may throw them like abused children at charitable authorities
but here they roll back again from every single goddamn
flea market, thankyou bag, flannelpajama promotional effortium,
sad symposium and unfortunate fundrive.

Covered with—
cartoon birds, disused regional flags,
best dads and overthehill mamas,
disappearing Captain Kirks,
lead leaves,
handpainted periwinkles.
Engorged with coffee crud and battered
tea leaves, with the same prognostication every time:
I will be in my cups
and cannot be rid of them
without loosing my place.

Twenty-eight lines to leave you by

The rainstorms, one for each atrophied leg
of my leaving, clear you out entirely, my girl:
I’ve no muggy fingers on the bones
of my wrist, no sluggish midsummer pulse.

Here, the rusty quartzes in the gravel road
are yellowed teeth & a mouth full
of light, are knots of russet hair
at the day’s blueing nape. The robin hopping

from the road, all ruddy herself, all early
evening, flickers once, twice,
then drops into shin-high grasses
& is gone.

Here, I pull on socks against ice-box evenings
& peer between lace, learn early
to startle at lonely evening cars rattling
down the lane. The streets are as wide

as a page. The river kinks just beyond the yard
& the horned skulls in flowerbeds are sweetened
by stands of white lilacs
their back-of-knee pulp all over.

You are pale, my girl, & insistent:
the last few days, you wanted me
within earshot, wanted me no further than think
thought...until I muttered that I was going

& I went. The sky here is too sure of itself,
the sky here is too sure & I revise
this dappled manuscript every time
you refuse to come to the phone.

* * *

Hey all, given that I've got nothing (I mean, nothing...) in terms of new poetry so far, I thought I'd share a slightly older poem. It hasn't been workshopped or critiqued anywhere, so I'd really appreciate your good eyes on it...

Sorry for the 'cheat.' But oh well.

A.

the fact of the matter is, we put the beading

where the leather's most worn. fringes
wick water from seams. sure call it
fashion if you want. these young
ones have forgotten the real
f-words - form, function.
fancy-stitching to hold
the patches down.
once, nothing at
all was wasted:
nowadays it's
that nothing
is saved.it's
all thrown
away box
and all.
& we
each
only
get
1
.



dedicated to Sherry & Greg who had me beading up a storm in the summer sun, and Elder Mary Lee, who makes things I can only dream of

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.

Hi everyone,

I'm delighted to be May Daying again. My goals are modest this year, as I'm working full-time and moving. I hope to post 4-6 poems. After almost a year of working on revisions for my first book, Night Gears, which is coming out this fall with Wolsak and Wynn, I'm looking forward to working on some new poems. And looking forward to reading yours as well.

Bren

Diamonds Raining

It’s past time
when I can call tonight,
past the rules that let
me hear you carp about the same
old grilled cheese and other
lunch lady fare –

the bane of your teen
wisdom, the boredom
slabs you have to eat
every day waiting –

adults buzzing
in your distant hive, trying
to make honey out of
nightmares and betrayal.

You gone so long,
long as your legs
grew like trees but never

able to outrun the pain,
trapped in silent lies,
wrapped in dead fish smells
passing for family.

Now the sound of your voice
sounds like diamonds raining

and we get to keep them
all and run to the sea

laughing, washing away
all the stink, where
everything tastes great and

you get to say no, where
what you know is
to be a child.

Strange Men

**i wanted to spit out all five character sonnets in a row but i could not, for the life of me, write a sonnet today. this poem still belongs to the DH series. also, i could not indent!! (thus the underscores)**

you know the kind:
unannounced, dark-
haired, thoughtful
____in bed, too
____good to be true

in the supermarket
the pulse of their eyes
beating in time
to the rise, fall,
____rise of your ass
____in yoga pants

on the street, steps
out of sync
with lingering
thoughts, their
one-hand-in-pocket
stroll, small
smile at peopled
windows, the
firm grip, cool
____like a blunt object,
____ knock-out

the friend-of-a-
friend, back-
lit with run-on
sentences that trail
like the middle
of phrases, leave
you looking
for your close,
leave you nowhere,
____stranded, yes,

they leave you
downstairs, desperate
at 3 am checking, re-
checking the door,
your heaving
breasts, laced
& raised, against a curtain:
just another
suburban woman,
____a border that wants
____to be crossed

Dear Hawkeye,

By now you’ll have noticed I didn’t marry you,
despite all those years spent planning –
Monday to Friday at 10pm –
in the basement of a suburban bungalow far from the front,
from the wounded and the blood and the tattle-tale Majors

I know you won’t be jealous to hear
that my husband is no crackerjack doctor
trapped in the khaki hell of meatball surgery
but he has a steady hand, tender bedside manner

Sure, he can’t mix a gut-rot martini straight from the still,
let alone toss it back in one easy swallow,
but he makes me laugh like you always have,
until I’m ready for triage:
face in need of sutures, belly of bandaging
(And he does it without a laughtrack)

Furthermore, I’m confident he won’t junk me
for some bombshell nurse
And I could never be as certain with you –
lanky you, with that rakish cowboy hat,
that rightous talent and appetite for women
How could I trust your squint-eyed grin?

And if this news dissapoints you,
please know I’ll never forget
your stories of Crabapple Cove,
those hijinks in the Swamp,
And that time – do you remember? –
you were so brave and handsome,
cavalier and cracking wise in your unbuckled helmet,
it’s the standard by which I’ve measured all other men

Love, always.

Loft: Wood Stove

Siren traffic crow
sound through the chimney to the open stove
where the coal tinkles like chips of glass

Soot leaves black marks
my arms reach into the dark mouth again
rearrange, empty a little breath from my lungs

Flames whoosh, the street creeps
down the black stove pipe
sounds small as a figurine screaming

Tinkle wail the flame dies out
soot rubs off ash turns white
a little water takes the marks off

Falling in Love/The Walls

I fell in love with a brick wall
yellow, Victorian,
his beard drooping and dragging
in Humpty Dumpty’s failed yolk
at his feet. He loved me because
I was not disgusted. I fell in love
with a concrete block
the kind they build walls out of
tougher than brick but prematurely grey.
She loved me because of my hard head.
I fell in love with a bulldozer whose
gargantuan nose eclipsed her gargantuan eyes.
She did not love me
she was jealous.
I am chained.

Under Canvas

"May 4th As we neared Clarke's Crossing this afternoon, "B" and "D" Companies were much disappointed to receive orders to remain there and guard the supplies assembled at that point, while "A" and "C" were to proceed down the river and join Middleton at the front...we landed at Clarke's and went under canvas as cheerfully as possible

12 days of drilling every year
on a city field - does this a soldier make?
One of the wounded from Fish Creek
told me how that night, sleet turned to slush

huddled against the weather, groans
of wounded and those who had barged
across the river near the end without
coats or gear - how he wished for a house. This morning

in my tent as I wait for dawn to come
I am chilled to my soul. Birds
call as if they are the only
way to summon the sun.
My hands are as cold as the barrel of my gun.

* * *
Mistahimaskwa Frog Lake, massacre of nine

Nine men were killed at Frog Lake to feed hundreds and it was called a Massacre.
Eight men were hung at Fort Battleford to appease the white man, and it was called Justice.

On the second of April, we begged Thomas Quinn
food for our starving. We were all winter-thin.
The treaties we'd signed promised in times
of pestilence and famine we'd be given relief.

If the Queen was a liar, Quinn was a thief.

He turned us like lamed rabbits to a wolf, sent us home empty-handed
Banished back to the bush, some turned to the landed
Who'd profited from all that we'd given away
Our children were dying - what could I say?

Quinn even refused us our regular rations
Hungry mothers, pregnant women, small children - our passions
for our loved ones was stronger than hunger or fear.
Wandering Spirit saw only one path draw clear.

He gave Quinn four warnings to leave Frog Lake.
Of those four it was only the fifth he would take
Written clear on a bullet. More men filled with lead
- I ran to them shouting "stop" - but nine men lay dead.

My men ceased that day, and without blood burnt the Fort.
Saved briefly from famine, I feared our reward
would not be long-lived. For I had no delusion:
While treaties were idle promises, not so retribution.

As I think on this time I am two years in prison
With one year of life left, if unmistaken my vision.

Both Big Bear and Poundmaker believed in passive resistance and holding out in hope for the treaty promises to be kept. Big Bear had, in fact, held off signing the treaties for six years because of their unfavorable terms, but had finally signed on three years before 1885, to promises that his people would be fed. That winter their bands were starving, and when they heard of the Métis defeating the RCMP at Duck Lake, some of Big Bear's men decided it was worth risking their own lives in order to obtain food for their hungry, when Big Bear's pleadings fell once again on deaf ears.

Remembering My Color

Maroon sits darker in my head
than red, that mere beginning of blood

but not the darker shade it wears
when spilled or smeared

off sharp blades
or dried

onto smooth clean surfaces
reflecting operating lights.

Maroon seems just the right
mix of lead and air to paint

curves inside a hollowed cavern
left with only half its load.

Maroon is browned crimson
changed by exposure –

outside air never intended
to touch the soft recesses

of factory flesh where
so much work and chaos

tremble beneath maroon wounds.

(two)

she forms semi-scissions
with a three inch nail
across her thighs
..........lets out a sigh
of salvation
before the tears arrive
.
..........jesus watches on, a
chamfered hand dangling at his side

Lockdown

Lockdown

I bad-girl escaped
my building before the lockdown
expecting to return to a world of quieter, humbler people
people too cowed by authority to boldly take
a two-hour lunch just to not crawl under a desk.
I and my friend in the next cubicle, slyly
winking as we shuffled toward the bus-stop,
A cold day in May. Buddhist restaurant. Lingering downtown
over baby soaps and camera batteries, just to make sure.

Of course we are punished for our escapade:
lockdown postponed. Technical difficulties.
Let’s all work out the kinks in our plans
before the gunman arrives: mine is to make peace
with my inner teenager, the one refusing
public safety and a proper coat too.

Bree

Good manners make good neighbors. What they say
is true: you can't resist my berry jam,
my lemon pie, my slow-cooked ham, displays
of books that feature Mrs. Van de Kamp.
I fold in two, in four, I bake, I tuck,
I dollop, crimp, and glaze, I darn, I baste,
I roast, ah-ha, you see, I glow with duck,
with glee I goose, I host, cerise flambe!
Now neatly cover up the past and scrub
those dirty memories clean. My Orson, best
in polo's, vests, and well-pressed pants, he loves
to keep things tidy. Me, I never rest,
perfection never blinks. All guilt's a sieve
it draws refined those sins we can't forgive.

Named


I still don’t know why I laughed all those years ago
when you told me what your last name had been
until age eight when your parents split

Maybe because it lacked the snug precision
of the one I’ve always seen you in –
your name now a perfect black t-shirt and jeans
While the other seemed tweed-scratch
and bulky, musty with old country
Before I knew the man who brought it to Canada, at 18,
buzzed with the thrill of typing it under a newspaper headline
Who gave it to you, your brother and sister,
never guessing it wouldn’t take root in the new world

After you’d moved and everything settled
you got to make the choice: keep or change
Too young for loyalties, you just liked the tough snap sound
And your mom baked a cake, updated her records with a red pen

When the time came, you knew you couldn’t ask me
to abandon the name I’ve always known
But I never told you I was tempted or that, even now,
like a junior high girl practicing some future signature,
I test its delicious weight on my tongue

A Soldier's Duty

Monday, 4th May This morning we passed Saskatoon, where we saw several of the men who had been wounded at Fish Creek. The sight of these brave fellows appeared to fire our fellows with redoubled ardour to reach the front...we had all been expecting to be in the thick of things in a day or two, and here we are cast ashore on a barren prairie...A soldier's duty, however, is to obey

And like Gospel Thomas I can put my finger in their wounds
This war is real. So close to the front, seems I'll be left to guard:
not fight. More of the drills
I've done since I was 13. My glory: to keep safe the horse feed.

At least I tread ground again. No more
puddle-hopping in that sand-clogged
tributary. Wind blew colder
off that water. The very air is hostile.

Middleton called Fish Creek victory
- 43 wounded, 10 dead -
no bodies left behind of the Métis.
Still, point is: they fled.

* * *

La bataille de la coulée des Tourond

What we lacked in numbers
Surely we made up in force:
We shot the fur cap off Middleton's head
and a bullet grazed his horse

Just so, the very thing we were trying to save:
Our long lots to the river. What they called Fish Creek
We called Little Beaver River: the army's only way across, ma coulée.

Still in my heart I see my boys, scratching in the dirt with Gabriel
Where best to take cover. I hid my tears in what little I could pack.
Slapped the cows out of the barn like I was banishing every hidden fear.

We joined the others at Batoche, digging at our
riverbank caves, nails black with the clay. Every
sandy root was my own heart, the veins

gripping desperately to the soil we'd claimed, what claimed us,
held us all here. Tangling past the wildgrass, prairie roots sink deep: needful
in these winds, these winters. The summer sun we might not see.

So. The English Scouts saw fresh tracks. Surprise lost,
only marksmanship left. That night my youngest son
Wincing at a tear said he'd pretended they were jacketed deer.

We turned them back with their fallen. One of Dumont's nephews wounded, one dead.
The guilty relief and sorrow of my arms around
Marguerite, wife of dead Jose Vermette.

These are the numbers the women
count: nine husbands gone since March
Forty-three children left fatherless.

And we left off our caves to dig different holes.
Caves to save, hollows to hold, always leftover earth: inside
a yawing pit never filled.

Hello.

I'm back to participate in my second year of the May Day Poetry Project. I look forward to writing new work for this blog in the coming weeks.

My first book, To End a Conversation, came out with Thistledown in 2008. And I am finishing up a long poem manuscript called Tigers.

Happy writing!

Waking From a Late Nap

The evening scent unfurls
blue banks of iris,
sharp green cut grass
and almost black
charring burgers.

Spring dreams slide away
with the neighbors’ cat

jumping on my bed
then out the back door.

Clouds still rain-full
shift into darkness
dotted with streetlights,

distant traffic lullabies
sing their way through
new-leafed sweet gums,

while peonies prepare
their pink explosions
for morning.

Introduction / 35: Intimacies

This is my first May Day Project. I missed actual May Day yesterday due to technical difficulties, but here I am, sitting next to the baby in a dark bed with my laptop glowing and just having written the following before turning to sleep before finishing the weekend and going back to the office tomorrow.

I cut and pasted from Word which is apparently why all the extra line breaks, which are not supposed to be there. -- Karen (K.I. Press)

35: Intimacies

As sweet as it comes—

chocolate when the baby sleeps.

Smells of memory.

Hits you at the back of the throat when you think you’ve forgotten.

Some hopeful old creep on the phone wants

to trade your wallet for your panties.

Those were the days—weren’t they?

Wireless, across rooms, across houses, across fathoms,

eons--eons necessitating overrated face creams and

complicated mucus measuring techniques assisting

in the impregnation of she-whales, whose mates' twelve-foot mobile

whale wangs, once the stuff of sea monsters,

are narrated calmly by Sir David Attenborough.

A pungent nip before bed, or a cup of warm milk?

Speaking of, the restless daughter

needs a nip or two herself,

as even whale babies do in their mammalian glory.

Mutually, hormonally, narcotically,

on the street to sleepland,

the scene, a bed of mystery infant dreams and sleep so very well deserved while daddy

relaxes shooting something with his keyboard.

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.

Istanbul

For A.P.V.


She sautés potatoes in coats
the colour of, she imagines,
wet Turkish sand, spreads cheese
on apples in anticipation
of weeks of only feta
from the Istanbul market. As she waits
for the brunch guests, the word Tuesday
sings through her head, in tune
with the kettle, the dove
perched on the fence. A packing list
of the familiar: the orange kitchen,
the varnished bulk of serving dishes,
the fretful bark of her father's dog
at the crunching gravel in the driveway
as they arrive to see her off, to eat,
to take her aside in the kitchen for a hug
and an everything will be different now,
which becomes the new chorus in her head on Tuesday
as her plane rushes forward into sky.

Four months. Four
months of emails
instead of dinners
out, but here she is,
feet in a sea
blue as her mother's
pottery, tasting
of saltwater and sticky
dates, his mouth
at her ear, his arms
at her waist, stronger
than the compass-pull
of her northern home.
Istanbul has released
him and now
they drift across the continent,
the only familiar thing
his body, the only familiar
sound the rattle of their next train.

hidden (one)

she hides the broken jesus
beneath the crisply cleaned sheets
before
she answers his knock
.there is no redemption when
he is there to caress her sins
away
........tuck and patti play
to the symphony of
rules expunged, ephemeral
pleasures paid for
after he is gone

The Visit

[this is one section of a longer poem]

From the penthouse restaurant we watch

the city disappear. Falling snow

smudges streetlights, rubs away

outlines of shops, gas stations, cars

crossing the bridge— blurry lumps

of movement. This isn't the view we came for.

Next morning, silence. Snow's hip-deep on sidewalks.

City's quieter than a small town on a Sunday.

Later, after breakfast, a sound: some guy buzzing his snowmobile

down the streets, just because he can. Radio talks of nothing

but the storm. We turn it off, finally, and go out, our boots labouring

through drifts. Each footfall, each breath, leaves a sharp outline

in the still air. We leave the neighbourhood and walk

down the middle of Pembina Highway, alone.

Hello in May

I am rather late in posting - so much to catch up with already! This is my second year, and I am very glad to be back. No particular plans for this month aside from writing as much as possible.

Sapphire 2

Sapphire's blue body suspends-

like one of those vaudeville tricks

men used to watch from velvet seats

when the city was newly stolen;

there are no wires in this act,

only breath

less-ness

as Sapphire waits for digital

word, or a call filled with echo,

or the hard knocked door

at midnight by the boys in green

who roll quietly up her street;

Sapphire's body suspends blue

air-less,

because her man

(one of the old-fashioned kind)

father to her two girls

sleeps but does not sleep,

eats but does not eat,

cries but does not cry,

far away in a thankless land.

Rehash


The movie scene: two old men
smoking on a park bench
pokes shadows of memory
And I try again to explain déjà vu to you
without saying this conversation is an example
because I know you won’t laugh

Too bewildered by the illogical,
its unnerving presence in your home,
you – who can answer any question
instantly yes or no –
tell me I must have seen the clip
before

There’s no point describing the eerie echo
and the wash of vague recognition
becomes just another of the things I know
and you won’t believe
on scientific principle
An addition to the dowry
of mysterious truths I’ve brought to you:
how to get blood out of a white t-shirt,
how long meat keeps in the fridge,
how to sew a button,
how magic can flicker, unbidden,
through the brain


(Marika, I liked your button-sewing poem so much I had to have one of my own. Thanks for the inspiration!)

Gabrielle

It's true, y'know, 'bout Prada, stretches thin
like "yeah-yeah" sunsets, fades in creases, sags -
it's overrated. Shopping discount bins
is painless (all my bling on payment), snag
those wheelchair spaces. What? My husband's blind
okay? Don't ask me how it happened! Some
freak accident! So what, we're poor, it's fine!
I used to screw the gardener (yeah, so dumb),
but Carlos never showed me that he cared.
The second time he married me I knew:
his secret offshore bank accounts...we'd share.
Two daughters, one blind husband, bye-bye shoes!
The money split; I stayed when things got tough.
My heart so full: the weight I gained in love.

from Interregnum

10

Emotions ooze like oil spills,

tarring the bird in the cage of our chests.

The river at night is a different oil spill.

Lit from within, houses that line the valley are torches.

I didn’t see the deer.

Dusky light. My heart swerved.

Moving water is always in the present tense.

And we’re stranded on shore.

Saudade.

Saudade.

Sunday Rest

May Day has come and gone on this benighted country with sunshine and solitude...The Colonel read prayers on the scow this morning and again reminded us of home and civilization.

We spend our time dislodging from
sandbars - I am riding a slow-moving tick
- framed by a riverbank thickening
with brush and colour

as if our eyes are what draw the
woods as if even nature seeks refuge
from the bleak plains beyond -

and we are reminded God is on our
side. That might and right
shall prevail.

By the hour Mother's on her usual bench,
gardenias and starched lace.
On the Lord's Day I find myself
in a Godforsaken place.

* * *
May 2nd: Cut Knife Hill Pitikwahanapiwiyin
Jacob-with-the-Long-Hair, an Elder who always rose early
Heard the splash of soldiers in the creek
Four hundred armed men, the clink and clatter
- no animal or wandering spirit
lost in the dawn

Fear, safety: we had gathered
like the buffalo themselves, one tribe.
Waking not to morningsong and the stir of fires:
but two cannons and a Gatling gun firing
on our families

the weight and tangle of collapsing tipi
- surprise of skin and pole on my childsmooth
face

wondering how i'd awoken in a cloudless thunderstorm
at dawn, being pulled free by my mooshum, a
silenced wail from a sister

Skimming flight to the ravines: my father
was one of the group of warriors who charged
the gunfire

our mothers counted children
smothered cries with breasts, splayed hands,
whispers and wide eyes.

Pîhtokahânapiwiyin, him they call Poundmaker
gave us quiet assurance while Fine Day
took position atop the hill
signalling attacks. I,

I brought him water after three hours.
He did not take his eyes from the field.

Our men were swift, fearless
as foxes. From the ravines they would rush
and return like rainwater. Deadly game: we were
wherever they turned their backs.

Their big gun had broken: we gave them
no targets. When they became
a wedge, we crept along the ravines
always drawing closer, a tightening
snare.

My people have always known
the gift, the curse

of invisible

At the end, when they fled, Fine Day
signalled pursuit. Not one of their soldiers
would have held life after that day
but for Pîhtokahânapiwiyin.

"They came for a fight, and found it.
Now let them go."

The greatest of warriors
makes peace, our Elders
say it is so.

Now old myself, I look back on that time
and know we all received less mercy than he gave.

Three years in Stony Mountain Pen: he shouted to the judge
he'd rather be sent that very day
to his grave.

Getting a Hand On Harm

A fist of pain presses firm
into my slit side,
knuckles lodged deep
like a frozen extension
of a lazy punch

waiting for indefinite signals
to unfurl fingers --

Blazing sharp nails bloom to attention,
as if for inspection and
trace florescent nerves alive.

Indiscernible arcs of rainbow sparks,
pulse invisible in the night recesses
of my mutilated cave, sealed

dark as a refrigerator with the door
closed --

wire nerve shelves sagging --

missing flesh chunks removed,
still crying for the connections

dangling
and sparking

unaware of the slick dark incursion.

Just clenching the pain.

Conversations with the Cyclops: Needlework

Even this, simplest of womanly tasks,
eludes me: the union of button and shirt,
needle and thread. I can manage
an embroidery needle, wide-eyed, and thread stiff
with spit to ease it through the signatures
of a book-block, but not the finer work
of cotton. This is the kind of skill you need
in this climate; to survive
you need buttons that stick,
useful skills, a collection of sharp instruments
on a handy shelf
in case you are surprised at home
by a giant roaring through your keyhole
or a man, far from home,
cuffs trailing threads, and a pointed look
when he catches your eye.

Hello!

Hello May Day-ers! I am very pleased to be participating with you.

This is my first year doing the May Day blog. I'm Marika Prokosh, and I've just finished my English BA at the University of Winnipeg. I'm moving to Montreal to do my Masters in Library and Information Studies in August, so you may well be seeing some bookish/moving-related poems from me.

For the past year my main writing project has been a cycle of poems about writing and blindness loosely based on the Cyclops episode from Homer's Odyssey. I'm legally blind, and the cycle is a way for me to articulate the unsaid things about that experience through the Cyclops metaphor. I hadn't planned on blogging them for May Day because they tend to be slow coming and hard to manage, but wouldn't you know, one came today. I don't have any other thematic plans for the rest of the month, but I'm hoping to manage three poems a week. We'll see how it goes!

Hi everyone,

Glad to be back at MayDay this year! For those of you who took part last year, the boxing poems I was working on then are now part of a book that will be released from Anvil this fall. Since I'll be working on editing for that project, I don't expect my output here will be as steady as in years past, but I'll do my best. No particular goals this year, but looking forward to all the reading and writing. Happy times!

Nick’s Inn Good Food


Chocolate milkshake frostfroth
licks the lip of a skyscraper-tall glass
the waitress sets in front of you
(And beside it: a sweating metal cup
that holds the melty rest)

Just like when you’d come here as a kid,
meet your country grandparents –
a Sunday dinner compromise
between farm and city
And I’ve never seen a photo of her
but I imagine your grandmother’s
pale cotton dresses, sturdy purse

We came here too (short drive
from suburbs to outskirts)
bundled into the station wagon
with my sullen sisters
for burgers buried in chili
and my Grandad cracking jokes
with Nick in the kitchen
And grade 6 June,
my broken arm itching in its cast,
just me and my Mom and she said OK
to fries and a milkshake for lunch
But the salt wasn’t as sharp, the shake
not as sweet, withouth the thrill
of guarding plate, straw,
from pilfered bites and sips

Now I sneak fries off your plate
and you swat at me with the greasy fingers,
fierce irritation, of a ten-year-old,
the youngest sibling – defending, defining –
that we both become here

sapphire

J, the camas are in bloom;

mid-Spring bulbs fat, white,

burrow the black earth,

your home of tall Douglas fir

Arbutus groves, red strawberry bark

peeling renewal, a fleshing;

there are stars in long grass

the camas flocked

blue, blue as sapphires of KAF

blue blue as Afghan sky in May

blue blue as her body waiting

for you to come home to her

alive.

Neighbours

It's easy to think
we all want quiet,
we all want peace,
we all want to sink
into that soft bed
for hours, days
even before light has left
the sky for the night.

But it turns out
some of us want noise,
the clash of steel on wood.
Some of us want music,
shaking bodies windows streets.
Some of us want beer,
in cans bottles kegs.
Some of us want laughter,
echoing down the block.
Some of us want magic,
a certainly flow that only comes
deep in the night as we
stay awake until dawn.

Lynette

So cancer found me kneeling by the bed
of roses in my garden - I work hard
to raise 'em just like children. Damn, you bet
I know the meaning of invasion. Yards
and families need a fence around them. So
I guard the borders, watch the exits, keep
a detailed list of things I can't control.
My Tom, he's such a softy, starts to weep
in chemo, just like when the twins were born.
As if this body were unused to wear
and tear! True beauty's baggy, loose, well-worn
with years of wash: I know. I've done my share
of laundry, felt the heat of love's machine,
the steady thump of all that's good and clean.

In the house, green walls

Hello fellow poets.

I'm pleased to meet you all, mediated though we are by the internet. Hopefully in time I will have the pleasure of meeting each of you in person.

I have just moved into a new house here in Winnipeg, and am going to be taking the month of May off from all other writing projects in order to sink poetically into my new home. I will post as often as possible, and look forward to reading any comments you might have.

A bit about me... Just ten days ago I launched my first book of poems, titled To Speak. It was a good experience overall, though far more difficult than I expected. Ever since completing in The Writer's Studio at Simon Fraser University in 2005, I have been working toward having a book published. Now that that is done, I am trying to adjust to a new relationship with writing. I hope this month will serve to re-root me in a poetic frame of mind.

thanks for having me,
Michelle.

Hello

Hello from Vancouver. I'm Regan, I finished an MFA at UBC over two years ago, and I have been having trouble finding the time and/or the will to write anything new since I finished that up. I have luck publishing in the little mags from time to time, and I'm now working toward a manuscript civilised enough to take out on the town. (Getting there... )

I've been here for a few of the previous outings, and while I don't post often or comment extensively, I've always managed to get something good out of the process. At the very least, reading everyone else's new work is wonderfully motivating. I'm aiming for one poem a week, and I have no qualms posting fragments. Looking forward to seeing what everyone's got.

Northcote

Wednesday, 22nd April. Left Swift Current at 8 this morning and reached the river at 8 this evening, having halted about two and a half hours for dinner and tea. The trail was in splended condition for marching, but we are all pretty tired and a few of us used up...We boarded the steamer Northcote immediately...We are very crowded and have none too much comfort...Cartwright and I sleep on the snow among the oat sacks with which it is loaded

Dearest: read between the lines,
I am used up and have not seen battle.

We still take time for tea.

The flatness of this place surprised
gave rise to swells like the curves of a woman
now we rest in her valley, swimming upward
to our reward

There is no sight of the enemy.

I sleep on frozen oat sacks and dream of home.
Awaken stiff to find the landscape scarcely
changed. All is flat, even this boat; the paddle
wheel spins and empties hours
and minutes from narrow shelves.

So my life
may be poured out yet, but my greatest complaint
is this: Cartwright snores.

* * *
Duck Lake, a survivor

Since Assiyiwin was shot down, then Isidore
je n'ai pas le coeur
for this war

To shoot a blind Elder with
a white flag, extending his arm
in peace: there is death, and there's dishonour.

These two await us all. Riel rode, praying;
Laframboise went down beside him.
Gabriel's scalp grazed, him still shouting orders.

It was my idea. I told Gabriel
we should empty
the hostile merchant larders.

Bloggorous Joy of Poemeticals

Thanks to Ariel for this; I am andie and was here last year, and it was a Very Good Thing. I wrote and commented most days.

I'm well west of Winnipeg but well east of Calgary, and look forward to May.

I have my suspicions on what my poems will be focussing on, and I hope to hear some good news about this project in May; but in case I veer off course (or the news is bad or, worse yet, missing until June) I won't bother saying more.

I probably won't write a lot about: interplanetary communication, tennis rackets, radish stems, or foot fetishes.

But that's only a guess.

I look forward to Mayday, m'aider; and new & old poetic friends.

My body covets
desire — tempts eyes
that travel down plunging
necklines, sweeps across
a skirt’s hem.
Cock-tease, I think,
yet change nothing.
I could look dowdy,
wear matronly elasticized pants
with box-shaped tops.
I am a mother, after all,
yet refuse to cut my hair
in the mandatory mom-bob.
I wear blouses pulled tight
across breasts, shine my lips
with strawberry gloss
meant for girls half my age.

May Day Salute!

Hello fellow poets,

I will be posting poems in a random way from a new collection I am working on. I have yet to get my first collection published, but onward as they say. Looking forward to reading your comments.

Dawn

Hooray hooray for the first of May!

Hello all! One of the inaugural May Day-ers, I've participated in four of the five previous rounds and am ever so happy to be making space for poetry this year after far too long away. Thanks Ariel for pulling this together again.

My creative efforts these days are given mainly to helping others tell their stories (in the media of film and television) so it will be invigorating/challenging to give myself a chance to tell my own short unevenly spaced stories again.

I look forward to reading your creations!

Hello

Hello everyone! Some of you I know; some of you I don't. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Ian LeTourneau. I currently live in Athabasca, AB, with my wife Sherry Coffey and my son Wyatt, but I'll be moving mid-month to Fredericton, NB. I teach English Composition at Athabasca University. My first book, Terminal Moraine, came out with Thistledown in 2008. Before that Gaspereau Press published a chapbook Defining Range. I'm working on a new manuscript right now, called Interregnum, which is almost done except for the title poem, a long poem that will be the centrepiece of the book. So I hope to post a few times a week with drafts. And I look forward to reading all your work and commenting. Happy writing!

Right now I'm reading Jim Harrison's memoir Off to the Side: it's a fascinating, well-written book.

hurray for may!

hey poets,

just a little note to say how pleased i am to be here! my plan is to use this space as a daily exercise in mandatory productivity. most of my poems will likely come from a new series i'm working on that focuses on the lives of the main characters in ABC's Desperate Housewives. yes, you read that right, Desperate Housewives! so unless i get sick of traipsing through the online archive of DH (unlikely), ya'll will see a lot of the women of Wysteria Lane.

a little bit about me...i am one spanish class away from finishing my BA in english lit. this fall i will be moving to the Tdot to become a master of english literature at the UofT. my poetry has recently appeared in CV2 and is forthcoming in Room Magazine. when i'm not watching, or writing poems about Desperate Housewives, i'll be studying spanish and/or working on my novel-in-progress, which, unfortunately does not take place in spain or any other spanish-speaking country.

Salut ]

The year between has found my creativity in need of different borders. I have had to sacrifice art for life if that makes sense (I’m not at all sure that it does, really.). And so my spirit is dry of, and starving for, ImagInatIon juice.

Here I am then, back at the page for my third May Day, hoping for a flood!

Vous pouvez m’aider, chers ami(e)s?

O May O May Day O May

I thought I was done. but here I write. again.

letters. letters. letters. to you.

o flight over red desert. o shiny white sun.

o black Kuchi tents.

o dust devils beneath my whirly bird.

o recce sitting so gorgeous

on the end of my bed

helping strap my helmet, my frag,

my ballistics on.

urging me to fly deep into country,

he'd just strolled in from.

deep into you, beloved,

o blue fault, o folded earth,

Afghanistan.

May Day-ing Again

Hey all,

I'm sorry that I've been so slow in getting going this year. But I'm here now and apparently we're all meant to write/post starting tomorrow...heh.

It should go without saying that I look forward to our fleeing little community, now that we're six years in.

But to those of you returning this year, welcome back! And to those poets joining May Day for the first time, double and triple welcome!

My writing/posting goal for this month is 3/4 poems a week. Said goal might be jettisoned when I launch my book next week. Or when I'm at the Canadian Mennonite University the week after that, doing the poetry section of their School of Writing with Barbara Nickel.

But I'm oh so glad to be back here. I've got a manuscript I need to jumpstart after months and months away...

For those of you not already firmly acquainted, here's my official bio:

Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg-based writer whose poetry has recently appeared in print, on-line, and even circulated on buses in Manitoba and Alberta. She recently won the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer at the 2010 Manitoba Book Awards. Hump (Palimpsest Press, 2010), her first full collection of poetry, will be launched May 5 at McNally Robinson Booksellers.

I'm looking forward to finding a voice for the events of this past year. Writing has stalled completly and cancer has swept my family like an invasion. One sister dead and two of us left without a kidney. Two sisters spared. All on high alert. Life is trying to declare it's fragility and uncertainty. Poetry remains.