The thirteenth day of May

The Writers’ Retreat: Arnes, MB.

1.

Bad enough that you’re cycling three inches
from the sand at the side of the highway
that could topple you
that you won’t know whether the vacationers
will give you a wide enough berth
that you won’t know
until they are past
bad enough that it spits rain
your shirt blowing open
your glasses speckled
and your sleeves sodden
bad enough that you’re panting
under the moan of wind the murmur of metal
going a hundred kilometers an hour
but then you see the animal
half in and out of traffic
its head driven flat
the other half haring off in the other direction
daring you to hazard a guess
cat?
rabbit?

Bad enough that it is worse going back
the wind higher
and against you now
bad enough that you can feel the wet
drip from your chin
to your neck
down
but you have come all this way for water
the taps full of softener
and you with a bike and a stretch of highway
if you want to wet
your throat
bad enough that you’re forced to grind
along this grid
north south city country near far
slow enough that you see
the frog as you flatten it
and further still the moth
and then destination in sight
going slow enough now
that someone sitting behind you
could collect mouthfuls
of sharp quartz teeth from the ground
you are stuck by
the lightening bolt
the twitch across the territories
of your back
and whether or not you’re ready
to stop
you’re stopped

2.

Bad enough that it’s all you can do
after
to dismount swing one leg over
and hobble the last hundred meters
bad enough that your back
is a seized thing
that like a frog in a fingered cage
the pain tries to find its way out
spreading across the long muscles
of your back
but you’re bewildered
because these things happen to your parents
but you’re young
still able to spring
into action when you need to
but maybe for now you will coil
bunch
wish for the painkillers
in their packets
at the store

Bad enough that you are in a cabin
at the edge of town that the only buzz
you hear is the bugs
that swarm your warm head
like bad ideas
bad enough that you can hardly bear
the hum of the computer
the flatness of all these pages
but two rainy days
after your back seized
when it was all you could do
to lever yourself out of bed
you are almost out
of water

Penalties

I lay in bed alone
listen to the baby cry
you've got four more
games on the road
six more seasons to play
Two minutes for sticking

I lean over to touch
that soft spot on your neck
right below the V
your hair makes
sweaty now and a bruise just starting
you shrug me off
Two minutes for holding

The girls in short black skirts
stand outside on the corner
while I wait for you
in the white Esplanade
I can barely climb into
Two minutes for hooking

I hover with the crowd
outside the dressing room
wait until the small boys
seeking autographs
wander back home
and the hotdog vendors'
squeaky wheels fade away
Two minutes for checking

Out late
I wait up
too many questions
next morning I plaster
the hole in the wall
Four minutes for roughing

No time for a two minute warning
Last minute of play
in the final period
na na na na
hey hey aay
good bye

night haiku

dark and the window
is open the window is
letting the dark in

Homewrecker

Between them my parents
have six or seven marriages
depending how you count

But only one stepmother
was known as the homewrecker

A living cliche
young, blonde, dumb nurse
who changed a perfectly civil
separation
into a full-blown divorce

My mother questioned us
about hand-rolled cigarettes
asked us to count bottles of wine
tell her how often the sheets were changed
demonstrated clearly
screaming on his lawn one night
that living three blocks apart
while convenient For the Children
was not going to work

Kricket didn't like kids
but she liked steak
and expensive get-aways
and wearing running outfits
and pyjamas in public

She didn't get jokes
but she got backrubs
and presents
that used to be for us

Kricket was the reason given
for why we had to move
why we weren't allowed to visit
for too long
why we had to pretend
to be something other than teenagers

When she was cast aside
in her turn ten years later
for a kinder, gentler model
who didn't laugh nearly as much
or as loudly
we didn't stay in touch

I wonder what became of her
if she latched on
to another doctor
or maybe a salesman
someone to take her to conventions

I like to think she shacked up
with girlfriends
opened her own business
I might wander into one day
looking for a hat
or a pale blue velour track suit
I could wear to a formal function

my bones so

smashing
my toe

into the door
frame my bones

so brittle
they break

o it may not be
broken

but the thought of
my bones

moving under
my skin

breaking
breaks me

inside
things

i cannot
see can

not predict
accidents

sudden
walking then

falling / down

The twelfth day of May

1.

Mumsy showed up at my door
two hours late
the turquoise bracelet she bought for me in Mexico
on her first vacation in ten years
tucked in her purse
but instead of wishing me happy birthday
she blurts

The last ingredient is dairy!

and thrusts a banana cream pie
and three cello-wrapped roses
into my hands

She forgot we are not a family
that gives flowers but I’m willing
to stare at her veined hands my own hands
at the sink of my first house stripping away
all the spreading leaves
she forgot that I am hitched to someone
who can’t do dairy but I’m still
willing to break
the seal
on the supermarket pie
and share a piece of its fatty insubstantiality
even though there is no way not
to bite down
on the browning pieces of banana
the homemade crust of Granny’s pie
no way not to taste it
or to forget the rightness of all of us
eating desert in the dim
of her dining room

I say, Granny’s was better -
because we are a family
that likes to remember
what it was like to be a family
and in the second it takes her eyes
to focus
I see that Mumsy had forgotten about Granny’s pies

The banana cream and the blueberry!

she’d scanned the cake cooler in her high-heeled
fluorescent sweep of the supermarket
and this was the only thing
that tempted her
and I’m not sure what’s worse
that she only remembered about you
as she stood at the door
of our first house
or that the last ingredient
in a store-bought banana cream pie
is dairy

2.

As I latched on
the bracelet Mumsy brought me
her cheeks billowed
with tea
I thought how well she looked
her face thinner and still
somehow tanned until she swallowed
and said

I’ll be up to the full dose of my anti-depressant tomorrow!

when I'll be standing
at the sink of my first house
my hands sawing off the chunks of stem
that had already closed themselves off
wondering when I’d learned
how to keep a fistful
of flowers
open
and when I’d forget
all of us shrinking
all of us trimmed down

when life overdrifts poetics with hypofloccemia

or
Just in the Nap of Time

don't you hate those rude interruptions.
you're napping perfectly soundly,
then this guy calls you
with an offer of a
meagre/miserly
$8.25/hr
to start
on a monday yet.
i sure put him in his place.
then this grandmotherly inuit woman
comes along like out of last night's dream & gives
me such a swift kick eye wind up airborne & in siberia,
working six feet under the zastrugi (as the russians
call that kind of snow) as shippereceiver
for a non-swiss family partially
named robinson.
and on a monday yet.
far cry from
my man
friday
gig.
talk about
your snow crash.
never judge a flake-farming
job by its crust, even if the hiro
calls himself protagonist when he's not
the deliverator, taking slices out
of the competition

Paul Friesen-Myassoff
on an Anal-Retentive Case
of Chilled Champagne
and Unduly
Elated

Elm Recollection

As the season’s heat begins
blue hot like the flame tips coming
from the gas cook stove
I remember the outline
of the old elm as it covered
a house where I grew up.
Under the green quilt of it’s shade
we would be movie stars
making up our drama
as the words fell
from our small cherry mouths
all the words rose spent from
each performance
swallowed in the upright mountain of leaves
our house like a toy beneath
it’s greening giant architecture.
The living castle of the yard
always bigger than everything,
always there
until it took a closer look
at mortality, unable to uproot
and outrun the blight
the silent black villain
who murdered our cool
fortress from the sun.

Survivor

I hadn't expected the bruises
though I knew
she'd been in the accident too

When they said she'd walked
away from the crash
I envisioned her out for a stroll
around the lake

But her forehead
a garish headband
purple and blue and yellow
tells the story
of body parts flying
through the air
connecting with windshields
metal car bits
bags of pummelling air

This tough old bird
has cheated death before
plays one more trick
with limited internal organs left
to be injured

My skin is like paper
she complains
and rubbing her hand
I agree
but that's just the bandages
flaking off in my fingers

The women all gather
observe, advise on how to change
the dressing
I look away
but can't miss
how fresh the scars
still are
how the stitches
bind thin skin together
like staples through
a too-thin book

In the morning
she washes her hair
tells us how
small bits of red and black
flake off into the sink
she didn't know at first
what it was
then remembered

dried blood
wounds close, heal
slough off
get washed away
down the drain

The eleventh day of May

My aunt up in northern New Brunswick
who is taking care of the uncle
with early-onset Alzheimer’s
called me out
of the blue
yesterday
from the breakfast table
the one with granny’s armchair bird book
(with the cracked spine they inherited after she went
into the home all those coffee cups
all those cooling cups of coffee
and the element
blazing hot)
within reach on the sill
so she can know what
she’s looking at
to say she'd been thinking
hard
about me

My aunt up in northern New Brunswick
who is taking care of the uncle
with early-onset Alzheimer's
tried to call herself out
of the blues
yesterday
from the breakfast table
the one with my uncle’s old football game binoculars
(with the cracked leather straps seasoned
by all those cool seasons all those cups of beer jostled
in the goddamn
lovely
uproar)
within reach on the sill
so she can know what
she’s looking at
and
she laughed
after she put my uncle on
and he chattered repeating himself
and repeating himself
but sounding happy
with all the territory
all the birded
timbre
of my voice

to dance

It can be explained, but not
easily explained.

Our presence, here, in this world.

The way light
tumbles onto
the pillows

when you smile.
When I ask you
to dance.

The tenth day of May

Renovation poem #2: the ground floor

Start low

Start at ground level
where cars grind in and out of the parking lot
marked by concrete pylons
piled like blocks next to the patchy sand-sown
grass the weeds that thrive
on soot and nothing
like fireweed after a burn
and the blocks that separate busy Logan
from the slowdown slowpoke of this lot
show rebar rust pock marks

Everything here is returning
to its blank slate

See the sign hand-lettered
punctuated by drops of paint
that warned against unpaid parking
how it is caught under a car warped
by this free parking free for all

See how the lines that said
here stop here are dashed now
as the paint lifts from the hot
asphalt like a pie crust
from a too-hot pan

Crouch down

See how the line is overlaid
by outstretched wings hinged
to a spine laid bare follow the line
of leg up into spine the fine fletching
of wing see how the long feathers
are still intact
black
and how little that matters now

On top of the bones there are butts
smoked down so that all that is left
is tar resin and reason
and the threads of a broken jar
some domestic thing
to be opened and put away

See the seeds from the scrub trees
that colonize the horizon
between concrete and brick
between the horizontal
the vertical leaves unfurling
taking sustenance from standing water
and rain-softened dust
from reflected sunlight and ground litter
no soil here

Lie down

Feel the long muscles
in your legs relax your spine
sag as the small of your back
touches down to the ground
see how the long beamsof the building
the lines of shadow
are intact
black
and how little this matters now

More Than A Mint

The spot warm weight of cat
upon my lap reminds me
there is silence
in the way
we talk,

the being still
that comes
after being fed

before both bodies
slide into the still
of completed day.

Caught in that space
between
satisfaction and dreaming
no thoughts arise of
separation, just

the silent warmth
and soft still place
where thighs become a bed

accidentally.

Like a noon shadow
beneath a rose bush,
the dark cat sleeps.

New Relation

At the Wendy's
we find a few blocks away
we share stories
how we've packed living
into short decades

I call him Kid
though he's only 6 years younger
something about the eyes
the jumpy weirdness
the way he sleeps in all day

At first
the comparisons
seem reasonable
states and cities
jobs and parents
classes and movies

but little by little
the differences pull wider
as the pieces come together

when he says
living out of a car
he means it

when he says
he used to snort
it means
he still shoots

when he says
travelling
he means
living on the streets

when he says
he's moving on
gonna go back to school
try something new
it means
he's been kicked out
for the last time

Chapbook, anyone?

Ariel & Polly have approached me about maybe putting together a chapbook of work from this site/project, which is something I happened to be thinking about already. I am just wondering if everyone would be interested in this idea.

What I’m thinking about right now is this: at the end of the month, each poet will look back over what they’ve written & select 4 poems. Then they can have until June 20 to revise these poems & submit them to me along with a bio & a brief write-up on how they enjoyed/hated the experience of working on the project. I’ll do a quick edit/design in July & turn the chapbook out mid-to-late August before I move out of the city (we can set up a launch some day that works for everyone). I’d probably also ask Ariel & Polly to write a quick intro describing the project itself & how it started, etc., if they were interested. Everyone will receive 20 free copies (out of 200).

Sound good? Comments (or other ideas)?

My friends are beginning to die

My fading voice sings of love
—Jeff Buckley, “Grace”


w/ thanks to Norah for the gift of the album


Live at Sin-é you sound at once
as if you are already dead
& as if you will never die.
Even today, years after
you drowned, you sound
confident of your place
in the world & its history.

My friends are beginning to die.
Last year, they were all getting married.
I did not know how to deal with that,
& I do not know how to deal with this.

I think what is most difficult
is that they leave things behind.
I do not mean memories
(though that is a part of it)
but objects.

The door
to Steve’s office.

Marvin’s book
on my shelf, & then later
a province away, on the shelf
of “new books” at the library
where Mandy & I
rented some movies.

Your albums. What should I do
with these things?
Help me. Tell me what
to do. Tell me what

it is like. Am I wrong?
I feel sometimes as if
I am wrong. As if

there is something to
look forward to, or
to fear. You sound

so alive. Your words, their music. You must
be able to help me. Help me.

Your voice persists. You must
be able to speak. You sound

so very alive.

seen from this side of the glass, poker tastes like gin

i think my brain is betraying me
or at least cheating,
stabbing me in the spineless cord
inverte-berating me

jesse says hindsight is 20/20
but only if i remember correctly did
i say yeah
my ass has grown eyes/
i go through a lot of visine/
does this chair look flat to you?

then again we were playing big blind little blind
which goes a long way towards
describing my ability to read people
never mind books
which i do so slowly
i read them in reverse

& the things i don't know
about playing poker flop
into the river of
known unknowns
(let's call it lethe
before i raise it to my lips again)
but it's probably the chips
that leave me with the redwhite&blues
when there's an apb out on my unknown knowns
my brain down on its luck
learning only that the state of lockdown
is called texas hold-em

at the end of the day,
the only stroke of luck
that really amounts to anything
is remembering,
vaguely
saying:
sure i'll have one--
might as well see
how i play when i drink

jumpin' juniper!
i feel like such a pocket rocket
scientist, so powerful knowing
what to call a pair of aces
(even unsuited)
burning a hole in my lifeline
(unless i'm bluffing &
can't tell my tells
from that
gaping maw in the middle
they call the pit [is it pot?]
either way the centre
cannot fold)

math was never
my best hand over fist
but i've liquidated my losses
like so much courage
flinging them like four champing bits
to the cardinal points on which pneumonics
devise their hooks unless that's
the vorti-cul d'amnesiac
my house of cards is built on

because i've still
got my verbetrade & my alfibbet --
with betrayal-for-brains
& a headcold in the folds
it doesn't matter what i think

Pondering Sorrell

It will take over the bed,
choke the other plants
and make you rue the day—
Wait, isn’t rue another herb?

Never mind. Sorrell. It bears
watching and turns algae brown
when cooked but then makes fish
into heaven with a bit of butter

Seasoned with the vibrant green
delight. It’s French, so that makes
it culinary gold -- and patriotic cur
if I leaned that way—

But who will dislike the eternal
influence of cooks
pulling greens
from dew-soaked dirt to make
salads, soups and all manner of
stuffs to stuff into our mouths?
I will defend my right to plant
sorrel and keep a watchful eye,
soup ladle in one hand, sharp
shears in the other.

Shovel pruning is not the resort
solely of rosarians.
Good cooks require courage.
And abundance

5-9-05

Not Home Brewed

A day away the coffee is commercial,
only here because I’ve got the cash—
weak as morning without you
trying for a taste that waits hidden
only in the beans you grind—

garage band loud love song.
You crash
the tar brown beans, releasing joy—

what you want to give me again
the lure of another day dripping
in your machine music as I write.

You turn
and shape trees,
coffee-making not your only art,

but just the one I miss
when the mug I lift to my faraway lips
holds only some suggestion
of the cinnamon-kissed communion
we share.

This fake creamer coffee needs
the sweet tongue taste,
that exotic tree bark spice
to carry my mouth home to you.

Holding the cup close to my face
I inhale long, nose searching.

It’s just
as good as the cook
can muster,
someone’s best.
No doubt in my heart.

But it’s
just wrong.

5-8-05

The ninth day of May

Time weighs on him like wet clothes
as he wades into the current of conversation
into the conversion of youth to age his face molded
and folded around language age finding and leaving him

water water water water water

that's all there is

he says

I know

she says

as he stands over her
tugs at her arm so this can be something asked
and answered instead of only the running
monologue of disease


Friends and family visit and revisit
the question with raised eyebrows but don't ask
because it is easier to make your way down
to the heaving dock with its cross currents
and cross purposes and watch as rocks
break free of waves for long moments and learn
again about moment by moment victories
like when he takes her hand
like when he strokes her face
and calls her sweetheart


But what about the defeats when he goes
dumb staring shy is it easier to pick
your way between shoals of dead
and dying mayflies down to the dock

water water water water water

that's all there is

he says

is it easier to sit at the edge and let
the dock move you removing
the idea of control


There is no way to know which wave will come
but even so they will break and you might break
but not just yet and you could still drop
off the edge
there is still that

I know

she says