Thanks, Poets!

Thanks everyone, for creating another interesting, beautiful month of poetry!

And thanks for the feedback on my poems - I look forward to going back and digging into several of them.

Best,
Polly

Under Construction

After the wear and tear of the years
I thought I had to start from scratch
bulldoze, leave nothing from before,
rebuild brick by brick

But when those first
destructive urges passed,
I looked around, checked
found the structure still sound
the skeleton strong enough
to hold for a few more decades

So I'm hanging a sign over
my bed, my head:
Under Construction

I'll hate the dust, the ladders
the loud men cracking jokes
spilling coffee
drilling holes
dropping dirty cigarette
butts to the floor

But I know in the end
there will be fresh paint
shiny new fixtures
higher ceilings
a certain elegance,
spaciousness, modernity
a sense of class
that will make the whole
project worth while

Names for my unlikely daughter

Contumelia - from Latin for outrage, insult.
She springs screaming from my equally yowling netherlands

Apologia - formal defense, justification,
especially of one's opinions, position, or actions.
Greek for "story"
Isn't this what children are for?
Our final defense and justification to the world,
we did it for the kids?
If not that, then at least a new story can be told.

Obvia - prevent, anticipate, make unnecessary
From Latin ob viam, "in the way"
Have I made her unnecessary,
or will she prove me wrong,
asking me to anticipate her instead?

Refragaria - from Latin
"to oppose, to withstand, to thwart."
Which is what I would want her to do,
even to me, especially to me
It is her destiny, after all.

Trise - to pull, to hoist, a pulley
She climbs, I hoist, she pulls,
we become a machine that works together.
or perhaps Trice - an instant; a moment
To remind us both,
that's all we get together in this world.

Apostasia - desertion from one's faith or principles
Greek "standing away from, revolt"
To have her, I will need to depart the church of childfree,
but I would teach her to revolt, to stand on her own two legs,
three if she's got 'em.

Prolix - unnecessarily long; wordy.
Latin "pour forth"
She will flow from me
and words of all kinds will flow from us both
as we figure out what we want from each other
and she experiments with how to get it.

Tervagant - boisterous, brawling, turbulent person
A Muslim diety portrayed in medieval morality plays
eventually referring only to women.
A small tornado to wrestle with
for a few decades,
longer if she'll have me.

My last

...post. And you'll be surprised to see it really has nothing to do with Yves, although I was trying--the poem just didn't conform. It's been a pleasure writing/working with everyone again in MayDay--I've found the experience fantastic. I hope people share the good news on any excitement involving the poetry. Thank you for your feedback/thoughts on my poems and good luck to everyone in everything.




SPEAKING ILL OF THE DEAD

1.

It’s a misread, an accident
that should have read “will”

the mistake of an aging single
aunt, a spinster they wrongly used

to say, as she speaks her living
into the tape recorder found

at a flea market for a dollar.
She will eventually hire someone

to revive her wishes, a friend’s
daughter’s boyfriend, the wanna-be

director, to film what she is unable
to figure out, her testament

to the process knowing full well
this isn’t the academy awards

nor is it high art (perhaps
in some French foreign

abstract way), but she wears
her store-bought blue

while posing on satin sheets
the bed a staleness

of occasion tightly bound
by the bone-bumped wrist

that grazes the pillow
of what she wills—

which is nothing
to the unseen, always ungrateful

family, and everything
to her neighbour.




2.

The neighbour knows
nothing about the aunt

except the laundry aired
daily on the rusted metal tree

the inside out hanging in long
underwear, the black gartered

slip, finely patterned cotton
dresses tracking days beside

pale silk stockings unsnagged
by any rough-palmed hand—

and rows of bras hold
only each other, silently sway

whipped by wind’s weekly
worry and high-waisted

hopes pinned in the past’s
determination to endure.



3.

Sometimes we all get the wrong
idea. A cloud that curls

in front of our eyes, the sold sign
hammered in before the sale. The white

wake widening before we notice
what we leave behind. And mis-

understanding the aunt asks, what will
save us?

twelve

You were my time piece,
one hand on my shoulder, the other
rooting around
in my shirt. Even half asleep
your third eye was always on the clock.
A year in, you're still a stickler:
just enough time to shower, just enough
to eat so I can feed
you again: Tick
tock, mummy. Tick tock.

eleven

A year in

They say Winnipeg only has two seasons:
winter and construction. They say
you can only count on death and taxes
except I sum-totaled the toes
curled in passive recognition
around my sun-tanned fingers
too many times
to count.

But that’s old news. A year in, the fusty raisin
rattle from the change table drawer
is the only figment
of the stretch between birth
and afterbirth. You no longer upholster
my middle-of-the-night with sharp
screams, preferring to cut teeth
on the flesh of my day-to-day
my twilight
my early evening longing
for unencumbered certainty.

They said to wake you if you slept
through the night. They said
you shouldn’t sleep in our bed. They said
you would never get to sleep
if we babied you
but today your face was luscious
in sleep but today when you waited
for the man that curled
around you, careful comma,
before lurching across the room
I shed all
my expectations.

Roche Lake: Fly Fishing

Up late with a bottle, early out on the lake. Loon call
rippling into quiet. Fish jump beside the boat, slap clean
their scales; my brother and I smudged with dirt
and campsmoke watch chronomids rise from the lake bed,
discard their former shell, and woozy, hatch. They swarm
the boat with sound. It’s my first time out—
novelty shines up the rods, the fly box. Supper art
at $4 a pop, a knock-off some sucker will swallow,
thinking it’s real-life.

But the fish are smarter than we think.
Nothing’s biting so we switch to shrimp,
set the bobber at twelve feet after consulting the fish finder,
$150 convenience that replaces what our eyes can see,
our hands measure—watching for colour changes
or dropping a pair of needle nose pliers on fishing line
to garner the depth.

All day out in the boat, filling up the hours.
Nothing to distract us, conversation idles. We change it up,
try a new location, try trolling, try casting.
When to give up, when to try again?
I can’t get into the Zen of it. I strong-arm the rod,
bend my wrist when I’m supposed to keep it straight,
hook myself, hook my brother’s line. Chaplin-style slapstick.
I catch two things all day: a steady pull as my hook
snags lake bottom, a big one I thought
as my line wrapped around the propeller.

Back at camp, we listen for tips: green chronomids,
cinnamon shrimp. How’s the fishing, we ask
then wish we hadn’t. Their ten to our zero
flares even the beginner’s ego.
It’d be easier with worms, spoons,
but skill is what we’re aiming for.
Wanting success, a four pound trout to throw on the grill,
we head back out. Anchor by the reeds.
Cast and cast and cast our intentions.
I can think of nothing worthy to offer
in exchange for it’s one life
and so catch nothing.


------
I've been sitting on this all week trying to make it hatch. Still wrestling with the themes, but thought I'd share it. Sorry I haven't been commenting much. I have been reading and enjoying the poems though.

Last Friday in May

A Leap into the Void

It’s only that our lives
are busy, our hands
plunged in painted

portraits, portions
portioned by
sky’s middle, parallel

pasts, our fingers full
in fact so much so
that we forget

to be thankful for
such finely
featured faces.

Copies

He takes them
but doesn't believe her

She could have taken them anytime
to that shop down the street
that sells nuts and bolts
and copies keys

She could have a set stowed away
in these bags she's taking
held together by a piece of yarn
or a garbage bag tie
or even slipped onto that new ring
of keys she carries around

She could come back one night
jump on a bus or drive back the car
unlock the door while he's sleeping
and slip in beside him
as if she never left

Yves Eyes

Yesterday night, Wednesday, we went into an abstract café… the abstractionists were there. They are easy to recognize because they give off an atmosphere of abstract painting, plus you see their paintings in their eyes. Maybe I’m delirious, but I have the impression I see things like that. In any event, we sat down with them. Then we began speaking of the book Yves Peintures. Later, I went to get it from the car and I laid it down on the table. At the very first few pages the abstractionists’ eyes began to change. Their eyes lit up and in the depths, pure, beautiful single colors appeared.

Paris newspaper, dated January 13, 1955






What did I know? At the time
I was certain that Yves eyes

were brown, not earth’s honeyed hue
exposed by wind, or the chocolate

of cocoa, or blurred like weakened
coffee, but a tender doubled tint—

morning’s shady past slowly
edged in dew’s damp linens,

the shyness of water’s soft fall,
light’s luminal glance

as day’s electricity turned first
on then off. Isn’t absence

what is most real? Someone
dreams a beginning, the impossible

burst of orange— one framed
wooden window. The sky

beyond is not simply scarred by birds,
or cumbersome clouds

seam-ripped by motorized machines
but faked by fingers that study

the blue. And blue,
someone says, is the great trick—

a kind of universal masturbation,
where the hand is always eager

to grasp what it sees.

ten

The city at night
is a tinkling bracelet
of sirens

Long Weekend

Cars double-park on every block
We drag our bags down the steps
throw them in trunks, drive off laughing

We've packed our hopes for the summer
into this long weekend

We bring shorts to run around in
and a suit for water so inviting
we have to dive in
even though it still harbours
strong memories of ice

We take care to bring fleece
just in case the nights
are not quite as warm
as we've dreamed of
all winter long


Here are two poems from the last few days at the Lake - a couple more tomorrow...

Deaths of Trees

Some trees rot at the roots
fungus grows deep down among
their twenty toes
with nothing to stand on
they topple over

Other trees suffer the indignity
of having their skin scraped bare
by humans, boars, elephant tusks
too exposed to the world
they die of embarrassment

Some are hit by lightening
without warning in the night
a flash of pain slashed in two
smoldering black cauterized agony
they are too traumatized to live

Others see the fire coming
from miles away, watch
their sisters extinguish,
immobilized mesmerized
they are consumed

In some parts, a genocide takes
out a mountainside in a summer
men with their machines,
merciless blades slice unstoppable,
they are sent up the river

But this grandma tree
decades of holes sheltering
birds and small furry creatures,
doesn't fight off the scaly moss
bent and warped from
years of wind-battle
still her sparse branches
put out green leaves
each spring

so long

uncertain


from the end of the driveway
we watch a slow shooting star
just beyond the stretch
of our fingers, until it becomes
the low glide of a gull, tiny spark
in an uncertain night



Hey all,
This will be my last poem for a while; I'm taking a week of holidays (actual away holidays, not a just a may day holiday). Happy long weekends to one and all!

k.

Garage Sale

for J


I love her hunched over coffee, pen in hand.
Up at eight to circle ads, she plots our route
while I’m still in bed. Saturday morning
spent in musty garages eying stranger’s
stickered history: hockey skates worn
half a season $10, all manner of racquets $2,
board games with missing pieces
and Robert Ludlum novels 25 cents. Junk, mostly,
but we both know treasure when we find it:
old tins, apple boxes at bargain prices.
She knows there’s a story in every object
and takes the time to ask. That was my grandfather’s axe.
She has the patience I lack, sees the potential
in everything. A rusted ten speed
for five bucks, that she’ll sand and repaint.
I love her hunched over the spokes
polishing with a toothbrush.

The Fundamentalist

Decides today he doesn’t want to be
a painter, raises his salon-blackened brows

to the ceiling’s lumbered frame,
thickens his canvas with water,

while judo-trained knees muscle-
crunch complaints about the foot’s

certain speed when he rushes to draw
a torch from the closet

filled with tobacco tucked in tins—
(in 365 days he smokes

so much that the lip-
dropped ash is enough

to build an Eiffel Tower,
or two). He understands fire

makes the body suffer. The flame
aimed at the morning’s

passing attempt of work,
seared hours singed simply

by the tense tilting
hand. And the sun’s surface

is not nearly as warm as a painter’s
forehead when he’s thinking.

speechless


you didn’t know what to say
that impossible winter –
cold hardening lungs and limbs,
steering columns and shoe soles,
but hardly registering with me except
that some days it was the only thing
i could think to tell my dad
as i balanced on the lip of the visitor’s chair
another cold one out there
and stole warmth from his hands,
crackers from his dinner tray

you chipped ice from our sidewalk,
nudged up the thermostat a degree
and stood each evening
at the living room window
to watch for my frozen breath
unlocking the door just so
i wouldn’t have to
take off my mittens

you turned off every hockey game
to sit on the chesterfield, hoping
with me the phone wouldn’t ring

you made sure the car was plugged in,
alarm set, milk and fruit in the fridge
so there’d be an orange for me
to take as offering, to occupy my dad’s hands
as i poured weak tea into styrofoam cups,
to zest-freshen the hospital room
and fill the minutes’ slow circular shuffling
with wiping fingers on a paper napkin

you packed a sandwich
for my dad that he spoke of – still does –
as if ham and bread were a miracle ,
and gathered just the right type
of newsy, ironic stories particular to men
and this climate – cars and cold misfortune –
that triggered a lift in his eyebrows,
reminiscing and remember-when

you gave me all the heat saved
up in your chest as you waited
with me for sleep, for spring,
for illness to finally thaw
with the season


A couple of questions here, if anyone has a minute... is the order of stanzas/information confusing? Ending too neat 'n tidy? Is it clear that all the "you" parts and "he" parts are happening in different locations?

k.

Junk Drawer

Crammed with rubber bands, sandpaper,
bent nails, loose change—a sanctuary
for the would-be-useful in triplicate.
Allen keys, AAA batteries, candle nubs
for waxing sticky drawers. Advocate
for pro-clutter décor, just open
its stuffed maw and toss in.
Dumping ground for twist ties,
and misfit buttons, a home for all
we’re too lazy to sort,
for thingamabobs and doodads
we can’t bear to throw out.

Stuff

I have come
to get my stuff

A friend suggested
it was too much for me,
I should send someone else.
But where do you hire
a person like that?

No, this is the kind of thing
you have to take care of yourself.
There are too many decisions to be made.

papers: do you keep the notes
from you to him or him to you?
Is it time to throw out the valentines
from the boyfriend now twice-removed?
Who cares the most?

files: who's going to copy
the tax returns, and who
keeps the originals?
Who counts the most?

cds: is it worth fighting
over who really owns the
special edition Miles Davis
even though you're perfectly sure
it was a birthday present for you?
Who listened most?

dvds: who gets Casablanca,
do you split up box sets,
what do you do with
the empty cases?
Who sat and watched the most?

photos: do you keep the ones
where you look good,
or leave those for him?
Who will remember the most,
and who will need reminders?

Traveler's Circle

I found another unpacked case
holding clothes
still smelling like the city

the shoreline
and the woods

receipts from assorted cafes
mark my steps
over concrete paths
littered with foreign paper

the tiled Imagine at the edge
of the park gave up photo op
to flash in my slideshow
when my monitor slows

between lines of words
falling out of my head
like purple bullets

splashes of Peruvian lilies
decorating the circle

a pair of fish inked
alongside Chinese characters
supposedly indicating
Good Money

which I have less of now

but dreams of trains
take me up welded tracks
to places where spring
is still budding

not all spent and over green
like this place
the poppies gone to seed
the lavender already heady
in the afternoon heat

a polished clam shell
glows luminous smooth
with a salty link
to steamed mussels
at sunset

the cedar shingles
of artists homes were gray
as rain sky
trimmed in crayon colors
around the doors and windows

almost the shade of tides
coming and going
under the open windows
were we slept

the dogs jumped in and swam
with more joy than fishes
as cats skulked in deflated seaweed
swatting green bladders

and cormorants dived
between lobster buoys
and gulls spread black wings
against the wind

I never figured out why
it blew so hard after dark
as if the sun’s departure
gave air more space
once light was gone

or why the cat wants
to sleep on the shirt
I’ve thrown on the floor
curled like a seashell
whispering with salt air.