Evensong

Good shepherd and sheep glowing red,
jewel colors in the east windows muddied
by glow from revolving lights.
Low voices, a shuffle behind the back pews,
blue uniforms bend over a woman on the floor.
The small crowd of watchers defers, giving room
to the skilled, but poised to fetch water,
clasp a hand, whatever's asked,
faces speaking their helpless concern.
Attendants murmur: can you hear me?
can you speak? Along the nave
the bent heads in rows, the call
and response: Hear us. Deliver us.

Terminal.

Headaches, or a spiralling dizziness. There
will have been an MRI, the diagnosis is so
certain. The specialists have thrown
darts at calendars, given you
a range to work
with.

There is light at the end of the tunnel.
It's a train.

You could bring up sex, politics,
religion. It's the rare person who will meet
your eyes. Some friends disappear altogether,
"to give you privacy at this time." Grave consideration.

There is light at the end,
there is an end.

The sky is the bluest it's been for a week.
How do you prioritize now? Time is no longer
money, if it ever was.
Time is time.

There is light.

after th fall 7

Pero yo digo:

sólo por breve tiempo,

sólo como la flor del elote,

así hemos venido a abrirnos

sobre la tierra.

Miguel León-Portilla

Fleetingly, we, like strands of corn silk, meet, come together, only for a moment—brief, our season—like strands of corn silk on ripening heads of corn in a mountainside field, red earth, red waterfall the strands of silk.

We are the waterfall, la cascada, a billion raindrops made one, if only we can hear this field, the red earth, the sound of feet, the sound of a hand sowing a kernel of corn—each kernel a daydream, an imagination of tall stalks, a season, a tending, a ripening, a reaping, the ritual of corn, the feast.

If only we can see this field, feel this red earth, our eyes open not only to the greatness of mountain, but to the greatness of the single, the tiny—a raindrop clinging to the leaf, a quietude, a star, perfect form within, a star, perfect form within us each.

News

I am quite excited to have just launched a chapbook called Crossings that includes several poems that appeared on May Day in earlier versions: "Saskatoons" from 2009, and "Departure," "Two days and a night," "Ontario," "The Island," and "Repetition" from 2010.

after the fall 6

clara si, clara
clarity

a mountain
a path

a step, one step
I step

up up up
slow

slow, the mountain
stride step

a stick, a broken hand
a rhythm click

a mountain
path

duff, scruff
y soy soy soy

alive from sleep
weeks lost

alive a step
a stride a click

a white
a granite

summit
clara clarity

alive
amigos, ami

alive.

Daylight Nocturne

Curled cat in a soft-bristled porcupine ball.
Grey-splashed noon. Rubinstein on repeat.
Black branches frame porridge-bland skyline
like a negative of midnight.
Last night, the super-moon was obscured by clouds.
Today, an ordinary sun makes the same wan complaint.
Vague as a rolling Chopin bassline in murmuring sixes.
Even sforzando dusk is robbed of glory. Can only deepen
what was foreshadowed sostenuto at noon.
Whisks clatter in the kitchen. As if
there is a recipe to stop the rain.
To un-do the day that has too much fade
to fade away.

we won't visit again

We've lost a few over the years. One lost her hands
fixing a bomb and drowned herself. Two died in battle.
One crushed under a train as we hopped cars,
another shot during a break-in.

But Lois,
Lois was the only one who left on purpose,
who chose domesticity, an urban life, adulthood,
lured by the clatter of keys.

We were marching near Omaha and felt compelled to look her up.
One of us remembered her married name and tracked her down.
The new girl and a few others went shopping for knives, but most
of us crammed into her little kitchen. Sunshine yellow and tomato red.
She baked cookies while we visited and let us cram our bags full when we left.

Lois wore lipstick, but her hair was a mess. She wore a gingham apron
with little embroidered flowers on the corners. Her arms were too skinny
but the rest of her had bloomed into the body of a mother and deflated dough.

No one wanted to hold the baby.

She said she was happy, that she loved her life, her boys, her husband.
She cried when we said good-bye, and when she hugged,
her nails dug in like fishing hooks.

Prelude to nocturne

Salt moon dissolves in stir of afternoon sun.
An east wind surrenders up the tinkling
of shop bells, ice cream bikes.
The backyard is ghosted
by the children who once
lived here. Skipping rope
knotted in branches, plastic
frisbee lost on the shed roof.

Generation

(after hearing "A Prayer to the Dynamo" at the New Music Festival)

The beginning was like this: a deep thrum
to set the earth's foundations,
a heart-hum while laying their cornerstone.
Start of the rotation that would drive the days.
An aurora of sound, the new skies swelling
with almost-light.

There was always a bass line, steady
or pulsating, always the rapid current
of flutes building suspense.
String glissando repeated, repeated:
In a moment life will begin.
They are ready to run.

Then the awakening. One after another
they present themselves, assert
their ostinato signatures: the low strings plodding,
violins skittering, brasses in bullfrog crescendo,
bird-flutes' ear-piercing excitement.
The wide-open day. The promise at evening:
this was only the first.

aftr th afll 5

sum1 iz dustng my braaine
th insid ov my skul
tickl feether dustr tickl
2day i wake wth a smile
no cry, cuz i drmed of u
all nite i drmed of u
tht u allwed u 2 luv me
th waay i kno u do

Song of...

Your armpit is a red squirrel torn

open on the road.

Your forearms are as cars left

at the curb, mid-summer: covered in aphid shit.

Which is to say you’re mottled. But your shoulder

is a high-beam. A bare gleam.

Your ass is two feral cats

in the auto bin.

* * *

Your eyes the lit tip

of a cigarette

coming towards me

in the dark.

* * *

Yes, your armpit is a dead squirrel.

And your ass is two gasoline pigeons

squabbling in the eaves. Two ginger cats

in the auto bin.

* * *

Your face

the sidewalk puddle

I shuffle through.

Your eyes

my last cigarette.

* * *

Your love for me is a raccoon

living under the porch & licking its lips

on garbage day.

No, wait! Your love is a brown vole

drowned in a pool

in a better neighbourhood.

* * *

Your pursed lips

a thunderstorm

I try to sleep through.

* * *

Your love for me is a raccoon

knocking over garbage cans & growling.

But without you, the streetlights won’t

come on. I sputter, hiccup.

A car rattling down the alley

& never coming home.

PDA

 

My love is anchored to the ground

with steel rods;

her skins maintained

rust-free but heavy

with metals;

her tentacles unwrapping themselves invisibly and stretching

out for me. I come to her.

 

She is girders and grids and grates.

She is hard mesh, polished steel, reinforced concrete.

She is all limbs,

from one side of the river

to the other.

 

My love is never empty of people.

When I kiss her I try

to forget the cameras

installed to spy on jumpers;

to show families;

to identify bodies.

She tells me, she cries

her freshwater tears for all those lost.

 

At night I stuff my nose against

the urine-soaked graffiti and beaten dogs,

the shopping cart men, abandoned stashes,

downstream sludge. I come with flimsy

trenchcoat and a blanket against the damp.

I am naked against the water lights.

I am here, my love, I know you

feel me; I feel

your immensity; I am cold;

my tongue senses salt, minerals, on dirty concrete;

palms scraped on rough patches, pelvic bones,

redder than carpet burn; on my knees, filthy;

I am whispering to you: where are the cameras now?

I am not ashamed.

 

Postcard that never got sent

It wasn't a beach. It was rocks and rocks.
I skipped them into the frigid waves
and wondered at this ancient place
that had no sand. Was this why
your ancestors left this land?

13 Things I learned in the last year

1 How long I can go without doing dishes 
2 How to discreetly wipe tears
      from the floor of a bathroom stall 
3 A made bed can feel like comfort at the end of the day
4 Love shouldn't feel like chains
5 How long it takes pain to fade
     and that some of it never will
6 Just what FWB means, and why it's so handy
7 That No Strings Attached can still get tangled
8 How to create a family of right now 
9 Judgment is something we bring on ourselves  
10 You really don't know who your friends are until you're gone
11 Guilt and recovery are incompatible 
12 More than ever, that God equals love
13 How to ask for help
        even when I still don't want to

Little white lie

 After Raffi's "Baby Beluga."

I met him on a two-hour tour

of the ice floes. Surveilled by zodiacs,

we felt the click of shutters on us

and in us

as tourists leaned out over the water,

their devices reassuring them: This moment.

Yes. You’ve got it. We answered

with the silence of our white flanks, how we turned

and turned. How we were

suspended. But his hands were empty

& his eyes moved

so slowly from snout to side. I was the smallest,

the one always on the extreme edge

of the pod. But I crept closer, the water

as blue as his eyes. Later, he told me

his smartphone was in his pocket,

battery drained.

Or he would have been all over me.

That night, confused by meltwater,

I circled the harbor’s plastic junk & beached

myself when I saw him, thin & drunk

& knee-deep in slush. He’d wandered windburnt

out of the bar, his adventure

gear bright foolishness on the scree

but he clasped me so gratefully,

his nipples small hard stones

against my chest, I thought he knew me.

On the way to his room, I adjusted the drape

of my skin – dingy towel –  around my shoulders

& discovered what it was

to shiver. He muttered

& held me tight, as if I was a sperm whale

and my skull made light enough

for two.

Three years later, my skin –

dirty laundry – was in the baby-bag.

But he left it on the front porch,

brought only his credit card to the hospital.

The labour was as long

as that first night

in the tangle of his arms, as slow

as the train back to the city in the morning.

I wanted to give birth in water,

wanted to wash the baby out, my skin the rag

shaping her, but the big-city birthing center

was delayed and badly over-budget.

So I bore down in a bed,

his fingers rubbing my lower back,

his palm
measuring out my spine.

after th fall 4

i ramember now
bill bisstt hd a fall
tho i 4gt xcatly how
he 2 4got 2 spelll
          *
my braiin iz cryng now
it hurtz 2 c th mntains clos
it hurtz 2 c th rver clos
it hurtz it hurtz it


hurtz

Slip

There must be a word for it, that prickle
at the base of the skull, that electric
tingle up the arm
that says you've come this close
to doing something stupid enough
to kill you, or at least
cut off a finger. That half-second loss
of good sense that lets you run
out into traffic, balance too many plates
on one hand, chop a hard-skinned squash
with an old knife— that moment's over,
you're startled into clarity, trembling
with what-ifs.

And there's got to be a word
for that other sensation, the one
that says you've really done it now.
The stack of plates in going to hit the floor,
the dull knife blade has slipped,
that blur and screech is a car,
and your inner signal is accurate,
if a little late.

Cyrk

Assied dans le sombre 

au pied des lumières à l’estrade 

son ombre tombe sur moi. 

Je lui demande, «C’est quoi ton art ?»  

                        «Je me contente à regarder.»

il me dit sans fla-fla. Et quoi donc riposter ? 

En silence nous regardons côte à côte 

la performance de bouffons qui chantent et 

qui dansent dans la maison des artistes. 

«Mais tout le monde a un art !» je bougonne, 

essayant de cacher mon mécontentement. 

                        L’homme sans nom 

revient chaque vendredi soir inspecter 

les artistes qui jouent à l’estrade, qui dansent

parmi les tables où nous y sommes 

assieds côte à côte. 

Il ne bouge presque pas, claque des mains parfois, 

ne parle jamais sans être provoqué. 

Il regarde uniquement il regarde   

et hoche la tête dans ma direction 

avant de partir 

pour son destin clandestin. 

Dans la nuit 

quand le sommeil ne me trouve pas,

c'est pour lui que j'écris, 

l'homme qui s'assied

dans le noir de la nuit.

Annikin

Annikin.

Annikin!

 

Get in here this instant.

 

Let me introduce

Oedipus and Electra (the twins),

Lolita,

and Annikin. I outlined the kids

when I studied with Robert McKee

one weekend. Children

expensive, but highly motivated

and freckled with plot points.

 

Annikin is the eldest--he has almost reached his

innermost cave, where he'll make out

with a girl and grab

a trophy to bring back to my side.

The ordinary world. I'm his mom so

I make a good archetype.

No, that part's not McKee.

He's all about the climax,

which is after the cave...

anyway, when Annikin pulls out

he'll change,

he'll come with knowledge and power, and hopefully

get a dream job.

 

 

 

 

Retrospective Weather Report

Yesterday's rain: on the roof, a madman played banjo.
Traffic sprayed and spun through liquid glissandos.
Today, elderly neighbours assert seniority over lawns.
Traffic chirrs and wheezes in a brisk wind.
The sky is a bluebird.
Suntrampled clouds molting like feathers.
Everything tastes of dust and sunshine.