Poetry
I want to be a body without organs.
Made of birch bark that you can peel
and peel and peel with no core.
A church with no pulpit, no pews, no people.
A matryoshka doll that disappoints children,
With no nesting other-selves to discover.
A once fleshy flower pressed
in a never-used dictionary, now paper thin,
and hiding between hardly uttered words.
Teal-tinged cyan, but not blue—
blue is a myth, a late-blooming word
that was born in the wine-dark sea—
peaks out from behind dusk
cloud’s full skirts.
With every glance away and back again
the sky becomes one non-colour.
One lack. Dearth. Death. Light.
A mass of hair and limbs buries her face
into a magnolia flower; three days ago
this tree was nothing but bones and desire.
A child pushes into a cupped hand.
A hand grasping towards the sky,
hungry for air and sun and warmth.
It is April and still snowing.
The forsythia, in a shock of yellow,
has come to Toronto’s defense,
attempting to drive back winter.
Mary Pickford (of 211 University Avenue),
a mass of hair and limbs, is desperate:
It is April and still snowing.
In a pet store, a goldfish’s glint
pulls at her eye, pulls at her hand–
pulls her towards its gilt, crescent body.
She is running down Bloor Street,
She is running with a dancing fish,
cupped between her hands;
she is running.
She slows in tandem with the fish,
Its fervent dancing has tapered to a hiccup.
Mary Pickford drops its limp and brilliant body,
a street car passes, a fish lies still and golden.
Mary shoves her nose towards stigma,
anther and odour. Seeking solace in a tree,
heavy with fleshy petals.
Insect wing lips and cracked heels, and
The desire to press my body against
Another, to drain its warmth, so that I can
Continue dredge dredge dredging.
I have swallowed many secrets.
As many as could fit in my gullet.
I am distended with secrets, un-
Digestible details that cling to my ribs.
Those remaining have been swaddled.
I will carry them away from this busy
Busy city, where the snow can never rest.
I will carry my smothered secrets towards
Silence: under bridges, between allies, through
the decaying industry of Southern Ontario, and
through forgotten reserves that are forgetting
their tongues, forgetting their secrets—
It’s time it’s time it’s time:
It must be winter.
The maker-modeler formed them from corn, but
Not us. The sun danced around the world a-
Hundred-hundred times before we were cast—cast
Both too early and yet too late—we were
Born of run-off, excess, and atrophy.
We were built by the same men who dissected
The sun. And we worshipped their magic with
The very same fervor of the corn-people
Who presented still murmuring hearts to
Chichen Itza.
There are no roosters here. No roosters to
Encourage the still steadfast sun. Still, he
Climbs over the lip of the colourless horizon,
gathering quick breaths over the yawning river—
He Climbs.
The money makers and movers mourn in
Black, despite the fact that: still, the sun climbs.
It is well known that roosters are maudlin
Creatures—gossiping to pass time. The men who hide
Their eyes and feign virginity have stripped
The sun. They have stripped the sun of his gold.
They have taken his lore, they have taken
Its voice.
The roosters have told us many secrets,
They have told us many myths, but they have
Not told us about the corn. Next to Chichen Itza
Men were buried with corn to sustain them;
They have grown roots while we waste in wait for
The boat-man.
Stretched thin like gum, you can see their
organs, complete with diagrams:
there’s the pancreas, and the gallbladder,
and the shy, impotent appendix.
Mothers will take these organs when
cumbersome, and lay them out in
the sun to dry. Sometimes feral
cats snatch intestines.
The hospitals aren’t sterile any-
more. The surgeons no longer suture. The
herbs are impotent— they are without their magic.
And now, when laid out in the sun, they
do not dry, but rot. Modern mothers
plant their petunias in neat rows,
they cover rather than covet the earth.
It isn’t apple season. These apples
were reared by Pinochet. Carefully
cultivated in Chile’s furrowed brow.
It isn’t apple season—it’s time for
the rutabaga and radish to revel.
The snow presses down against the city
(the snow that loved the city before
R.C. Harris built an altar to worship
water). It has loved Toronto before
indiginous tongues forgot consonant
clusters. Before the snow loved the big smoke,
and before Tkaronto was suffocated,
the snow lusted after the lake.
These apples: cultivated in Chile’s
furrowed brow. It isn’t apple season:
the snow presses down, loving the place where
trees stand in the water. Today I watched
a man. I doubt anyone could match his
perfect pitch (even before the place where
trees stand in the water became Toronto).
No amount of rehearsing could rival
that languid launch. Today I studied—
A man abused by the seasons:
Winter had pulled at his eyes.
Spring had pinched at his cheeks.
Summer had prodded at his brow.
And autumn had beat at his heart.
The seasons had left him, the same way the
snow will leave Toronto for her other
lovers. The seasons had left him wrinkled
and gleeful— his accessory flesh fading.
These apples cultivated in Chile’s
furrowed brow had been exiled by the
supermarket junta to the half-rotten
dollar bin to be picked over by those
forgotten by seasons. It isn’t apple season.
These apples, reared by Pinochet, were culled
in Chile. I appraised the manner in
which he threw Eve’s temptation between
streetcar tracks. I assessed the way his knuckles
clenched with anticipation. Waiting.
Waiting for that big red brute to come and
splinter that apple across King street and
reveal the secrets.
Secrets that would come as the snow left.
The secrets lusted after by the snow.
The secrets suckling at the bottom of
lake Ontario. Secrets known to
the carp, but not the snow.
The sky is very ominous
And the corn fields are whispering
(secrets of epic proportions).
The scarecrow sings:
Making toast by the fireside,
Nurse fell in the grate and died.
What makes the matter ten times worse,
The toast was burnt along with the nurse.
The crows scoff, the crows cough.
The susurrus of corn swallows the scarecrow.
The sky grew suspicious.
Then the sky grew jealous.
The ravens refused to share their secrets,
and so the once ominous sky began to rain.
And it rained, and rained
Till all the foreboding gathered.
It gathered between birch roots.
It gathered in ditches.
It gathered in furrows.
And it rained, and
The corn drank deeply.
The corn whispers.
The seagulls laugh and bathe.
The crows cough and count.
And the sky is light,
And the scarecrow: silent.
These lines were etched into the walls of the House of Poppaeus Sabinus.
These words were cosseted by Vesuvian ash while the city of Pompeii slept.
Do you listen? Can you hear their breaths:
Awkward, staggered breaths?
Almost a language—Non-words uttered by
those who ignored their own deaths.
If you felt the fires of love, mule driver.
Listen to the etched words. Press yourself into walls.
Christen them with your ears, your eyes, your pulse.
Here division between man and stone eroded under
aa and ahs as ash smothered the village.
Mule driver, if you felt the fires of love,
would you make more haste to see Venus?
Ash plastered her mouth, pent her voice,
but time has not smothered her love.
Composed some distance from her destination
She pressed her eager urges into the doorway:
I love a charming boy, I ask you
Goad the mules, lets go.
Take me to Pompeii—
Transposed never to decompose,
where love is sweet.
Thanks to that smoke pine tree
Recalled by young Pliny.
The year you died your peach tree bore
more fruit than it could hold. The year
you became intimate with the earth, your tree
knelt in near piety from the burden.
The knell called down from the top of the hill.
In the church’s lap children continue
to swing up, up, and back again as
the bell tolled, tolled, and told.
As peaches swell your tree grows buckle-kneed.
Soon those left to tend to trees’
buckling knees will remove the coverings
from mirrors and break bread with you.
The year you died your peach tree bore
more fruit than it could hold.
The year you died the knell told your secrets
easing the burden as you were once again
held by your mother.
Every word whispered is plucked from the speech stream.
The vowels are weighed and clamped:
their density established. Consonants are laid-out neatly
in rows: their limbs plucked off with rapture.
The shifts of your irises left, left, left
makes me chew my words, my cud, my words.
These syllables sit like stones in my larynx.
When they finally manage to emerge they are muffled
and muddled and I long to inhale them back in once again
and push push push them down.
Down past my insomniac heart—
past my volatile liver,
down to the bottom of my gullet.
Soon my heart will join those half-masticated morphemes.
It’s those left, left, right shifting eyes that have
yanked too hard on the tether that holds
my heart in place. The rope has become worn.
The weight of that anchor pulls and pulls and pulls.
And as you pluck and prod words,
I plot to steal this heart—
this insolent stubborn sleepless valve— and then eat it.
Let me stop chewing words.
Let me reach down into my larynx and past my
dormant syrinx and pick that still beating heart.
I’ll eat that heart—left ventricle then right.
Then tomorrow when your eyes look left, left,
right again there will be nothing to swing
like a pendulum in my chest– tolling;
there will be no more tolling, no more telling.
I’ve stolen that heart and eaten it with relish.
I will steal the pears from your mother’s pear tree
in broad day light. Just to taste them. Then, and
only then, my words will be light again.
Then, only then, your left-left-right eyes will
no longer be master of the knell. And
think of what I can plant there with all that
new space. Maybe gladiolas—or a
perennial—something sturdy like a hosta.
Broad and silent and sleepy.
Scissors camouflaged into the back of a drawer
are sprung by still clumsy fingers. Under the dull yellow light
Delilah Harris cuts her fringe behind a closed door.
Scissors camouflaged into the back of a drawer
Snip until there isn’t a fringe anymore
Sally then giggles with guilt & delight.
Scissors camouflaged into the back of a drawer
are sprung by still clumsy fingers under the dull yellow light.
Delilah’s mum, Hazel Harris, had eaten her old name
and so bought a new name and forgot the old.
Mrs. Harris’ parties often received the highest acclaim—
Delilah’s mum, Hazel Harris, had eaten her old name,
And took up entertaining guests by feeding them Christ’s flesh without shame.
Her guests would drink Christ’s flesh in glasses rimmed with gold.
Delilah’s mum, Hazel Harris, had eaten her old name
and so bought a new name and forgot the old.
While downstairs they laughed, ate Christ’s flesh, and drank his blood,
Upstairs, under dull yellow light, Delilah hacked at hay coloured hair.
With guilt gnawing on her shadow and tears welling she sobbed a prayer
While downstairs they laughed, ate Christ’s flesh, and drank his blood.
She prayed that her mother would still call her ‘ little flower bud’.
O, but what would Mrs. Harris declare when she set eyes on the affair?
While downstairs they laughed, ate Christ’s flesh, and drank his blood,
Upstairs, under dull yellow light, Delilah hacked at hay coloured hair.
Stop eating Christ’s flesh. It’s high in carbohydrates.
The vinyl hasn’t changed,
it’s still uncomfortable, sticky,
and has the lingering odour of people
(I will never know).
The motion— jerky— erratic.
The frosted windows— still fogging from human
heat, though the temptation to curl my hand
up, press it against the cool condensation,
then peel my warm fist— carefully— away, and
tickle fingertips across the cool surface
drawing awkward toes,
no longer tempts me.
There is no longer a need, nor is there space,
for imprints of premature feet.