on this day in history: 2011
(nothing happened)
there are fire
works outside a window,
iced canals of spurting
flame and life you
pushed into my lungs and
nothing happened, nothing
upon breaths of empty
pure and frigid winter
air,
masks and gloves did
nothing much.
the air lit up in other flame,
a backdrop mist of tear
gas, smoke from curling
bodies, burning homes
and nothing happened.
Filed under poem tree
you’re so long and dry, impatient. six
month stutter i outlined
and traced
and he erased, and
every time we’ve turned our
backs we have exposed
another white lace silhouette.
there is no one to tell.
he has gone, with promises of
ice skates, fingers linked as
they collapse on couches, under
pillows, the ceilings of dead
living rooms with walls whose
paint is chipped and split;
there is no wait.
the calendar is pencil, gaps
forged by passing
time and wrists.
Filed under poem tree
outside city hall we
rolled a basketball back
and forth between our weathered heels
i pretended, walking on the
curb, to be a model
we pretended that no one
had accidentally pierced anyone’s
foot with a needle last night
you pretended to not
see me fidget, let the ball drag it
self to the gutter
you said i really could be a model
if my eyes were more blue
and less grey, if i had
eleven more inches
Filed under monologue
we took a really long
drive down
carling, because carling
is so damn long
and you needed the break
i can’t legally drive
but it was a good time anyway
at the end of the
street is a school
and we parked on the side, i
talked you through while
your nerves
sank like keys in my purse
you rolled down the windows
when you were my age
you killed an eight year old girl
you couldn’t stop and she
died on the street in front of her house
now you are old
and on morphine and telling me this
so i’ll carry your pain
instead i’ve stopped
having hallucinations, fantasies,
of much older men, and i don’t
drive cars
and i don’t drive on carling
simplicity,
a backwards pedal
into a garage
your seeping wealth
of beads of sweat, dark
hair,
your back blurred
in the dryer of a
mens’ room.
stray cats, sex, grey
shorts alone and one
less cigarette a day and night
ten days after we fucked i
went grocery shopping with my
dad, which doesn’t happen very often.
he bought four bottles
of ketchup because it was on sale
and he still lives in 1962
and every spot in the sky is a
reconnaissance plane
every spot in the sky was a cloud
marked by breath you’d expelled to
the stars,
every sound that had failed to
reach space
there was one bottle left in
the cupboard at home,
but he said that
he never wanted
to buy it again
Filed under poem tree
while bearing the weight,
when every bone struck
by another finally
gave
you came up through swamps,
through metres of
dampness, miles. you swam
pools of water for me and
my wavering faith,
an idea you would travel
much farther,
give lessons in sadness
and strength
Filed under poem tree
tips lather at
seams
and are strung,
at mouths,
twine to my hands,
knots for your hands
scratches
to come in, be
let through a window
with shoes on
Filed under poem tree
this is how
we remember ourselves
three hundred days later
exposed pipeline
in dirt, a wrong turn.
fresh as the holes where my
eyes had been once, and were, yours
on the nape of my neck
with hands,
in gananoque
a winter so long no spring
ever came, no summer
bled into no fall
Filed under poem tree
