Category: poetry

Travel Advisories

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Every two weeks I collected my welfare
and went about my small life, unashamed.
The travel agency went on without me, I supposed —
the odd ticket, inbound, coming home.
I went home too,
facing unprecedented times.
The spring thaw felt warmer to me.
Mondays had no shape.
I delighted to go for a drive without sliding,
no hard destination in mind,
at any time of day.

The person I love made room for me,
around the apartment more,
let loose from forty hour weeks.
We made time for books,
for more coffee,
for quiet meandering about our days.
We caught each others’ eyes more,
learned to rest our heads on long silences,
celebrate simple survival every night with wine.
Our consciousness become something else –
living, a real occurrence.
I began to notice what life could be —
and felt like a child, awake in a sun flooded bed

after a bad dream.
before wellness and normalcy
overtook the news again
in spite of the pre-existing conditions
that go on and on and on.
Sickness and wellness turned into numbers
like everything else, and
I, too, found a 9 to 5 job again
in the fall.
After my first eight hours in more than a year,
riding home on the capital line,
grey sliding past the windows,
I notice my insides held taut,
my head vacant, thoughts thin.
We can all go travelling again.

Job Search

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Sadly, sadly singing
in some soft apartment,
underground, snowed over.
White noise: fridge hum
and soft electric buzz.
You are at work, and I
am humming too, to
make my presence known.
I put the dishes away,
pick off the bits that stayed behind,
reheat my coffee
and sit in front of my screen
to scroll through job boards
and look, again, for some cash register to work.
Last night, I dreamt I had it:
an old job I quit years ago. In it,
I remembered just where to stock
specific housewares and what their codes were.

Perhaps I should have stayed there
and become the old woman
who kept her first job forever,
knew everything,
let complaints roll off her back,
and went about her business
rolling her eyes at young management
day dreaming and scheming, alive
and thriving on minimum wage.

Sheltered Kid at a Cat Funeral

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My mother insisted the cat be buried
but we had no land of our own
so I paid a man to box her up, laughing,
under a tree he had grown.
The burial took too long for my liking.
My mother, too sad to appear.
“From ashes to ashes, dust to dust” –
The cat doesn’t know we are here!

The cat had been loved more than she could handle
and rode that wave into the sky.
Her heart was enlarged with it, that’s why she left us
alone, just my mother and I.
Of course I don’t blame her, for mom’s love was stifling.
The cat and I lived much the same.
We well-kept possessions, we beautiful playthings,
too precious to go up in flames.

My Hand of Cards

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I thought about how to write
down the feeling of my lungs
held up in clouds or my heart
melted down into a shapeless mess, when —
all at once I knew you —
and knew you were
moving in the same timeline,
on the same planet
in the same city
in such a way
making enough noise so that I
could find you.

All at once, we are not the sum of our
miraculous parts, immaculate parts…
(wet parts, hard parts, warm parts, soft parts)
even when we are apart,
even when we go to pieces
and those pieces social distance and self-isolate.

We make,
or made, something good
when we swiped right or when I climbed
into your truck or when you kissed me —
whenever you want to call it —

In that moment, I’m sure a star was
born, and a chicken hatched, and
twelve million new discoveries were made
and a flame was lit, and a seed planted, and
a song conceptualized in a brain —
and you and I, all emerged from some
same magic.

What I’m trying to say is it’s bigger than me
and nothing was before.

slept with

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You sleep different.

Some others, hidden away under miles of sheets,
inside the duvet cover, even —
buttoned or zipped up tight
while I, folding and tossing about,
frantically search
another sheet, another pillowcase.
A body lost in layers with no heat to spare.

Still others, sleep-talkers and -walkers.
A mumble, a shout in the night
means that much more —
shakes a house apart.
Any step in dark stillness seems its own radical act
and I listened, I watched, always.
Awake. Tired.

You do two things:
You drift off after saying your piece,
still, you say it
I weigh it, and you hear me mumble back
some sleepy pleasant thought
lost by morning, but I remember the feeling.
And,
you hold me and I hold you.
Even off in a dream not about you
and you, in a dream not about me —
mutually found
warm in a cold room.

ghosted

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The walls of my room are swollen with your silence,
thick and smothering.
I once again mistook somebody’s lost, hapless wandering
for freedom;
your aimless tread for a path being forged.
Drunk with possibilities, I followed you singing
until your voice, which promised and scoffed at me in the same breath,
ended with a squeak in the night.
Inebriated and naked every time I saw you,
I wonder what pieces you took
(my words, my mouth, my chest, my drunken singing?)
and when I would realize they were in your hands,
long gone.

Savings

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You keep asking me where my rainy day fund is.
I don’t remember the last time the sun came out
and where I’m standing it’s been pouring for years.
You ask me about my rainy day fund
now, because the power has shifted
out of your hands and into those of a
Thing that kills — get this — not just poor people.
You ask me now, when my contributions to you
hang precariously in the balance.
My death means less than my consumption
still — my purchases worth more than the food,
the medicine in my shopping cart.
It is so strange to stare into the eyes of a cashier
both of us waist deep,
both of us without umbrellas,
our clothes clinging to our bodies
and our bones bared to the wet cold.
Steeped in want —
we see you start at one drop on your face,
and beg us to save you from drowning.

[Untitled]

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I used to think that I would find God again
in a woman’s breast pressed into the palm of my hand
her soft, tired whisper landing on my tongue at the end of the night.
I still look for her
but I have found God
in the dark corners of a small apartment,
fragrant — something on the stove —
alone, starting over.
And I have found God
in sacred solidarity with every working person
who talks harder against capitalism
without ever learning the theory —
whose steps fall into rhythm with mine
clocking in to rent our bodies and voices out another eight hours
or longer.
Usually longer, it seems like.
I have found god
while she is elusive, and
her name is used by many things that are not her
and still she goes by many names.
One day, maybe I will breathe one of them against a woman’s neck
on her jawline, and into her mouth
and for a moment,
be saved.

Front Covers

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I have never once been something to someone and not meant it.
Too many people have sang about their worlds being shaken by love
for me to talk about the way you ran through my veins
and maintain a shred of originality.
Besides, you were one of those people, and your words are lost.
In the space between us,
they only carried out your true intentions and died at their wits end.

So I won’t.
One poem written for you in the front cover of a book
that I forgot to copy — my own words, lost as a gift in your hands
as they all were.
I imagine you casting out that page as I, too, burned your play in my kitchen sink.
We are both artists.
You are an actor, and a good one, I believed you —
but I have never lied on paper.