2004: November 2007 Archives

The woman in the green hat
and corkscrew hair stirs a coffee
in the sunlight, coaxes notes
with the thin strip of wood:
whole rich notes conducted upward
from the soft swirl of brown
where they explode into music
in the golden strikes of light.

She woke up to discover
there were pieces of her missing,
portions plucked from skin
not ready to give them up,
only flaps of flesh remained -
like the smooth, wet holes
that wisdom teeth leave behind:
cavernous openings missing bone
and enamel, half-concealed by gums
that slowly collapse over the vacant spaces.

Again she would need to pinch
the folds together and wait for the skin
to seal with a scab, to swallow the wounds
with a scar, to enclose the vacancy like a vault.
Let the empty pockets heal into silence.

The slap of my skin on skin
interrupts sleep but continues
the dream. I half-wake to the sound
of my fists connecting precisely
with muscles and bones and teeth,
the echoless thuds of hands slugging
something surrendered.

And I am seven again, appetite
whetted by semi-conscious fantasies
of punching Vicki until
there was more blood than skin:
face swollen, bones snapped
her body a throbbing
passive purple welt.

But what I really wanted
was five minutes of
her eye in my head,
her tooth in my mouth.

She watches her blood spatter into four vials:
the purple and orange rubber tops
pressed in turn to the plastic cylinder
at the base of a line of gleaming metal
embedded into the flat white and
unfreckled plane of her arm.

The needle noses inside the blue vein
welcomes the warm rush of red
that engulfs its slim and silver point,
drawing warmth into itself before shooting
into tubes, wine red and bright: a spectacle
to distract from the potential code it carries.

Without eyes (the clear and clinging
half-spheres that move things into focus)
you are barely distinguishable from the sidewalk.
Buildings and cars are impressionist dabs
on a black velvet canvas.

Without eyes, colours intensify,
freed from detail, and you are a smear
of blue light between indistinct pinwheels
of red and white taillights.
The next morning
your hands are pigeons that flutter
above my blue T-shirt sky

I

Found a finger in the snowslush:
a perfect digit with an iced-blue knuckle
and purpleblue nail, stiff and pristine.
Thought a finger would be useless
without a hand, but it made an impeccable
utensil for writing names in the snow.


II

This past Autumn our pines and spruce trees
were weighted down with an abundance
of cones: heavy brown omens of a long
and treacherous Winter, of dangerous drifts,
and bluecold faces and fingers.


III

Mittened hands shake snow
from a girl's hat and coat and marbled skin,
poke fire into her hypothermic limbs;
their eyebrows are stretched into question marks
but their eyes lock in truth, knowing,
as they drag her from the bloodstained snow,
gloveless and missing one finger.

From my ninth-floor window
I see the fair lights spin pinwheels,
orange and familiar.
And I am back at the Fall Fair,
with the aromas of french fry grease
and pungent onions, the odour of animals
and truck exhaust strong
even while waiting at the top
of a rusted red ferris-wheel.

Swinging suspended in drizzled air,
there is beer on his breath
as he moves toward me,
eyes shut, lips outstretched.
I relent, but wait for the moment
when the carriage swings downward,
knocks his head backward, and
fills my nose instead with
the arrival of Autumn:
the crispness that breaks
under feet like leaves,
and the dampness of earth
that floats up in smoke, buoyant
up and away from a clinging small town,
to safe distances across cities.