barbara fletcher / poems

barbara fletcher / poems http://www.barbarafletcher.com/poems/ en Copyright 2008 Sun, 18 Nov 2007 13:48:20 -0500 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification Taking minutes at the Tuesday morning meeting it is the word war. The war of words.
Threats hurled across polished wood tables
skid across the slick surface,
slam into expensive suits.
Arrows shot from between bleached teeth
pierce the air with poisoned saliva.

Every Monday morning she records
the battle waged in tongues,
where voice collides with voice,
and egos fall wounded onto the table.
But today she can't stop looking
at his pale lips as each syllable
fires from his mouth with military precision.
Each moist movement articulates
words designed to maim.
Today she wants those lips on her,
mouthing dangerous consonants and vowels
against her neck.
]]> http://www.barbarafletcher.com/poems/2007/11/taking-minutes-at-the-tuesday.html http://www.barbarafletcher.com/poems/2007/11/taking-minutes-at-the-tuesday.html 2003 2006 online print lips surface teeth tongue words Sun, 18 Nov 2007 13:48:20 -0500 Crumbs in the crumbs scattered across the table,
brown bits arranged into dull
constellations on the shiny wood:
heroes and warriors
going against the grain.
]]> http://www.barbarafletcher.com/poems/2007/11/crumbs-1.html http://www.barbarafletcher.com/poems/2007/11/crumbs-1.html 2006 print Sun, 18 Nov 2007 13:47:10 -0500 Sand of your tan-coloured hand
rise up like snakes of sand,
swirl across endless desert:
fishscales that shift and ripple,
catch light in flash movement
against the etch of settled silt
beneath shallow water.

I expect your hands to feel dry
against my face, expect the crosshatch
creases to chafe me. But there is no
desiccant clutch, no sandpaper scrape;
your desert hands do not pull moisture
from my lips; instead the dry warmth
brushes my skin with warm weightlessness.

Slowly you blow against me, hot breath fills
my ears, my eyes. My lungs struggle against
your increasing heaviness.

The veins on your forehead rise to the hot
surface, ripple with intensity.
I am thirsty, and into my open mouth
you deliver sand.

]]> http://www.barbarafletcher.com/poems/2007/11/sand-1.html http://www.barbarafletcher.com/poems/2007/11/sand-1.html 2005 print hands mouth sand Sun, 18 Nov 2007 13:45:46 -0500 Amphibious bend the tall thin blades to their green-silver underside;
Dip and ripple. Swish and splash.
The breeze blows grass into sea.

We dive headfirst into cool greenness, arms part
blades with each stroke, legs sweep past jade stalks
that curve in our wake. We pause for watery kisses,
tongues tasting salt and green sweetness.

I could swim here for hours with you, slice through
shining wind-waves as the air rushes above. But you
begin to feel the familiar pressure, the need for breath:
it draws you to the surface with brutal buoyancy.

You explode into air, suck lungfuls into empty chambers
as I wait suspended in familiar green below. I wrap fins around
your ankles, pull you down into the swell, know the short time
you can spend submerged, the necessity of breath.

Small bubbles leave your lips, travel toward
the surface. And I wish for a current to catch you,
endow you with the gift of gills,
draw the mammalhood from your blood.
]]> http://www.barbarafletcher.com/poems/2007/11/amphibious.html http://www.barbarafletcher.com/poems/2007/11/amphibious.html 1998 2000 2005 online print arms blood breath curve explode kiss swell Sun, 18 Nov 2007 13:45:26 -0500 Aria 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.
]]> http://www.barbarafletcher.com/poems/2007/11/crumbs.html http://www.barbarafletcher.com/poems/2007/11/crumbs.html 2004 online coaxes explode notes Sun, 18 Nov 2007 13:44:17 -0500 Missing pieces 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.
]]> http://www.barbarafletcher.com/poems/2007/11/missing-pieces.html http://www.barbarafletcher.com/poems/2007/11/missing-pieces.html 2004 online bone flesh scar skin smooth wet Sun, 18 Nov 2007 13:43:25 -0500 Eye for an I 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.
]]> http://www.barbarafletcher.com/poems/2007/11/eye-for-an-i.html http://www.barbarafletcher.com/poems/2007/11/eye-for-an-i.html 2003 2004 online blood bone eyes mouth muscle skin swollen teeth Sun, 18 Nov 2007 13:41:59 -0500 Blood test 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.
]]> http://www.barbarafletcher.com/poems/2007/11/blood-test.html http://www.barbarafletcher.com/poems/2007/11/blood-test.html 2004 online arms blood freckle Sun, 18 Nov 2007 13:41:07 -0500 After losing contact lenses at a friend's party 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
]]> http://www.barbarafletcher.com/poems/2007/11/after-losing-contact-lenses-at.html http://www.barbarafletcher.com/poems/2007/11/after-losing-contact-lenses-at.html 2004 online eyes flutter Sun, 18 Nov 2007 13:40:17 -0500 Toscin (an omen)
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.
]]> http://www.barbarafletcher.com/poems/2007/11/ifound-a-finger-in-the.html http://www.barbarafletcher.com/poems/2007/11/ifound-a-finger-in-the.html 1998 2001 2004 online print blood cold face finger Sun, 18 Nov 2007 13:38:02 -0500 Terrain
to feel the texture of your tongue trace
a river over the topography of her shoulders,
to feel its journey over the pebbled path of her spine
mapping out each vertebra,
to feel the warm dampness of your breath
rise in clouds around each slight elevation of bone.

She has never known this desire:
to feel your mouth move over each square of skin, measuring,
to feel your lips search for freckled landmarks
as you chart each contour,
to feel your teeth mark out a legend
on the white expanse of her back, tasting
her geography, her terrain.
]]> http://www.barbarafletcher.com/poems/2007/11/terrain.html http://www.barbarafletcher.com/poems/2007/11/terrain.html 1998 2003 online Sun, 18 Nov 2007 13:36:01 -0500 Revealed darts across the pavement
and yanks up the woman's skirt.
People stop to watch her,
helpless, as the cloth lifts
like a kite into air,
white thighs and underthings
exposed to perverted play.

And the man in the blue suit
cannot help but stare
at the unintended exhibition,
cannot help but wrap his eyes
around the extent of shin and skin
stretching upward to the tiny pink
and polka-dotted panties
that she cannot cover with skirt
or hands or anything
in this suspended moment
when all is revealed to him.
]]> http://www.barbarafletcher.com/poems/2007/11/revealed.html http://www.barbarafletcher.com/poems/2007/11/revealed.html 2003 online Sun, 18 Nov 2007 13:34:50 -0500 Ferris-wheel 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.
]]> http://www.barbarafletcher.com/poems/2007/11/ferriswheel.html http://www.barbarafletcher.com/poems/2007/11/ferriswheel.html 2003 2004 online print Sun, 18 Nov 2007 13:33:53 -0500 Winter in the sky a barren snowy landscape
of winter-white hills and plains,
clouds smoothed from the compression
of heaven and hell. Sky and earth.

If the window would just open
she would fling herself from the wing
land in a snow bank, petal-soft and cold;
she would gather up armfuls of white
and toss snowballs back at the windows
where white faces press against
the glass portholes in wonder.
]]> http://www.barbarafletcher.com/poems/2007/11/winter-in-the-sky.html http://www.barbarafletcher.com/poems/2007/11/winter-in-the-sky.html 2003 online Sun, 18 Nov 2007 13:32:57 -0500 Banff, Labour Day, 2003 noses and eyes burning with the memory
of campfires, bonfires, scorched pine.
Weakened light stretches through
the haze and onto the streets,
illuminates particles and acrid breath.
In the valley, tendrils of smoke wind
along the river, curl around the mountains,
cloak firs and spruce with charcoal scarves.

Soon the sky is enkindled, alight
with the orange glow of distant forest fires.
Smoke slithers across the sky,
inches a caustic veil over the sun,
asphyxiating the light into
a smothered red orb.
]]> http://www.barbarafletcher.com/poems/2007/11/banff-labour-day-2003.html http://www.barbarafletcher.com/poems/2007/11/banff-labour-day-2003.html 2003 online Sun, 18 Nov 2007 13:31:23 -0500