Half-Life

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You probably didn’t know this, but I used to hide
in the trunk of your car.

I saw myself as a gorgeous outlaw, putting on my makeup
and touching my red lips to the gun barrel. It was too dark
to see my reflection, but I knew how well my eyebrows
waved hello and how
my thumb would look inside your mouth. 

How you saw me was different- I know
like that girl who always wore the same t-shirt
day after day,
with a picture of a moose on it only instead of a moose it was
a picture of two people who are both halves of a horse, but keep
missing each other
day after day, oblivious
to the threat of extinction.

(and you never knew
and no one asked, ever)

While you were at work
I tucked my legs up into your perfect shoulder blades
while you looked for the right paperclip
which is the wrong color
and you will always be looking for it- I think
that if you wanted me to hold the pages
I would meet you halfway
I would stay in the trunk
and you could take me out
whenever you wanted to.

(I wouldn’t hide)

Fishing

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if I was a bear
i would lumber and
i would make into my home
the cave behind this waterfall,
and wait for you
to flail over

i would punch your fish-face
with my head-sized paw
until your
gills caked with blood
until your
popcorn brain
eked out even one thought,
i would spin you on my claw
i would watch the water fall
and listen
for larger prey than you-

i would peel off every single scale
and underneath you would be blue.

What Remains, After Exhumation

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We all remembered
how our great-aunt Helene’s
house was
noisily full
of retired ghosts, dragging
abacus chains, clicking
black eyelids
which seemed just like two halves
of
a bivalve shell.

my own room was cold
empty with
the silence of all the elephants
dull pink with mud flaps

run out of it.

seeing that
the mailbox bird outside
is a crow, of course leaping
right at the
man with a green horn
right at the
sitting duck eyes, gleaming
a gleeful stab! –
the way Helene wants it
the way

a spider
could live in your cheek
or you could wake up every
morning
with flecks of rust, staining
the pillow
and no idea if anyone in your
family is still alive.

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We watch the
old black-and-white reruns
from the
backs of couches.

Lock this boy up,
he crashes his cars together-
trying to untape desks
Cut off the goalposts
And eat them tonight
Mom-in-the-kitchen stuff
Landing on her chin.

Wet shoes on the rubber mat-
Trying to read street signs
For what the earrings had cost
and for other articles
on subjects
on the milk-spilled floor.

A (partial) Found Poem, from Caroline B. Cooney’s “The Face on The Milk Carton” 

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An opaque wine bottle
cracked over a headstone
blisters longing,
scabbed heat
below the grass
night cools and
bones devour
themselves-

over time, oil-slickened roads
red petals open onto breasts, shift
dresses and murky longing
depths

too much meat
too many people
wrung their hands
the soil is dark, mixed
poured like marrow
below the grass
a worm pushed through rot-

a  yellow fingernail
with someone’s
heart still in it.

Community

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Spadina Road stretches north of Bloor, the hipster bustle of the Annex fading into a series of run-down apartments. The crush of vehicles on Bloor thins here, too; the noise of the traffic punctuated by the low rumble of the subway below. Walking north, on the left-hand side, I meet a high wall separating the sidewalk from the Native Canadian Centre, the NCC. In the evenings, smoke and song drift down to the road; sometimes there is music playing, children running barefoot along the wall. The campfire coals turn red, and then to ash, and groups of old men gather around a rusty bucket, tossing butts like horseshoes and speaking in hushed, gravelly voices.

There is a Community, just steps from my front door, of which I can never be part. But each day that I pass, the smoke and song remind me that, I too, have blood that flows red.

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The old willow breathed
green and white blossoms
in late August,
lifting her arced limbs
to the mossy smell of rain
sighing under

the weight of a little girl
swinging
blurred brown legs
like bulrushes.

A Chili Reception

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He slammed the pot down on the stove, sending a spray of kidney beans and ground beef flying through the kitchen. The beef hit the fridge in clods. Her face, the dog, stunned and speckled with the grey-brown meat. The kidney beans slapped on the tile in quick succession, littering the floor like fallen crabapples.

Perhaps he would be allowed to attend the Superbowl party after all, she decided, using a thumb to swipe the grease from her nose. The empty pot still clenched in his fist, he looked her right in the eyes.

She thanked God that he hadn’t yet added the tomatoes.

Unlucky Baby

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Two floors above my head
There is a baby in the stairwell
Now that I am aware-well
I take the elevator instead.

I wish to go back to before
We decided to explore
And found it tucked under a ladder-
Few things than this are sadder.

There seem to be no other clues
As to why a baby might be there
If it were mine, I would not choose
To leave a baby by the stair.