Category — Poetry

on narrow slats
I balance
one leg near edge
one ounce from falter

canopied
our sky falls open
like mouth seeping cream
cerulean grey

I cup a warm hand
by my lashes
gathering smooth gusts
into the creases

into my retina
burning a reminder

the last time here
I sat on a rough stone
near water’s edge
at the base of Larch Street

I had his mouth
he had mine
open open
swallowing each other

whole with intention

Caterpillar,

you’re so quiet when I see you.

Caterpillar,

do you talk only to your friends?
People are like that too, sometimes.
They’re called cliques. Do you have those too?

Caterpillar,

where’d you get your fuzzy coloured back?
Did you get to choose tangerine orange and electric blue?
If I were a caterpillar I would be hot pink with lavender trim.

Caterpillar,

if I were a caterpillar, could you and I be friends?

Caterpillar,

if I were a caterpillar and a little kid picked me up and accidentally squished some of my legs would I still be able to walk?

I’m really sorry Mr. Caterpillar.

::::

Writing exercise: write to a beautiful and mysterious creature and ask it whatever you want because you know its special language.

Image source

I have been spending nights with The New Oxford Book of Canadian Verse in English. Margaret Atwood’s poem, You Begin, published in 1978, is startling, buoyant, and sombre all at once. I’ve been rereading it for days.

I have copied the poem below. What do you think of it?

: : :

You Begin

You begin this way:
this is your hand,
this is your eye,
that is a fish, blue and flat
on the paper, almost
the shape of an eye.
This is your mouth, this is an O
or a moon, whichever
you like. This is yellow.

Outside the window
is the rain, green
because it is summer, and beyond that
the trees and then the world,
which is round and has only
the colors of these nine crayons.

This is the world, which is fuller
and more difficult to learn than I have said.
You are right to smudge it that way
with the red and then
the orange: the world burns.

Once you have learned these words
you will learn that there are more
words than you can ever learn.
The word hand floats above your hand
like a small cloud over a lake.
The word hand anchors
your hand to this table,
your hand is a warm stone
I hold between two words.

This is your hand, these are my hands, this is the world,
which is round but not flat and has more colors
than we can see.

It begins, it has an end,
this is what you will
come back to, this is your hand.

three years since our hands folded into one. it isn’t easy, i won’t lie. but every day is worth it, unfolding our broken, broken pieces and saying yes to them, over and over. i am yours.

today michael and i celebrate our third anniversary. we are spending tonight at raw canvas, sipping, sampling and painting. i can’t wait to see what we create. together.

::::

only hope

[a poem for the one i love]

I want only to struggle in your arms
you in mine
pummel chest with marble fingers
erase
scars fortnight left
fortnight forth come
I want to writhe in your arms
only
because
I mistook apology
for

I want to take nail stabs in my palms
smear the bathroom vanity
across the cool of toilet bowl
into waiting tub, where her rubber ducky reigns

I want to dance on 5×12 patio
above whistling suburban thoroughfare
the view is fine
reduce the space between chest freezer, rusted-out barbecue, now gone
solidarity declared beneath the dead hanging basket

we’ll need it on the islands

THis is the first poem I’ve written on an iPhone
It doesn’t feel write right
My finagers long to lace metal
I’m maki g mistakes becUse my thumbs are too big
My words want to cuddle clearmint lines in notebooks And run over you
With ease as I jot backward

My feet are making
Tomorrow’s line
Through conditional circumstance
Along path
The TrAversed line
Quick
Through chestnut marked leaf lawn
To my doorstep

I Am yours
If you let me walk again tomorrow
In the morning
At the same time
I Am building a reminder
And you are my permission

I want the whole mouth
Incisors torn-gum half moon

Abandon us

You are A wilderness
I am explorer
You Are an estuary
I am sun
My light is shadow spot on your remainder

Sent from my iPhone b

:::

Part of Imperfect Prose Thursdays

Home is asking to be wrapped. Rooms wait ready to spill out door, into arms of strangers, onto trucks, into cardboard, buried in storage, carted on boat. Too many bins and boxes for my little head: what to keep, what to store, what to sell, what to bring to Bowen, what to ship out east, what to give to family, what, where, how, when…

But I know life sits out of hand. In arms a billion star courses wide. And I take her hand, now one-year-old, and walk our path to smiling eyes. Sit in her chair at our coffee house. Visit our park, swing our swings, dip in our wading pool, visit our friends, roll all over green carpet thick, laid out under our trees, eat sushi where they remember our alaska rolls and our names.

Soon, together three, we will light new paths, grieve old ones, sit huddled in front of burning hearth, welcome friends at ferry dock and feed hungry mouths, rest weary heads in our island home. We hear the Voice who’s laid out our mornings, years, seeking Face that tells our story. These six months will set a course, I can feel it.

There is much ahead. Family to forge. Words to write. Poetry to spill. Schooling to ingest. Home to make.

I met a friend while visiting in-laws last week who told me her story. Of her travels to Romania, working with Gypsies, igniting a call to international law. She’s running toward it. This relit my heart to study more: media’s impact on democracy — how our incessant ingesting of information shapes our understanding of citizenship. Perhaps a Masters in Toronto, time and prayer will tell.

Much is afoot in my little writerly life. The book, the one about women who seek Jesus but don’t all look like suburban mammas, edgy, world-changing gals who rock tats, paint up storms, influence politics here and overseas, is out as a proposal… seeking an agent / publisher. I’ll post some pages so you can see. Poetry is being submitted, I’ll share as it makes its way onto pages. I hope to start having others share their poetry here. I’ve been inspired by my friend Emily’s imperfect prose Thursdays.

My sister-in-law, Brittany, and I have a crazy idea of starting a little onesie company, using my husband’s adorable old Scouting badges: Badge of Honour onesies on Etsy. We’re setting up shop as I type.

For now we take the days as they come, living them full, here in our home in Burnaby… Thank you for sharing this adventure with us.

THE MAIN STREET MAGAZINE TOUR
Thursday, August 19, 2010, 6:00–10:00 p.m.
mainstreetmagazinetour.ca

Celebrate our local arts, cultural and literary magazines, with poets Jennica Harper and Elizabeth Bachinsky as your guides.

VANCOUVER – The Main Street Magazine Tour is a free event that invites participants to explore the local literary landscape, set against Vancouver’s eclectic Main Street neighbourhood. Known previously as the Main Street Literary Tour, the event now shines a spotlight on the arts and culture “magascene,” with presentations by FRONT, OCW Magazine, Ricepaper, Room, Sad Mag and subTerrain—all Vancouver-based publications. The tour starts at the Rhizome Café (317 E. Broadway) on Thursday, August 19 at 6:00 p.m.

From there, poets Elizabeth Bachinsky (EVENT magazine poetry editor and author of God of Missed Connections, 2009) and Jennica Harper (winner of the 2009 National Magazine Silver Award in Poetry and author of What It Feels Like for a Girl, 2008) will lead two tours that traverse the area at Main Street and Broadway, stopping in at local haunts for 30-minute encounters with city’s arts, cultural and literary publications.

“What’s fun about this event is its spontaneous, grassroots nature,” says Heidi Waechtler of the Magazine Association of British Columbia, the organization that coordinates the event. “We’re showcasing literary arts magazines out in the community, in spaces you wouldn’t necessarily expect to see poetry readings or improv, such as a vintage clothing store and a hair salon. The tour makes visible the intersection of magazines with our communities and our everyday lives—how they both reflect and shape our culture.”

The Magazine Association of British Columbia (formerly known as the British Columbia Association of Magazine Publishers) was established in 1993 to represent, connect and promote the diverse British Columbia magazine industry by uniting and fostering the immense talent, knowledge and skills of its more than 80 member publishers. For more information about the association, visit bcmags.com.

TOUR ITINERARY

Thursday, August 19, 2010
6:00–10:00 p.m.

Meetup point: Rhizome Café (317 E. Broadway), 6:00 p.m. Select Tour A or Tour B—or mix and match!

TOUR A
· Room magazine presents poetry by Casey Wolf and Elena Johnson. (Kafka’s Coffee & Tea, 2525 Main St.)
· subTerrain magazine, source of Strong Words for a Polite Nation, presents readings from issue #56. (Pulpfiction Books, 2422 Main St.)
· Slam poetry by Fernando Raguero collides with improv by members of The Exploding Sandwich, Hip Bang! and Pump Trolley, presented by the recently relaunched OCW Magazine. (F As In Frank Vintage Clothing, 2425 Main St.)

TOUR B
· Ricepaper magazine celebrates the launch of 15.3, the Food Issue, with a reading of a tasty new play by Linda Mei, featuring Adrienne Wong and Fiona Tinwei Lam, followed by delectable poetry by Ray Hsu. (Rhizome Café, 317 E. Broadway)
· Visit the FRONT magazine reading room and meet artist Heidi Nagtegaal, who’s combed through 20 years of the magazine’s archives to produce a limited number of one-of-a-kind presents for tour-goers. (The Western Front, 303 E. 8th Ave.)
· Sad Mag presents a conversation with salon owner Jim Dreichel and Burcu Ozdemir (of Burcu’s Angels) on drag culture, gay and lesbian culture, and the history of Main Street. Hosted by drag sensation Isolde N. Barron. (Mine:Stylesource, 177 E. Broadway)

Afterparty: Rhizome Café, 8:20 p.m. onwards. Readings by Elizabeth Bachinsky and Jennica Harper, prize giveaways, magazine sales and music.

Last week I had the privilege of sitting down with three other poets to write over pints (theirs) and chamomile tea (mine.) Diane Tucker, fresh off the plane from NYC, brought with her a number of writing exercises from renowned educator, Kenneth Koch’s Rose, Where did you get that red? 

The challenge: Write a poem addressed to your poem asking it to do something for you.

Here’s my unedited attempt:

 
dear poem

please fling your consonants
your double-meanings

please leap-frog your seed truth
over the form
out the pages
off the screen

please drop-kick my philandering lead strokes
clear over closest range

then

brush yourself off
scale the rock
descend the mountain

climb into waiting lap

and speak
 

::::

Part of Imperfect Prose Thursdays

God’s not dead
because I thought him/her so
like the holocaust nay-sayers
the animated moon walkers stabbing two inch toothpicks into three mile styrofoam craters unlikely green

God’s not dead
because we’ve lost some children
now witness to blinking nail bed growing in woman womb
delivering half-way placentas nine pound eleven ounce spirits through openings that for thirty years were smaller than bar soap bent to its circumference
making all labia-living believers

God’s not dead
because city does not become her/him
forgetting book promises cambodian valleys cave to hazel life
seven year pupils erasing invisibility lip-spoken not theirs
up climbing through arm of unlikely stranger
otherworldly kindness our universal language

:::

Part of Imperfect Prose Thursdays

A few of my words appeared in ‘print’ this past week.

A poem: A Prayer in catapult’s Arms are for Hugging issue

An interview: Wax Poetic in Comment

And my first profile in Sweetmama: Overhaul the Coveralls

Also, I entered a full-length poetry manuscript into a 1st book competition on Monday. Fingers and toes crossed. 

Have a happy weekend, Everyone!