even you, Vin:
as the ball is thrown
so shall it be caught,
and something—maybe it was God
but maybe it was just Carter—
says no, damn it, and no force
on earth can stop
the ball’s spin when it hits
a fault in ground no one
could have known was there.
The painting Whistler’s Mother was originally called Arrangement in Grey and Black Number One.
—Newspaper Item
Only a woman, a mother,
neither substance nor form
with the force or weight
of triangle and square
to anchor it to canvas and mind,
merely flesh, lacking
the permanence of parchment.
Yet surely there is
something of interest in this arrangement of colour and form beyond the obvious bow to the sentiment, the tug at the romantic forelock.
She sits in an arrangement
of bone and flesh that defies
the contortionist’s logic,
her lips composed in
a smile smeared with sex
beyond flesh and nerve, beyond
gender to the root of biology.
She has just said something,
waits listening for answers.
Her heart beats, blood flows,
the smell of her lifts itself off the canvas the way a fighter must before the bell, raising his head the way she does hers, into perfection.
Late April mornings, when so much
and so little push at the edge
of sleep, tearing us away
from sweet oblivion,
applesauce life slides around,
filling us with warm expectation,
a bath deep as oceans
but shallow
as our breath as we stir
in dream waiting to enfold
us, take us under
far as the curve of sky.
This is the future, with past
and present spun around
like tinselled gift wrap
to make the package alluring
despite the hollow box
it hides, the stink of rotting
grass, the ache in the back
of the mouth. This
is the future, the face
staring back, the voice
at the other end, the touch
in the night, the road
on the other side
of the folded map leading
nowhere, circling back
to where we started,
April morning, sleep.
for Paulette Dubé
Your tongue is
split, a shell
cloven in two
one ribbon of flesh
rabbiting across prairie
where the enormity of sky
squeezes you small, the other
curling through mountain
passes where you grow
into yourself, a nautilus
one tongue bitten sore
with accent, its mate licked
smooth, one dark as the wing
of a heron glimpsed
overhead, the other bright
as the eyes
of the silver fish
it swoops down on.
Your tongue is
split, a leaf torn
along the stem
the poem it sings
a metaphor
for the desire
pulling you, pushing
you, pressing you
down, hurling you into air
bereft of meaning.
Your tongue is
split, your heart
whole.
Three days into the treatment,
the chemical teeth gnawing
their way through her veins,
Yvonne passes a bad night,
wrestling with Death, who slips
not under her bed as the demons she feared as a child liked to do but into it, cozying right up beside her, cuddling, hands all over her breasts and backside, foul breath singeing the tender flesh below her earlobes, hardly a gentleman, she thinks, remembering the Emily Dickinson poem she read in university, no, more like the boys she’d fended off that same year, all intellect and hands but more of the latter, she and her roommate would laugh, but, just the same, nothing to be afraid of, and not now, either, despite that stinging breath, the clawing hands, the persistent fingers, no, the old defence still works, the defence of last resort her mother taught her, a knee, doubled up quickly, where it hurts the most, even for Death, not so proud now, not so fearsome. But this is just the fourth morning, days before her hair turns white, before her stomach turns itself inside out, days before the first bouquet of his roses arrives.
for Melanie
Pride of flesh, skin’s vanity,
blood’s boast, hubris of bone,
these are gifts we bring
to this arrangement, virtues
we have more than enough of.
In the mirror, my image wrestles
yours to the glass, distorting
not just what we see but the sense
we have when gazing at perfection
of being close to what god whispered,
to what he may have had in store
for Eve and Adam had they not