Purity of Absence. Dave Margoshes. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: Dave Margoshes
Издательство: Ingram
Серия:
Жанр произведения: Поэзия
Год издания: 0
isbn: 9781770706729
Скачать книгу
of the colourmen,

      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