Poems

The Lammergeier Daughter

That night, I opened your wardrobe and found

a trophy of vultures, their necks pierced

by hanger hooks. I saw at once

that you hunted everything I loved —

My Grandmother Washes Her Feet in the Sink of the Bathroom at Sears

My grandmother puts her feet in the sink

                  of the bathroom at Sears

to wash them in the ritual washing for prayer,

wudu,

area boys

brash talk on sidewalk

brethren to irreverence

short teeth long stories

~

aspirations high

rolling tape decks tweeters six

by nine speakers deep

January 1, Dawn

After the celebrations,

people, TV channels, telephones,

the year’s recently-corrected digit

finally falls asleep.

Between the final night and the first dawn

a jagged piece of sky

A Glass Tube Ecstasy

a glass tube

for my leg       says Hugo Ball

my hat a cylinder

Internet Safety

My dad taught me to never give out my real name, age,

address, or photos. This seemed obvious to me. My fake

birthday entry was always my crush's birthday plus a

The New Experience

I was ready for a new experience.

All the old ones had burned out.

They lay in little ashy heaps along the roadside

The Soldier

If I should die, think only this of me:

That there’s some corner of a foreign field

That is for ever England. There shall be

Poetry

I too, dislike it: there are things that are important

                    …

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,

And Mourners to and fro

Kept treading — treading — till it seemed

Visit from Mother

You sleep on the floor in my room

in the modelling apartment

I share with eight other girls

You open the fridge

to see what we’re eating

Butter Spray, Diet Coke, Jell-O

Do you think we’re clichés

Day 62

Unless you believe in the eye of the needle

this kind of poverty will never be about material

it won't be about ragged clothing

or mud huts with broken walls

or river blindness

or murram roads

Last Visit

Now I set out across a minefield,

space having taken all I owned, I’m starting over

from a point where every pebble may explode

beneath my shoe and the flowers blaze up

behind my body as I gasp for air,

Love (III)

Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,

Guilty of dust and sin.

But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack

Exculpatory Lilies

Good Friday, the day they delivered

that sad bouquet, was the day our cat

ran out on the road and failed to look

both ways. I’d stashed the candy eggs

under the sink, in their pink raffia nests,

Wow! You’ve Changed

You’ve changed.

You used to be so

and now you’re all

like, you’ve transformed

I don’t know how to describe

it’s like

you don’t like canasta anymore

you text IN ALL CAPS

Qawanguq with Fox

I was walking up some stairs in a building

Inside parts of the building were new

but no one lived there anymore

I passed a lucky fox head on the stairs—

Break of Day

’Tis true, ’tis day, what though it be?

O wilt thou therefore rise from me?

Why should we rise because ’tis light?

The Maldive Shark

About the Shark, phlegmatical one,

Pale sot of the Maldive sea,

The sleek little pilot-fish, azure and slim,

The Dark Stag

A startled stag, the blue-grey Night,

Leaps down beyond black pines.

Behind — a length of yellow light —

We’ll Not Die in Paris

You forget the lines smells colors and sounds
sight weakens       hearing fades       simple pleasures pass
you lift your face and hands toward your soul
but to high and unreachable summits it soars

From Red Doc

GOODLOOKING BOY wasn’t he / yes/ blond /

yes / I do vaguely

/ you never liked

Clouds

                                     My father’s green Pontiac

Veronica?

What's it like at the centre of the AGO?

Hmm. Imagine being coloured, drawn, and placed

in a wooden frame, another hung woman, positioned

just so in the middle of a landscape surrounded by rocks,

the many descriptions of being brown

White people tell you to apologize for yourself

through gestures, through small talk, through the ways in

which they ask,                  “Where are you from?” and

Not the Music

Not the music.

It is this other thing

I keep from all of them

that matters, inviolable.

I scratch in my journals,

a mouse rummaging through cupboards,

Two Hours on the Train

During two hours on the train

I rerun the film of my life

Two minutes per year on average

Half an hour for childhood

Another half-hour for prison

Love, books, wandering

take up the rest

The Pulley

When God at first made man,

Having a glass of blessings standing by,

“Let us,” said he, “pour on him all we can.

I’ll Teach You Cree

with the tip of my spring tongue, ayîki 

your mouth will be the web

catching apihkêsis words,

Thou Poem

Thou poem of lost attention and half try,

do you fear more the inner world or outer?

I do…

Last Visit

Now I set out across a minefield,

space having taken all I owned, I’m starting over

from a point where every pebble may explode

beneath my shoe and the flowers blaze up

behind my body as I gasp for air,

The First Day

When I was five I was put on a bus

and sent to Catholic school

not unlike my mother who was five

when she was put on a train

and sent to residential school,

both feeling that gut feeling

Break, Break, Break

Break, break, break,

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!

And I would that my tongue could utter

The North Star

It's melting helplessly,

the North Star.

Ten million, or even more,

tons every day

(ice, cold light, gas)

waste away from the frame

of this immense animal.

You will see,

Verso 3.1

At first there's no lake in the city, at first there are only

elevators, at first there are only constricting office desks;

there are small apartments and hamburger joints and

To My Dear and Loving Husband

If ever two were one, then surely we.

If ever man were loved by wife, then thee.

If ever wife was happy in a man,

A Hundred and Fifty Pounds

In some, the luggage lies open

like a mouth mid-sentence.

In others, closed zippers grimace:

What would you have brought?

Slippers, a stuffed platypus, a gold watch

My Last Duchess

That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,

Looking as if she were alive. I call

That piece a wonder, now; Frà Pandolf’s hands

Old Ironsides

Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!

Long has it waved on high,

And many an eye has danced to see

From One and Half of You

Price depends on how the cheongsam

was made, the fabric used.

Gasp. Lift breasts with one hand.

Stuff your body inside.

If you wear this print of peonies