Carte Blanche » poetry

OPENING

lepp — Tue, 22 May 2012 04:51:59 +0000

Sun glasses, scarf like feather boa
thrown back with bravado
high boots tooled in soft leather
voice velvety and slow

Between your fingers, a glass of wine
a cube of cheese on a tiny stick
â€œOh really,â€ you say, â€œthat is quite fine,â€
with a toss of hair, glossy, thick

as when you say, â€œWe must get together,â€
the declining tone says, â€œsometime,â€ â€œneverâ€
and when you say, â€œOh really?â€
do I hear a trace of, â€œYouâ€™re losing meâ€?

The art on the walls is unremarkable
so you let the conversation flow
with yet again, â€œIt must be wonderful,â€
until again, â€œI really must go.â€

All very casual, all quite right:
from sophisticated heights sublime
you step out into veils of night
forgetfulness in time

STALEMATE

lepp — Tue, 22 May 2012 04:51:48 +0000

Nothingâ€™s left. I learn the bad news over good merlot
and unremarkable dinner, fraught with pieces of shell and cavernous want:

the muse has quit. Up and left with no trace,
a body turned away, a disappointed loverâ€™s back, at night.

No longer hungry, I feed crumbs to magpies who skip, peck, sample
what shines, what glitters, what reflects. Theyâ€™d rather eat the sun.

Consider fight or flight: in the kitchen, you knock dishes in the sink
until something breaks. Eggs shattered in tonightâ€™s omelet, us still not full.

How can I hunger for this? Even the bread grows hollow, yeast over-risen,
bubbling into empty spaces. No food assembles here.

Crumbs dry in my mouth. I taste the stale-
mate. Black birds no longer sing. The wine is gone.

Sundays with the Pastor Gone, My Father Gave the Sermon

lepp — Tue, 22 May 2012 04:51:12 +0000

I couldnâ€™t bear to watch him but couldnâ€™t
not listen, so Iâ€™d squint at the gold cross
above the altar so hard its light splintered
across my eye. Its crosshairs twisted and
grew and shrank their brilliance as my father
spoke the words of struggle and sin and love
despite. His voice muscled against
the stained glass, then broke so small and tender
I felt it like a single hair down my throat. He knew
when to cast a net and when to pull it in. Congregants
sometimes forgot themselves and applauded
when he was done. Heâ€™d have to usher
at the sanctuary door after the last hymn sent us forth,
shaking hands and refusing praise: You have such a gift.
I always enjoy listening to you speak. You know,
you may have picked the wrong profession.
He would squirm like an animal in another animalâ€™s
teeth. My motherâ€™s handbag held the keys
to our Volvo and Iâ€™d filch them while
she stood, wire-smiled, by my father
so I could slip to the parking lot, wait out
my fatherâ€™s accolades from the driverâ€™s seat
where I wasnâ€™t allowed. I changed the radio presets,
sweat in the sun made cruel through window glass.
I yanked on the locked steering wheel and roared
engine sounds like I had anywhere urgent to be.

Predators

lepp — Tue, 22 May 2012 04:50:43 +0000

I.
I dream that my legs
are covered in hair, dark
and coarse as a bearâ€™s.

Iâ€™m afraid of this.
I canâ€™t breathe

for the thickness of the air.

II.
Hibernation â€“
a season of deep sleep

and now wakefulness.
Prowling
this shapeless darkness,
heavy on skin, ceaseless,
sweet-tasting
but scratching at the throat.

A rash of thistle
and of thorn.

III.
Skin-depth: I imagine

that you crawl into bed
each night
smelling like a butcher.
Whoever yearns for you there
in sweaty darkness
craves this:
craves your raw scent

and the rinsed blood
of your fingertips.

IV.
Soon youâ€™ll come stalking,
cutting through metaphors
and these illusions
with the precision of a hunter.

I too could consume a heart,

and swallow it whole:
in such dreams, the heart
is a small detail,
a petty conflict of territory.

In this,
I am reckless. Feed it to me.

V.
The hot air crackles, licking
at our bodies. Petrified

into life again. Who knows
whoâ€™s the butcher, the hunter,
or the bear? I tremble
with such electricity.
It punctuates my skin, snaps
the roots of my wild hair,
and sparks at my lips â€“

between
the sharp small bones
of my teeth.

VI.
Iâ€™m not hiding.

Iâ€™m biding time.
I canâ€™t find myself
among these twisted trees.

How long will it take
to rinse this blood from my hands?

VII.
So she lies wrapped
in damp sheets, stark-stripped
in his bed. He watches keenly,
wondering about her dreams
and whether he is in them.
His eyes linger like shadows

or like teeth,
all over her skin.

Physics

Maria Schamis Turner — Tue, 22 May 2012 04:49:35 +0000

Note: “Physics” first appeared in The Anatomy of Clay, published by ECW Press in 2011. To see our Q&A with Gillian Sze in this issue of carte blanche, please click here.

What falls from the sky
is still deciding what it wants to be.
Something like rain, something like snow,
the streets mottled with wool caps and umbrellas.
Nevertheless, St. Catherine is soaked.
I hang my jacket, the added weight: proof of indecision.

The horns of snow trucks disharmonize
and someone else laughs, senses a poem.
Any minute now is my new repetend.
Any minute now for the water to boil.
Any minute now for the mailman.

No mail in a week and I am certain I donâ€™t exist.
Loneliness, once the enemy,
has since become acceptance.
It blusters in and as I get older,
becomes easier to identify:
a hand palpating an imaginary organ
that joins my heart to my stomach,
qualms to lethargy.

The shorter afternoons
and the forced optimism of my daily horoscope
make me seek approbation.
Todayâ€™s reads:
Your job is to maximize the moment.
Quit judging yourself.

I pass an alley
and a voice from somewhere above me
calls out a curt Sorry!
I donâ€™t bother to look up.

What falls from the sky
is an apology
belonging to anyone who can hear it;
singing, A woman left lonely will soon grow tired of waiting,
a voice spread through that takes its time to dry.

Flag

lepp — Tue, 22 May 2012 04:49:02 +0000

Scraps of her conversation
drift near the ceiling

of the rooms of my house:
torn-away phrases

buoyant now she has left
rest briefly at the top of the walls

like moths
then bob free.

The bits of speech are lonely
separated from her

from each other. Even when they lived
in her mouth

these words were orphans, had no siblings
were raised in institutions

or by strangers. Theirs is the solitude
of a flag abandoned on a windless lifeless

moon, the pennant displayed
by means of a wire frame, surrounded

by a powdered grey surface
reaching for horizons of frozen stone.

The discarded sounds
stay aloft in my rooms’ upper corners.

Outside it was winter overnight.
It will be winter

this afternoon. It will be winter
all evening.

WINTER GARDEN POEMS: THE RESISTANCE

lepp — Tue, 22 May 2012 04:48:49 +0000

Y si entre estos caminos
â€¦vuelvo al recinto de mi propia vida:
un jardin solo, una comuna pobreâ€¦
–Pablo Neruda, “El Egoista”

I remember those districts lashed with rain
through three Vancouver seasons: our modest houses
or three-storey walk-ups stuccoed
or wooden-sided, a drenched tricycle
toppled over on the small wet lawn,
Ford vans, old Chevy station wagons, rusted Dodge four-doors
and Austins, Valiants, Volkswagens with the hood a different color
resting at the curbs after work
–the gutters miniature streams in the steady downpour–
all the vehicles gone before 8 a.m. Clouds low over the inlet
obscuring the North Shore mountains. And the gale through the afternoon,
then even fiercer toward supper as the gusts
drove sheets of water onto the roofs’ mossy shingles,
liquid that rattled and banged
descending the downspouts
during the cooking, and each hour of the night.

And every dwelling alive with the promise
of those who inhabited these neighborhoods
of slick sidewalks, corner stores with steamed windows,
empty half-flooded gardens with rotting fences along the back lanes,
streets soaked under the endless maritime spray: the promise
echoing in the shouts, the droning speaker at the podium
of union meetings, protest meetings, action planning meetings
with water pooling on the scuffed floors
under our boots and shoes and from our saturated coats
hung on the backs of the old wooden chairs.
Outside, smell of wet malt or fish offal
through the blustery days. Hours we squelched along sodden asphalt
in front of dripping buildings or industrial fences
with our strike placards covered by flapping plastic
on which water beaded, our defiance secured around our necks
by damp string as the rain
which was never on strike worked its way inwards through seam
after seam of jackets and shirts, layer after layer
until it reached our insurrectionary skins.

I remember the jammed bus
with its windows fogged and beaded against the downpour
as I returned from work, clothes stained by sawdust and
sheetrock dust. Or driving to the factory
through the early morning storm, windshield wipers ceaselessly
clearing the flood, the line of vehicles splashing through puddles
into the employees’ parking lot, the rain falling equally
on mobile construction cranes, ship’s chandlers,
lumber mill booming grounds, cannery docks,

and hotel beer parlors:
the Europe, Anchor, Waldorf and more–
designated haunts of the railway workers, or posties, or longshoremen,
the fabricators of steel cable, builders of off-road logging tractors
and the rest of us: the rain hammering against the high windows
while over terry-clothed small round tables
we conducted the incessant planning of a new day
free of the endlessly falling water–utopian (why not?), revolutionary
(why not?)–as our arguments proposed liberationist means
of production, distribution, public wealth: the saturated words
merging, then flowing off every manufactured surface
into office lunchrooms, plant cafeterias, tugboat galleys
and onto the leaflets spewed forth from the battered mimeograph
or old offset printing press in basement or storefront rooms
with the squall showering its pellets of spray
against the glass and outer walls.

And other windows
where under the warmth of the duvet
she and I, side by side and naked,
sipped hot coffee from cups
with a sugared rim, the downpour
driven by wild surges of the sea wind
against the first light of dawn,
the time clock and my toolbox waiting,
her office typewriter waiting,
the resistance waiting another day
under another season’s steady rain.

Crow/Snow: A Winter Vision

lepp — Tue, 22 May 2012 04:48:33 +0000

Crow/Snow: A Winter Vision

Like billions of dark butterflies
Beating their wings
Against nightmares, rather
Like myriads of
Spirited coal-flakes
Spread from the sky
Of another world
A heavy black snow
Falls, falling, fallen
Down towards the horizon
Of my mind, where a little crow
White as a lost patch
Of autumn fog
Is trying to fly, flapping
From bough to bough