1.
During a poetry reading
in a tent
a bee flies into my hair.
I feel the person
sitting next to me
become rigid.
My ears fill with
the sound of zippers.
The lady behind me
taps my shoulder in a
panic
and points at the insect,
which has landed on my
shoe,
studying it for
pollen.
2.
I shop for groceries
in exactly six different
places:
Safeway
The Granville Island
Public Market
Apple Farm Market
Whole Foods
No Frills
and the anonymous corner
store down the street
where the Asian cashier has
such a shrill voice.
3.
Movement on the water
like oil marks.
A dozen people and
seagulls watch
while a man with a biker
beard
guts brown fish with
a machete-sized knife
and throws pink insides
into the shallow water.
You can see the rocks at
the bottom
dotted with small mussels
4.
I read The Brothers Karamazov
on a westbound bus
with a four in the number.
The pages get blunter
and the spine more pliable
as my thumb approaches
page 776
when it’ll be written THE
END.
On my way back from school
I can’t read because
the bus is too full
5.
The first time I ever
walk into a gym
my ears pop like
when the plane
begins its descent.
I feel faint after the
pushups
and I need to lie down
and then I get up too
quickly
and I need to lie down
again.
I leave a sweaty blur
on the mirror when I rush
over
to puke in the bathroom.
The blackberries from
breakfast
come out hot and sour
and red as blood.
After, he tells me I look
like shit.
I don’t know if he means
my pale, clammy face
or my skinny arms.
4.
so I stand, eastward,
until my stop at Vine
Street.
All the streets after that
are named after trees:
Maple, Cypress, Fir, Pine.
Further it’s provinces:
Yukon, Alberta, Ontario,
Quebec.
Sometimes I think of
staying
on the bus and stepping off
there
but it wouldn’t get me
anywhere
because she’s moved
so far East that I might
as well
just fly over the North
Pole
to give her a hug.
3.
The movement in the water
is a seal, no two,
three seals.
The smooth, whiskered head
of
the most adventurous one
pokes from the surface and
follows the fisherman’s
movements.
The seals plunge for gills
and intestines.
They have white spots
on their black backs
like oil marks
on the dark water.
2.
But I only go there
when I run out of milk.
I have no one else to cook
for.
The second portion
cools in a tupperware
for the next day
while I eat and read
a story in The New Quarterly
or watch an episode of
Homeland.
1.
I stay calm.
The bee is so big
that when it flies off
finally it is nudged down
by its own weight.
My gaze follows its
bobbing until
the wind sucks it out
into the sunshine
and the lady behind me
gives me the thumbs up.
4 comments:
I don't know how I feel about this one. I'm not sure if that's fully my sentiment about the poem or my displeasure that you're writing something so melancholy and that that makes me sad.
Okay well I'll start with the things that I do like. The form was awesome - really interesting use of stanzaic mirroring. I love how the poem is sandwiched between the two number ones; the tenseness of the bee, even if you don't consciously realize it on the first read, follows through the entire poem so that while reading it you're almost holding your breath and it's such sweet relief at the end when you can let go and know it turns out okay.
I also really liked the action happening in 5. As a middle stanza, it functioned really well in intent. Parts of it bothered me though - the ears popping, the word "puke", and something about the last two lines. Maybe the insertion of a "he". Maybe the powerlessness of the speaker since I want him to show a bit more fight. I don't know...maybe it's just me being weird and picky for no reason :P
As for how the stanzas ended, the first time I read it, I found them abrupt and missing the deliberate poignancy that your writing usually masters and that really threw me off. Reading it a second time, I pieced each pair of stanzas together and found that no, it really did work well when each was complete, and I liked your choice to divide it up like you did. Reading it a third time, I didn't know quite what to think, although I would probably say leaning more on the like side.
This probably isn't helpful at all - sorry! But it's my thoughts on it in any case.
Also the Granville Island market is amazingggg ^ ^
I like the binary between significance to an individual, and another thing focusing on something else being significant. It was an interesting take on perspective I thought.
The second time I read this I pictured 5. being the poem you read at this poetry meeting. though I did find 5 jarring. I like this piece.
the lines ``because she`s moved so far East that I might as well just fly over the north pole to give her a hug`` took me by surprise and I liked that a lot, they fit and were poignant and sad and they worked.
This feels so lost. I really like the dichotomy between the routine that the narrator is developing and the sense of being adrift, with "no one else to cook for." The water imagery and the tension with the bee that Marta mentioned all contributed to this sense of being lost, for me.
The stanzaic form is just heaping it on, too. And it's brilliantly cut. I like the jarring bits especially, I think.
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