Issue 36: Winter 2017

Two Poems

After considerable something / just beyond your ability to recall, / you're human.

 

Autobiography As A Child In Second Person

After considerable something

just beyond your ability to recall,

you're human. Not just any,

you're a human girl incapable of calm.

It was the Turkish potter at The CNE,

deliberate, hard-edged as a scimitar,

first made you bodily aware. Little girls

like you get kidnapped daily, dad says,

don't take candy. So you take the potter's

pot instead. His clay-caked hands

just big enough to close like rope

around your neck, slow-hoist you,

as he hoists his carver's rib, back

where you came from. Don't be

so squeamish. In the Port-a-Potty

there's an angel dressed in drag.

He is as new as you are to the myth

of matter, master of compassion,

valiant as he pledges endless friendship.

You will both be unadulterated after earth.

The meantime's just a stage to play on.

You play bold, your Go-Kart guided

by divine light as you sharp-turn past

the pedophile's white van, hand-in-hand

with every wish you'll will into fruition.

God is just a hug, is everything when

you're in love with being but the body

(little bitch) won't love you back.


 

 

Disembodied At The Botanical Gardens

Could be a raven, humiliation of, a wife.

Or better: koi, albino in that garden

where a bridge arcs like two arms joined

hand-to-wrist or fern-to-lookout to a kid

who stops to add me to his catalogue

of reasons to exist. The corridor of cherry

blossoms laced with little girls in Vogue-

appropriate attire makes a pink so sweet

it's hard to swallow. Could be the effigy:

life-like, dwarfed by ferns, drawn by boys

with Asperger’s and aptitudes in line

to be unearthed. Maybe my face will be

what clicks: some shy savant who finds

his gift. There is a word for stuck in form.

Please let me be a blaze. I will destroy,

I mean create again this place.