LITMIR.BIZ

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out for sheer pleasure

      over asphalt and concrete,

      ribbons of dark desire

      driving us madly toward death,

      perverse, presiding over

      five o’clock traffic

      like the queens on Church Street

      grand in their carstopping

      high heels and blond wigs

      and blue makeup, darling,

      so nice to see you, and what,

      dear one, exactly was the rush?

      Or oceans, vast beyond ridicule

      or question, and who cares if it’s

      much too hot for November,

      isn’t it gorgeous, darling,

      and even here, in this

      most polluted spit of land

      in Canada, with its heart

      attack and cancer rates,

      the trees can still knock

      you out with their loveliness

      so you just wanna drop

      everything and weep, or laugh,

      or gather up the gorgeous

      leaves, falling, and throw yourself

      into them like a dead man,

      or a kid, or a dog,

      5

      O the brave deeds of men

      M*E*N, that is, they with phalli

      dangling from their thighs,

      how they dazzle me with

      their daring exploits

      every time I cross the Detroit River

      from down under, I mean,

      who else could have given

      themselves so grandly,

      obediently, to this water god,

      this fierce charlatan,

      this glutton for sailors and young boys,

      risking limbs and lives, wordlessly

      wrestling primordial mud,

      so that we, mothers and maids,

      could go shopping across the border

      and save ourselves twenty minutes

      coming and going, chatting about

      this and that, our feet never

      leaving the car, never mind

      the mouth of the tunnel

      is haunted by bits and fragments

      of shattered bone and looking

      every time like Diana’s bridge

      in Paris, this is really grand, isn’t it,

      riding our cars under the river

      and coming out the other side

      illegal aliens, needing passports,

      and feeling like we accomplished

      something, snatched from

      our busy lives, just being there

      Afterworlds

      Gwendolyn, I call you back

      from your bed of roots, delicious

      under moist scented worm nudged earth,

      speak to me,

      rising from my bed of stone,

      finding the courtyard empty,

      the gate swinging open,

      O prophetess of blood and fire,

      your famous ancient lions crouched

      beside Lake Ontario,

      drunk on the jewelled wine of death,

      tell me, in this unexpected resurrection,

      as from drowned Atlantis out of the carnelian sea,

      as from the sister watching the sister

      who lies down

      on the long stemmed wet grass under

      rumbling steel bridges,

      grateful after everything for he

      who childishly plucked out her eye,

      blinding her into buffalo hoofed sage scented

      seeing,

      tell me, princess of Babylon,

      what would you have said,

      had you been able, in that last moment

      before the animal darkness,

      to speak,

      your brutal jewels flashing ornate in the naked

      prairie sun,

      and in what tongue, outliving for one flaming second

      the devastating stages of your catastrophic

      loves,

      tell me, Gwendolyn,

      how should I find my way

      among these empty incantations,

      these chipped white dishes on soap sudded oilcloth,

      these nothing signs

      among the walking dead,

      the lilies sprouting tiger lips and rust,

      the prairie struggling to rememberIn prison we ate rats

      its dream wild partridge feathered feast, that exuberant

      drumming?

      Castle walk

       after Alain Robbe-Grillet

      Curses on she who asked to be

      ordinary

      among painted plates and cups

      and bits of jam left on spoons,

      willing to forget

      fire flashing through

      silver sheeted clouds,

      her forehead bleeding,

      her ragged torn heart.

       In prison we ate rats after drying them in the sun. Every night God visited us in our cells, soothing or frightening us with his velvet hands and invisible dark sword.

      Even now I could leap

      off any shining parapet

      at high noon

      into the Devil’s arms

      in search of that fire,

      were it not for the garden warbler

      nesting in the rhododendron,

      pink and scarlet blossomed

      under the Castle Walk,

      the bluebells blazing

      beside the sycamore.

      The water at the bottom

      of the well

      remembers Queen Victoria,

      Sir Wallace, and the numbers

      of the dead.

      Here in this red rock

      overhanging the sweet path

      tremble the memories

      of cave dwellers,

      shuddering their easy

      ecstasy.

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