Tuesday poem #109 : Helen Hajnoczky : Other Observations

A flimsy crutch to hold the light
Day’s back strained against the night
We stroll in sunset’s consumptive rattle.

He scuttles me through muffled streets

Our tedious retreats

Drain hours like the sour aftertaste of milky tea
His company, the dregs of winter between my teeth
Until some baleful fit guides his stupor
To lift a stammering hand to my back
And shuffle closer through the sawdust and ash
To troll me through still more stale roads
And cocoon me in dusk’s colic glow

All too soon his fumbling gaze
Tugs the hemline of my ease

The humid morning pressed against the evening rain 

Night’s fresh breath crushed against the morning’s rays

Thick air wheezed upon the doors of the balcony

Squeezed under the door cracks into the foyer

Let the dawn cough its heat onto the still damp streets

Breathe its stale breath, in sickly heaves

Until the sharp teeth of evening rain

Bite back the day’s hacking heat

And again and once again

The dawn will press its breath into the coiled streets

Will crush its heat against the evening’s sleet

And then again and once again

I will wipe the makeup from my dripping face

I will pull on and then pull off my lace

Come home from work and pull off my heels

And sink into the clotted air of home

And him again, and me again

Another again like a hundred evenings

Again misunderstood empty meanings

Before sleep’s cold relief

Yet in the morning his fumbling gaze
Tugs the hemline of my ease

And yes again, and yet again

I plan to leave and plan to leave

But again I turn back and take my keys

My dreams too heavy when the day begins to wheeze

(And they will whisper, how my eyes are growing dim!)

My disappointment bulges in rolls around my chin

My flesh bloated and swollen as my hope grows ever thin

(And they will whisper, oh she used to be so slim!)

And yet I plan

To stir the stale air

One cold morning is enough

For a breeze or then a gale to blow away our worn affair

But I have met this man already, met them all

Have gone for dinner, drinks, the honeymoon

I have drifted through my life on phony swoons

I know his shows blaring through the flimsy walls

Drowning the lament of my heart torn and hewn

            So how should we conclude?

But I have been alone already, been scalded raw—

I have blundered naked through their gaze

Been wrapped tightly, squeezed and plastered with a grin

When I am hung out for sale, bought and gnawed

How will I  set my chin

To scare the jackals off my last scraps, braised, ablaze?

So why should we conclude?

But I have cast his heart already, cracked and flawed,

A heart I forged with hurt’s bitter flare

(But in a desperate moment still a useful ware!)

Was it the inferno in my own chest

That fired hard our loneliness?

My heart, burned and frozen, freezer-burned and thawed

            So how should this conclude?

            And how should I forgive?

*          *          *          *          *          *          *

I could confess, I have stumbled out in the alleys of night’s storm

Let the rain knot my hair as it tumbles from the eaves

Washing me in the rooftop’s grime, the thick sediment of the city

I could have waited for one of day’s glittering puddles

And fluttered like a magpie to it’s rippling edge

*          *          *          *          *          *          *

And the evening, the night, turn so sleeplessly!

Churned by restless feet,

Raw… exhausted… indiscrete,

Spread across our bed, heavy with humidity.

Will I, after another sleepless night,

Have the nerve to start our final fight?

But though I have grown tough and bitter, tough and resolved,

Though I have convinced myself I want to see your head brought in upon a platter,

I am not Herodias—but a wife of Sodom and Gomorra,

I will resign my freedom to my nostalgia,

And I will sacrifice my future for some long forgotten pleasure,

And will stand frozen, crystallized like salt.

And would it have made any difference, any difference at all,

After wiping the sleep from my bleary eyes,

After hiding in the bathroom again to cry,

Would things have worked out any better,

If I had lied and said it didn’t matter,

If I had swallowed my longing and said nothing at all,

If I had ingested this thought and let it fester,

Instead of saying: “I am Lot’s wife, frozen stiff,

Turned away from you, turned away from it all”—

If I had not turned to you and spit,

            With venom: “You never listen to me at all;

            You never listen at all.”

And would it have made any difference, any difference at all,

Would things have worked out any better,

After the sleepless nights and muffled crying in the bathroom

After the biblical metaphors and making up and twisted sheets

After these conversations and our little deceits

You still never listen to anything I say!

But my nerves dissolved when your shattered face turns grey 

Would things have worked out any better,

If I had rubbed my eyes, smiled, and said nothing at all,

Instead of welling up with venom and spitting:

            “You never listen at all,

            You never listen to me at all.”

*          *          *          *          *          *          *

No! I am not Queen Gertrude, nor could I hope to be;

I am the Chamberlain’s mild daughter, but I amuse the prince

I sway to his plot, happy to deliver his turns and twists

Slight and sweet, there to be spurned or kissed

Delirious, hysterical under crisis

My flowers strewn carelessly yet still apologetic

My frantic dance, foolish if not frenetic

At times, indeed, they think me pathetic—

And yet, I could drown their distaste.

I am alone… and still alone…

I burry my desire in the marrow of my bones.

How to smooth my wrinkles out? Do I dare face the day’s sickly heat?

I wait for night’s forgiving darkness and then stroll along the streets.

I have heard the ravens calling, each to each.

I do not think they will call to me.

I watch them preening their black feathers in the treetops

Then spreading their wings to catch the night’s breeze

When the wind’s rough breath begins to wheeze.

We have floated on the currents of evening’s air

With raven’s iridescent feathers floating on the squall

Till dawn soothes the night’s wind, and we fall. 

Helen Hajnoczky's work has appeared most recently in the magazines Rampike Vol.23 No.2, filling Station issue 59, Poetry is Dead issue 10, and online in Lemon Hound and Jacket2 as well as in the anthologies Why Poetry Sucks (Insomniac Press, 2014) and Ground Rules: best of the second decade of above/ground press 2003-2013 (Chaudiere Books, 2013). Her most recent chapbooks are Cover Letter from No Press and The Double Bind Dictionary from above/ground press. Helen's book Poets and Killers: A Life in Advertising is available from Invisible Publishing. She blogs http://ateacozyisasometimes.blogspot.ca/ and tweets @helenhajnoczky.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #108 : Jon Boisvert : DESCENDING

My first girlfriend shot an arrow straight up into the air & left. My second girlfriend came & kissed me on the cheek. I told her everything: my mango allergy,  the number of pets I accidentally killed as a child, the time I saw aliens descend from their pale green column in the sky. She threw her head back & laughed at that one. & that's when the arrow came back down, right through her open mouth. & even though I live with the memory of this image every day, I still love my first girlfriend most. She had the conviction to believe.

Jon Boisvert grew up in southeastern Wisconsin and now lives in Oregon. He has studied at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Oregon State University, & the Independent Publishing Resource Center. His first full-length manuscript, Black Balloons, has been rejected by many fine presses, and he is currently revising it. Other work of his can be read at jonboisvert.com.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #107 : Rusty Morrison : Naming Fable

The simplest way to pose the problem of recognition is to call out a name.

I mistake adult crane flies for mosquitoes, ignoring that a crane fly’s stillness makes the sound of information gathering, the clue.

Clue is a name for the patience I lack, arriving a cappella—the highest note struck by a boy who knows his voice will crack, but nonetheless goes on polishing thinner and thinner its porcelain.

I’ve never called out my own names, all at once, the way a female insect will lay hundreds of eggs, which hatch together in their season, as larvae, and burrow.

The problem of recognition incubates in each of its egg sacs differently. These can be found hanging from named as well as unnamed branches, among the dense purposes that camouflage them.

Shadows on the eaves of my neighbor’s house are already digesting purpose as I watch evening become recognizable, and daylight come apart.

The female crane fly’s larvae burrow into the ground or into decaying wood, in no need of, nor under any obligation to the sanction of name or law.

Isolated within its call to immediacy, a name is an orientation-limit, presenting something that, either by rights or point of fact, is now inconsequent.

My hands reach out in their own directions, never complicit with the names I’ve given them.

The prefix “re-” in recognition means to know again, to reach back and forwards at once, directionality splayed.

A well-struck glass will ring with the sound of pure dispersal. How to say my name with that force and disappear as a vibration radiating, freed from solidity.

A crane fly is in my ceiling’s corner, too far from the open front door, too disinterested in my waving and prompting, my increasingly violent provocations, to be frightened outside.

The light from the open door has cast the fly’s wings in shadow, which is what naming does to the absences within a thing.

Difficult to distinguish those from the absences I make by trying to recognize it.

Rusty Morrison's letterpress, limited edition chapbook from speCt! is Reclamation Project. Her books include Beyond the Chainlink (Ahsahta 2014), Book of the Given (Noemi Press 2012), After Urgency (Tupelo 2012), which won The Dorset Prize, the true keeps calm biding its story (Ahsahta 2008), which won The Sawtooth Prize, the Academy of American Poet's James Laughlin Award, the Northern California Book Award, and the DiCastagnola Award from Poetry Society of America, and Whethering (The Center for Literary Publishing, 2004), which won the Colorado Prize for Poetry. She is the co-publisher of Omnidawn, www.omnidawn.com. Her website: www.rustymorrison.com.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #106 : Jan Zwicky : Up at four a.m.

Not night, not morning: dead light,

the breath in you gone cold,

your third eye opening on everything

unloved. But your terror

shows you do not understand.

The housework of the universe

is done. Or not. An ember in the stovebox

faintly glows. Or not.

Jan Zwicky’s most recent collection is Forge, shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize. Alkibiades’ Love, a collection of essays, was published by McGill-Queens last fall. Other recent titles include Lyric Philosophy and Wisdom & Metaphor, now available in revised editions from Brush Education.

Photo credit: George Sipos

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #105 : William Hawkins : Untitled

There really is a secret success to life

Things live that are simply called poems

It appears that the whole thing

is just talking and listening

on a number of levels

I just now referred to them all as

confusing

and I cannot

comprehend it

*          *          *          *          *          *

I want to write the poem again

I want to hear the song in my ear

I don’t really think

I’ll ever get what I want, just yet,

But I can’t help stop my wanting

William Hawkins was born in Ottawa in 1940. After side trips to the West Coast and Mexico, he resides in the capital, pursuing enlightenment or a reasonable alternative thereto. Hawkins worked as a truck driver, cook, journalist and musician before settling on the taxi profession as a means of preserving integrity and ensuring near-poverty. He is now retired. His work appeared in the seminal anthology New Wave Canada: The New Explosion in Canadian Poetry (Toronto: Contact Press, 1966) edited by Raymond Souster and Modern Canadian Verse (Toronto: Oxford, 1967) edited by A.J.M. Smith. His books include Ottawa Poems (Kitchener: Weed/Flower Press, 1966) and The Madman’s War (Ottawa: S.A.W. Publications, 1974). Broken Jaw Press published his Dancing Alone: Selected Poems in 2005. Also an acclaimed songwriter, a tribute CD (Dancing Alone: The Songs of William Hawkins) was released in 2008. In 2013, he was inducted into the VerseOttawa Hall of Honour. The Collected Poems of William Hawkins is forthcoming in 2015 from Chaudiere Books (Ottawa).

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan