easter moon

I walked for hours last night.

The whiteness of birch, bleached limbs that crawl like spilled milk over the sky. I was thinking of your arms and legs, that night, how I would gather them in towards me, how they came together and moved apart lazily but with ease. I spread them around me and breathed in your hair while you laughed and I sighed. Do you remember that? You must.

dialogue

I remember how you could never sleep. I listened to you stir and shift, breathe and attempt to suffer in silence, until you couldn’t stand it anymore and you would rise and move through the house with soft feet that pad around. You would boil water and scratch a pen on paper for a while, sip tea, pet the cat who mewed at your feet. You looked for your slippers, and finding them, you shuffled on the laminate floor. You put your headphones on and sometimes made whispering sounds with your lips. Did you know that I listened to you? I was awake in those hours. That was my secret life, all the times that I followed your sound, and filled in with sleepy familiarity what I could not see. Then you would return to bed, sneaking in like an unfaithful partner, like you had been out living your own secret life. I watched you behind closed eyelids all those years. I saw that the tea was gone and refilled, gone and refilled. I never drank it.

YES! This picture was taken from the UNBC web site (www.unbc.ca) where Deliquesce is being advertised! Deliquesce is a chaotic zine published by the UNBC Arts Culture. This is the second, bigger and better issue. May there be many more. Get your copy of this zine at the Corner Store on Campus!

riff

heartbreak guitar
plays in the background of a
tuesday afternoon
bending strings
simple-like

outside: snow is thawing
drip drip drip (gutter tap)
i skipped class again,
lagged behind the rest,
that i might listen
to the turning of laundry in the drier
scraping hot buttons, faded jeans
wrapped in dysthymia

a note that will ring

while the people upstairs
walk in high heels and heavy feet

move along

backdoor

the folds of her dress

a sprawling epic,
she is vast --
and wide;

a body with dunes,
undulating hills,
and a horizon.
My eye sinks
a disappearing sail
inspires an 80 day trek
to face those who will not let
us have our
sensuality,
and eat it too.

Feed her strawberries;
pass them one by one over
her thick/slick red lips
but hold the sugar
hold the sugar

You can be a warrior
funny girl
writer with no face
really nice
a good friend

but girl, you need to understand
they don’t want you here,
they have no use for you.

plow

snow falls heavy
on this nodding head
sleep walking in thick fur
banality is hazed,
dream
that swirls in dim
orange light

I hitched a ride
muddy ice
on the underbelly
of a plow with
a low idle
to talk with dirt and salt
about where we are going

winter industry

she is putting on weight

a warm kind of
slow-moving weight
(like being filled with soft sand:
it trickles in)

it pads her shoulders
and her hips
her inner thighs are thickening
her cheeks round

she is pressing
against her clothes

swelling like breath
in the winter
when it’s cold and
it feels good to
grow


she sleeps nude
and lays with feet
outstretched
her dream-self counts
clenching fingers and toes
watches the rise rise fall
of her breasts and blankets
and listens to the purr of
throaty, heavy sleep

she has been dreaming lately
of an unplanned trip to mexico
she finds herself
on a plane
looking down on
stone-skipped clouds
as altitude and panic mount –
no money or clothes
(she hasn’t showered)
her passport photo is of
a slim-faced girl she doesn’t recognize
did she bring her wallet?