Ah! les beaux jours de bonheur indicible
- for Iva
There are so many things I don't want to remember:
the toilet cleanser your mother used
that suffused the small rooms
of our youth; your brother whom I believed
for he offered nothing; your step-father
at the kitchen window, his Friuli tongue
working your ears like a knife; the winter of '80 in Paris
cafés when we riffled our hearts
for the tawny season we wanted most. And finally
how we fought for each other
with hate till our closeness
crumbled like bread in our mouths. I
sit here now, drunk
on memories, remembering your blizzard
hair that matched your rabid
coat, the way we mikadoed through
our university days - Sartre
a lovely stench on our minds, and those joint French
seminars about an old woman estranged in sand
hankering for the feel of love, simple
and manageable as a toothbrush, or
a mirror that would tell her nothing had changed
except for the sun that kept
leaving the scene
to return brighter than ever above her broken
face. And I recall the tales of Argentina,
your uncle's place in Rosario, his
language that you'd kindle
to fairy life with your fine Toronto hands
on October nights; how again and again
we'd end up in Yorkville, standing like foreigners
in front of dusk, slick
with laughter, practising the art
of bringing men to our mouths
like chilled wine. Each time
my memory slows, I see
you under my apartment balcony, watchful
as if at a border, evening
swallowing your sleeves. The first moment perhaps
that you were free of me. Decades later
I stare at you through
my own skin, eyes like leeches
in the kitchen skin. Once I walked your life
in a nightdress, my wash
a death in our bathtub, our futures
ancient as tequila. Listen. Once
we were young, and pretty
as stones that cannot speak. I wonder
where you are now - at a window
licking breakfast off your fingers, touching
your frontal bone, the past
a colour in the closet. At present
there are continents between us, a ballast of animal
moments. And your soul's
a voice I wouldn't recognize. But
even so, these words would be
either the end, or the beginning
of everything we choose
to contain, or protect.
First publication: Malahat Review
Bloomdale, Ohio
...When I can make
Of ten small words a rope to hang the world!
- Edna St. Vincent Millay
At the intersection of what was
and is, a siren
cuts through a life. My sister
leans into this accident
of sound, puts her mouth
to the blade. She's
always preferred the hard things in life.
Her lover's on her knees in a blue sunset
of fields compelling as summer.
Even from a distance, I can decipher
the direction their words have taken.
I've been tracking this sister for decades. As
it is, she owns three long acres
of silence, and a dirt road
that swings by like a cervine rope,
headed for something larger
but smaller
than the hand she now brings
to me in greeting, holding this moment
in her eyes
till it skids and shatters.
First Publication: Vintage '97, LCP prizewinner