Beautiful grandmother
the view from your porch
is just amazing
it has opened up my home
to the voices of a farflung choir
of articulating women
heartsongs rising from bush
and inner city
dancing like the sun across
the long grass
of this
wild prairie
GUILTY
~ Garry Gottfriedson ~
chaos by obscene chaos, another desire is birthed
so aflame is the tyrant’s craving
to singe the pretty words of our women
the last breath let loose and cupped in killing hands
aloof on the streets, along isolated highways
a mind full of sweaty anticipation
a body alive swirling slay
tear by red tear, another heart breaks
a nation of women tugging at grief
tribes of men coil angst in raw fists
pounding revenge drumming in tribal blood
children leave the lights on at night
crawl into the hard corners of soft mind
clinging to sanity in an insane world
brick by black brick, another wall rises
wedging revulsion between tribes and government
legitimizing criminal behavior
denouncing sociological disorder thriving white
denying this travesty as truth
thus, building a sociopathic fortress
and the Prime Minister is guilty for all of it
ALL-INCLUSIVE
~ Andrew Pyper ~
We look at each other across the pool
protected from rudeness by the mask of sunglasses.
Days passed with walrus slides into the water,
marguerita errands to the swim-up bar, half-dozing
speculation over the lives of fellow guests.
We wonder about the state of their marriages, their reasons
for looking so satisfied relative to our own.
We imagine what they look like naked, what they like to do
in their beds with the towels on top folded into swans, whether we’d like it
if they did it with us.
Thoughts unspoken when entertained at home
but harmless here. Their accents—the English, the Italian, the Texan— reminders of our distance. Our friendships are instant,
measured in hours. We are free to stare without shame or penalty.
We will never see these people again.
GINGHAM DRESS – 1967
~ Mary Swan ~
Forty-seven years ago my grandmother sat in her house, and it might have been a spring day much like this one. Shifting between pale sun and showers, hyacinths glowing in all the wet, early gardens. She was thinking about her daughter, her granddaughters, and thinking about celebrations. About how time passes for people, as well as the countries they live in.
That year we all paid attention to things we’d never really thought of. Smooth-gliding canoes mounded with furs and old stories of corduroy roads. Forests falling and blocks of hewn stone rising into houses, the lights of cities spiralling outward like time-lapse photography. And white-whiskered men in black coats, signing papers in a room by the sea. That year the men all grew beards and people in our town, maybe all towns, dressed up in obvious costumes. Modern versions that were just as removed as the long-finned cars that lined the streets, as nylon stockings and rock-and-roll on the radio.
Forty-seven years ago, my grandmother made a list. Chose patterns, bought fabric, yards and yards. Bought buttons and thread and white lace. Thinking her thoughts as she carried her soft packages home, unfolded the stamped, brown tissue and cut around with her black-handled scissors. Three dresses, three bonnets, and aprons. The hum of the treadle machine in the quiet house and a needle glinting, dipping in and out as the patterned cloth flowed and pooled around her, through all the soft mauve evenings. So much time for her mind to wander, maybe thinking of her own grandmother’s heavy long skirts, the way she beamed through her first, lurching motor car ride. Or her own journeys, the boat to Europe, filled with dancing men, and a stylish red hat, bought in Paris.
Now vanished, that hat was around for years. Worn by generations as a costume, a joke, and I have said to my own daughter, My grandmother bought a red hat in Paris, in 1922, and she kept it all this time. Assuming it had great meaning, as we do with things that survive. A version, like the costumes we wore in those parades, the best we could do, with no one left to ask.
I don’t remember the moment my long dress appeared. I should feel shame about that, and I do, added to all kinds of regret. I’m sure that I received it, as my sisters did theirs, not as our due, but still without surprise, and that tells me how treasured we were, and how lucky.
And this is the only reason I can think of, for wanting to believe in something after. That you could see me here, happy in my house where rainy light flows through the open windows, along with the scent of wet hyacinths. That you could see that I have unfolded that gingham dress, and sprayed and washed and dried it. I wish that you could see my older face through the steam that bubbles and rises from the iron, and know that I’m thinking of you, know all that I remember. I wish that you could see me put it on, the dress, the apron—yes, even the bonnet. And stand like a ghost of myself, held close by the stitches your kind hands made.
MERCY
~ Priscila Uppal ~
Here is the gripper I use
for the sake of making myself less of a bother:
if you count the number of drops in a day
you understand despair accumulates
like coins in a busted vending machine.
I have insurance forms to fill out and
a few grant applications I was considering
assembling—seems easier than contemplating
the odds of tumour recurrence or survival rates—
yet urgency is the greatest deterrent
to normalcy, so one ends up sorting pill compartments
and spending an inordinate amount of time
solving the ‘how to get one’s socks on’ dilemma.
I think of my beloved cat Professor—
dead of cancer at eleven—and weep a five-second funeral—
as if my eyes are rotating power point presentations—
[vitamin E cream]—[dead cat]—[quinoa stew]—[MRI]—
I wait patiently for him to show up again as black-and-white pixels
wearing the collar we cremated along with his paws.
I used to think of my body as a well-oiled machine—
what I put in, I got out. Now I look down at my leg and
it’s an ironing board, the donor site on my thigh
just like the burnt indent of distraction, linen shorts
that can’t merely be thrown out or replaced.
This is what permanent scars mean:
I’m at the mercy of figure skaters
on Sunday afternoon TV,
dangling spirals and axels,
my heart the only cushion
such a spectacular crash
can absorb.
IF MOTHER COULD HAVE SPOKEN…
~ Wanda John-Kehewin ~
I never mean to leave you my children; I was trying to run from the storm that raged and fought inside of me. It hurts so bad to know that I left pain and confusion in your path.
From the first time I had been touched as if my body was that of a women when I was a tiny girl. I have tried … to run from their sins; but it’s not possible to run from myself. I tried so hard to stay with your dad for as long as I could but … The storm that raged inside me was fiery anger and it wanted to get out somehow; anyway it could. I turned to the bottle for comfort and I finally felt relief from this life.
Your dad wanted me to quit so bad with his love for me but even his love couldn’t calm the devil that chased me si
nce I felt their dirty hands upon me; trying to tell me they were God’s messengers.
If they were messengers than I thought that God was sure one sick son of a @##@@#.!
But now that I found a medicine that could take away all the pain; I can’t seem to stop; Even as I look at your tiny faces. I felt only shame when I walked away. I felt the shame I felt all my life and it felt normal to be buried in this shame. I let shame embrace me, mold me and take me away and I’d follow cause if I veered off the path towards righteousness others told me I was acting too high class and would offer me a swig of cheap rotgut whiskey. If I was already down, not one person in sight would even offer me a quarter for my next bottle. But you my babies; you were so pure, I wanted to protect you but I didn’t know how I was going to do that with all the craziness going on around me. I figured that if at least I could show you and plant a seed within your mind that somehow you could make it out of here no matter what happened. I wanted to plant the idea of a pure love … A love so huge that you would one day know that I did die for you … So that you could go on. I wanted you to analyze my life and do everything in your power not to give up like me. You would say to me and I know this my girl … “Mom you never gave up, you did your best with what you had and what you knew”, but I tell you I think I knew deep down in my deadened spirit that I never had a chance but I did get a chance to have three wonderful babies.
And giving birth was the only time I never felt dirty.
How could there be anything dirty about
You kids who were so skinny and helpless?
I lacked nutrition to have 9 pound kids
That the white women were having
But my babies were the cutest and the quietest;
Even the nurses were in awe of my 5 pounders;
I told them, “I pack light”, they stood there
Wondering whether to laugh or take out Canada’s health food guide.
GOD LOVES A DRUG DEALER
—GRAFFITI
~ Susan Musgrave ~
She forced you to cut your hair, hack it off
in front of those you counted as friends but failed
you in the end. Next time she’d make you
shave your eyebrows, too she said, and sent you
back onto the street with what was left of your dignity.
This girl sells the heroin you can’t live
without. She said she would donate your hair
to a good cause, like cancer, and I thought
trust you to find a drug dealer with a social conscience.
I have learned not to ask why, but then I opened
the door and saw you standing small in your nakedness—
the kind of nakedness that can never again be clothed.
I cried and cradled your head, while you, wise
as ever said, “Mum, it will grow back, it’s only
hair.” But your hurt goes deep.
You were the child I suffered for, your long hair
streaming as you ran wild into the wind
with your imaginary friends. While other mothers
snipped price tags off back-to-school fashions
I sat by your bed in the Intensive Care Unit
watching your vital signs blip across a screen.
You were barely fourteen; you’d had enough
of being alive. I lifted your head from the pillow—
the summer sun had streaked your hair
faintly gold—and brushed thin strands from your face.
I could almost feel you want to live again, by the grace,
as your hair slipped through my hands.
OSCAR OF BETWEEN, PART 17D
A NOVEL IN PROGRESS
~ Betsy Warland ~
– 17 –
Light-filled morn. Oscar walks down to Multimags to buy Sunday edition of The New York Times. July 22, 2011, Norway: a “Christian Extremist” (camouflaging himself in a policeman’s uniform) gains easy access to a small island. Kills 76 people. All but two are youth at a summer camp for politically active young adults.
Horror rises up in Oscar. The self-proclaimed Norwegian hero of the war against multiculturalism, feminists, and Muslim immigrants, posts a 1,500-page manifesto and video of himself—in war camo with semi-automatic rifle—a couple of hours before his attack.
This is it.
—it’s you or me—
One survivor, a Sri Lankan–born 23-year-old who moved to Norway at age three, is quoted as saying the camp had been
“the safest place in the world.”
– 18 –
Three years later. Twenty-two-year-old California student posts a lengthy manifesto detailing his hatred of women and racial minorities. Next night he posts a YouTube video before killing three Asian roommates, three women students, wounding thirteen others. Then—surrounded by police— kills himself. His father a unit director of The Hunger Games.
Yesterday. Corner of Commercial Drive and Broadway—older aboriginal man holds up white T-shirt for sale with black block letters:
Aboriginal Holocaust:
1492–?
22 BELOW
~ Melissa Auf der Maur ~
Many years ago, as a little a girl
I saw a bright light, in the darkest night
22 below, seven feet of snow
Bundled up, determined to make it there for certain
The futile search of man, cuts across the land
Bloody ships a sail, we hide behind the veil
A greedy golden hand, swallowed by the sand
Thy kingdom comes no more, we’re looking for the core
Digging down determined to get us there for certain
The center of the Earth, the heart of the universe
Fire deep inside, spinning us through time
The heart of the matter, I hear it getting louder
I’m your healer and you’re mine
I’m your healer and you’re mine
I’m your healer and you’re mine
I’m your healer and you’re mine
CHASING PAINTED HORSES
A NOVEL IN PROGRESS
~ Drew Hayden Taylor ~
There’s an old joke in the Native community about a man walking down the beach carrying a bucket full of crabs. He meets another man who points out to him that he should be careful. “I notice you don’t have a lid on your bucket. Your crabs might escape.” The first man smiles and tells the other man not to worry. “They’re Indian crabs. When one manages to get to the top, the others will grab him and pull him back down.” Supposedly it’s a comment on the anarchy and backstabbing in our community.
I maintain this is the wrong way to interpret the story. I think what really happens in that bucket is the crab that manages to climb to the top looks around and sees all that he or she can see. Then he or she willingly goes back down to the bottom of the bucket to share with the other crabs all that he or she has witnessed and learned. By doing this, he or she also allows other crabs the opportunity for them to climb to the top to see what they can see too.
One of the first rules of storytelling, sometimes a story can be interpreted several different ways. Those are the most interesting kind of stories.
BAFFLED IN ASHDOD, BLIND IN GAZA
~ Stephen Heighton ~
Eden Abergil: former Israeli Defence Forces soldier who, in August 2010, posted photos of herself smiling beside bound and blindfolded Palestinian prisoners. She labelled her Facebook album “The army … best time of my life.”
Eden
Abergil,
Eden of Ashdod, you only did
what any young recruit might do—
what I might have done myself, a little scared, a little
stoned (on your own strength, Eden,
as if each beautiful bullet you packed
were a pill—designer hybrid
of Percocet and blow, to anneal you against all
that’s frail and slow, that’s bound,
&nbs
p; beyond help)—
And so these Facebook pix
and that bit of bad press (don’t worry, Eden, the news—
save on Al Jazeera and in the tabloids of Tehran—
has already moved on).
You don’t get it. You protest. Your little shoot
killed no one! So then, why are the great Jews—
the poets and performers, the scientists, inventors,
philosophers, reformers—those truest
People of the Book—all weeping quietly
in their tombs: Paul Celan,
Hannah Arendt, almond-bitter Mandel-
stam, Marx and Einstein, all of them sad
insomniacs of the hinterlife, tallowing
hours away in the earth
to understand this “Facebook,” as well as the smirk
this now-world wears: failed future that won’t leave them to sleep,
not even the adamant suicides—Benjamin, Levi, Celan—
especially not the suicides.
And you yourself sit baffled in Ashdod,
Eden, wondering why no one quite caught
the joke—meantime the army’s marketing folks
photoshop your face to a blur, but
too late, you’re famous! Your poses
pathogenic, spreading via tweets and texts, and sickening …
sickening no one at all—we’ve all gone immune—all
but the hopeful dead, though of course
they’re dead and can’t die again
of our indignities.
Eden,
Eden of ash, your grand-
parents were the Nazi War—Eden
of Ashdod, der Tod
is still in the story, the frontier
between millennia didn’t keep it out,
the Human Future didn’t phase it out,
now it’s posted, grinning, on your wall.
Let every wall wail.
FIRE AND SONG
~ Eve Joseph ~
It’s a miserable November night. The rain is heavy and wind is sheeting across the water. It must be cold, I think, on Burnaby Mountain and I imagine it is hard work to keep the sacred fire from going out. One week ago my youngest daughter, Salia, turned 24 on the mountain—the day after the Kinder Morgan injunction was upheld and the RCMP began arresting protestors. Sails, as we call her, has two birth stories. In the first one, she’s born after a long, hard labour in which I hemorrhaged badly. In the second, the wind picks her up—much as on a night like this—and delivers her into my wide-open arms. Who is to say which one is real? To my mind, she is the wind’s daughter as much as she is mine.
Kwe: Standing With Our Sisters Page 5
