(oxy)moron

he said i should sound
less like a geisha
so i laughed louder
but that wasn't what
he meant.

Lastly,

You said
I owned a
"rich inner life"
which is the highest manipulation
because it seemed
the highest compliment.
Well, between us
there might be empties
sunburns
crab sticks
poppy seeds
sincerity
or the Black Sea.

Agreed

There's a science to
the complete lack of calculation
which goes

1. enter dining room
sit down
put on shirt
raise arms
remove shirt

which goes
2. remove shoes
enter river
apply moist towelettes
to shoes

agree
3. I will bike you
to the man with the best
smile in Saskatoon
but that's it.

Wish you would

Let's play the game
where you close your eyes
and I am allowed to do
anything to your face
for 15 seconds.

But First, which is a preamble to last year's June 29th

First you need to understand
how we all sat.
That we have chosen this,
legs-crossed,
Starbucks,
Birkenstocks in socks,
Chucks;
to click through slides
as if they were your family pictures
as if they were an album
that is always about sex and death
and paint and canon
and Canada.

So we have chosen
Emily Carr and paid
the requisite fees
to look at paintings of
disappearing savages and gape-trees
holes hollowed out like
we know the answer
and yet it is
always about canon and Canada
and never about sex.

If we wanted to set a precedent,
we could choose one.
For example, at the Farmer's
Market one morning,
I saw a woman set a dangerous
precedent like a hangnail,
loading a Lada with cabbage
(which is not a euphemism)
filled up like a fload,
but not floating,
because the cabbages were
like blunt objects.
They settled on each other
leafily and
stuck in
the way that cabbages stick
to other cabbages
(this is not a euphemism, either).

Unloading the unfloating
cabbages,
from bottom to top,
this woman set her stall
spilling cabbages,
still sticking onto sidewalks.
So if you're silent once
things have a tendency to
slip or spill over.

Maybe that doesn't make sense
since it's
hard to apply the cabbage story
to an academic setting,
so you need to know
that we applied to grad school
and are ready to box up our books.

Second you need to know that that
burned out hole was a cunt
and no one said it.
But first you needed to know how we sat.

Number 2

Yeah
Well
Maybe I wouldn't be
so charming
if I wasn't
so goddamn awkward

saturday morning in the printmaking studio

this is the sound the good ink makes,
the way soaked paper will sink
up to your wrists in pulp and sizing,
the methyl alcoholic heat between your
fingers.

a rhythm of ghostprint,
wash hands, swig of coffee.

i have always been a mess
of inkfingers and bruises,
the girl with her own thumbs
for thimbles. i don't remember
the last time i wore an apron.

now you
teach me how to turn the
ship's wheel of a press,
tighten until it kicks back,
blot rags and newsprint. 

you point out the box
of rosin marked "cancer."
i think, everything in this room
could kill me. you assure me
it would only be slowly. 

i have forgotten how little
i trust my own hands, but
i can learn.

this is the sound
the good ink makes.

Untitled post a million.

I will pick a word
even though it's not the right one
because there are so many
words, I mean.
You are intruiging
intruiging's not the word I meant
but also
incredibly awkward.

inspired by "if my body spoke instead of me" - alison

if my body spoke instead of me
today it would tell me
THANK YOU.

at least #2

but at least i can say i was
here
for the summer it rained
every day.

listing

this year's inventory of the
changeling between my ribs
is uncountable

sparrows, 
or something
that flutters
and swarms

more like
a hornet's nest than
monarchs;

something that gnaws
more like aphids than
a chipmunk;

something that storms
more like lightning
than the sea,

or the sea sometimes,
with lightning; and

your hands, or at least
that's how it feels;

an empty space more like
an attic than the sky
above it; and red

more like muscle
where it's finally
supposed
to be.

inspired by "on convergence"

you know how when you don't
floss in a really long time
you feel the blood run in the gap
between your front teeth but you
know they're finally clean, well
that's what it feels like when i can
finally spit this all
out.

learn-two

this summer, or how to
go deaf to everything
she ever said to me.

learn-to

this summer, or
how to talk without
swallowing my tongue
anymore.

let me tell you about my boat #2

if you asked me to i would

be your 

anchor.

May 4th 11:28 pm -- On Convergence

When I get your words
caught in my mouth
(Lately) I feel
the blood run in the gap
between my front teeth.

Not-very found poem

Sometimes
I think or wish
we are speaking in
codes and both
get it.
I guess I can't
ask if this is true.

Guilty and self-deprecating penance poem about poetry penance which is to you, but all the judgemental stuff is actually to me.

Where are we now?
I almost
wrote you a poem
in soapy irony
that started

Funny that we chose
writing ourselves to
deadlines
cause we like them so much

and in meter, across
wires liks tightropes
forgot
the exercize was
every twenty four hours.

And now in grand marnier
backwash and
retrospect
that went "something like that"
someone else will say
where are they now?

found poem (with gratitude to berkley)

a post-apocalyptic
world full of
supermodel babes really
rubs me
the wrong way.

variations on car accidents

i picture you getting into
a car accident, screaming

what if
my name
is still your emergency
contact.

variations on "to say"

to say
we are connected
is to say
all of my worst
and my first
stories
begin
with your name.

letter to an occupant

i am writing to inform you that everything your house has told you
about me should be regarded with suspicion,

except for perhaps
the ceiling and the floor as that is where
i spent the most time.
the ceiling saw everything.

please don't listen to the walls.

Seeing spots

He writes
sacred geometries
finds the golden ratio in
the nerves of the cornea
arms of hurricanes.
Victims of male pattern baldness
must feel a part of something
larger than themselves.

To say two

To say
we are connected is
to say
that twelfth street runs from
where I turn off
past your boyfriend's house
with the truck
parked outside
and through

the house where I grew up
across from
the house I was first kissed
past my coworker's
and his wife's swelling belly
on my red wagon route
to school
and your house is the
house of
a childhood friend
that wasn't
where just this week
I learned to ride
without handlebars
tar and roadrash immediate
in the shutter of wrists on asphalt
and slow drag of adrenaline
and where I walked drunk in
highschool coaxing
your arms into my coat

but to say
this is a coincidence
and a bike route.

Tell me 'bout it. It rhymes?

Got new skinnies for my bike
and rode it round
the roads downtown
it's faster and more
aerodynamic.

And thought of how
strange
it would be
if my body spoke instead of me
bet my body'd say really
stupid things to you.

But
now
the wind
is in my legs
winding wheels.

let the epic catching up begin

louise told me
if you wake up between the hours of two
and four a.m. it is when spirit speaks to you
the loudest and

YOU MUST WRITE

but it is three thirty and
i don't want to write,
don't want to
listen.

Win Fortune

Outside a local chinese place
called Win Fortune
we are playing the paper
plates like wooden
spoons and inventing the
jigsaw jukebox.

It's summer and the bus
has air conditioning
and bathrooms like we
always wanted for field trips
And this is the best field trip
because we have armed ourselves
like real vegetarians
with a chant of
hell no we won't go
without eggplant hummus.

In Sudbury there is a music
store and a chinese place
and a big brick monument
to mining and in Dryden
I see the lake
vacation homes and
we're burning oil all the way
to Ottawa armed like
protesters
with a chant of
hell no we won't go
by plane
'cause this is cheaper.

let me tell you about my boat

we watched them build it
in their driveway for
fifteen years, how

they each took two hour
watches tied to the railing
in the middle of a pacific
night.

when i said lonely lonely
lonely, didn't mean it like
a bad thing, but they

can't seem to make an offer,
she says he's going alone
next time.

One of those moods

I often use food to win fights
so when you said
it's not safe to have
too much of hot and cold
in one place suddenly
I said yeah
well
what about baked alaska
it has ice cream inside
a cake
isn't that the best?

To say

To say we are connected
is to say
there is a line of spit
that runs like the strings from
hot glue guns
from my mouth
to someone else's
to hers
and
to yours.

And that is gross.

I like America and America likes me

Joseph,
drenched in
palour and felt
lard and leather
and sandals
like a shepherd
approaching the coyote.
In communion
he waits for moths
to eat through
his suit of straw
until the chewing
sounds the siren of
the ambulance.
And leaves, never having seen
America right.

And the moth that eats his suit
is the great grand-daughter
of the one who ate all Napoleon's
library and carved
a dress from meat.
They say it
shrivelled til
it was a suit of straw.

September 16th, 2008... back up backtrack

The first time I watched a man get out of bed
for two hours at once
I wrote
at once
I wrote
for the newspaper
OLD MAN GETS OUT OF BED
with the sub-title THIS KIND OF THING HAPPENS
EVERY DAY
and realized I could not be married
to you

I wrote
at once
a novella, entitled
THE TOILET PAPER HERE
IS LIKE STREAMERS
FOR COMMUNISTS
I wrote on graph paper because
as I wrote
THE LETTERS GET SMALLER
AND SHORTER
I could fit more in
but really
the letters just got shorter

I sawed down a tree
that autumn
with my own hands and
another pair
and on the tree we wrote
in slugs and bitten ankles and soft water
I CANNOT BE MARRIED FOR THIS
BECAUSE THIS KIND OF THING HAPPENS
EVERY DAY
and agreed
across language and across hours
that even in the direst of circumstances
(TO DODGE THE DRAFT WOULD YOU MARRY ME?)
I could not be married
to you

I wrote
my fingers unfurling
more slowy than his
in the spongebathwater
I wrote in the halting steps of
a man waking up for two hours at once
I wrote in my needles
and his saliva and brittle skin
in all the dead cells he would give me
I wrote in the sound of the rain
under a canopy of poisoned grapes
and wrote symbolically
in the milk-bench blocking the door
this kind of thing happens
every day

Thanks... more penance.

I picture getting into
a car accident
and screaming your name
because you're the only one
outside that bar who
will answer me.

Inheritance (for July 11th)

Collections one two and three
are made from birds
and have for parts
wings and feet in jars,
hearts and guts
charred and caked and cooked
on sidewalks
when it was warm.

Collection four
is scissors
labelled his and hers
for clipping the ends
of feathers for pens.

Collections five and six are
made from straws
for breathing underground,
have parts that must be replaced
every three to five years.

Collections six through ten
are sweat stains only
cut from t-shirts with scissors
labelled his and hers
and organized accordingly
from when it was warmest.

the last of the catchup poems - smoking

so i ran into your best friend in the alley
behind the gay bar and i tried to light
her cigarette for her cuz it seemed like
the kind of thing you would have done
but it was too windy and we stood
in the dark with our hands cupped
in front of our faces and i said,

it's not like we could have taken
you to the hospital anyway
you wouldn't have let us

someone offered me a scarf
i said i didn't need it

but maybe
i probably could have.

compromises

my father has given up  t.s. eliot, wagner, and BMWs  because they are anti-semitic.

(not that he could afford a BMW, but it makes him feel good to yell SHAME ON YOU out the window at their drivers)

but i think the ring cycle is kind of a cool idea. and what if t.s. eliot had loved jewish people, and because he loved jewish people or maybe because he was secretly jewish himself he for some reason never thought about mermaids or peaches and never wrote the love song of j. alfred and i never read it in my first year english class where the prof told me i looked like the mona lisa and i got all teary every time he said "i do not think that they will sing for me"? this is what i think about when my dad says t.s. eliot hated jewish people.

come on. who doesn't want to measure out their life in coffee spoons?

dear sylvia

dear sylvia.
the other day my mother said you were a terrible person and that you had been horrible to your husband and your children.

i thought you should know i defended you. i said SHE WAS SUCH A GOOD WRITER and got terribly righteous. (sometimes i'm a good writer but more often than not i'm good at being terribly righteous).

i mean, yeah, you were pretty terrible. but you wrote such good poems. and ted wrote such good poems about how awful it all was. birthday letters makes me cry every time. i would like you to know that when i was twelve i rearranged my grandmother's bookshelf so that all your books were next to his.

maybe this makes me a bad person. not the bookshelf, i mean thinking that it's ok that you were terrible to your husband and your kids because you were a good writer.  but if i had the choice between the bell jar and a good marriage i would pick the bell jar.

ok maybe i am a bad person.
i haven't even read the bell jar.
but i just wanted you to know i'm on your side.
not that i'm picking sides or anything.
ok, i did.

sorry ted.

sincerely,
leah

hey ginsberg

dear ginsberg (not the cat. my friend has a cat named ginsberg). no, let's try that again. (how am i supposed to write ginsberg a letter. i am not a beat poet. i don't smoke and i will never wear a beret. i am not writing this over coffee. i am writing this waiting for the laundry to dry, and i am not wearing socks.) ok. hey ginsberg. i would like to quote your poem.

which poem? howl. i know. everyone wants to quote howl, everyone wants the expanded edition and tiny chunks of it tattooed into their wrists while your other poems wither from neglect. but that's because it's....well, i have a list of reasons.

Ginsberg I Would Like To Quote Your Poem in My Poem and This is Why You Should Let Me:
  
1. i am jewish in a really lapsed way that you would probably appreciate. because i am jewish i wanted to quote your poem kaddish but i thought i would be a hypocrite to quote a poem called kaddish when i don't actually know how to say the real thing. not that your poem isn't a real kaddish. it's kaddish for all the nice lapsed jewish girls like me who never went to hebrew school and read your poems instead. 
2. i wanted to say kaddish for a friend of mine who died but i don't know how and he would have laughed at me. if you were alive i would say please write a kaddish for atheists. (maybe your kaddish is also for atheists?) you're not alive, so i have to write my own. i won't hold this against you.
3. i can't say kaddish (i can't even read hebrew, maybe if i tell you this you will feel bad for me and let me quote your poem) but i wanted to do something for my friend who died and then i remembered all i really know how to do is write poems anyway. sometimes.
4. because i saw the best mind of my generation destroyed by madness. ginsberg believe me.
5. because everything you said to carl solomon i should have said to my friend who died and i didn't.
6. i wasn't actually with him in rockland, the day i called to go visit him the nurse told me he had been discharged.
7. because i was too scared to go see him and i am going to write a poem to make myself feel better.
8. i was scared to go see him because i thought maybe i should be in there too.
9. i don't know why i was scared, i have a long family history of mental illness. or maybe that's why.
10. actually, my father has the same name as you and he's named after a mental hospital.
11. my father is named after a mental hospital because that's where his parents met.
12. that's a true story, i don't know why i told you that. um. ok.
13. you're dead.
14. you and my friend are dead and i would like to write a decent poem for both of you because i can't say kaddish.

i hope that's ok with you ginsberg.

sincerely,
leah

Second Penance (... in the style of)

I really didn't mean it
when I said
I turned you
to drink.
You turned your own
goddamn self
to smoke.

Uber Penance Backtrack

I didn't really mean it
when I said
You are a crowd of oysters
sucking at
each others'
necks.

Yesterday's

Toshia how can I explain
not that our hearts are different
than our skins,
but that we both have
skins and hearts
and live with the aches
of the skins and hearts before us.

the poems he knows

tonight your lover asked me
for the poems
he knows i've been writing
about you.

he said
i will be the front row tears
when you read them.

he said
you said for me
to always write my own.

(even though i never let you read them.
you were the first and last boy i will be
ever so good at not breathing a word to)

(i will be ever so good at these poems for you,
even though you will never read them)

( i will be never be as better as breathing
your words like this
for him)

itchy legs

things on my legs right now:

the welts from the two hour river walk,
wading in sweetgrass up to my knees
and my new tattoos swollen with red

marks from the the mosquitos who were teething
on my ankles last night, they rose up
from the gravestones in dustclouds and said
stay a little longer, remember us
under your fingernails

the blue stripe of a bruise
where i drove with a tank full
of fish held tight behind my knee,

the one with the tissue-paper scars
from the bike accident on the gravel driveway
and a week later on my grandmother's sidewalk,

and further up a memory
of your hands on the one spot
you like so much, a place i never
thought about before.

Will You

On the back of an attractions sign
at the top of the hill
on highway 5
you know the one
where you either can finally or can no longer
see
the city's afterglow
it says

WILL YOU

And
when I stop assuming that
something
must

come

next

I get scared that
the artist is grand-standing
against apathy itself.
WILL YOU do anything?
WILL YOU embrace these
lucky seven letters
WILL YOU stamp them in the side walk
for anyone to read who is anxious
and courting the ghost
of things undone?
WILL YOU scan them nightly
on your commute out
and feel your feet tingle with
the hours left in the day?
Or WILL YOU,
under the shifting weight of
trying to be calm
drive the highway til you lose the city's
lights and dust and
citizens against backyard chickens?

Turns out on the back of a turn-off sign
three kilometres off where I turn from highway 5
it says
MARRY ME JOY MARRY ME?

decisions

i never know who else i'm going to
run into grieving up here

on the hill where your old lovers go
to scream, the graveyard
of pioneer children buried under trees,
and grace fletcher's headstone
resting on her piles of bison bones.

tonight there's a couple on a motorbike
by the train bridge
setting off fireworks with a cigarette,
sounding gunshots into
the thunderheads over the river.

if i'm gonna have to be without him
i can't decide
if i'd rather be the cigarette,
the train bridge,
or the firework.

#2, which is a list of things that belong to me

Clothing, worn before,
a dresser painted pink,
hairdryer,
purse,
phone,
toothbrush,
keys to get in,
bottles of vitamins,
empty bottles of vitamins,
deodorant and
stale perfume,
blocks of linoleum,
a rubbermaid container full of used paper,
set of paints so cheap I have to keep and
a set of paints to sell,
books and
four in a meagre collection of artists books,
a mirror, lipstick stained,
a card table,
cue cards in a corresponding case,
soap, inherited,
a set of measuring cups to look like little ladies
stacked inside each other, cradling and
a flawed set of bowls with pears,
box of fabric,
box of yarn, handspun,
pens and
pencils and
knives and
scissors and
combs and
bobby pins,
earrings in an antique box marked
"L" from a lover who didn't know my name,
stretchers,
frames and
a polaroid of a lookalike shopping in November,
vinyl letters,
love letters,
fanmail, unsent and
letraset,
sketchbooks, coil-bound,
sketchbooks, hard-bound,
three sets of collector coins from an uncle
I just met
(he bought me lunch)
peter rabbit in porcelain and also stuffed,
things,
measuring tape,
ukuleles,
a desk and two chairs,
a bottle of wine,
an accordion duct-taped,
two clarinets,
pan flutes,
vegetables and
lentil buns and
leftovers
and
candles,
board games,
unicycle,
bike lock,
baggage lock,
combination lock,
a lock of mullet hair,
helmet,
photographs,
and miscellany,
two circus figurines that
go limp when you push them from a lover who knew my name,
a camera, inherited,
camera paid-for,
credit cards,
memory cards,
magnets,
a laptop, July hot and sticky,
pairs of shoes and
sandals,
scarves,
kercheifs,
baskets,
bookshelves,
a zebra towel,
jars of spices and
jars that still smell like spices,
shampoo for fine and oily hair,
bottles for water and
for paint,
rags soaked in linseed,
six plants,
privilege,
(and also art)
and this receipt, which
on the back
is a list of things that belong to me.

at least

yes, there are things i'm still quite sure of.
 neko case, "i'm an animal"

on any given night there will be
at least
two of us awake & haunting
the empty that was you.
at least
i will always have company.

Checkpoint

This city,
a grid of reflective casings:
insects' pupal shells and traffic signs.
Lanes of lights line the highway like ligaments.

Flashlit and fine-filmed with false guilt,
I answer "nothing tonight,"
and in your eyes is
bad guys
and
drunks
and
a white girl in a polka dot dress
selling beer is nothing to worry about.

Say
I'm the one asking the questions, here
like
Do you find that people are generally mistrustful of you lately?

'Cause in my birthplace
casings light the lines of picket signs:
speed limits and pupal shells and teargas.