Skip to main content

a note for sugarbones

Still trying, in my intermittent way, to put up bits of writing, here and there. This poem appeared in the Volume 19 Number 2, Spring 1999 edition of the Pottersfield Portfolio, out of Sydney, Nova Scotia.

a note for sugarbones

I took down the Arbus clipping from the fridge.

I used to press my palm to it
in a drunken Saturday night prayer
but now it just leers
and I want it out of my mornings.

Saturday night
can stay where it is
it's consumption made all the more conspicuous
now that the furnace is cold
filled with old letters
and the resentment
of discarded guests

the boxes of guilty presents
and bundles of cunning hope
it all made beautiful blue flames for ahile
but now the wires are burned black
and none of that works anymore

I want to walk through my week
like a gentleman, enlightened by the grace
of your trembling lips
your sweetness
your taste.

Comments

  1. biteyourowntail5:30 pm

    You, my friend, are a very good poet indeed.

    ReplyDelete
  2. juj1:20 pm

    sarah's right - this is stunning.

    i want to steal that last stanza but i am not that sort of folk. i'm not above coveting it tho....

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

glamour, by extension

C is friends with the fashion stylist Rebekah Roy (left in both pics above) ... one of those people who personify calm and smiling success. On her blog she presents glamour in this very sincere, straightforward way ... whether she's taking pictures of people on the street , talking about stain removers , her favourite videos , or attending some glittering party . One minute she's ruminating on hair extensions, and in the next she reveals how she's been featured on the Vogue UK site. A real disarmer and charmer (and this without meeting her yet, although I feel like I know her because we both did our time in Winnipeg). * * * * * Coming home from Russia, we did many bad things. ; mixed media on canvas, 10 x 10 inches. In my own life, the glamour is wholly imagined. * * * * * witches, smoke ; mixed media on canvas, 10 x 10 inches. My second go at this one, and for some reason I'm painting a lot of smoke lately (note to self: tell C that I want to be cremated). *
7 comments
Read more

the indisputable weight of the ocean

People are always telling me that my work is too dark. So I've put up this sunnier story, but even it has a shadow, as its original publisher – a fine Atlantic Canadian literary magazine called the Gaspereau Review – is no longer in business. ---------------- It was a simple enough thing and that thing was simply this: Edmund Kelley was a gentleman. Of course his mom called him her 'little gentleman', as in 'Oh Edmund, you are my perfect little gentleman,' which did seem to hold to a certain logic that these type of things often follow, considering her affection for him and the fact that he was, after all, only ten years old. Still, Edmund himself was not particularly fond of the diminutive aspect of that title. Gentleman was enough; gentleman summed up the whole thing rather nicely, thank you. He was definitely a more refined version of your average child. He lived in a state of perpetual Sunday m
2 comments
Read more

Oona Balloona (doesn't care about new tables)

Well, it's Friday, and since I'm pretty depleted in the chit-chat department, I might as well put up some pictures of Ol' Giggles At Ghosts before Grandma starts sending me hate mail. Man, what a goofball. At this rate it's going to be, like, eighteen years before she has gainful employment and moves out of the house. I mean, come on . * * * * * C is especially crazy and frantic today. About two months ago she decided that she no longer liked our dining room table (take that, dining room table! no more BFF for you!). Since then she's switched the dining room and kitchen table (and all the rest of the furniture in the house -- about thirty times, but that's another story) as a provisional solution while she scoured area stores for an upgrade. And she thought she had found one, on Wednesday, at JYSK ( Whatever , I said). But when she ordered it, JYSK called back to say that they were really low on stock, and that the stock they did have was damaged, and
44 comments
Read more