A Story Now Thrice Told

I've been sort of sitting on this one for a little while now as I study for exams because it makes me feel unsure. It's very different. Uncomfortable. But here it goes regardless.

A story now thrice told, of my mother.

Of my mother’s secret inner hell carried around in her mind long ago.

We were all very small when my mother’s father died, after a struggle with skin cancer. He struggled with the poisonous body ravaging illness, and in my mother’s mind she struggled too. She struggled with the poisonous panic creeping through her thoughts. As he fought and fell, she fought and fell.

We all would gather by his bed to rally around him and share his fight, and when we would leave his house we would cry together when we could see he would lose. But at night we could all slip into sleep, and then nobody was gathered by mother’s bed to share her fight. Scared of sleeping, shaking with panic she would slip down the hall to my sister’s room. And in the small hours of the night, she would pick up Hilary, sit in a rocking chair, and hold her daughter’s three year old body against her own. A parent’s panic of losing a parent ebbing away in time with her young daughters little heart beats.

Nobody knew of this private coping of my mother, of her inner torture, not even Hilary, lying sleeping in my mother’s arms, until this year when missing her father my mother told her daughter. And my sister told me.

A story now thrice told, for Hilary, for me, for you to carry around in your mind too.

Burning Lake

I hate the inadequacy of cliches. They can never even approach the true experience, the true feeling. Experiences, feelings, they're subjective and dynamic. Cliche is a blanket statement smothering all things small, original, simple, creative.

I won't tell you that I love sunsets. That's a cliche.
I love Sauble Beach at dusk, wearing sweaters, toes in the now chilly water, watching the sun slip into the horizon. This is my childhood.


Burning Lake

The sky's on fire
as the earth turns,
as the sun dips
and melts
into the lake
a blazing orange pool
bleeding into the still black waters.
But you can't touch a sunset--
so warm looking in the sky.
None of that warmth carries.
Cold wind
blows off the burning lake
and whips through dune grass and our hair.

Bad Mustaches

With a major essay deadline looming, sadly this is exactly how I'm feeling at the present:


Bad Mustaches

There's a brick wall in my brain
red brick I should think,
with pale grey mortar
put up between my skull and my mouth

I'm waiting on a wrecking ball
and sweaty hairy men with bad mustaches
and yellow plastic hard hats.

Shoreline Skin

his body is a map of

the cote d'azur
of vacation

in
beautiful blue ocean
eyes
and baked shoreline
skin

Seeing as you're just sitting there on that horse...

And now, a little insight as to why I've decided not to pursue a masters in English:

I hate research on 18th century English lit! It's just so fucking pointless! I can't imagine something more redundant! And even if I do come up with an interesting and original thought on William Cowper, who cares? What's it going to even prove? He's been dead for AAAAAAAAAAGES.

So on that note, something a little funny and a little silly.


Seeing as you're just sitting there on that horse doing nothing

I want to teach you
of my worth.
Sit you behind a desk
and pace back and forth
in high heels
and a pencil skirt
with hot pink cue cards with all my points on them
and make you see.
(You'd see.)

That I'm desperate for you.
You make me catch my breath.
Maybe if I stop breathing
and turn purple
from lack of oxygen
you'll notice me
and then save me
(mouth to mouth!)
And then we can gallop off into the sunset on your white horse.
Clearly,
seeing as you're just sitting there
on that horse
doing nothing
we should be together.

Greece for Stacey

There has been too much Homi Bhabha in my life of late. He's an absolutely brilliant postcolonial literary critic (for those of you who are not extreme englishy type nerds) but with brilliance comes complexity. Rather, it's bloody hard.

I think everybody has those moments where they just want to escape real life and all its Homi Bhabha-ness. For Stacey and I, this is escape is obviously and naturally to Greece.

One day, we'll live this:

Greece for Stacey

I sit here, with shoulders in twisted knots of pain, my fingers so cold they're practically numb, wearing four pairs of sock trying to write. Write about Greece.

Greece for Stacey who sits at her laptop in a different city, with shoulders in twisted knots of pain, her fingers so cold they're practically numb, wearing four pairs of socks staring out her big second story window. Staring at swirling and gusting winter.

We'd live in a white stone house with pink and blue laundry fluttering on a line, and set into a mountain, reached by wonderful winding steps. Every day stepping out our front door, and traipsing down the rock hewn stairs to the beach, sun burnt shoulders half hidden under floppy hats, wearing black bathing suits, to read Pablo Neruda, Margaret Lawrence, Mark Haddon, on the soft warm sand. We'd meet tanned, green-eyed boys--boys who are perfect because they're boys who don't speak English. We'd have a constant sun kissed view of jewel-bright sand and sparkling green water, edged with white waves, rimmed by the rest of that deep clear blue ocean. A view of Eden--of Greece, for Stacey.

Now

Odd practice, remember birthdays never to be celebrated.
For my Grandma Toth's birthday, it would've been 85 this year.


Now

Now
she's gone--
sickened body burnt into dust
and blown into the winds...
a fine powder, that's all that's left of her
once loving
living
breathing body.
Her dust finds its way into the wrinkles
and deep creases of his hands
as he spreads her on the air.
He brushes her off...

And we plod on.
We smile and don't feel guilt.
But birthdays will never properly exist again.
There will be no card with her
spiky black letters on it,
and it will be as though the entire
Earth
had not made it around the
Sun
once more.
Years
will never pass in succession again, because
my
Grandma has died.

Harmless Thing

Since it's Halloween, how about a poem about fear?


Harmless Thing

Blonde beautiful&
dumb
so young and
excited

about a peanut,
like the fresh green
part of a maple key, taking
root
in her.
Tiny jellyfish-like embryo
translucent, showing
skinny fragile veins
full of her blood,
living in her inside.
A fingerprint sized
harmless
thing.

I'm
the one who
chokes
with fear, as if
a chord was wrapped around my neck.

Things, Things are Changing

My beautiful friend told me to get posting so that she could procrastinate. I wrote this yesterday after a particularly scary encounter with a spider, and how it made me realize that things were just better in Southern Ontario when we were younger.

This one doesn't really feel finished though... thoughts?

(That means you Becky.)


Things, Things are Changing


in the
summer the grass is a luscious green
the sky is a wet dense heavy grey
and a damp chilled breeze
slices
through milder lighter air
when we
were young
the grass was parched and starchy,
a crispy pale yellow, the sky was always
just
blue
it wouldn’t rain for weeks
and the air was so hot heavy you could wear it like a sweater

in the
fall
the spiders come rushing
back into the house,
armies of eight-legged monsters
crawling abjectly appearing
not to move at all
all eight horrifying legs propelling the large black bodies
Before,
they were pale yellow
so faint and frail
I could imagine them away,
or if they insisted on intruding,
drown them
mercilessly
and swiftly
in the shower

things
things are changing

for the worse

only the winter
remains
cold
with chapped elbows and
faces beaten red and raw by driving snow

A Handful of Staples

Nobody screws over my friends and gets away with it.

...Or at least escapes without me hurling truly, truly scathing poem at their ego.


A Handful of Staples

I hope it hurts like
hell

Like grainy sea salt
rubbed into a thousand splintery
paper cuts
on the tender skin
of your
neck

Like being stepped on
by a
Clydesdale
on an already broken rib
leaving big plumb colour bruises
on your white bones

Like being submerged
in lemon juice
the pale yellow
acid
burning at your eyes
eating away at the soft
membranes
of your nose, your lips

because
it really should.

The powerful knowledge
that you’ve been an
undeniable
unoriginal
idiot
should feel like you’ve swallowed
a handful of
staples.

Firecrackers

This is another poem that had just been sitting around in my head. A few years ago my family went to Meaford for Canada at my cousins' cottage. For the firecrackers we climbed way out on the pier and sat on the rocks and watched the firecrackers over the water. As we did I wrote the poem in my mind and unravelled it when we got back to Guelph.


Firecrackers

bloom in bright blossoms

shot against the sky
in glimmering specks
catching in the breeze,

to rain down
in silver sparkles
falling on a stage, and the heads of
technicoloured dancers

then wilting
into wispy ghosts…
ash peonies slipping apart in the wind…
smoky petals dissolving into the sky.

Cape Breton Island

I'm taking a 20th/21st century Canadian lit class this term with one of my favourite profs--this is the third time I'll have taken one of her classes. The reason I love her lectures is that they kick your ass ...hard. She's so smart -- which I know seems ridiculous to say, she's a prof, she has a PhD and all that -- but she's really smart. We've been discussing postmodern Canadian writing, and the quest of some Canadian poets to write "authentically" Canadian in spite of a permeating and prevalent American culture. And the reason this course is difficult is because, really, what does a Canadian writer write like? When you're on the inside it's hard to look outwards and answer that decisively.

I haven't been to Cape Breton Island yet, but I hear it's beautiful.


Cape Breton Island

You grab the neck of his faded t-shirt
and pull him in real close
to put your fist through
his face
feel cartilage shatter beneath your knuckles
now slippery with his hot blood that
streams from his destroyed nose
drops of blood that fall like
big flat shiny stones
as if Cape Breton Island was tipped
horizontal
a shower of rocks thundering down
from shattered skin and bone
pouring down his faded t-shirt
a blossoming red stain, it marks him, like a flag
you’re victorious, anonymous, wearing a clean t-shirt
with nothing but grubby knuckles
and the knowledge that you’ve the power to
flip Cape Breton Island

Ever Present Ache

We miss Becks while she's in Syd.

I feel like I speak for all of us when I say:

Ever Present Ache

I miss your wavy blonde hair
and I miss your long brown eyelashes
I miss your slender
piano playing fingers

I miss your lumpy snuggly duvet
and drinking wine standing around the counter in your kitchen

I miss blurry evenings
drinking and dancing
that squinty-eyed pout
we put on

I miss tall soy lattes and patterned pashminas in the library
whispering in the quiet sections unsuccessfully
two heads bent over one essay

I miss the wholeness of my self

you are an ever present ache
when you’re so
far
far away

Eden-Green

I wrote this poem in first year, when I was taking a second year creative writing class. I would send my poems to my friend Goob so that he would help me name them. Usually he would give me at least one word that would spark my interest, and I'd tweak this rest -- hence "eden" green. Seemed like an excellent and loaded adjective.

I'm sure being able to name your own poems seems like a simple and obvious thing to be able to do as a writer, but I think you have to grow up a lot, and gain insight into who you are and what you actually want to say, before you can do it. I name (most of) my own poems now.


Eden-Green

The powdery brown path
carves apart
the thick lush trees

and the tree tops are ragged paintbrushes
stroking
deftly painting everything Eden-green.

We can’t see through the canopy
except on this dirt track
which has punched a snaking cut
in the trees, leaving a
scar of sky gleaming through

as though someone had lazily, erratically
dragged a knife
against this canopy, opening it up.

We spend out entire time looking up at this wound,
struggling for
a bearing between bars of branches.

The birds view the forest
as a soft green smudge—
with a pale brown ribbon
splitting all that green velvet.

Ontario Lake

I had been talking to my friend T-money about this poem, before it was even written. I haven't had much time to write now that the semester has really begun, but I had this poem, mostly formed, just sitting in my mind.

Brand new, hot off the metaphorical press (because I haven't got a printing press in my room. That's just a pipe dream):


Ontario Lake

Tuesday was humid

the kind of day
where the dense air
weighs down on your shoulders,
presses on your chest
and your lungs draw in liquid air

the type of day where such tangible air
sticking to your skin
makes you feel heavier,
makes you yearn for a cold crisp Ontario lake

so that you can sit by the dock
and strip
peeling the cotton tank top from your shiny chest
and slip
into thin and cool dark water

Streetlamps

I don't even know if we have 'streetlamps' in Canada per se.


Streetlamps

You had on your mittens,
and I mine
and instead of looking at the cream wool
with the earl grey tea stained into the stitches

we walked with our heads back
snowflakes spinning down, tangling into our eyelashes

looking at the streetlights
seeing each bulb
supported by cold grey cement
glow a yellowy pink
and they were just little fuzzy smudges
set into the deep deep sky

all the streetlamps lined the road
all supporting their own glowing fuzz

a string of glowing gold
of burning pink beads
laced and lying
across the chest of
dark blue smoky sky.

Dry

I feel like this a lot.


Dry

I couldn’t bleed even if wanted to.
If you tore
me open,
sand
would pour out
powder escaping from my seams.

Disco Bitches

The name "Disco Bitches" started as an insult for a contestant on So You Think You Can Dance. She was quite literally a disco-ing bitch. Hilary, my sister, and I thought that me just randomly blurting "what a disco bitch!" at the television was hilarious, and this poem was born. Though I'm not sure if the poem will make any sense to anybody but the two of us, I have to say that I really love it.

Hilary really did find pie in her bra once. That bit is not a lie.


Disco Bitches

Just the kind of girls to marry
a man from Montréal for the gorgeous chocolaty
accent
having moved to Québec in a failed
attempt at growing up

The kind of girls to dash
about metropolitan cities,
laptops and scripts tucked under arms bearing
suede elbow patches, only to realize that
there is … pie… in their bras

Girls who get incredible
hair cuts and then pull those strands into pony tails
because of so and so’s
neck and so and so’s difficult jaw line
and sheer utter morning lazy grumpiness
sparing time for an attempt at reviving over cold cereal

Who are up themselves disco bitches because
they scrawl words in sentences in ways nobody
else really does, and
who just really really love the
French

Lovely

Taking creative writing classes means that you have to write outside of your typical style. It's the prof's job to make you try new things, understandably, how else will you grow? This poem was originally a sonnet for an assignment, meaning that it had to rhyme, and it had to be in iambic pentameter.

It sucked. Utterly.
But in free verse, I really really like it. Lovely.


Lovely

My hand
rests
so that my cold fingertips
are pressed
against your beautiful pink
mouth
damming the flow of words behind your lips
causing the soft phrases
to well up behind your pale
pale green eyes.

It’s not that I hate your words.

(I’ve felt them run
over my body before, like
steaming waters
from Hell
warm and cursed)

But

that I can’t handle the joyful
sounds of your voice…
the melody of your thoughts is such a pretty thing
I have found.

So don’t speak until my jealousy stops
for I want
your lovely voice
but for my ears alone.

Bones

I should say that I don't really believe in perfect. I think that nothing is ever without flaw. This isn't negative thinking, it's realistic, and getting rid of the notion of perfect makes life more manageable, less disappointing and more enjoyable.

The first draft of this poem was so far from perfect it was daunting. I had to fight this poem so hard. This piece was the most work, the hardest struggle, the most revisions.

I think it's perfect.


Bones

a delicate skeleton,
an entire
set of white bones
was found, nestled into the hot desert dunes
scattered like the fine grains of summer sand
arrayed like sterile surgery tools
scalpel. scapula. skull.

ribcage spread
and peeled open
as one would an orange
the ribs curled slightly in
like the slim fingers of a hand clutching
soft swells of desert drifting across
the spiky ridges of spine

waves of glittering golden sand
pooling under clavicles
covering the sternum stained a soft pink
like limestone washed in water colour

hot dry air whistling in and around the spaces
empty sockets
empty mouth decorated with bead-like teeth
empty pelvis

gleaming splintery femur and fibula fragments
caging
naught but hot dust
and stale air

collected by rough hands
and rough men with sun burnt skin
and tossed into buckets
taken
back

In the Street

This is the poem that started it all, really.

I wrote it in my grade twelve writers craft class, and this was probably the first piece written that year that seemed ... real. This was a real poem.


In the Street

It’s raining in the streets
turning butter lamplight to blurs
of vibrancy in my sight
and I pull you out there with me.

I stand
arms wide
head back
letting it pour on me.

Torrents stream down my body
rivers carve my flesh
my shirt now pressed to my skin.

Cold rain splatters my cheeks
and makes my eyelashes stick in triangles

as I feel the sky drop down
on me
and you
in the street.

the goods

My name is Julia.

I'm entering my fourth year of university, and while all my best friends have some semblance of a plan, upon graduating I will be left wondering: what the hell comes now? Quite literally, the only plan I've been able to formulate thus far is: retire. Yes. Graduate school, then move to the beach and write poetry. Sounds nice, no?

So, to perfect the practice of sharing poems, I've started this up. Hopefully it works.

... if somebody reads it. Please read it.