Celaeno, oil on canvas

this morning I saw a face
in the abstract painting
that hangs between the stiff leather couch
and the chipped plaster beam
in the lawyers’ reception area

a wicked old woman
she raises an eyebrow
above her skeptical yellow eyes
faithless in my clumsy plans
that slip and stretch like cat’s cradles
she wrinkles her nose
disapproving of my cobweb of hopes

she snatches up
neighbouring fans of soft colour
for her wings
and soars above me, a harpy
pecking at the day

though the morning is spent
tearing at my conceptual canvas
trying to turn her back
into vague, neutral shapes
I cannot unconceive her

Sinking

She is always kicking her feet,
treading water, the only way
to stay afloat
when the people you love
cling to your arms
because they are afraid
of drowning.

She is always gasping for air
and breathing in brine,
crying out, her words echoing
off the ears of friends
who throw her lines
she can’t accept.

As I age

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Secret Toronto

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Empty room

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A packet of birth control pills

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Unromantic

Foraging leftover sesame seeds
off my empty plate, one
among the girls talking shop and gossip
around the office kitchen table,
my take on romantic love
sticks out like unwieldy bangs or the slip
of a dress dancing below the hemline.

I believe in best friends, not soul mates,
and that love is acknowledging and accepting
facts, flaws, fetishes, death of infatuation,
and not the struggle to frame beloveds
as dark-and-handsome archetypes.

I believe in birthday reminders, personal space,
the diplomatic necessity of occasional white lies, being
straightforward and GGG, voiding external expectations,
and that pious fools who buy cows first
deserve their sour milk.

Sepia

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Firecracker wars

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Victoria Day

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Ingrid is just as bored as I am

but unlike me
she finds standing idly at my desk
sighing and swaying her dead weight like a cow
leisurely chewing in a field of sunburned grass
more appealing than
the view from the picture windows
I have to keep minimized on my desktop
until her boss shoos her back to her office
like a cranky old maid.

Bedtime stories

Come sit, my love, and tell another bedtime story.
Tell of famous scientists or inner workings of machinery.

How about the story of Marie Curie?
I like best when you mime her
grabbing glowing rocks with naked hands,
throwing up this new find in my face
and crying, "HAVE SOME RADIUM!"

Recount her tragic end: betrayed by that she loved
and all her notes and furnishings encased in lead
like maidens locked in towers.

Witness

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Ego, meet Gratification

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Potted tree of knowledge

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these bruises on my heart

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a diamond crucifix

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Status: in transit

Correspondence has slowed
due to a shortage of postal codes
all my friends frozen in mid-jump
between school and home
or dreams and realities
and some of them wandering
library books lost in transit

Me? I am misshelved
Tattered paperback fiction
concealed
between dusty encyclopedias

Takes me to the zoo

A giant lizard that can swallow a water buffalo
and give you blood poisoning with its spit
is infinitely more interesting
than anything cable TV can come up with,
but going to the zoo still gives me
the vague boa constrictor stomach
you get when you go to a third world country
and you’re not sure
if the school you helped build is enough
to offset all the carbon points you used
on the flight over.

Andrew says the highlight of the day
was watching a three hundred pound orangutan
take an elevated shit

I prefer the otters
fuzzy things that exist only to cuddle and swim
Less vulgar, but no less superficial

Underground rooftop patio

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