breaths

A golden dusk;

The contrast between us and between our failures

Heartache takes place in the shallow bodies of water

strangling the softened eyes out of Zeballos 

(community of pop. 5000 and diminishing)

I can’t understand how you don’t see it

You established your worth then put it out 

in the weeds that grew up the side of my old townhouse

I watched the embers fall through the leaves

There wasn’t anything for you to realize

But I’m like this now and my sense of self

is all I have to give away

Beside the fig tree in that backyard 

I gathered the shards of a cheap hubcap 

into a pile and burned a small and slow 

transparent flame that filled the backyards

the open windows with plastic smell and smoke

You call it low grade anesthesia 

when I pull the white kitchen catchers over my head

I don’t know

I could already see your mother

through the kitchen window then

when it was dinner and dark set over the brutal oaks

Her fervent whispering of made up psalms

and ghost stories she’d learned from you

staring back at her window reflection

her hands white and bony around your neck

Each year when Christmas would come 

you were always ready to die

The hill up the road became spindled 

with stinging nettle and runaway dogs

I will never watch the city stir in its sleep 

from there with you again and for the better

Saturna just became an obsolete ideal

the way weed tea did, or Cipralex

This has never been easy for me to admit

but I don’t need you

You only want to spend my hard earned dollars

anyway ha ha ha

We’ve never actually watched a river run 

while standing together

and I can see now the cracks will form

in the wall whether I'm in the room or not. I lived 

for the smell of what we stole from department stores

That kind of thing's just too risky now

first poem about lightning

distances have been crocheted and dust

built up in the rope. between dark hills i watched 

while you felt sorry for yourself. there are patterns

in the forks of lightning that reflect the i ching 

and whether we’re what we call ourselves 

for you i’d never come up short

you’ve heard somewhere my destitution

is the pride of our nation’s capital region

but i may still be a toothache and i may 

cause you to dream of tall grass and knives

clairvoyance and purpose are simple stones

on window ledges. my fear of the immaculate 

is all i can talk intelligently about

but somehow women still think i have an answer

like somehow the water won’t stir up the sand

let’s watch the lunatics eat pot pies at a picnic table 

while the weather is nice. no one’s ever told me to 

give it a rest but then i’m just the lobby shoeshine

i saw you anchoring the news last night at ten

i couldn’t stop laughing at the clothes they'd put on you

fluorescent lights and smoke fill up four undecorated walls

i’m tearing entire pages off a rack of magazines

my cat died only once he’d seen me cry on the floor

i guess it was what he’d been looking for

one day my thoughts will look like prayers again

Steph Gets Her Master's At 22

I always thought I would treat time

that way: easy to hold as ash.

Now I sit by my window after dark

and wait for the doorknob to turn.

You’d think they’d have found

me by now. There are unsettling 

cracks in the store bought century.

1971: My dad is on a comedown 

kicking the dirt on the side of the freeway

with a plastic gun in his belt.

1991: He drives the white Toyota

towards Duncan. On the steel bridge

over Golden River a semi enters 

his lane too soon. He moves right 

sees sparks, his knuckles let go 

the barricade ends. 

Like painted birds or homespun sins 

I am better off abandoned. 

One morning you will wake to find

all the shit stains you’ve monopolized

look like they could be anyone’s.

I Gave All My Love

to a shoreline far up-island:

a black bear sleeps in the tall grass; 

a grey haired woman wears a leather coat

follows wolves into the trees. 

Lately I've seen the water rise 

and Pessoa standing in the ebb tide.

I want every name to be abandoned.

I want our ankles to crack under us.

I never saw the front of the shaman's

head who led us to the clearing:

Totem; pale body in the sunlight

paint once pollen all gone (thinned 

by rain in the April storms); A ghost 

is quietly at the end of the trail.

Weather, weather, all altruism aside

I grew older than you then died

and now I am here haunting you.

The front lawn was last cut 

by a neighbour, tired of looking at it.

The ceiling will cave in at the end

of the decade. By that time I will 

have forgotten how to settle dust 

by watching it fall. I will be shooting 

owls from the side of a logging road

lit up in high beams and moonlight.

foxfire testament

You were so lawless last I saw you

slow dancing lonesome Sarah Palmer 

in the basement. You spoke smokily

of prophets leaning on wooden rakes 

in the toothy sun over Paraguay. I never 

said my share of apologies. I wrote off 

the foxfire testament, buried the book 

like it was your body pale and receding. 

I ripped photos of you, rolled them into 

cigarette filters and fucked all your rivals 

in their peach coloured dorms. You took

to the omniscience of road maps. Left

shards of cd’s on your front lawn to melt

in the dry dirt. I’m still bleeding through

the same stitches. You can and should 

rub salt into the cracks. 

I saw truth and then the hair on your ass 

and then rent checks on your mother’s coffee table. 

You punched the vanity mirror and rubbed your fist 

into the broken glass. Other than that you measured 

the faith out into hand bound books and watched 

the Juan de Fuca grow darker from your balcony. 

Then anxiety bled out of hometown backyards 

and into your ernest blue lungs. I know you 

left for a righteous reason. My mother just

prayed me gone like shitty weather or calls

from Collections. I know it’s colder where you 

are now. There, sunlight dies behind a treed hill 

with an electric crucifix on top. I may never see 

the vapour leave your blistered lips. 

When I stare through my hands it’s like last light through bare branches.

You’ll never know how all this death got into my eyes and under my nails.

platonic teeth

dusk hangs off your shoulders

as you shine down the beach road

your weather and crow's feet to keep.

my loneliness and symptoms 

are classic. i worry no more about

you or the academy. celebration

approaches like a thirsty horse. i've said

i'll ruin you before you win.

i'll draw the curtain over your 

veridic skin and leave you waiting

in the setting sun, an honest 

horoscope from the suburb's paper.

your vitality calls for suffocation

hazard lights and shirttails. my stetson hat

is in the grass. little tunes i've suffered

on the harmonica you gave me

bleed down the hillside like wounds.

my hands touch red to my jaw.

i look for answers at the plantation's ruins.

i look for rewards in your polished veins.

a little sunshine can steal the breath

from all your prose. on the other hand

those nights took me in like a drunk 

mother in law. the trestle curves

as i half run on an empty stomach 

to get another enemy undressed.  

the smoke is thick in the pockets 

of my body. make best use of the god

who's at the window with you 

guiding red leaves to their gutters

dry-heaves at the strip mall

you preferred to live under stars that shook

with memory a swift hand folded punching 

your throat. in the library's basement

there are rows of tables on the basis 

that you'll be forgotten. stack the auto-

mechanic journals to the ceiling 

till they fall like dead grey seagulls. 

forget the world when you go camping

love your friends on the slow-pitch infield.

throw spitballs in the setting sun while

your husband drinks molsons on third 

losing hair into the ice box water

drive home loudly playing jack johnson

through your ipod nano. 

snail mail, stainless steel, keep your kitchen 

counter clean. you were baptized by your grandpa. 

you shed tears every winter at the civil war parade. 

diamond sphere privatized eternity spider's web

iron breath will give slack to a familiar collapse.

your husband spits his gum onto the sidewalk

half drunk. he anxiously awaits your lies.