I used to curl my body up small
and write poetry in the kitchen

heartwater cresting in my eyes,
***** smoke crawling upward from between
narrow fingers
and blooming open against the ceiling
like silver flowers,
ashes on the table,
teeth like bone berries in my mouth
red and sour cloaked in cooking wine
heart bleating,

losing heat and composure
in the icy swaddle of
bluewinter afternoon lastlight

continuing the crazed scrawl
onward into the black hours of morning
arched over pages
like a mother or raven or predator or gargoyle
shrouding my prize:    
my vicious poetry      
                                                    ­                  
                                              ­     my hopeless meandering prose

The Pigs
symbolize for me now
the hell
that was the year that just fell away
a year now spent and in ruins
dropped off like a golden husk
dead cobra flesh
summer sugared flakes of skin,
torn with teeth from a wintered mouth

The Pigs were an omen on that day
last January
day of first blizzard and weather churn,
sleet and howling,
first day of white knuckles and prickling thighs,
first day of numb chins and jowls,
thick and gummy feeling against hands

dead and uncovered in the back
of a grisly pickup truck
The Pigs came into existence,
piled ten feet high and fifteen long,
bodies jutting stiff and macabre
reaching for the sky, blank and indifferent.

I remember being disturbed by their enormous heads
and the way the ice formed a crust over their bodies
binding them one to another-snout to useless ***, milky underbelly
to back
creating not a pile
but a mass.
Somewhat
globular.

I watched
mesmerized by them in their sorrowful death bed,
gliding over black ice down that empty leg of highway,
black beautiful forests woven into color hungry sky
and chalky fields on all sides
devouring sound
I felt numb and small on the back of that prairie stretch
In my blacks and my wools,
gut colored scarf around my throat
Stuffed into my panting mouth
Breath freezing to the yarn and to my lips
Cold wet song escaping me
-my protest against the freeze that held me
Music about wolves against my ears-the haunting lyrics
Stumbled upon by a man with ancient desires, the need for
Animal blood, stone dwellings and strong women

This collage woven by the senses
Became me in that moment
For me a holy moment-every piece of me engaged and
Acute
Body clenched, mind awhirl, ears ringing, eyes filled with white

And then The Pigs whipped past me-in their resting place of crusted steel and chipping
Paint, their eyes clenched like hundreds of tiny fists,
Their mouths open and crookedly petrified
around the last breath of their lifesong
Their flesh as pink as the day they were born
Their minds and organs preserved by the patient
hands of Manitoba winter
The smell of death was imagined then-I was
Stricken by the harsh, wet scent of flesh
Against the back of my throat it lingered for only a moment

In that moment I was complete

I blinked and The Pigs were beyond me-one hundred miles an hour
to nowhere beautiful
And I was left with a sense of awe and a thousand questions
Death riding my thoughts
Hand against my padded heart

I moved forward in time-caught my ride
Which followed the tracks gouged by
The ***** pick-up for a little while
Something small and true stirring within me
Protected beneath all of my meticulous layers
A new awareness of something
dark and curious in the world.

the forgiveness came

suddenly like the break of a day so bright
and so hot in springtime mess,
like that first blazing lashing
of sunshine so brazen upon wintered flesh
upon skin, gentle
like the sound of a lamb’s feet on soft mud,
skin, white
and cool as milk.

it came with a perfect and welcomed brutality-
burning slowly,
definitely,
defiantly.

forgiveness came,
so enormous with sadness-
a sense of loss profound as the bruised velveteen of a
sky ripe
with summer heat and
the full, squeaky sound
of june-happy,
beer-drunk teenagers
biting one another’s lips in dewy fields.

the forgiveness came so clear

it tasted in my mouth like penny bile.

it pulled in my heart like a small perfect spoon pulls
through honey sat uncovered three days too long
on a windowsill
the ripples folding over themselves slowly,
grey and golden with sugar.

the forgiveness changed me right then, as
the loss of you changed
me before.

it struck me.
it was holy.
it carved something
smaller, newer, smoother
out of this life.
a glimpse of my core
was revealed then.

the perfect part of me-the finest grain
the purest fragrance
most sensual to the touch

my core-what I grew from, what my life swirls around
my core-what breaks light into fractals, what is heavy for it’s size
what is pure and secret in me

through this forgiveness is unveiled
for the first time
since I was born.

the cold and the snow
hang above in giant monochrome lungs
that sag and are filled with fluid halfway
to crystal: clouds that devour themselves
and spit themselves back out
quietly above us.

we wait for the grand purge.
the throwdown of winter's hands.
the release of copious white.
the gentle unfold of sloping blankets
and ice expanding in every concrete vein.

we wait for the wind that has teeth in it's mouth and
a *******. a wind that grew fierce rolling fitfully across
aching prairie miles.

it is nearly december and every day we
wonder about the impending deep freeze.
we consider (eyes cast warily upward)
the fist of mid-January noon,
the subtle split of lips and chapped hands,
boots gnawed by salt spilled raw on the streets,
necks and legs
and fingers and feet
put away until spring-
swaddled in flannel wool goosedown cotton tightly wound
until all curvature is lost.

how we will shuffle penny-eyed between pockets of
warmth, curled into ourselves
in protection of our hearts that rattle sweetly beneath
every binding layer,

buried in a six month breadth
of silence.

the cold and the snow
hang above in giant monochrome lungs
that sag and are filled with fluid halfway
to crystal: clouds that devour themselves
and spit themselves back out
quietly above us.

we wait for the grand purge.
the throwdown of winter's hands.
the release of copious white.
the gentle unfold of sloping blankets
and ice expanding in every concrete vein.

we wait for the wind that has teeth in it's mouth and
a *******. a wind that grew fierce rolling fitfully across
aching prairie miles.

it is nearly december and every day we
wonder about the impending deep freeze.
we consider (eyes cast warily upward)
the fist of mid-January noon,
the subtle split of lips and chapped hands,
boots gnawed by salt spilled raw on the streets,
necks and legs
and fingers and feet
put away until spring-
swaddled in flannel wool goosedown cotton tightly wound
until all curvature is lost.

how we will shuffle penny-eyed between pockets of
warmth, curled into ourselves
in protection of our hearts that rattle sweetly beneath
every binding layer,

buried in a six month breadth
of silence.

Oh sister,
growing fiercely from between the cracks of those
big city sidewalks

I know you love the new-found
sparkle on your pointed shoulder,
your shoulder now chiseled by a place
rough and dripping glamor,
you have been gobbled up by
a culture booming and
ravenous for new blood
you have been swept away and intoxicated
by the strangeness and the newness and the heartlessness
of that place.

but don't forget us girl,
we
your family of
patient prairie dwellers
don't forget this humble, ***** city,
this heartsoil
these winters are what
made you so strong

big city baby
don't forget our cold season

the way the winter hems us in
and
forces us to
make art and get real

the way that
our faces grow white,
eyes grow dark and humble,
hands curl and stiffen
clenching at nothing for months

the way these hearts and souls,
nestled in ghost orchid flesh,
nestled in snow,
grow fat and red blooming carelessly


like the open mouths

of winter flowers

there is something tragic about the young.
there is something haunting about the ***** of a young man’s browning neck.
his neck and those sweet earlobes and the tremor and clench of his thoughts provoking him
and tension bleeding quietly through the tissue and muscle and precious bone. there is something tragic about the young.
men, how they break out of one neediness and into another….

i had this lover who hated women
he hated women because his mother hated him.
when he told me this i decided i would forever keep my heart away from him,
he was dangerous
and full of fear
and full of this need to destroy.
he needed to ruin.

he needed to tear into something tender and pure and foolishly expectant
and pour all of his darkness into the frayed, howling gap.
suddenly he needed something in my slightness, my body whiteclad and open and unbroken ...
one spring cold with persistence
i forgot about that promise to myself
when for some reason i felt                                     so ugly

and then yes  he ripped,

ripped softly

into me.