Win a copy of Canadian poet Heather Haley’s incendiary debut novel at Goodreads.
”Haley has the gift of writing to suit her subject in all its raddled variety, from wired and jarring to lyrical and tragic.”-Vancouver Sun

…from the forthcoming collection and a photo of a young bear taken by my son when we lived on Bowen Island. I miss our old place, you never knew who might drop by.

MAMA

Beefy titmice.

Permanent chickadees.

Cubs, cute

Marvels I must leave,

Push, fling, provide

The briefest infancy.

Born back east, in Quebec, I have resided on the left coast so long, I’m practically a native, most at ease surrounded by ocean. Here are two more poems from the forthcoming untitled book.

WILD WEST/COAST

No lotus eaters we

Swelter pepper,

Swig beer and bitch.

Cook up the rent.

barbecue / cauldron.

steak / prize.

gavel / tenderizer.

We grow enormous,

Righteous, meting out

Beach justice, from our camp,

Our point. Our peninsula.

With less mitigation

Than an island, its

Star gardens, clarity

Of marine life, surround

A Sound of silent crime.

THE HUMBLE MURALIST AND THE REPROACHFUL BUDDHIST

Island roads are only as long as the island,

invariably leading to the vortex every island hosts,

the village or burg hugging the cove or bay,

the place where sweaty, unrepentant

cocaine and alcohol consumers

wind up, gurgle down, to rub

elbows with the vigorous Tilley-hatted,

swamping the gentry

with their nasty habit stench.

Island roads rove lowly

through swaying grasses, expansive elms,

lambs, cows, horses, llamas.

Do not be lulled.

Anxiety stalks the dales and hollows,

tamped down, concealed behind neat

rustic wooden fences,

skulking in the cottages

despite a glut of acupuncture outlets,

yoga, meditation and pottery classes.

Here there is much intestinal discomfort,

ceaseless aspiring, straining

toward the light.

Dolly for example is the biggest Buddhist,

baddest, blackest sheep

herder on Paisley Island,

happily bending over

for regular shearing

as long as the taxman

is tranquil about it

and she’s back at the ranch in time

to inject herself

into the tête-à-têtes.

Her resident good egg Greg studies

the recommended sutras,

working on his anger,

moving past it, out

of his townie flat to create

murals in the great outdoors.

Grandiose depictions,

towering trompe l’oeils.

Ostentatious? Yes,

but they have provided

our meek hamlet with an angle,

a tourist attraction.

Indeed, they sustain us.

Revisions for my new, still untitled book are nearly completed, including this poem.

WARES

I need a good barrel. Or barrelful.

Beer, rain, oil, doesn’t matter,

Just give it to me

Then go

Or come, oh nuisance caller,

Nothing to sell, less to share.

Will we ever buy into one another?

Exchange crowns? Silence crickets,

Respective niggles?

‘Tis folly, seeking sanctuary

Beneath a bat-roosting tree.

Their jaunty black-sky scribbles

Invade our periphery,

Jolt our creaky alliance.

Cold in front of the fire,

Burning side by side,

Stones skip beyond us, the

Cinema of sunset so banal

It provides no sidetrack.

Score. Or anything we want.

…you heard it here second folks. Now through tomorrow, Wed, April 20, the e-book edition of my novel, The Town Slut’s Daughter is free. Follow this link.  “Haley has the gift of writing to suit her subject in all its raddled variety, from wired and jarring to lyrical and tragic.”-Vancouver Sun. Happy spring!

Indulged in some movies last night including Heathers which I’ve had a hankering to watch; delighted to find that it’s still exceptional, blackly funny and stands the test of time. Nostalgia inducing, high school was hell, as Veronica observes, though I liked my friends. Well, most of them. All I wanted to do was get the hell out of there though, putting in the required effort to graduate. This recent poem seems apropos.

FIELD TRIP

Take umbrage.

Sour all I have.

Do not rock kismet,

Delight in peals of spring.

Mired, I flicker, follow

A waif; wily, poisonous, we

Pervert high school rituals,

Clawhammer rivals,

Blind to the nests,

Cocoons, hives, shells,

Snoozing in biology class,

Oblivious to organisms

Living in, on, through us.

All escape our attention.

I know I must

Observe, take notes.

Name stars and species,

Salvage withered specimens,

Friends. Repair things

Beyond repair.

Sail toward a ship.

Oh, and it’s my birthday, according to Google.  A present,  another poem from the forthcoming collection.

PACIFIC TIME

Cedar jungle.
Left coast.
Mellifluous bees and

Hummingbirds swarm the
Morning, a teeming creek
Bows to the sea.

Chocolate hens and hares
Consume the household
Quickly. Mugs stacked,

We steep, fuse. Volatile
Lives lampooned,
Bursts. Snipes. Rants

Compelling as a drowning cow,
Pert hustler rising in your skull,
But see, Howe Sound

Currents obviate
Previous episodes, ancient
Grievances, low levels.

Forget restitution.
Leave the old scow
To rot on the alluvial plains.

Still wondering, especially with my birthday approaching so thought it apropos to re-post this blog entry along with a recently scanned baby portrait. According to my mother, it was the runner-up prize in a baby contest. Story of my life, I swear.

Who’s Your Daddy?

March 8, 2012

I wish someone could tell me. Let’s talk paternity fraud, a term that didn’t exist when I was born. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to find my biological father. “Does he know I exist?” I asked dear old Ma after she’d blurted out on her death bed that my father, the only father I’d ever known, was not my “real” father. Shocked naturally, I didn’t believe her at first, but it explained so much! Why people often asked if I was adopted. Why I felt no kinship to my father’s side of the family, the Daneliuks, or the “Danefucks”, as our schoolyard tormenters called us. Why I took my mother’s maiden name. It explained the bouts of estrangement between my sisters and I, my half-sisters. We’d always been so different, what little common ground we shared divided in two. Why Grandma Daneliuk favored my sisters. She must have harboured suspicions. Why I always felt like a freak!

I asked my *alleged father*. Equally shocked, he could provide no information, but sympathetic, took a DNA test at my request. The results excluded him, “as the biological father of Heather Haley.” First thing out of his mouth; “I’d never have married her if I’d known.” Thanks Dad. Poor Dad. By lying on my birth certificate, my mother had betrayed both of us. All of us, biological father deprived of any relationship with his daughter. I was stunned by my sister’s reaction, intense sibling rivalry. “Ha! That means I’m the oldest.” Neither could she understand my dismay, or why I should care. I must always know the truth. Besides, I have a child and our health to consider. Ironic too, that fascinated by crime, intrigue and mystery, I wind up saddled with huge one, seemingly impossible to crack. I’m running out of time with everyone, including me, getting older. I’ve questioned my mother’s surviving relatives, all claiming to know nothing, though I wasn’t spared gossip. Apparently, Ma liked to have fun, often driving down from her home in Matapédia, Quebec to the CFB base in Chatham, New Brunswick to attend parties. Maybe bio-dad was stationed there, serving in the Air Force. I’d consult with a private investigator if I could afford to. Though I could go mad speculating, the writer in me can’t help imagining. I’ve developed a theory; she couldn’t tell me, didn’t know his name. Maybe it was a one-night stand. Maybe she was raped. She did describe such a scene to me once. Catholic, rural, Great Darkness-Duplessis Orphans era Quebec was not a good place to be knocked up. Ashamed, desperate to be married, her child legitimate, she lied. This is the real kicker; wed or not, knowing people would do the math, my grandmother tried to coerce her into an abortion.  Sins are more sinful when the whole town knows.

I’ve been advised by someone who does understand how much this means to me that generalized ancestor DNA testing can provide valuable insights, give me an idea of bio-dad’s racial, genetic back ground. Family Tree testing provides email addresses of people who share your DNA and wish to be connected. My only other hope is to visit the relevant villages back east and start asking a lot of hard and persistent questions, if I can find people willing to talk. Of course any such information can be extremely unreliable and vexatious. I will try to arrange a trip out there in the not-too-distant future. Hey, I could make a documentary. We shall see. I still hope there is some way to find some answers.

I envy adoptees and sperm donor babies; they have legal recourse. Clues. In 2010, a woman named Olivia Pratten mounted a lawsuit against the provincial government, the first of its kind in Canada. It sought to amend the B.C. Adoption Act requiring physicians keep permanent records of all egg, sperm or embryo donors and allow offspring to access those records when they turn 19. Not having the right relegates Pratten to “second-class citizen status and represents the province’s wholesale abandonment of equality rights,” according to her lawyer, Joseph Arvay, a veteran constitutional attorney. Indeed. It’s a fundamental right to know our origins. Arvay cited a passage from Roots, stating “that in all of us, there is a hunger—marrow deep—to know our heritage, to know who are and where we came from. Without it, one is left with a disquieting loneliness.” Try and explain that to my sister and long-dead mother, whom I still miss. I think she had every intention of taking the secret to her grave, but dementia prevented that. Ah, family secrets, all too common and often entwined with abuse and domestic violence.

Though it’s not in my nature, perhaps I should just give up. Let it go. I’m torn. Still wondering. Thanks Ma.

And neither can the poet in me help but imagine:

PRINCESS NUT

If I could have been inside
the hollow tree that night
I would have seen his face.
I would know his face. His body,

spiced with sweat salt and tobacco.
My father. Forbidden topic.
Fugitive. Alien, though earthly
as a cyclone to my mother, clinging

from an oak as he pried her limbs apart.
I would have heard howling, watched
his head rearing back. Full lips, gappy grin
revealed. Full lips, gappy grin like mine.

I would have seen the twigs
and russet leaves stuck to their thighs.
I could have picked up
the knife. Saved my mother.

I would know, what is his,
what is mine. I would know
he’s the smooth nut in a rough cup,
I, one of many acorns.

The manuscript is coming together, painstakingly but such is the nature of editing, revising. Not much time for other projects but I’m still hoping to record an audiobook edition of my novel. So, a poem, from the forthcoming collection, to be re-named.

MY WEEK

Fed a germ.
Dog tottered.
Spooned flies out of yogurt.
Dislodged ants from the toaster.
Entered words.
Fought for blackberries
And free stuff.

Doctored bites.
Signed language.
Collected greens,
(Heirloom tomatoes.)
Parlanced a meme.
Registered my feelings.

The last house on HUSBAND RD
Has prolific bamboo décor.
You can sit in a resin chair there,
The white ones especially war-strong.
It’s too late in the week
To do anything nice

Or nicely.
Too late in our lifespans
For anything,
Though he’s still trying
To Xerox his ass,
Moon earth.