Despite the fairy tale, and a good trick in a cyclone.
DOROTHY UNDRESSED
When I, as in a dream
Am not me
I am free.
A sudden jerk
May stoke the cold
Chimney but when I
As in a dream
Am not me
I am free to divest
Of gingham pinafores
Flying sock monkeys.
When you, always you
Find me at last
It might be too late.
Posture all you want
My rangy munchkin
It’s too late
To smooth cotton things out.
The house is abandoned
Hot iron inside, remember?
BOTCHED MISSION
Or, booty call gone bad.
It’s not funny. Nor murky.
Icy thorns of fury
Recede slower than scars.
The sustenance of pain wore off.
Frayed, aching, sopping
With venom, rage engorged,
Vein of mayhem opened.
Angel dust of adrenalin
Winging dainty arms,
Amplifying might. Charm
Offensive, to be admired only at night
Beloved as a mule,
His shame her cargo.
Serial monogamy, serial frustration.
No getting off this ride.
Flexing reserves of righteous
Muscle, she kicked ass and dragged.
Damn him, fuck spadework,
Shanghai the shower as tomb,
Victuals, body rotting,
Speculation rising
Till they found the red stench,
Cordial, self-winding businessman
In fetal position, lenses
In the washer, voyeuristic goo.
Water did not silence the apparatus
Nor launder its images
Truth as obscured
As that Judgement Day in June,
God in the guise of ex-girlfriend,
Jesus lost in five years of lynch mob.
Some Mondays are more brutal than others.
RUDE AWAKENING
Thunder protests
Dappled grey morning,
Skyline of baby teeth,
Gush of soldier ants.
Pesky dream flickers
Will not scat. They invade
Dismissive e-missives,
Monster blogs,
Yammering news;
Mothers Day shooting,
A spate of immolations,
The highwayman who surveilled
A close to the road family,
Playing, exposed, oblivious
To all the uses of duct tape
Though the kids knew
They were too puny to win,
That you can’t move a house
If it isn’t made of Lego.
EXTINCTION
Warning, first you lose
The teat, then Dad
May skedaddle, disappear
Like snot into a rag,
The delicate mastodon,
Or cash, not so petty
Once it’s gone. Gone,
What was once embodied;
Mensch. Rock. Guide. Kingpin.
He stands prostrate,
Christ-less, memory flogged;
The spit-built homes,
One failing each decade,
The friend in prison,
Five years for manslaughter
Of desire.
He who eschews matrimony,
The futile urge to procreate
Harbours a friend
That killed a dude
For fucking his wife.
BIRD WATCHERS
Binoculars resting on the sill
Blackly inveigle us to look.
The luxury of observation
Rackety silk.
Cotton sheets abuzz,
I sleep with a mad bomber
In a bed too narrow
To contain explosives,
Eroding acres encroaching
Shores of receding flesh.
Grip off, I watch
Elfin hummers amok,
Flap-happy Mallards
Swarm a blustery afternoon,
Recall bionic gunrunners, East Van,
First day back from gangster land.
Recoiling at the forecast I fled,
Cramped in a compact car
Child piloting the wife. Blindfolded
Against your scrutiny, foiling
Implicit shame, I skirted
Roadblocks, sculpting my spine
Straight, forcing it
To withstand gales. Tolls.
Lousy steward, I drop
The argillite raven,
Gleaming abalone eyes divided.
I slap my back with hot plasters
So it may bend when necessary.
Fit inside. Repair.
When will listening
Reveal the shape? Scope. When
Will seeing decode the trick?
Woo hoo! My AURAL Heather videopoem, How To Remain has been selected as part of the inaugural Body Electric Poetry Film Festival in Colorado.
And as it’s National Poetry Month all month I will be doing another reading for FORCE Field on the 26th at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts in Burnaby. My work is featured in three new anthologies! My poem Appelton was featured in Alive at the Center along with other Cascadian poets from Portland, Seattle and Voracious, Sechelt and Three Blocks West of Wonderland are featured in FORCE Field: 77 Women Poets of British Columbia and Year of the Monkey will be part of the Bowen Island anthology coming out in June as part of the Arts Council 25th anniversary celebrations.
Whew! Recovering from an action packed weekend; two launches for two anthologies. My poem Appelton was featured in Alive at the Center along with other Cascadian poets from Portland, Seattle and Vancouver. It’s a farcical poem, people laughed and we all revelled in the convivial atmosphere at the Rhizome Cafe. Saturday, I read Three Blocks West of Wonderland at the launch for FORCE Field: 77 Women Poets of British Columbia at the Vancouver Public Library, followed by a party at the Railway Club, which turned out to be a fantastic gathering of the tribe.
Well, it is National Poetry Month. I will be doing another reading for FORCE Field on the 26th at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts in Burnaby. Couch surfing is a little rough but it does provide a wonderful opportunity to visit, something I rarely have time to do when I cross the moat (Howe Sound) and go into Vancouver with a long list of errands, meetings, appointments.
I’ve just signed with an agent, Drea Cohane of The Rights Factory in Toronto. I’m pretty excited and boosted; such a boost to have a professional in your corner. Drea is smart, enthusiastic and encouraging. I will have more news in the near future. In the meantime, here’s an excerpt from the forthcoming Town Slut’s Daughter.
New York, New York, a town so nice, they named it twice. Nice. Yeah, right. And the city that never sleeps never sleeps because it’s rank and sweltering hot, baked sidewalks oozing blood, urine, spittle. Neither did things cool after sundown. Still, Fiona loved the city’s fascinating, ruthless nightlife and omnipresent skyscrapers.
The band had scored a sublet on the Upper West Side, not far from the Dakota and the Museum of Natural History, New York City a peeping tom’s paradise. The Virgins watched yuppie couples cook, cleaning crews dust and a working girl roosted on her toilet, a fine line between uninhibited and exhibitionist thought Fiona.
The plan was to sojourn in NYC for a month, play shows, make contacts, seek management and promote the EP. Everybody else liked the record. It got them gigs, which got them press, which got them a European tour, airplay on a string of college radio stations and a big time booking agent, Brian Kezdy. Most East Coast press coverage was favourable, though Fiona wondered why rock journalists could never come up with one original question.
FROM CANADA—PURE ROCK ‘N ROLL—THE VIRGIN MARRIES
I must admit I’m a sucker for girls with guitars. At times this well-built punk thrash outfit from Vancouver, Canada, sounds like Bessie the Brontosaurus pounding the city’s pavement. You have to give them credit for being tough and loose, fast and funny, all in a femaleist way, as they steadfastly condemn tanning beds, silicone implants and Citibank. The Virgin Marries exhibit the introspection of a Steppenwolf in All I Have Is Me while Woman Driver reveals insights into the female psyche: A mother, a bride or a daughter / Now which one will I be/ Forever and ever is a long time/ To turn my back on me/ My parents ornament the hood/ My husband’s in the rear view mirror/ My children ride up on the roof/ I think I am behind the wheel. This is a seditious band and these provocative young women provide fine, if not frightening, role models.
New York City is not a good place for anyone with a jones for heroin. Dolores swore she was trying to corral her habit, but Jackie often found her in the bathroom, head in bowl or spike in arm. Rita kept an eagle eye on the band’s equipment.
“That’s the next step with junkies. They start stealing your shit and pawning it.”
“Aw man,” said Dennis, “don’t call her a junkie.”
They wanted to put Dolores into rehab but Kezdy had them booked to play the UK and Europe a month down the road.Despite a loud Virgin Marries buzz, a 150 bucks was the most money they’d ever earned. Friends and hangers-on volunteered to manage the band but Rita insisted on holding out for someone with clout. They did have a certain breed of chippy coming out for all their shows, new friend Poppy the ultimate fan. Poppy was an exotic dancer, a euphemism for stripper, Fiona learned.
“Poppy is sexually strident, cheerfully malevolent and a larcenist,” observed Rita. “Check her bag.”
A huge Plasmatics fan, Poppy had decided the Virgin Marries were her new favorite band. “I’d walk through Bed Stuy to see you girls.”
She often got off stage at the Galaxy Club in Times Square, covering her tits and track marks with feather boas to take a cab to Max’s, because “CB’s is full of bridge and tunnel people now.” Poppy spent all her tip money on drinks and drugs, indulging Dolores far too much. She introduced the Virgins to Dee Dee Ramone, Mink DeVille, Johnny Thunders and Gordon Stevenson, bass player for Lydia Lunch’s band, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. They wondered why Johnny Thunders knew everybody. Why soon became obvious. Thunders was a desperate opportunist hustling anyone who showed even the remotest interest in him. Poppy had asked Fiona to come by her room at the Chelsea to pick her up for lunch. Fiona dutifully arrived on time and walked in on her giving Thunders a blowjob.
“Oops, sorry!” she sputtered.
The “living tragedy” looked up. Sort of. Poppy lifted her head of kewpie doll curls, Thunders’ dick at half-mast. “I’ll be right with you, sweetie.”
Yeah, right. Too bad she’s not getting paid by the hour.
It seemed the entire Isle of Manhattan fancied the Virgin Marries, including John Belushi, often showing up at their shows, entourage in tow. Club and record storeowners were bombarded with requests for the Virgin Marries. Major label deal rumors flew.
“Oh man! We’ve gotta get signed to Virgin Records.”
Revelling in their run of successful New York City gigs, Fiona sat sipping coffee, reading a Sunday Times article about John Steinbeck’s friend marine biologist Ed Ricketts, not only the inspiration for Cannery Row character Doc, but Steinbeck’s muse as well. The phone rang.
“Fiona, get over here!” yelled Poppy. “415 W. 57th Ave. Quick! Jackie OD’d.” Continue reading
PACIFIC TIME
Cedar jungle.
Left coast.
Mellifluous bees,
Hummingbirds swarm
Morning. Teeming creek
Bows to the sea.
Lisping hares,
Nipped chocolates
Consume the household
Quickly. Mugs stacked,
We steep in me.
Fuse. Volatile
Affections lampooned,
Logic disturbed hourly.
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.
Ditch. Forget restitution.
Leave the old scow
To rot on the plain.
Dennis convinced Fiona they had to visit Joshua Tree on their way to Los Angeles.
“I want you to see the real desert. This is the best time to go. Early spring. Everything’s in bloom.”
They stopped for gas, kitty corner to the Oasis of Love Wedding Chapel. Dennis pointed to an uneasy and checkered queue of couples clad in black and white lining the block.
“Let’s get married!”
“Are you crazy?”
“You still need a green card, don’t you? Isn’t that the best way? Marry a citizen?”
“You mean you?”
“Why not?”
“Because, green card marriage or not, you’ll take it seriously. Besides, I’m too young to get married. You’re too young to get married.”
“What am I to you?”
Fiona groaned. “You’re a friend, Dennis. One of my dearest friends. A friend with privileges. Take it or leave it.”
I’m such a bitch. A mile down the road, she slid her hand between his legs, stroking the denim taut over his balls. Moaning, Dennis pulled the van over. They did it in a plume of red road dust.
The lovers gradually eased into au naturale mode, more serene with each mile of desert highway kaleidoscoping past. They motored through gorges and coulees vaguely familiar, like a Roadrunner cartoon, SIDEWINDER CAFE, BORAX, LOST HORSE MINE road signs riddled with bullet holes. The Mohave was a shock of alien beauty, teeming with life. In bloom, indeed. They stopped, got out, waded through bellflowers, asters and fuchsia sand verbena, beavertail cactus sporting coral red blossoms like hats. Dune primroses reminded Fiona of the Alberta wild rose. Dennis laughed at her wide-eyed, gaping mouth astonishment.
Finally they reached Joshua Tree National Monument. She’d been expecting a phallic wonder rising off the desert floor but realized the Americans used ‘monument’ to mean ‘park.’ Dennis photographed her in relief against a horizon of softly sloping stone hills, sporting her new, fifties-circa straw flying saucer hat. She struck a Bono pose under a Joshua tree, which was not a tree at all. Lightheaded and languorous in the balmy air, Fiona stretched out movie star-style, hands on her hips, looking directly into the lens, studly paramour documenting their euphoria for all posterity.
They came upon a thick stand of Bigelow chollo cactus harbouring nests of Sage sparrows.
“The balls of their spines break off and stick to your skin like magnets,” warned Dennis. “Don’t get too close.”
The Yucca plant produced strange fruit, clusters of pale blossoms exuding a warm, waxy scent, but the most sublime desert plant must be the ocotillo, she thought, a tangle of towering, quivering green stalks like tentacles, gilded with scales and topped with scarlet arrow tips.
Dennis’s sharp eye spotted all manner of lizard; banded geckos, iguanas, chuckwallas. They saw silver spotted grasshoppers and a Walking Stick suspended from a Mormon Tea branch. Down the road, they were forced to stop the van, agog at the sight of kamikaze caterpillars crossing the asphalt in a shuddering river. Dennis bent down to examine the freaky, fetid stew of yellow, black and lime.
“Man! This was a wet winter. This only happens every seven years or so.”
They climbed Jumbo Rocks, huge boulders suggesting rising dough or the granite buttocks of sleeping elephants. At the crest, the rock face resembled skin, lined and pockmarked. In close, the surface was pebbled, filled with cracks and crevices. Elated, Fiona photographed Dennis beneath a large, round boulder miming Atlas supporting the earth. He snapped her standing inside the huge eye socket of a rock skull. They nearly fell into sinkholes, perfectly rounded basins carved into rock by water. Dennis invited her to sit.
“What about scorpions?”
“Nocturnal. We probably have more to fear from rattlesnakes. Just don’t put your hands on any ledges you can’t see.”
They sat, nestled, gazing down the valley of saltbush and smoke trees. Dennis pointed to a jet etching contrails upon a gradient blue sky. Cap Rock jutted out, a visor of stone.
“You can see all the way to Mexico from here.”
“It’s easy to see why this place became sacred.” A breeze cooled her skin, prickly from too much sun. Fiona turned. “And the air up here is making me randy.”
“It is?” Dennis was hard in an instant. Panting.
“Yeah.” She avoided his eyes, resting her chin on his shoulder as if studying the lengthening shadows. Fiona allowed a few seconds to pass, then Continue reading