Thanks, Poets!

Thanks everyone, for creating another interesting, beautiful month of poetry!

And thanks for the feedback on my poems - I look forward to going back and digging into several of them.

Best,
Polly

Under Construction

After the wear and tear of the years
I thought I had to start from scratch
bulldoze, leave nothing from before,
rebuild brick by brick

But when those first
destructive urges passed,
I looked around, checked
found the structure still sound
the skeleton strong enough
to hold for a few more decades

So I'm hanging a sign over
my bed, my head:
Under Construction

I'll hate the dust, the ladders
the loud men cracking jokes
spilling coffee
drilling holes
dropping dirty cigarette
butts to the floor

But I know in the end
there will be fresh paint
shiny new fixtures
higher ceilings
a certain elegance,
spaciousness, modernity
a sense of class
that will make the whole
project worth while

Names for my unlikely daughter

Contumelia - from Latin for outrage, insult.
She springs screaming from my equally yowling netherlands

Apologia - formal defense, justification,
especially of one's opinions, position, or actions.
Greek for "story"
Isn't this what children are for?
Our final defense and justification to the world,
we did it for the kids?
If not that, then at least a new story can be told.

Obvia - prevent, anticipate, make unnecessary
From Latin ob viam, "in the way"
Have I made her unnecessary,
or will she prove me wrong,
asking me to anticipate her instead?

Refragaria - from Latin
"to oppose, to withstand, to thwart."
Which is what I would want her to do,
even to me, especially to me
It is her destiny, after all.

Trise - to pull, to hoist, a pulley
She climbs, I hoist, she pulls,
we become a machine that works together.
or perhaps Trice - an instant; a moment
To remind us both,
that's all we get together in this world.

Apostasia - desertion from one's faith or principles
Greek "standing away from, revolt"
To have her, I will need to depart the church of childfree,
but I would teach her to revolt, to stand on her own two legs,
three if she's got 'em.

Prolix - unnecessarily long; wordy.
Latin "pour forth"
She will flow from me
and words of all kinds will flow from us both
as we figure out what we want from each other
and she experiments with how to get it.

Tervagant - boisterous, brawling, turbulent person
A Muslim diety portrayed in medieval morality plays
eventually referring only to women.
A small tornado to wrestle with
for a few decades,
longer if she'll have me.

My last

...post. And you'll be surprised to see it really has nothing to do with Yves, although I was trying--the poem just didn't conform. It's been a pleasure writing/working with everyone again in MayDay--I've found the experience fantastic. I hope people share the good news on any excitement involving the poetry. Thank you for your feedback/thoughts on my poems and good luck to everyone in everything.




SPEAKING ILL OF THE DEAD

1.

It’s a misread, an accident
that should have read “will”

the mistake of an aging single
aunt, a spinster they wrongly used

to say, as she speaks her living
into the tape recorder found

at a flea market for a dollar.
She will eventually hire someone

to revive her wishes, a friend’s
daughter’s boyfriend, the wanna-be

director, to film what she is unable
to figure out, her testament

to the process knowing full well
this isn’t the academy awards

nor is it high art (perhaps
in some French foreign

abstract way), but she wears
her store-bought blue

while posing on satin sheets
the bed a staleness

of occasion tightly bound
by the bone-bumped wrist

that grazes the pillow
of what she wills—

which is nothing
to the unseen, always ungrateful

family, and everything
to her neighbour.




2.

The neighbour knows
nothing about the aunt

except the laundry aired
daily on the rusted metal tree

the inside out hanging in long
underwear, the black gartered

slip, finely patterned cotton
dresses tracking days beside

pale silk stockings unsnagged
by any rough-palmed hand—

and rows of bras hold
only each other, silently sway

whipped by wind’s weekly
worry and high-waisted

hopes pinned in the past’s
determination to endure.



3.

Sometimes we all get the wrong
idea. A cloud that curls

in front of our eyes, the sold sign
hammered in before the sale. The white

wake widening before we notice
what we leave behind. And mis-

understanding the aunt asks, what will
save us?

twelve

You were my time piece,
one hand on my shoulder, the other
rooting around
in my shirt. Even half asleep
your third eye was always on the clock.
A year in, you're still a stickler:
just enough time to shower, just enough
to eat so I can feed
you again: Tick
tock, mummy. Tick tock.

eleven

A year in

They say Winnipeg only has two seasons:
winter and construction. They say
you can only count on death and taxes
except I sum-totaled the toes
curled in passive recognition
around my sun-tanned fingers
too many times
to count.

But that’s old news. A year in, the fusty raisin
rattle from the change table drawer
is the only figment
of the stretch between birth
and afterbirth. You no longer upholster
my middle-of-the-night with sharp
screams, preferring to cut teeth
on the flesh of my day-to-day
my twilight
my early evening longing
for unencumbered certainty.

They said to wake you if you slept
through the night. They said
you shouldn’t sleep in our bed. They said
you would never get to sleep
if we babied you
but today your face was luscious
in sleep but today when you waited
for the man that curled
around you, careful comma,
before lurching across the room
I shed all
my expectations.