and ruin the furniture.
The parents to be
need a new ottoman.
The waiting place persists
without me. The doors blink
and stare. Names are called
and not called. The dream home
is always almost complete.
Nearly 50% of Toronto Islands underwater after recent deluge of rain: City
I’m sorry/I could not row the boat/ashore
— Half-remembered lines from a poem published in a literary journal approximately fifteen years ago, which I’ve been unable to locate
At the risk of stating
the obvious, the island,
that place we met
and fell in—is
underwater. In the rom-com,
we got married alongside the hedge maze
on Hanlan’s Point. We imagined
more than I could handle.
Your dreams, Love, are very heavy
or maybe they are light
as a baby. It depends
on how real a thing is love or the future—
obviously, at the risk of—
they are adjacent
to some real, though it’s hard because
neither can be held like a present.
On Christ-mass, I held your gift
and shook it, a little, trying
to guess what might be inside.
But inside all of that was fear
—not of nothing—
but of things that feel
like they could turn
to nothing. “I’m sorry/
I could not row the boat/ashore.”
These half-remembered lines I remembered once
but forgot long before we met
in that time which resembles the present
—now is like then—
except for memory
we are strangers
again. We did not row
but were ferried there
to what is now a shoreless island—
a place beginning in the middle
or ending there. I too notice
the central metaphor is falling
apart. I’m sorry
I could not row the boat
ashore. These stolen and butchered
lines better than the emails I begin
and can’t send, ever since I said
I’m sorry/I can’t do this/
anymore. I don’t know
exactly what I meant by this—
how much of this was us
and how much the idea
of where I thought
we were headed. I thought
myself incapable
of arrivals. I’m sorry/
I don’t know who the boat is
and who, the shore.
But the flood isn’t about us.
Climate change as metaphor is
problematic, but in my defence
that poem or this one is, I think,
about carelessness. In related news,
yesterday, and mostly
by coincidence, I found myself
at the ferry docks accompanied
by an absurd idea: if I looked far enough
from the mainland, I could see
the flooding. I could see
what was no longer there.
Of course, there is nothing
to report, other than a sign,
which, if I am remembering properly,
read: residents and special personnel—
of which we are neither—
are permitted to cross. I’m sorry/
it is literally impossible/
though maybe that was always the case.
It’s just something I can say now without
uncertainty. But you knew all that.
You read the news.
In Praise of Losing Things
Nothing to grieve.
Only things, but
we needed them
to lock our doors or prove
we are who we claim.
The irreplaceable ones,
in truth, merely substitutes
for the irrevocable.
But even these are not gone—
like all lost things
we may just never see them
again. They wait for us
under cushions, purloined
upon table-cloth daffodils.
Subway stowaways by mistake.
Have you checked your pockets?
asks the well-intended,
who thinks you a novice at loss.
Your reversed pockets flop.
On strewn clothes, your frantic hands,
teenagers at drive-ins.
Retrace your steps, she says,
as though you haven’t already
ransacked your home until
it appears burgled. You unbury
old losses. Find so much
that has turned useless.
Sometimes things turn up
when you stop looking.
The cliché that sounds
like a koan and undermines
the urgency you’ve found.
Then comes the dreaded question:
Where was the last place
you remember having them?
You want to snap back
Of course, if I knew that,
then I wouldn’t—but you’ve lost
the subtext. She wants to know
how you could be so careless.
Ode to Remicade
You wait eight weeks. I promise
to arrive on time. Strange to consider you naked
without my body
warming the plastic upholstery. The IV bag
sags. Be patient, Thirsty Drip,
you will repress my immunity soon. Superego
without a conscience. Dear Remi, Fair Cade,
I’ve been saving my best vein.
Our pearl anniversary is imminent.
One morning, I’ll unwrap the black box
warning & surprise! find you inside—
Quiet Crab, stand erect & scuttle to me slowly.
There’s no hurry now. As promised
I have kept our appointment.
Infusion Song
The panoramic view of the parking lot
is majestic. Beneath the sun asphalt softens
like chocolate. The air inside the clinic,
cold and still as a snow globe. I recline,
my feet point towards the sky.
In this land of the sick, we are all kings
for two hours and forty-five minutes.
Personal TVs and IV pole sceptres. My remote
control, a trident. I mute the screen.
My immune system swims in liquid
clear as gin. I await the snacks, am bereft
to find no Kit Kats left. Time
drips. Impatient for my vitals check.
The blood pressure cuff, tight as a hug.
And Then Job Answered God from inside the Whirlwind They Were Both Caught inside Of
I am of small account: what shall I answer thee?
— 40:4
I will kvetch in the bitterness of my soul.
Sentenced to bright Sheol. Punished for suffering.
Meds soften feelings to trees. Gnawed rootlessness. Exiled
from myself. Diaspora
to weep beside. I weep
in the shower
by the wa
ter fountain.
I weep into paper cups of medicinal jewels till they dissolve
to dust and ashes.
Imagine Sisyphus too weak to push.
You take the myth too literally. Punished to some curve of corridor
to roll an absence of self
back and forth.
Mealtime gives form to the day and the waiting
for the daily assessment
sometime
between eight and six. Waiting
for nothing
to change.
Is there not a limit on suffering or suffering? What is my end
that I should be patient?
You do not ask. You ask
the answer translated to symptom
depression talking
as though it were someone else
dybbuk possession a symptom.
But what do we really live for?
Or do we live?
The question worthy of clinical observation.
You do not ask.
Reasons are symptoms.
You see my calamity and are afraid.
Reuptake faith. The synaptic sea
in the well mind sequins with serotonin.
So dense there isn’t space
to weep beside. Am I the sea
or the sea monster?
When the patient responds marginally,
administer lightning.
You will forget your misery; you will remember it as waters
that have passed away.
If I am sick
turn the key
of the receptor’s hushed casket.
Cut my brain down the middle.
Centre of normalcy.
Unglue my brain.
Pull out the cortex like fibreglass.
Insulate against pain.
Worthless physicians all of you!
May there be a lament in your belly—a klog dir in boykh.
Zol dir shnaydn di kishkes—a stabbing pain in your guts.
A thunderbolt in your sides—a duner dir in di zaytn.
Oysdarn zol your brain bay dir der moyekh
should dry up. Zolst kakn shit
mit blut un mit ayter blood and pus.
Zolst kakn mit blut un mit ayter a meshugenem a maniac
zol men oysshraybn un dikh araynshraybn
should be crossed off the register
of madmen and you should be inscribed in his place.
Zolst onkumen tsu mayn mazl—
you should have my luck.
Oh, that I had one to listen to me (Here is my signature,
let the Almighty answer me!)
If not god then Leviathan.
This earth, the whirlwind.
Job’s Girlfriend
is the title of the poem I was going to write for you. Forgive
the exposition, but the poem requires that you know
Job lost his children and property and kept his faith
until God struck him with boils from head to toe.
Once the loss is him, his faith goes.
You don’t need reminding about my affliction
or as they say, the partial blockage of the visual receptor
that boils in my mind.
Job spends a lot of time
arguing with his friends about justice
and God shows up at the end and speaks.
What he says isn’t important
to the poem. He’s just another man with a take
on suffering. I’m more interested in Job’s wife.
She is not a significant character in the story
except to me. She has just one line,
tells Job to “Curse God
and die.” Then is silenced by the men
speaking about fairness and faith.
After that, Job barely mentions her again
though he says, “My breath is offensive to my wife.”
I sometimes like to take this line literally.
Job’s breath stank because in his despair
he stopped taking care of his dental hygiene
but obviously that’s an anachronism.
But so, I’ve felt lately, is love.
The premise of the poem was that Job
leaves his wife for another woman,
which in the story he wouldn’t have done
since part of his innocence defense
is his faithfulness. But in the poem
he opts for your kindness over
his own sense of righteousness
because you are the only person
that sees him behind his sickness.
Job’s girlfriend also knows what it means
to be ill. They take longs walks and discuss disease
under the olive trees of Uz and, of course,
fall in love. In the poem, as in the story,
as in real life, Job spends a lot of time
waiting for God to speak through a whirlwind.
Tornadoes are rare in Toronto.
Still, I’ve been waiting and waiting to hear God
in the wind. Waiting occupies all my time,
but in the poem, I realize
your breath is the breeze God speaks through.
Your voice is a gentle whirlwind.
Like that time I had a cold and we were kissing,
and you asked me to brush my teeth because
my breath smelled like NeoCitran, remember?
But you wanted to keep
kissing even if it made you sick.
That’s when God appears hidden
in the gentle whirlwind
and says there is no justice,
just light. That’s what happens in the poem
I’ll never write. Because in real life my vision
was not only distorted, I couldn’t listen
to light. In real life I didn’t have faith
that I could hear a faint glow. I
let you go. But in the poem
you make Job want, still, to curse God,
but live. I guess
I don’t get the chance now to write that poem,
which is too bad,
I think you really would have liked it.
Lamotrigine Song
Visit the Google Images gallery of side-effects & see
leprosy in a hurry, bodies charcoaled, still lives.
All of History in you.
I brought you home from the hospital-
pharmacy, swaddled
in plastic, rattling beside impulse buys:
chewing gum for boredom, scratch card
to test my luck. I heard you tap
against the childproof lid.
0.08 percent get the rash: pogrom-ed skin. 1 in 10
receive a scarlet warning
& just in case must be taken from you—
my pink miracle, suicide-inhibitor, provider of
not faith, but will
to endure absurdity
without levity.
The suicide in me desired
to be incinerated. Body, a pyre.
Metamorphosis: I’ve become the rash
entirely. Allegorical
of nothing. Reflect feelings not found
on the emotion wheel: blood-libelled, skin-thieved, fleshless.
Shame deeper than biblical. Unlike the psych—
people would visit me in the burn ward. I dreamt of pity
& fire. More of me wanted to want
life. I tried you,
Lamotrigine, a year ago
& now pop with a Claritin at 8 a.m
.,
impatiently watching the coffee drip
& check my skin, then get on with this
… with this … with this … ellipses of breaths.
Re: hey, and i might have cancer
I know we haven’t spoken in a while, but I just came back from having an MRI. I’m guessing you would rather not hear from me right now, especially about something like this. It’s just I wasn’t prepared for how enclosed the MRI machine would be, and I didn’t expect to be this scared. I haven’t forgotten what you said, and you were right: I took advantage of your kindness, at least, sometimes. I never meant to, but I did. I get that now. And I know it wasn’t okay—the way I ended things. It must have felt like it came out of nowhere. I’m sorry—I really wasn’t planning on writing to you. It’s just during the MRI, I couldn’t stop thinking about something I read in the news, years ago, about a boy who crawled into an abandoned freezer while playing hide and seek. He wasn’t found. I mean eventually he was, but of course by then. . . . Inside the MRI machine it sounded like one of those carnival haunted houses—when you’re in the little car and a really fake skeleton falls in your direction while a dim, red light flashes above and then that noise—like a cow having a heart attack. I used to love going on that ride. I would make my mother take me again and again, and I guess I did that because I knew exactly when the scary thing would happen. Familiarity, even when unpleasant, is that the opposite of fear? I stared at the machine’s curved ceiling the whole time. I thought I should close my eyes, that it will be easier if I close my eyes, but I didn’t. I wanted to be present. I wanted to remember the experience in detail since I thought it might be the beginning of the story. Though I suppose if this is the story, it’s hard to say when it began. I asked the tech why the machine was so loud, and he sounded tired when he said, “That’s just the way it works.” He said it like the way everyone says on some occasion or another, “Life is just like that,” or “That’s just the way the world is.” I felt close to god or the absence of god—in that machine, they felt like the same thing. I was momentarily certain, there was some kind of vast power determining our lives, and it had no idea why it worked the way it did. For no reason and without being able to do otherwise, it was just like that. I feared I was ruining the test, that I was breathing wrong. What if I’ve been breathing wrong my entire life? Have you ever flown home and walked into the area where people wait for their family members or partners, and find yourself looking around, trying to see the person who is there, in the crowd, waiting for you, and then realize—no one is? After the conveyor brought me back to where I began, I got dressed and stood outside the hospital and waited for the taxi. It was hot enough to sweat without moving. I closed the door to my apartment behind me and just stood there, completely unsure of what to do with myself, with my fear—with this thing inside me that could be nothing, or everything. This is how we end: god in the machine or is it god is the machine? It’s difficult to think clearly right now. Forgive me. And I know, I shouldn’t have written this to you. It was selfish. I realize that, but I needed to tell someone who would really care, even if she wished she didn’t. I needed someone, aside from me, to be waiting for the results. I will find out in a week. Less than that if you don’t count today. I’m sorry, it’s not fair of me to write this to you after all this time. But I will tell you as soon as I get the results. I promise, you’ll be the first to know.