Lori Weber
Dedication:
For Fran, cherished friend, teacher, and mentor, who first taught me to believe all those years ago.
Acknowledgements::
A huge thank you to Cassandra Curtis, Ron Curtis, and Jane Barclay who read my tangled web of poems with great insight and gave me invaluable advice. Thanks to Fran Davis who listened to an early draft over tea and then never stopped asking. Thanks also to my editor, Christie Harkin, for falling for the book and then helping me take it to a higher level. Thanks also to the design team at Fitzhenry & Whiteside for their creativity. Thank you to the Canada Council for the financial support that enabled me to write this book. Finally, thanks to two special cats, Silver and Bogart, who keep me amused while writing, which is more important than I can say.
Contents
The Third Floor
Crossed Over
The Kind of Life I Want
Doloroso ma sognado
SOMEONE BIG
Getting the Hang of it
Why Stacey Dumped Us
HOT
Talent Show
Con Forza
Lucky
Just Because
Social Action Group
These kids
MY STEEL SHELL
My Dad
Ostinato
Things She Doesn’t Want to Know
Poem
This New Guy
Trying to Change the World
The Truth
Glad He Didn’t See It
OMEN
Ordinary
Agitato
Love Poem
It’s a Good Thing
Stacey’s Sister’s Diary
HIS LAST THOUGHT OF ME
You Don’t Know
Sotto Voce
Make-up
In My Pocket
Fleeting
Touch me
FOUND IT
Pinch Pinch
How do You Know
SAILING
How Could She?
Crescendo
What Stacey Thinks
I Never did Know Mary
Overture
Christopher Is
NEVER LONG ENOUGH
Injustice
NOW
RULES OF THE ROAD
On the Inside
Modulation
Pearl
INSIDE THE MALL
Opening Me Up
I Know How It Happens
Against Me
WEIGHT
Alien
Crossing the Line
All I Need to Know
Telling Annabelle
Appassionata
Heresy
As a Dad
Stiracchiando
Something She Doesn’t Know
THE KEY
Back Again
Pregnant
So Perfect
LOST
Deck The Halls
BACK AGAIN
WHO IS THIS
False
IT MUST HAVE BEEN
Volante
Adventure
The Big
GoingThrough the Motions
ALL AROUND ME
Cuddling Up
RUST
Gravity
COURAGE
Intrepidezza
Mary’s Music
Lights
Empty
Ideals
First Time
Super Charged
BIG WHITE SMILE
Control
Eclipse
Trionfale
Fine
Relief
Syncopation
Hope
Empty
Strepitoso
EXPERIENCE
Good Intentions
Both Things
THE SHAPE
Counterpoint
Smoking Weed
Midnight
Surrender
THIS GIRL
Magnetic
LANDING
What He Did
Simplicita
Simplicity
Into the Adult World
LIGHTENING UP
First Step
On the Bus
MY YELLOW MINI
The Third Floor
Annabelle
I hate to walk past the third floor lounge
of my school, where
the cool kids
hang out.
The cool kids talk loud and dress preppy,
carry condoms in their pencil
cases and smoke up at
break, throwing
their butts
into the
bushes.
If I have to go to the library, I take the second floor
as far as it will go, then climb
the stairs and double
back, just to avoid
the third floor
lounge.
If I really can’t avoid it, I hold my head so high I get a kink
in my neck, and I try not to look anyone straight
in the eyes, because if they know you’re
looking they flaunt it, their
popularity, pull it out
of tight tops like a
magician’s scarf
and fling it,
laughing,
in your
face.
My ex-best friend Stacey hangs out there with
her boyfriend Mark, wrapping him
around her like a shawl, the hair
on his head spiked up
with gel to make
him look
taller.
If Stacey sees me, she’ll wave and holler, Hey Annabelle, how’s it going?
and even though she doesn’t say it, I know she means
down here, among the loser girls who haven’t done
it yet, girls who think the purpose of school is
getting good marks and not a boyfriend
named Mark, who drives a yellow
Mini, his girl of the month
beaming beside him
like a yellow car
Princess.
Crossed Over
Stacey
Sometimes, I want to pull
her in and give her
a makeover.
It wouldn’t be hard—
she’s not ugly.
She’s got amazing green eyes,
thick brown hair,
and a decent shape,
not that you’d know it because
she hides herself under
peasant skirts and baggy shirts.
Sometimes, I think of the olden days
when we’d sit on my bed, eat chips
and talk about the third floor gang,
wondering if we’d ever be one of them.
Sometimes, I can’t believe I crossed over,
all because I learned how to flirt with guys
on holiday at a cottage my parents rented
last summer by a lake.
There, I met Paul, who could skip rocks
ten bobs on the water. He said when he
saw me his heart exploded.
We kissed on the big rock, way out
in t
he middle of the lake, our tongues
sparking like flint. With each spark,
a piece of my childhood chipped
and fell into the lake, taking away
the geeky girl I had been.
My parents were tiny as paper dolls
in their beach chairs, noses in their books,
and by the time I was back on shore
I knew I’d leave them
and Annabelle behind.
Now, in the third floor lounge, Mark and I
entwine under the florescent lights
and I shine—his girl, not loser girl
with Annabelle and Mary anymore.
Now, I’m the girl who gets to hang her arm
out the yellow Mini and wave
at suckers waiting for buses.
I get to roll with Mark beside me,
his left hand on the steering wheel,
his right hand on my thigh.
The way he speeds through stop signs
makes my blood race and I want to keep
driving forever, leaving school further
and further behind because I can’t see
how it’s going to give me what Mark
gives me, which is the feeling that
I’m someone who’s going somewhere
fast.
The Kind of Life I Want
Annabelle
My mom’s had to work hard
That term always makes me imagine
that other people have double moms
or triple moms—a string of moms
stuck together like those paper cut-outs
we used to make in kindergarten.
My mom says she’s a woman surviving in a man’s world,
which means she has to be careful about how she dresses
and acts at work, where mostly men get promoted.
She wears two-piece suits and pointy-toed shoes,
and carries a leather briefcase full of stats
on house sales, interest rates, and mortgages.
She smiles at meetings while the men crack dirty jokes
and loosen their ties because they can let their hair down,
while hers has to be impeccably cut and streaked.
My mom says it’s a disgrace that I don’t take care of my face.
She buys me creams and lotions to clear my skin
even though she knows I don’t play that game.
I hate the way girls fool themselves
by using eye liner and mascara, as if
popularity comes in a tube.
She says one day I’ll have to learn to play the game
like she does every day, preparing for battle,
putting on her armour, layer by layer.
But I know I won’t because that’s
not the kind of life I want:
corporate.
Doloroso ma sognado
Sorrowful but dreamy
Mary
I like the way
minor scales dip
down, like
a landing bird.
Minor scales remind me
of the deep pangs
that strike me
when I see
something sad,
like the kid
who eats alone
in the corner,
tipped away
from the crowd,
his sandwich
cut in four,
in a way that says
someone at home
loves him.
Minor scales suit the space
where I practice—
two hours every day
that go by in a haze
as if the music happens
in other time,
not world time
but music time.
When I play my piano,
images whirl and twirl
in my head, filling
the room with colour.
I’d love to take
those colours
with me to school,
but they hide
without the music.
Sometimes, during the day,
I’ll get a spark,
quick and fleeting,
but there’s too much
people-noise
for that colour
to break through.
SOMEONE BIG
Mark
My Mini gives me wheels
to go
wherever
I want
whenever
I want.
Nothing holds me back since I bought her
with the insurance money
from my dad’s accident,
Second-hand, reconditioned
by a Mini Man:
two black stripes
over the hood,
cosmic wheels
chrome fenders
from the ’50s.
My mom says my dad wouldn’t have wanted me
to waste the money on a car. He would’ve wanted me
to use it for school because that was his dream for me,
to become someone big like a brain surgeon
or lawyer or engineer, even though
I was already a grade behind
when he collided head-on with a truck,
driving his cab: two weeks in Intensive Care
draining into sacs, his insides leaking out,
attached to so many tubes he looked like the back
of our TV, hooked to the satellite, DVD, and Xbox.
My Mini surrounds me
like a second skin,
hard and bright.
My dad had no second skin.
The truck crushed his cab so bad,
he and the metal became one. Bits
of it were buried with him, lodged
deep in his limbs and chest.
I picture those pieces shining
in the grave when everything else
has turned to dust.
Getting the Hang of it
Christopher
I’m the guy
who stands too straight,
who can’t seem to get the hang
of hanging loose.
My body won’t let go,
it wants to be rigid
because so much anxiety
is making it hard
to lighten up
and untighten up
enough to stop
looking
like a jerk
when Annabelle’s around.
Just the sight of her
clenches my jaw
hardens my hands
turns me to granite,
even though inside
my thoughts of her
are soft
and tender
and warm.
When she walks by,
I’m a stone statue
standing stiff
as a guard
at Buckingham Palace,
While inside
I’m reaching
beseeching
her to see
Past this rock face
to the funny guy
I know I can be
and would be
if I could learn
the key
to feeling at ease
when Annabelle sees me.
Why Stacey Dumped Us
Annabelle
Because after ten years of being best friends
with me and Mary, her ego
exploded
And now she sees herself as much bigger than us,
like she is perched on some
high peak,
Queen of the World, while we
are just lowly
worms.
All because some guy named Paul liked her
and told her she was hot
and tried
To get into her bikini, the yellow one
she always ties in a double
knot,
Like she’s the first girl in history who’s ever
been seduced at a summer
cottage.
When she came back, she was bursting with
superiority, rolling her eyes
at us
Like everything we said was childish and way
too simple for her sophisticated
ears.
She tried to describe how it all happened, the kiss
out on the rock and the rest, but stopped
halfway
Because nothing we could picture in our little brains
could match the grandeur of the
real thing.
HOT
Mark
Stacey is short skirts and long legs
in my peripheral vision
when I steer.
She is soft curves when I reach
over into the glove
compartment.
She is loads of laughter in my ear
when the sound of traffic
gets me down.
I never noticed her much before
this year, but now
here she is,
Day after day, riding with me,
stroking my hand
on the shift,
Making my heart race and my feet
push the pedal
even harder.
Talent Show
Annabelle
Talent Show posters line the walls,
auditions coming up.
I want Mary to try out
but she’s scared
because Stacey is doing make-up
and the rest of her crowd
everything else, except for
lights and sound, which the AV Club
is eager to do.
Mary will have to place her ego
in their hands and trust
it doesn’t get crushed,
like a bird.
Besides, says Mary,
Chopin’s a nerd
to that crowd.
They’ll want rock bands
or pop stars
with bellies showing
or hip-hop dancers
in army fatigues.
Mary plays so well it’s scary.