Two poems from Wretched Beast (BuschekBooks, 2011).
A White-tailed Deer Stood Statuesque
in the Curve
of the Winding Lane
The last thing your lips touched:
my skin
and a coffee mug, Stephen's
blue-green pottery
I purchased in trade, and oh,
I am not sentimental
but admit, I paused before washing
it.
Rag-dollish
all afternoon through these
icing-white rooms
in my Wal-Mart dressing gown
and sweatsocks.
See what you've got yourself
into?
Just me
and the leonine contour of my dog
beneath a commotion of bedclothes.
This morning
we lurched across the field
I'm considering now. Snow-waves.
Aubergine light.
What a short poem you and I made
of yesterday's hike:
… the dog stitching the woods together,
something about delicate animal
tracks
stamped into the tinted snow.
I am all basic nouns and drifts
in the shapes of beasts.
Last night, a small party with writers
and trivia games. No one knew much
about the Blue Jays
or 1970s Nobel prize winners.
Each time I looked
you were brewing coffee
and your eyes appeared sad.
And how still
the ribs of this house today,
relearning
the meteorology of absence
at the water-stained table
and in my hand-me-down bed
(where you've cracked your shins
and so often slept poorly).
Now here's a surprise:
I have eaten the leftovers
from the gathering. Yes, even the
chocolate,
and I am sick but not sorry.
When will I see you again?
I discovered your grey socks
and one pair of jockey underwear
entwined with a towel
in my dryer.
Tell me you need them.
Insist they are irreplaceable.
My hands back in dishwater;
this is the way
to get on with it.
Does a coffee mug have a memory?
Is the blue cobalt or smoke?
Hours from here, you are.
-Shelley A. Leedahl
While
Recovering From Breast Reduction Surgery,
I Discover The
Poetry Of Charles Wright
Bleached light and the elocution of
southern birds.
I knew a storybook garden
once.
Rock-walled, on the far side palominos
whinnied some ancient complaint
about apples. The greenhouse grapes had
gone wild
as fourteen-year-old girls left alone
overnight, and lightly I stepped
between bruised and fallen plums.
Well, that was Scotland, and oh,
this is not. The hound dog's movie-starring
on the bed beside me, wearing his
mournful eyes.
No one walks him
and he implores all to believe he is
dying,
the way he sighs through his nose and
entertains himself
with the erratics of magpies
in the French lilac, not knowing I
watch
from the metal-reinforced screen door.
Some days
I find nothing to praise, but the
American elm
grandstanding above the neighbour's
grey shingles
earns a few songs this morning. Leaves
still one colour
away from being named decisively green,
ventricaled limbs bullied by a 40k wind
but not giving in.
Upside-down
hoop-skirt,
swaying, showing off. To be that ostentatious
on an ordinary Saskatchewan
mid-morning. Just after April,
and all
of the little names sink down.
Heat, rest: a surgeon's monosyllabia.
Pills are round white words,
palm-tongued.
-Shelley A. Leedahl
_______________________________________
Five poems from the manuscript-in-progress, "Go".
Deluge
Symphonic
rain.
And I am lured in the throat-hold of night
to consider blossoming puddles
between spikes of new onion
and the lupins
that follow my impenitent course, man
to man, inner city to inner city; only these
flowers
(pink like nail polish marked down
to a dollar) do not fail me.
____________
The sky over
Edmonton:
titanic, used. Tissued in clouds
like popped off dolls’ heads. It defers
to the wheedling wind
and sirens
needle the suede of hours
into the shape of a lunging dog.
(I startle a prostitute at her trade
in the space behind my garage
when I set out the reeking trash; no lullaby,
but the truth is—
rain or not—some of us never sleep.)
___________
Ear to the pane. Ear to the past. One tires
of her chapters: windows and rain songs
and clouds of restiveness
through the solstice of years.
One becomes
old
recalling rain, the children steeping in it—
barefoot, laughing—beneath the dripping elms
of another city: a drama
set hard as initials in cement
that refuse to wash away.
____________
And you, latest dreamer —
naked and
blissful
among feather-down pillows
plump as loaves
from the Portugese bakery —
will not miss me
in this sock-and-gown creeping
across my garden of shadows.
__________
Come, morning. Sooner is better.
And let us civilians splash to the library
beneath bold umbrellas, whale-skinned
in slickers and gum boots
like actors in a maritime movie,
and sit close to windows in coffee shops
admiring transients with wet smiles
for no one.
-Shelley A. Leedahl
*"Deluge" was shortlisted for Arc's "Poem of the Year" Contest, 2013
_____________________
Can’t Write
Today
Because
I’m not in a Mexican hammock slung between the corner-post
of
a fence I helped build and a spruce tree pocked with brown birds.
Because
I am no longer thoroughly alone.
Because
of last night’s thunder, sky flashing in sheets and a tap-steady rain between
the bedroom and bathroom walls.
Because
my back itches.
Because
of an unfulfilled promise of tennis.
Because
of the warrior cockroach who surprised us in the
stairwell of the Lisbon apartment.
Because
of his photogenicity.
Because
of contemporary art.
Because
I’m fifty and will never fit in at art school.
Because
of your hideous toenails.
Because
of the dropped ring gypsy scams near the Musee d’Orsay.
Because
we learned to scream Nyet!
Because
there may always be tornadoes.
Because
my children don’t know me.
Because
of mean bus drivers.
Because
of Vasco da Gama.
Because
of blind beggars with dogs on the Charles Bridge.
Because
of the Eiffel Tower as golden torch when viewed at night from a boat after a Fat
Bikes cycling tour.
Because
of the Brazilian who blamed me for her crash.
Because
of the sound my feet made on the hardwood floors in the Egon Schiele Gallery in
Cesky Krumlov.
Because
my little brother is memory now.
Because
of BB King.
Because
we were told It is not possible! by an employee at a sex club in Prague.
Because
we met Rick Steves in the I.P. Pavlova metro station and his grandparents
homesteaded in Edmonton.
Because
of grapes and Alsatian towns.
Because
of a thirty kilometre hike to Cabo de San
Vicente with a sixty-two-year-old Dane named Sigrun.
Because
I called her Sigrid until I knew better.
Because
of swans and covered bridges in Lucerne.
Because
of funiculars and the palace Michael Jackson wished to buy.
Because
of cheese and sausages in a Freiburg market.
Because
we spent nothing.
Because
James Gandolfini died too.
Because
aphids covered the lupins like snow.
Because
I don’t speak to anyone.
Because
of flipflops up to and all the way through Haut-Kœnigsbourg Castle.
Because
of the bitchy Tourist Information woman in Belfort.
Because three
times you couldn’t remember your VISA password at a cash register and lost the
privilege of charging.
Because
of the near-arrest in Estoril and the way sirens sound like WW2 from the back seat perspective
of a cop car speeding toward Lisbon.
Because
of those hard plastic seats.
Because
you wouldn’t tell me why.
Because
I needed to laugh and you snapped at me for covert photography.
Because
of a dozen postcards I never sent.
Because
there has been too much running to nowhere in the highest heat.
Because
of the legend of The Cock of Barcelos.
Because
of peacocks and five chicks at home in an artfully-designed B & B.
Because
of being too tired to go the bullfight.
Because
of Strasbourg.
Because
I came in a whirlpool at Baden-Baden.
Because
of Prague’s cheap beer.
Because
of the porcelain skin of the woman from Macau who sat next to me on the Tap
Portugal flight.
Because
she now lives in England and oversees a plastics factory.
Because
I still can’t speak French.
Because L’addition
is cool to say in a restaurant.
Because
the door opened a little.
Because
of striking Swiss Air workers at the Mulhouse-Basel-Freiburg airport and their
deafening party\riot\parade.
Because
of this Humboldt Motors Body Shop pen.
Because
of jet lag.
Because
Bob Flanagan beat me to it.
Because
of Monday.
Because
of radio commercials.
Because
a woman with hands protruding from her shoulders handled cigarettes with
finesse.
Because
of Portugese oysters that travel to France before returning to Portugal to be
sold at ten times the price.
Because
of a haunted ruin shot in sepia.
Because
of baggage tags.
Because
of reading glasses needed for maps.
Because
my booking reference number is FG6LLD.
Because
of pasteis de nata.
Because
the mountain\cliff\tree\wave\boulder\village is there.
Because
there’s another side.
-Shelley
A. Leedahl
_______________
.York loft and am one of those
Pennies
We
are completely void of wine.
Always
like that night’s I want to pretend
I
live in a New York loft and am one of those
tall,
lithe woman who is perpetually 32
and
paints abstracts in happy colours, paints
her
lovers’ bodies in abstract colours
and
is mostly always happy
when
she stands before her floor-to-ceiling windows
in
a white linen shirt—unbuttoned—
and
panties, bare feet.
The
best thing about today should not have been
the
fact that when I stepped from my car
I
spotted nine pennies in the mud
and
I brought them in to one-day polish,
one-day
tell a grandchild about these little coppers
that
feel good in the palm
or
elsewhere, skin-wise.
Penny for your thoughts?
Where
will all the old expressions go
now
the penny’s obsolete?
On
the flip side, my bank account
will
soon be fatter. I am frightened of the sum
in
the way one might wince near lashing animals
in
zoo cages. Money is fire: I am convinced
I
should not touch it.
I showed no foresight re: the lack of wine.
I
stand before the pantry, wondering why
we
have three roasters,
seven
rolls of plastic wrap
and
a blood pressure monitor
certainly
no one will ever use.
Oh, and I recently turned 50.
It
took a lot of wine
and
pennies
to
get here all the way from 1963,
but
paint and New York longing
have
little to do with that.
Somewhere not here there’s sophisticated jazz
and
small white lights sparking off
and
on like sunlight on flint
in
a creekbed. Subterfuge. Cities
are
best at it, and the woman
at
the window is so alone
she
smiles.
-Shelley A. Leedahl
(*note: the final line is not working yet ... open to suggestions)
_____________________________________________
Smuggler Cove Marine
Provincial Park
And
so we park and I set my Garmin to ensure we hike at least an hour and she says
be careful it’s slippery and I say is that a Douglas fir or a Western Red Cedar
and she says oysters and don’t you love the way moss drips like that and I say
oh yes I definitely do.
So
she tells me she’s been to San Francisco fourteen times and I say I’m losing
sleep because my son’s flying out with his girlfriend and what if she hates me
and don’t you think if so and so was fitted with a nice pair of Levis he’d be amazingly
hot and whoa close one.
And
so we squeeze past three hikers and stand on a rock admiring Thormanby Island and
she has friends who have a cabin there and you can’t see it but just around the
bend there’s a great beach and let’s go into Vancouver for plastic surgery
consults and the girlfriend’s from Germany.
So
after the Canadian Pacific Railway was completed William Kelly smuggled illegal
Chinese immigrants from Vancouver into the US for a buck a head and evaded
arrest by hiding in Smuggler Cove and I make a note to Wikipedia that and need
a hat soon plus Gay Pride Parade.
And
so I slip on a bridge and muddy my gloves but don’t slide off a cliff and she
says no more roller derby drama for her and she sure had a terrific meal last
night at the organic restaurant and I wrap the jacket around my waist and
February in Saskatchewan was never like this arbutus.
So we’re talking
182 hectares and at what point did you know your son was gay and of course I
had no issues when my daughter came out and how is your daughter’s pregnancy
going and are you buying RRSPs and especially the potatoes plus yellow crocuses
and Scarlett if she has a girl.
And
so I can’t read the minute directions on the can of bear spray from Source for
Sports and do you believe this was fifty dollars and she has pierced three cocks
and can’t read it either and wouldn’t it just be our luck to suffer a cougar or
bear attack and be doomed by nearsightedness.
So
we finish and it’s not even four kilometres so I say what’s down that road and
ooh look at those houses on the water and wouldn’t it be fantastic and she has
an artist friend who lives nearby and rescues cats and stops to stretch her
back maybe $1200.
And
so he has a gorgeous mouth and yes to a little lipo beneath the chin and
eyelids for sure and she’s meeting her best friend for lunch and I can’t say I’ve
got one and we met in a beach bar in Indonesia and hiking on the Sunshine Coast
on Mondays always and what kind of duck is that.
So
during Prohibition rum-rummers used the cove to store
bootleg from stills on Texada Island before heading to the US and isn’t that
interesting but not quite so much as
dating a cobbler and don’t spray downwind and a hotel on Market Street and
tight ones and Dr. Chang but time’s up.
-Shelley A. Leedahl
____________________________________________________
Raspberries
So
dark and ripe they are
halfway
to wine. Penultimate night
in
this house with the sadness
I’ve
nurtured
diseasing
the walls. Black mould
and
gravity
do
their tricks. Re/max sign
on
the lawn claims the house is for sale
but
means I am for sale.
Who
could want this
one
who knows only hard work well?
I
will not get to see the calla lilies bloom.
Neighbour
Eileen knows
I
am not eating
because
I am consumed
with
the garden and undone
by
rampant daisies. She sends her granddaughter
with
a bowl of lemon potatoes—
from
my own garden. They are
slippery
with butter and the best thing
I’ve
ever eaten
because
this near-mother prepared them
for
me.
Light—I
want to call it Divine—
on
the crabapples. Heliopsis
like
yellow stars. I will be drunk
tonight.
After this watered-down margarita
there
is wine from a cardboard box.
Storm
approaching like a wolf.
I’ve
fastened the windows and wait
for
it. Now in the spruce trees,
now
rattling the giant sunflowers.
Behind
the raspberries, the old compost heap.
I
bashed the hell out of a mouse
with
my rake
and
knew the blind joy of killing.
A
bald eagle plays the sky
as
if prairie’s confused with coast. Sign?
Oh,
but the light is all
one
needs. The world stops
and
even poppies hold their breath.
Mint
on my hands. Dirt on my teeth.
Now,
finally, I understand: everything
is
everything.
-Shelley A. Leedahl
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