Multitudes (5 page)

Read Multitudes Online

Authors: Margaret Christakos

Tags: #Poetry, #General, #Canadian, #Women Authors

Part 2
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ppp ooo ooo ooo nnn nml
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Part 3
aaaa aaaaaccc ccdd ddde
eeee
hhii kkkl lllllmnn nnoo
oooo
ooop pprr rrrs ssssttww
wwww
cold sidewalk wake hard
dawn
crow call achesoon step
past
poor rain morn wakeslow
cold
walkwa
esoons
oorrai
akeslo
DOCK
Wavering on a stoop. The day doesn’t start yet. Days on end come to a stop. The water is all in the lake. Level
rises, falls, but the lake is itself. Everything alive in the lake belongs.
Anything incompatible immediately ceases to breathe. There’s a limit.
You don’t necessarily do what is strategic when moths fly into your lips. What if the
mouth had been ajar. What if I’d swallowed that fly. Perhaps I’ll dive under the surface.
I was an old lady in the first dream. Then I woke in a hotel room with
tartar sauce on my little finger. We’d had supper and fucked. I didn’t feel so old then.
Kids are obsessed with opening and shutting any door they find, rushing their
shoulders through every portal. What happens that it locks? How will I escape?
They spend a decade deciding which way to run when the walls close in. They’re smart. Days don’t end when they sleep.
Lake streams around the rockpoint the way you penetrated me in gladness. Crappy
bedspread didn’t matter. We weren’t looking at the patterns. Wind reverses direction and heads out to the hillside
way over there, by the
hospital. That place is full of windows stuck shut. Bad air. You think twice
about going in there for the X-ray. Maybe you’ll never come out.
DIRGE URGE
Sign a
DNR
 before you leave the nurses’ station, we really can’t leave this undecided. Pack up all your shit, hit the highway and get yourself
free of all you can’t abide; or, kick your shins forward and find some nutrition at the lake’s bottom. Haul it forth and feed the masses inside you dying by the minute from
gentle disappointment. Make a fucking choice, howabout.
Most of the silence you hear here is suffocated yelling. Just saying. I watch
the train back up around the bend, swallowing its own metal hum.
People consider it a good move when violence is zeroed out of tolerance. True,
things are cleaner, less blood to mop, less breakage. Nobody mentions, though, how tough it is for a body to sift through the void. To get a
handle on the vacuum. Suck it up, they suggest. Suck it up.
When I use a category like People I’m probably hiding in the juniper, excessively chewing.
Tradition has it a few locks of hair are left on the tombstone. Subtle. I’d gnawed off a forearm, figured it was best to jog clear of the gravedigger who
likes to flirt with all the widowed. He caught up with me, in his mudcaked galoshes, waving my limb like a dog bone. It was embarrassing. All
right, here, I conceded, cut off a curl already. Arrange it the way the normal
mourners would. Lady, he winks, no can do without tip. By tip, I mean favour,
or some solid kindness, you’ve still got one good arm.
I realized then I was writing an Atwood poem from 1978. Nobody says how brilliant and mean she was, how shitkicking. She’d have known what to say, exactly what to do with that arm.
DISPLAY
th cunt with ankle ties
beige jute string clean
cotton canvas simple
wedge sole
n summer
bareassed on a walkabout
wear ur espadrilles
in th city 4 style
spill ur slender insteps
2 th sun n cocks
arrayed in public
after noon
ALTER [ALTAR]
Pre-digital. Post-analogue. Pre-
9/11. Post-
suicidism.
Pre-pubescent,
post-hysteric.
@ 15 girls.
@ 15 women.
@ 15 breasts surface, suggesting they r in there already, mounds
abt 2 move from behind th ribs
2 on top, like portholes.
@ 15 cunts under th tunic.
Nuts undescended yet sensory.
Tissue masses in motion n all th women @ 15 in 2012 
dressing like slavegirls
with flat sandals
n exposed toes.
O I’ll b back b4 long. I’m only
15. What do I
[Bobby Lee,
Ode 2 Billy Joe
, 1976]
know of th world? [ … ] But th girl
says no 4 3½ pages! No no no no
No no
No no no no no no
No no no.
Pre-yes. Post –
An arrangement has been made 2 appease th gods. Th in-laws.
Th community leaders. Us.
Hey girl,
it’s time 4 u 2 go.
ISLAND
Swim there n shut up. Hide in reeds,
burrow in sand. Doesn’t matter how u disappear.
Unlike it.
Or.
Expect th inescapable. Ur
era has prepared u, no?
Bleed on this rock 4 me, come on.
Like it. Like it like
a muthafuckah.
Like it like moonwork.
That’s a high-def red that can’t b faked, bee-atch.
That’s th best red
2 please a god
fast. Please us with ur postings. We
deserve so much more than ur boney ass can ever give us
unupdated. Like it.
Like it with ur red mouth open, red eye
widened. Let th last shutterclick of th world
hit our dickshores, leave us blind.
Or else. Swim 4 it.
4 ur life. 2 that hunk of rock out there. There’s no dish.
It’s bare earth engulfed in pure seafoam.
Nightmama of nothing of silent
unlike. Ur a strong babywhore
of th 21st century, right?
Choose.
WASEESEESAW NG
gninaemeaningninaemeaningninaemeaningninaemeaningninae
moaning
If in n sofaras theres
a glass that will hold
well, yo, my guest, ill
bring u water. cold itll
b.
February 23, 2012 at 15:45
Banish
Do women have to be naked
to get into the Met. Museum? 
Guerrilla Girls, 1989–
1. BANISHED. ABDEHINS. BA NI SH ED. DE. HS. IN. AB.

2. WASH
Go 2 an in-spot
n ask 4 callus
remover. Show ur skin.
Wash ur skin. Take
away some of it
[ur skin], then swab
with rubbing alcohol. Waft
ur scent when u
leave.
 
3. CROW
Don’t overthink it ur probably
not th first one who’s
ever felt that. I was
worried abt being tossed out
on my tush. I was
nervous I’d b denuded. When
I went 2 sleep @
night I garnished with my
teeth. Like a crow with
a past. Loosen up! Each
store window discounted. Even though
u tried 2 laugh off
80% of the pain, u
still felt chopped down @
th knees. Initially breadcrumbs were
there, then they weren’t. I
scoured th ground that’d bred
me. It was unsprinkled. Tell
some worstgut jokes n get
out of here. There’s a
huge crowd in th atrium
c? Large throng by th
turquoise pool, c? I’m a
human whsprr n th humans
don’t want me whsprng anymore.
4 I do not call
one greater n one smaller.
I laugh @ what u
call dissolution, n I know
th amplitude of time. I
do not say these things
4 a dollar or 2
fill up th time while
I wait 4 a boat.
A crow all ruffled by
the rain just parked on
a ledge I happen 2
b sitting on th other
side of my window from.
I’d rather say this on
Twitter because then u might
hear me. Is anybody out
there? Like Waters I was
a teenager once. Was one
of th viled. Buildings arrayed
around courtyard. Outside th compound
r ordinary folks going 2
work. Who friggin gives a
shit if. They ask u
politely 2 leave th hospital
as u no longer have
anything they can cure u
of. Of which they can
cure u. Which they can
control eradicate make vanish.
Th pre-lineup 4 vouchers 4
online tickets goes round 2
blocks. In about 35 years
there will be no need
4 th conventional incarceratory forms
a non-virtual society uses. Is
being sent 2 another continent
2 marry a bit similar
2 being banished? Is there
a voice in ur head
telling u there is a
voice in ur head asking
a voice in ur head
2 head 4 th hills?
If so. Without delay. There’s
that crow now down on
green grass. He or it’s
with another crow. Even in
th outback this’s a particularly
pretty morn. Watch I am
going 2 put on my
invisibility cloak. It’s a cloud-covered
shiver running thru my tendrils
n each toenail I have
lurches a little 4ward like
a fiddlehead smiling. If one
has odours these can b
compared 2. If dressed like
a rodent. Gait of amphibianic
ne’er-do-wells. Others have a destiny
that calls out 4 conga
lines. In trust I crow.
When they want u 2
leave sometimes they FedEx a
letter. Or send big bouquets
of hay n ragweed. Other
times th gang gathers (together)
like an ethics panel n
puts u into a humid
thermoradiant chair in front of
them n says defend urself.
Say something, a crow inside
ur head echoes. Say u
didn’t mean it, say u
were confused temporarily off ur
rocker deeply rattled by something
u saw on th Interweb.
Explain u were under influence
of crowspawn. Shriek I wasn’t
myself. Write ur name on
a paper 2 show how
u do it. They figure
4 minutes per client, 3 
if each cuts back on
niceties. A carillon’s belling
2 keep everybody on sched.
Helps. Helps. Helps. Helps. Hel.
In th middle of a
dry field uninsured workers haul
enough soil out 2 leave
a sizable hole n he
is asked 2 sleep there
4 3 weeks. A corner
@ Bay n University where
she goes with a raft
of cardboard. There’s a soft
cage in th ravine ur
uncle told u about 2
years ago. He was going
thru a bad time. Ud
just left college with plans
2 see Antarctica. U got
that blank in his eyes
n for a moment he
was more than a narrative.
He was linked in. All
my online friends think I’d
look better with bangs. Well,
about 12 of them say
this n the rest don’t
comment, so. All of love’s
a freakin hotbed of magpies.
Makes u fancy that ravine.
Makes u singe in June
evenings as sun sweeps in2
some ditch in a dry
boneyard about 3 kms west
of th promenade where u
go with a latte from
th newest roaster place. Why
not drop bucks on ubercool
everything. Designers make th world
efficient n more attractive. Don’t
get left out of what’s
trending. Items that u don’t
even like in a store
window can b ravishing @
sunset on ‘Hula Boulevard.’ Just
4get abt money cuz lack’s
th real culprit, not excess.    
U know there’s Prozac in
that creekbank. Lurking leakage. Downers
in bathwater. Some of this
mirrors th psychic load of
disciplining others. Go immediately 2
ur room. I told u
2 get 2 ur room
n stay there until I
tell u 2 free urself.
March! Until March? No. March!
He says, I’m banned from
th alleyway. Cop said if
I come back there I
get arrested, that’s it. No
more warnings. Set one foot
on th premises of th
duplex u once lived in
n then craved 2 much
n, well, ur going 2
be apprehended n charged, with
prejudice. We’re watching u closely.
Delectate on that b4 u
go 2 dreamland 2night, guy.
Th kitchen is out of
bounds for those with a
carb issue. Bathroom’s supervised by
a fulltime attendant in case
the bingers try 2. Well,
it’s an All-U-Can-Eat joint, attracts
th upchuckers. @ any rate,
those bitches b hoarding. Word.
Thirsty crow’s gotta go 4
th baubles in garbage. These
sculptures r fragile n so
th grey ribbon keeps u
back. What do u think
it’s there 4? This is
my lane. What r u
a fuckin idiot? This is
my lane.

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