THE
TEACHER
Electric
heat and humidity
Assault me
This morning
In my classroom,
Both leftover from yesterday's Coup d'etat of
summer.
I
reach out to open a window,
But I discover a "fat" bee
Peering through Plexi-glas, Helplessly still,
Watching the world
Die.
Its
stinger-abdomen
Barely twitches.
Its wings,
Like agate-wafers,
Droop.
A clump of pollen,
As green as grasshopper-blood, Sticks to one leg:
I
open the window, and
A page flies off my desk.
Armoured bits soon
Pulse and twitter.
Wings tremble.
The bee flies away,
Sleepily,
Mind you,
But off it goes,
With legs dangling
Like numb tentacles.
I
sit at my desk--
Uncluttered at last!--
Peering at my lesson plan:
"Lead destroyed Rome."
But I look away,
Craning my neck
To feel cool air flowing
Across my face from the
Open window.
Yet
again I feel cheated.
The children I've taught
Will leave.
You'd
think I'd get used to
All this,
This last day,
But I don't,
I haven't.
I
search for a travel brochure, Anything to take
me away,
For a few minutes,
Before the kids clamor down the hall
One last time
To say hello and
Good-bye.
THE
GRAVEYARD SHIFT AT 7-ELEVEN
PROLOGUE
June
29, 1998:
"Just stay relaxed," my new boss Says, his mouth
half full of
Burrito-bits.
I
June
30, 1998:
A greasy-haired man
Without shoes, pants,
Or underwear--
Just a plaid shirt and red
Socks--
Asks for Export A,
Grips
money in a
Yellow-fingered fist
And grins as if
He knows something
I don't.
"Cat
got your tongue?"
He asks before leaving, and
Then
he holds a door open
For a short lady--
A librarian?--
A lady so shaken
That she drops her wallet
That spews out change
That he squats to retrieve.
Like
a manikin,
She can't seem to move,
Refuse the change
That he drops into her hand,
Nor take her eyes off him.
He
leaves,
Shaking his head
And chuckling to
Himself.
II
July
3, 1998:
A thick-necked man leans
Across the
Windex-clean counter,
Grabs my shoulders,
And--
He
has an Iroquois cut
(An orange and black strip
Of bristles):
This is not an
Afterthought--
And he says,
"Phone the police!
I take psycho-chemical drugs,
But they aren't working!
I feel violent!
I'm
going to do something
Terrible!"
His eyes look as if they belong
In a Van Gogh
Self-portrait.
He
runs outside;
I phone the police while he
Blocks people from
Passing into or out of the store. Nobody argues
with him.
And finally,
Within four minutes,
Four officers (RCMP)
Reluctantly wrestle him,
In
front of the doorway,
Into handcuffs.
III
July
6, 1998:
A bald, scrawny man
Kicks a "regular" gas pump,
Yells at it--
I can hear cursing
Through double-paned glass--
And then,
Waving a squeegee,
Like a Ninja warrior with his Nunchaku,
He enters our temple of
Submarines
(He has only one earlobe),
And cries,
"Don't phone the police!"
He smashes the squeegee
Through counter-glass.
He attacks the cash register,
Coffee pots,
And
freezer-windows:
$10,000 damage in three minutes.
IV
July
12, 1998:
Another man, vacant,
Like a basement without a house, Pulls out a five
from worn-out jeans, Pays for two liters of Coke,
Looks at his change,
And says,
"How much do I owe you?"
"You already paid," I say.
"You must be mistaken," he says. We argue;
My partner, Burt, and he
Argue;
Burt gives up:
The customer pays him from Another five,
And after that he pays me
From a ten.
He leaves,
But he returns, empty-handed,
Six
minutes later,
And wants to buy more Coke.
We ignore his pleas for one hour; Finally,
He leaves.
EPILOGUE
This
was the graveyard shift
At 7-Eleven,
But I wrote it in the present Because,
As a bored dog catcher,
Now,
I often relive drama
That was burned into my
Brain.
But
what I really want to be,
I think,
Is a composer--
Not bad-tempered,
However,
Like Beethoven,
Nor moody.
Like Rachmaninoff,
Nor funny-looking,
Like Paul Williams,
Nor short-lived,
Like Mozart.
By
the way,
I rented "Amadeus" last
Monday night,
And I loved the music,
But I thought it was terrible
That Mozart wrecked
Salieri's life.
THE
POET
The
man in the living-room (gyproc And oak trim)
Can't see his station wagon
Outside the finger-smeared Window--
The car like a giant cockroach Asleep under an
orange streetlight; The man can't see his own
reflection In the picture window of the Neighbour's
Dark house across the
Truck-smashed
Road;
The man can't see these things Because he's watching
a movie About Van Gogh
And dreaming about
What a great poet he'd
Have become If he'd been more Mad.
HER
STORY
"All
right," she said,
Lying back on her belly.
"Do it yourself."
"You're
a real sweetheart,"
He said, tossing a bottle
Of sunscreen
Into a red beach-bag.
"Shut
up."
He
leaned away from her
And the white sun;
He used an empty Coke bottle
To draw a big circle in the
Black sand:
"What
time is it?"
"I
wish we'd never come here,"
She
said, trying not to
Think of--
"I'm
going in." He stood up
And dipped a foot into the hot sand Beside her
striped towel.
Then he raced to the water.
"Don't
bother to come back,"
She said, raising her head,
And she almost repeated it
Loud enough for him to hear,
But instead she wiped her
Stinging eyes.
THE
INSOMNIAC ON A MILITARY BASE IN P.E.I.
Bullet-birds,
Flashing by a streetlight,
Picking off moths.
I
don't like them,
But I did my job in
Liberia and Turkey.
In
our bedroom,
I rest elbows on the
Lead paint-window sill.
"Don't
sand that stuff,"
The sergeant said.
"It'll make you lose
Your marbles."
I
take a deep breath;
Birds dive out of darkness
And then back in:
I'd
like to
Shoot them.
My
wife stirs behind me:
"What are you doing?"
"I can't sleep."
"Oh."
And
then she falls back
To sleep.
DINNER
FOR TWO
White
wine, soft jazz,
An awkward touch,
An eye's occasional twinkle,
Eons interrupted
With words like, "You were born Where?"
Then dinner arrives.
Cutlery clinks;
The man and lady thank the Ramrod-waiter.
The
man winks;
Boldness swells
In his lungs.
He slices through
Cordon bleu.
"I've never had cordon green, Either," he says,
laughing.
Her upper lip twists
Into an Elvis-lifeline.
His eyes widen as the knife
Opens
the protein-bolus--
"Yuck!" he exclaims,
"It looks like puss inside!"
He
laughs.
She,
Beneath her ballerina-bun,
Halts in time, like a poem,
With unchewed cordon bleu
In her gape.
He
laughs again,
And then chews heartily.
SKIPPING
STONES
Across
the metallic skin
The shale skips,
Wounding the gentle stream
As if a sniper shoots true.
Again
and again,
The hunt continues, .22 slugs into an Elephant's
hide--
Blood-angry it cries--
All inside the hunter's eye.
Finally,
a smooth, flat rock,
As black as a beetle,
Follows a Gatling row,
Exploding the sun-fired,
Cold surface,
All the way to the other
Clam-clattered bank.
The
bare-chested boy rejoices, Glances at the sun-ball,
And smiles at the wind.
IN
THE PICKLE-JAR
The
kitten
In the pickle-jar--
That still smelled
Of dill and vinegar--
Meowed, barely audible to
The young captor,
And scratched the glass
And bumped its head
Against the metal lid,
And panicked,
And twisted,
And, finally,
Died
Curled up.
His
enraged sister,
Who'd found the "coffin"
Beneath his bed,
Deposited her kitty-in-a-jar
On the supper table,
Between plates of spaghetti
And tomato sauce;
Then
his father
Spanked him,
And sent him to bed
Hungry.
LATCHKEY
Tourquoise
eyes,
Like a Caribbean wave,
Crow-black hair,
And gleaming braces--
She runs home from school
(To embrace her husband,
She pretends),
To let herself in,
To wait for her
Mother and father.
She
stops at the daffodils-- Lilliputian arrows
That barely pierce
The dark soil--
And breathes in deeply,
Dreaming that her husband
The soldier
Is a dead soldier.
And
then, the sight of
Two salamanders--
Ex-patriots from the frog-
Croaking swamp?--confuses
Her: How did they end up
Caged in an ice cream-bucket
In her weedless yard?
She
passes budding
Lilac bushes filled with
Unborn purple;
She
unlocks and opens
The heavy oak door,
And hears her gerbil
Running again
On a squeaky wheel.
THE
KITTEN
A
blonde girl
Exhales mist
Into the night.
Her eyelashes are wet;
She wipes her cheeks dry,
But she wears no makeup:
She is too young for that.
She
calls again
Into every dark space,
Tree, and bush,
Into every molecule
For her kitten.
A
car rattles past;
Her
brother should not have
Left the porch door open
Three nights ago!
She
bites down hard.
Her mother,
At the kitchen window,
Shrugs her shoulders
And smiles between
Peach-colored curtains.
The
blonde girl calls out,
More weakly,
Under the yet-barren
Mountain ash
And along the mucky trail
That weaves between
Pussy willows
To the lane.
At
the lane she turns to
Glance at the roof,
Searching for a kitten-silhouette
In moonlight.
She
ignores her mother's
Frown,
And later, she cries
Herself to sleep
In her hard bed;
She bites down often
And
snores.
In
the morning
She glares at herself
In the mirror.
She locks the bathroom door, Shutting out her
brother,
Her mother, too.
Today
she will wear Mascara,
Even
if her brother laughs
Or her mother disapproves.
She
is unskilled
With the little brush.
Her hand shakes,
But she is a determined
Young lady
Today.
ONE
HOT DAY
A
girl
More than watches
Buzzing hornets and bees
Darting like heat-seeking
Missles, flashing inside a
Plume of apple
blossoms.
And
In
the hot breeze a petal--
A flesh-eating arm--
Falls,
Twirling through a whorled-- Reluctant?--dive,
Glinting, a snowflake with
What sort of
character?
And
then more petals abandon Their stronghold:
paratroopers
Lost
in Europe. A dragonfly
Lands like a Spitfire,
And a blue jay deftly searches
For ants on a limb.
The
buzz is music,
An
ominous roar
Above her ears and
Swimsuit. She shivers.
She loves the music and
The pink
(Her bedroom is pink),
But now, in a moment as long
As a sigh, she feels
Alone,
Peculiar,
As if abandoned in a
Wasteland.
Then:
Quick as a startled deer,
Or soldier,
She finds shelter,
Swimming like a white fish
In her small pool.
BEER
BOTTLE-KNIVES
The
creek,
Mindlessly clear,
Spews gems into
Dragonfly-jet stream
And pollen-breeze.
Children,
in the
Cold water, play
Like seal-cubs,
Rolling, squealing;
Crying:
Beer bottle-glass--
Like leftover mines
In French meadows--
Has stabbed her right arch;
Red clouds obscure her
White feet.
Children
run to her,
Help her hobble
To
the grassy shore.
"Pull it out!"
"Squeeze it!"
"Where's your mum?"
A
freckled boy adds,
"You should have worn
Runners, like me":
She,
seated amid
Shivering dandelions,
Watches his thin lips move,
And she hates them,
Just
as she hates
The blood pouring
From her foot.
AT
THE HOME
A
fork scratches a plate--
Chalk screeching
In a moldy
Classroom;
A
scolding eye;
A
mouthful of
Niblet corn;
A smile;
Some of the corn
Falls out.
"Do
you want any salt?"
"What?"
"Salt?"
"What?"
"Do you--"
A
fork scratches a plate--
A needle grating
A record on a
Victrola;
A
sigh.
The
old woman eats
With her mouth open,
While her daughter
Looks at her watch
Again.
