Pupa

Pupa

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Pupa Catherine Graham

INSOMNIAC PRESS

Copyright © 2003 by Catherine Graham All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a license from Access Copyright, 1 Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5E 1E5.

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data Graham, Catherine Pupa / Catherine Graham. Poems. ISBN 1-894663-55-1 I. Title. PS8563.R31454P862003

C811'.6

C2003-904818-7

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council, the Ontario Arts Council and the Department of Canadian Heritage through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program. We acknowledge the support of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporations Ontario Book Initiative. Printed and bound in Canada Insomniac Press 192 Spadina Avenue, Suite 403 Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5T 2C2 www.insomniacpress.com

For John Coates

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You will ask—what is the feeling of hatching? —Vladimir Nabokov

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Acknowledgements Versions of some of these poems have appeared in The New Quarterly, The Danforth Review, The Fiddlehead, Poetry Ireland Review, Books Ireland, InCognito, Oasis, Aireings, Beneath the Surface, Coming Up for Air (Cranberry Tree Press, 2002), The Frogmore Papers, Signals: An Anthology of Poetry 6- Prose (Abbey Press, 1997), The White Page I An Bhileog Bhan: Twentieth Century Irish Women Poets (Salmon Publishing, 1999), and in the chapbook, The Watch (Abbey Press, 1998). I am grateful to the Ontario Arts Council for a Writers' Reserve Grant, to Arc: Canada's National Poetry Magazine for their recommendation, and to Mike O'Connor and the Insomniac crew. My deepest thanks to my remarkable editor, Paul Vermeersch. And lastly, to the loving memory of my parents: Mary Ellen (Rusty) Graham and Donald Richard Graham.

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Larva

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Contents Larva Pupa / 17 Tallyman/ 18 Undertow/ 19 White Christmas / 20 Visitant / 21 White Cells / 22 Red / 23 Glass Jar of Buttons / 24 Back to the Quarry / 25 Snails and Trilobites / 26 Pursuit of Grasshoppers / 27

Katie's Appointment / 28 The Watch / 29 No Appointment Necessary / 30 Chef's, Buffalo, New York / 31 Visiting Day / 32 The Heintzman & Co. / 33 Black Kettles / 34 Driving Range / 35 Wind Tricks / 36 Pupa Kewpie / 41 Paper Dolls / 42 Doll Soul / 43 Madame Alexander's Little Women Dolls / 44

Worry Dolls / 45 The Doll Maker / 46 Doll-in-the-Box / 47 Caring for Dolls / 48 Japanese Doll Festival Haikus / 50 Fortunetelling / 51 Bye-Bye Kitties / 52 Kiddles / 53 The Legend of Frozen Charlotte / 54 Dummy / 55 Dollspeak / 56 Imago Wind Phonics / 61 Eye-Flower / 62 Drowning / 63 The Badly-Loved / 64 First Sip / 65 Corn / 66 Thieves Like Us / 67 The Hummingbird Lie / 68 Foreshadow / 69 Restraining Order / 70 Luna/ 71 Worm / 72 Study / 73 The Divorce of the Inanimate / 74 Feral / 75 The Cutting Reason / 76 You Are The Age I Was When I Met Him / 77

Brogues / 78 The Look Back Lens / 79 Stepping Stones / 80 Spelling / 81 Pteros / 82 Zones / 83 Thorn / 84 Ololyga / 85 Spools / 86 The Lifting / 87 Imago / 88

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Pupa

And one day light lifted me. Knock. Knock. Who's there? Mother's walker on wood. Cotton sock footsteps. Father's Craven A cough. Pitti-pat quick of Ledger's paws. Nana Florence mops dust. And in my room light took me.

17

Tallyman

Step on a crack break your mother's back. On to his wise sky Scoreboard another tally marked. Little Miss Princess missed— her slipped shoe, her lame excuse. Later, mothers back cracks like a walnut.

18

Undertow

From the dock mother watches daughter swim— her quiet time, a time to think and smoke, to sit outside—the house, the quarry, the little routines they've built up. The flick of her cigarette, an ashy cylinder boulders an ant, slips. Mother can no longer reach her daughter should she begin to drown. But strokes are clean and strong. Kicks plume and she ascends the raft. Exhaling, mother raises a sail to the wind. Daughter springs. Dives in.

19

White Christmas for Stephenie Gillingham and Kristan Graham

Bloated Mary Ellen watches for cars sardined with kin. Her doctor forecasts one more Christmas. Infant-thin hair, greets them. They gather to pose by the tinsel-thin tree.

The waiting present. Needle smells. The hospital bed cradles a vanishing mother. Her last breath hollows. Outside the window snow cocoons her silhouette.

20

Visitant

A glowing knell. He wakes to incandescence. Where does light emerge? Radiated hips. Scarred left breast. Cataracts. Bedsores. Fingertips.

21

White Cells

Bones split skin. Scabby. Raw. Ratty. Blood hoik. Golf balls. My shadow mother lumbers. Knuckles curl. "Your wants, your needs. Selfish girl." We want healthy mothers. Not women with bedpans, sheepskins, vials and pills, walkers, commodes, wigs, gowns and wills. Morphine stranded. Too late to stay— white cells gagged and you were ashamed—

79

Red

My grandmother's backyard in Owen Sound.

We sit in her garden of feverfew, snapdragon, aster and thistle. Over eight decades since she cut her hair. Wiry pins clip two snakes precisely in place. Hot water and milk. Gold tooth glistens. Her rose through diamond wire. Grey brows knit. Yanks— red hair falls. One bald button.

23

Glass Jar of Buttons

Airtight to the brim, it marries the years my mother s body belonged to her. Closing my eyes, I test the quarry water, dip and scoop. Gold-rimmed indigo signals the Christmas I was given the radio—rouge rosette— and our picnic at the Botanical. A teacher now: division time. Small hands scramble for the brightest. The best. I know my words won't be obeyed: hand them back, don't take them home.

"'4

Back to the Quarry for Liz and Dave Wightman-Jones

This surface for long-legged spiders once absolved teen skin. Plunge into the limestone museum. Mingle with rusty machinery sunken by a triggered spring. Let sunfish nibble toes and raise the fear of turtle snaps. Pursue pathways carved by perch, catfish, bass. Dive in. Turn to water before it freezes.

25

Snails and Trilobites

Radiating coolness like grandmothers cellar, I pocket a stone from Portmuck Harbour. The snail shell stamp fossilizes me to the summer of mother s first operation. We moved to Ridgeway, a house on a quarry. Three decades before her birth, an underground faucet turned limestone basin to water pit. Walking the pipe-holed edges, I'd stoop to touch the leftover lives of the little, radiating coolness like grandmother's cellar.

26

Pursuit of Grasshoppers

Carrying Strub's dill pickle jars, filled with divots, twigs, serrated leaves, five nine-year-olds in pursuit of grasshoppers, ready as frog tongues. Bare guts. A buzz of gauze. In heyday, flies hover over a squashed frog. Tire tracks stamp its stretch, mid-leap. We dare each other—touch it! Until my father arrives with spade and bucket. Slapstick chef with a griddled pancake sky-flipped from tarmac skillet.

27

Katie's Appointment

There is a kitten on the ceiling. Katie is dead angry about it. A man has a gloved hand in her mouth. She wants to bite it. "Wider," he orders and Katie obeys. She smells, with sniffles, the Lux on his wrists, the Brut on his neck, scents of onion. Spearmint. No man has been so close. Except

28

The Watch

Six foot three, basking in tawny heat, sunk in his lounger, spring to September. His face bakes like earth. Chest hairs slice the sweat beads. The black leather watch (he never forgot to unstrap) ticks beside his ghetto blaster. Cobalt eyes, silver thick hair, dentured smile, arms folded under the crest of his chest, he poses for fall's final mould.

Later, after the black skid, spin and deep tip of the freshly polished blue Caddy; after the crunch of skull on the dashboard; even after the front page photo and headline: my father's watch, still ticking, unzipped from the O.P.E's plastic. No cracks, glass smooth to touch. Dry mud flakes sprinkle like ashes on to my opening hand.

'} 9

No Appointment Necessary

I think of him, that barber in Burlington, still clipping men's hair. My father—tall talker—walk-in once a month. Faithful, even though Joe was over eighty miles from home. One fall he doesn't show. Who is styling his peppery head? Trimming the bristly burns? Snipping the black nose hairs?

Sweeping up a year later he stops to think, Shit, the ol' bugger, I wonder if he's dead.

30

Chef's, Buffalo, New York

Hypnotic garlic exhales through the porthole door. On his table, bread and Chianti, slippy noodles slide down his throat. Red-to-the-rim, his glass clinks against his guest's. Soon, his long flailing arms cut through the night's ambiance, attract odd glances. Even those out of sight hear his gripping voice... If only I'd been there, so that one month later I wouldn't be standing in the kitchen opening September's Visa— black digits summing up his last supper.

31

Visiting Day

So full of his new parlour. Tours me through. Points at prints. Statues. We journey down. See glossy caskets. Prim pillows. Pink lace. Satin. "Here's the model your mother's in. I'm sure you'll want the same for your father and you know how I feel about keeping coffins open." At first I decline, then numbly agree. "It's a must for your grief." "We kept the coffin closed, his face, too bruised to view.'

'•*">

The Heintzman & Co. for Bev and Bruce Gillingham

Living in Ulster, a decade later, I write that family to summon her back. Read between these lines— it's hard to hand her over. But blanketed, taped and boxed, mother's Heintzman & Co. freights the running scales of the Atlantic. We count the days, I can barely play, but soon I'll lift the wooden lid and do my half of our duet.

.'5 5

Black Kettles

A leashed collie tugs like a kite. Birds gather into bouquets. Up ahead, the dirt road bends as the neck of a swan. Grief is like waiting for fifty giant black kettles to boil.

34

Driving Range

Field explosion of glossy domes white dandelions gone poof. Rootless. Stainless. Kissable as cue balls. They lie like headstones in a shot-put cemetery after the last stroke.

3 ">

Wind Tricks

Irish Sea, kitchen turquoise, wind unravels, waves somersault ashore. From the L-pier edge I see two dust devils circle back and forth. My parents jitterbug across linoleum below a turquoise sky.

36

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Pupa

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Kewpie circa 1913

From Rose O'Neil's sketches to the magic bisque our bodies built along the line. Big-bellied, blushing birthday suits hidden behind impish smiles. Stand tall. Daddy's gone. Sentinels.

1i 41

Paper Dolls

Mute paper cut-outs birthed from books. Envious wardrobe fastened by hooks. Teeny torso. Side-view sick. Torn. Tattered. Tattooed. Trick.

42

Doll Soul Summer auction, Southampton.

Mr. Quicktongue holds her. Daddy's finger. Mine. Sleeping eyes, thicker curls. Red Crayola lips and nails. Forgotten, find her. Lift her, gently. Skin, lime-speckled. Caked eyes, empty.

43

Madame Alexander's Little Women Dolls

When I turned six, I turned seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, my grandmothers gift: the set of six. Wide-eyed and wired to pegs, they witnessed my growth.

Her waiting world, the villa walls, she thins inside her wingback chair. My visits fewer, year by year, "Nana, it's me, Cathy." Blue eyes, doll-vacant, stare.

44

Worry Dolls

A souvenir from Guatemala, an aunt's gift for a little girl. Six wiry dolls in spicy clothes tucked inside a bamboo box. "Take one out for every worry. Let them worry while you sleep." In her dreams the dolls grow angrywe have worries for you to keep.

45

The Doll Maker after Olina Ventsel

Little Olina travelled by train, her mother, lost, in Sakhalin, her father in Siberian camps. Arms, heads, hands, legs. It so happened I trusted dolls. Told them all my secret thoughts. Dressed them up in fresh attire. Loved m,e, quietly, leaning close.

Doll is the world. The magic stick. The carried stick through place and time. While making doll I feel each kick until they break into a life.

46

Doll-in-the-Box after Unfilled (Bebe Marie) by Joseph Cornell

My glassy eyes see glass through thin bars of twigs. I wear a smart hat, a sunset of straw to keep me warm. Rosebud dewy, my lips, one small slit ready— to shout out the past I was kept in. Until Cornell placed me, gently, in a box. (His girl preserved, her sparking stare.) My eyes shout louder than my mouth ever dared.

47

Caring for Dolls

A glass case is not enough to protect your doll from settling dust. Glass stones crack. Remove with a blow-dryer, gently. Handle with cotton gloves. Germs. Perms. Worms.

Keep dolls at a pleasant room temperature well away from radiators. Beware of melting. Smile. Use water as little as possible for silk may fall to pieces. Silk moon puddles. Cleanse any bisque with damp cotton wool. Dab it dry with more cotton wool. Don't listen. Drink. Take special care not to dislodge lashes. Don't scrub a face with a brush. 48

Welcome to The Lash Lodge. When ready wrap carefully in acid-free tissue. Lay her face down in a box.

49

Japanese Doll Festival Haikus

Miniature dolls rest on a red tier of shelves every March third.

Below the empress and emperor sit their court in social order.

Hand-picked peach blossoms symbolize softness, mildness, sweeten the backdrop.

Daughters of the house gather to play games and singperfect etiquette.

50

Fortunetelling

Grandly filigreed, Queen Victoria had one: a full-skirted doll, destiny nesting in her skirt. Folded papers in the folds of her silk picked at random to fortunetell: happy and blest with the one you love best.

Victoria Day, the restaurant in Dundas after a meal of Chan's fried rice, we sip green tea. It's my turn to snap the cookie: one day you II pass a difficult test.

"> I

Bye-Bye Kitties

Inside long boudoirs, dolls lounge and laze, recline like vamps on pianos, divans. Smart set mascots of 'The Charleston' days accompany ladies on city streets. Cinema magic, that's where it's at. Bohemian Clara, the ultimate 'It.' Lenci creates high quality bodies, exquisitely so, no flapper dare part with. Until The Crash. The well-to-do falling... goodbye to dolls better dressed than they.

52

Kiddles

Tiny thumb-nuggets. Sweet flowers and fruits. Raspberries. Bluebells. Roses. Jamberry hair. Wee heads, body big. Alive in nooks and crannies. Lost, taken or given away. How can I be certain they were ever really here?

53

The Legend Of Frozen Charlotte

Cold country day in a lightweight dress riding to a neighbours farm. Halfway there too far to turn back, too cold— Found, frozen china doll limbs in April snow, genuflecting.

54

Dummy

The hang and hinge of my jaw mouths his cocky talk. I sit, a beanstalk, upon his knee. Yuckity yuck. They lick it up. Stiff without his hand inside. Mute without his anus gab. What act dolled me to Hollowland?

55

Dollspeak

My mind an oval bubble, my eyes a draining stream, my nose breathless, my lips pinpricks, my skin a Cezanne peach, my torso, hollow, body borrowed. You didn't think I'd live.

56

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Imago

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Wind Phonics

Incoming clouds cap the six o'clock sun. By midnight, sea winds talk in lost tongues. Attend to the silence between wind phonics, the undeniable language of vacuum. Love has ended. Tell him.

61

Eye-Flower

What was I before ascending the stairs? Eyes lock at the top— sclera, pupil, iris. Do stamens matter? Though we haven't met as yet, blue eyes break into bloom— cornflowers blossom in a crowded room.

62

Drowning for Jennifer McCullough

The one rowing (my mother) knows, neither can swim. "Tell me, Rusty, how deep below us?" tuhoosh of oars seconds split twisted water wax drips "Once over our heads, does it matter?'

(\;:)

The Badly-Loved A Northern Irish symposium on contemporary poetry.

At The Badly-Loved we met— I had longed to love badly. Badly you had longed for love— so we met at The Badly-Loved.

64

First Sip

First black sip transforms it: bitter, sweet, salt and sour buds. Fiery silent mouths. No place to go, bud-roots shackled to clit-pink tongues. Waiting for saliva's oozing.

("• '" • •

Corn

Hard-core capsules womb the wet drops. Heat, red-coiled, courts the shaking pot. Water in wants water out. Crack. Open. Pop.

66

Thieves Like Us

Soft little voice that says, don't go in there gets pushed aside—go in. Go further. Dark door of his voice, I turn. Enter. His work with the light slips dark in between the red phone box calls, photos of love, talks after classes, back walls of pubs. Slip into secret, sin into nice. Desiring is blind, so easy to miss the talking of tongues, the pint gossip. Sick thicket of want, reason can't cut it. But want isn't love and love needs to seed in hearts beating blood, not two beating thieves.

67

The Hummingbird Lie after Raymond Carver

Suppose I say "summer" after finding 'hummingbird' written on paper next to your dresser. You say, it's nothing. It's not what you're thinking. And then you lick the salt from your lips.

68

Foreshadow

One oven-door thud. Blackbird below our window. Black eyes, beady wide. A wind-finger feathers its breast. Body tilts. Spriggy legs poke at God. A getaway worm.

69

Restraining Order for Pauline and Paul Burgess

I imagine you at your mother's. Tea. Twix. Carolina-lagged. Missing Molly. Pissed at me. I've already changed the locks. Soon, two R.U.C. officers serve papers at her Bally door. Furious, your fists knuckle the air. Blue eyes widen, you speak in spit. Order others to dial the number. The number no longer connects. The gable end's been hit— the crushing accordion wreck.

70

Luna

Whole note mute, hunger big. Bold. Flashlight face. Clouds of flannel pass, need no polish. Clock button with craters, fastens full nights together, carrying centuries like secrets.

71

Worm for Tina Turner

The worm in the middle of the room addressing me—voiceless, earless, eyeless. Slimy brown, dangly long, squirming for permission. I tell her tell and tell it soon before too many seasons shrivel, shrink.

72

Study

I read your journal, Molly. The diary is opened. Love-need Bleeding-need Love-blood More like nosebleed. But he's married

73

The Divorce of the Inanimate

The illusion ripped. Anger ripe. Carried across a safer place. But during that scissor rush to divvy-up the dead stuff... In the filing cabinet his wedding ring. Fuck it.

74

Feral

Outside my aunt and uncle's, clear and distant in darkest June— I didn't know foxes screech like birds of prey. And your voice: not sound but strain of sound. The time you chased me down the hall till I caged myself in, crouched on dark green tile—your feral voice fanging through the wood.

75

The Cutting Reason for Caryl Williamson

I go back to the island, see the house, no longer home, breathe the sea, to breathe the sea. Walking the streets, Belfast on Orange Eve. The two of you, sipping tea. Bewley's. Pane of glass, the glass between— and when my skinned heart finally stops beating and beating, a lambeg drum, I know, having walked away, the cutting reason why I came.

76

You Are The Age I Was When I Met Him

So many times I have hugged you in my absence. You became my right of way. The southern door that took me north and put this house back in my mouth.

77

Brogues

Silver taps nailed to his brown brogues. The click of steps unbuckles my skin.

78

The Look Back Lens

Days our love was hot peat air. Sky. Helium. Ballooned above. Clouds. High. Blind below. The cut bodies, the kid blood. Rose without binoculars.

79

Stepping Stones

Never mine, you never were. Cared and worried for your welfare. More than guardian, less than mother, for tribal-blood we never shared. A father's route around the Lough. Friday pick-up. Sunday back... Bridge of water, all that's left. Hope split into stepping stones. But stone steps left a line so long— litde legs can't hop the gap. Deep bedded stones, salt water licked, lost like the souls of Atlantis.

80

Spelling

For so many years all the letters are there. Ovel. Evol. Spelling nonsensical. It lasts—only so long—it splits. What is released is released once again. With time over luck, hermitic dust, this one day arrives (and it feels like we've met). See four letters fall: love settles, love sets.

81

Pteros

Now it's time. Open your eyes. Red petals strewn across garden sheets. We enter bloom. Stems entwine. And on our backs, our twin thinning backs, we feather. Red.

82

Zones

Beach fire welcoming, backs blind and dark. Where does your erogenous zone start? Earlobe. Wrist. Neck. The line seaming the back. 1 answer skin. Water's coat. Largest organ. Knowing all. A new answer and only since my skin started storing the press of your lips, the five-feathered whispers of your fingertips— what we peel and reveal before breathing it in.

83

Thorn

I wallow in it: wide wanting warm, wide wanting more. The past rears wallow to sorrow, wide warm warning. Thorn wild wanting.

84

Ololyga

The liquid quarter in his hand her soaking hair receives. His fingers weaving through the strands— the lathered cap released. Adult to girl, her shoulders shrink: the stinging eyes, the scour of scalp, the vinegar rinse, the vinegar rinse, her pleasured cries for help.

Ololyga is a piercing female outcry representing intense pleasure or pain and has its roots in the Goddess worship that preceded Greek patriarchy.

85

Spools for John and Cherry Whi taker

The Roses tin stored cast thread after chocolates. Lines wound snug, tight as fists. Smack-in-the-middle, an empty spool. Canvas? Carcass? Gift?

86

The Lifting

Dark water stirs from underneath. Two orange webs replace two feet. A spread of wings. Wet words on page. First wide, then wider. Tap the lake. And let the torso take to air— rise easy here, in sky, elsewhere. The lines, the wings, the bird uplifted. Return the sun. The screen is printed.

87

Imago

My life as larva has ended. Silken girdle around my middle, pupa blends with vegetation. The greening gift of greener cloth, my chrysalis—the last instar. A swaddled change that can't be seen. Internal systems rearranging. Leather ripe, eclose my bind. Shrunken leaf, laundry wet. Pump in air, escape the crippling, drain of red. It's time, it's time. Dew receives meconium. Dawn, the quiet. Imago. Up.

88