Poems
Barcelona Bakery | 2012
The Barcelona Bakery Of No Return
You can’t stop me from seeing
even if you cover my eyes—I will see reality.
Like that day
at the Barcelona bakery
that rainy Spanish day.
E and I think
we’re in bonbon bliss,
‘til the sweets on display
turn cyanide kiss
like falling in love with a narcissist
poisonous and lethal.
O Catalan cakes in every shape
covered in a light mist of forget it there’s no escape
rows and rows of cakes so scandalous they could kill.
I imagine sugar-craft crosses at their heads
inter-galactic sweet breads
from another galaxy
chocolate-glazed behind glass
my mind spins, orbit blast, body shakes
I’ve got an incurable case of cupcake heartache.
An altered cosmological deviation—
dipped in dark chocolate—a Godiva sensation
they’re an existential fudge distraction
pure as the z-machine, they shoot me with a shock vaccine.
I’d tie a cherry stem into an eternity
knot with my tongue
for the full-frontal fantasy
flavour of their cocoa cocoa bean.
Then again, I thought
why not just write a poem à la Kerouac, a sketch
to last in the-mouth-of-the-mind forever— yeah
through my sugar-buzz haze
So I decide to capture the cakes
with my camera
as digital dessert for later,
to lick the pix like a spatula into a poem—
butter—shutter—shutter—butter, lick
later, when I’m alone
click—click—click.
I hear, No pictures!
a preposterous pomposity approaches
on the other side of the cakes, and breaks:
No pictures!
He sounds cartoony—
so I ignore him and continue to simulate
the taste of the sweetest cakes
click—click—click.
He says:
Stop taking pictures of my cakes!
I think he must be joking,
But I love your cakes,
click—click—click.
Stop taking pictures of my cakes!
Sugar-laced, on your risqué cakes
I feel dirty—like they’re porno cakes,
click—click—click.
He says,
I don’t take pictures of your cakes
and you cannot take pictures of mine.
I say,
I don’t make cakes
so you can’t take pictures of my cakes
because there are no cakes,
and the operative word is cakes
they’re just cakes
they’re not sensitive material,
top secret spy cakes
click.
He yells: Stop!
he snaps, he freaks,
he streaks in front of the cake display case,
like a grand guardian of cakes,
blocks me from seeing his little master-pieces
arms and legs extended
like an monstrous starfish.
You can’t stop me, I say,
I’m a pastry paparazzi I say,
And I take digital snippets of the blessed bonbons
from between his dumb ass-teroidean legs
click—click—click.
He doesn’t get my joke
so I try again:
Come on, you’re selling cakes
the cakes are on display.
I could buy a cake
take the cake home
and do whatever I want
to that cake,
I could have my way
with any of your cakes
click—click—click.
Out of my shop! he yells.
Ha! I have seen your cakes
and your cakes have seen me
and now I’m going to write poetry.
He yells:
Remove this woman from my cake shop
remove her!
And that is when the Barcelona bakery bouncers
appear out of nowhere
grab each of my arms
and they throw me out the door
onto the ancient Gaudi streets,
like an ornery contrarian without a Patisserie
in the world.
The icing on the cake, my friend E looks down at me
and she sings:
Someone kicked the cake out in the rain.
Piece of cake, sometimes you
dream of being cream, other times you
end up being pound.
I almost had my cake, and ate it too.
©Sheri-D Wilson
Goddess Gone Fishing for a Map of the Universe, Frontenac House, 2012
Bridge of Your Ghost | 2008
Bridge of your Ghost
Today, I came to visit the bridge of your ghost
like a monument built over mortality
and the weeds and the flowers
grow below the solid line, like capsized dreams.
And I came to the water’s edge
where they left you face down
in the mud,
drowned and clubbed to death.
When I was down there
the groundskeeper came by,
to say a mother duck
laid her eggs just inches from where
they left your life behind
for less than a song.
Underneath the wooden bridge—
what the hell went wrong, all graffiti
skulls and half-sprayed words
under there, on the cement wall
pylon beside the place
where they kicked and you crawled—
I sing to you.
I sing to you
a lullaby—sense of senselessness
fills up in hollow blue hue questioning why,
why you?
Under a noisy wooden bridge
planks and beams shudder and quake,
above my head, rush-hour retreads, snakes
over.
I take digital vigil snaps
of your beautiful imaginary body,
invisible outline wraps
around the tide here still
like a flower, a water flower
where you laid to rest
your final breath, and I can hear you
here, beg for mercy
I can hear you here
clear as spiritual bells
ring in a bowl.
Past midnight, a meteorite,
you write prayers across the sky.
I want you to know, I sing to you
in praise, and I hope you might hear me
as the night heard you cry,
through the wooden bridge
above, like a racket, rattle dust overhead.
Was it heaven you thought you heard
above you, like a calling
overhead circling like vulture-angels’ tell-tale
tattle, and the herring in the water still
and the heron’s priested shore,
and the gates open above the bridge
to the other side
where you might live again?
Gates where you might live again
in your teenaged body like a long note
of stolen youth and eyes of naked wonder,
body unlocked to love
and all the births you might’ve had.
The streets grow quiet
and the ducks brood on their eggs
and all that remains of life
is death and memory and ghosts and my song
humming
still humming along—
Today, I came to visit the bridge of your ghost
where people cross everyday
on their way in and out of their lives
en route over bones, sticks and stones
cockle shells, easy ivy over.
The sacrifice of a flower
and a heron and a weed and a clam
and a blackberry bush, and a final hour.
Crow calls to me
and I try to understand
without meaning.
Reason is a name on a gravestone
I once saw. Light breaks
and when does hatred rest—
and the wash of excitement and the rush of relief
and the disbelief
that they actually killed you
with sticks and stones,
and they did break your teenaged bones
and their names will always hurt me.
©Sheri-D Wilson
Autopsy of a Turvy World, Frontenac House, 2008
Alberta Poem | 2008
Alberta Poem (Fortis et Liber)
Oh, I love you Alberta
Big sky beautiful you, strong woman, ruff and soft soft-blue,
I’m sitting right in the middle of miles of you
High on my ponderosa pony
Saddle smooth and sexy beneath me,
I want to ride the range of your possibility
I’m Alberta bound baby; hear the silence of your immensity
I want to touch the horizon of your immeasurable light
Ride the westerly wind of your raven flight
Pow
Pow Wow
Let’s go
Golden trail. Light sinks, just west of highway 22
As me and mini gallop wild-west to the crest of you
Ah! Your light stops us in our horseshoe tracks in awe
Even your shadows fall gold – alchemist maw
In the background you’re a capella sky that impossible colour
It would seem, beyond,
Beneath me ponderosa pony ponders – amber dream
Find a feather
Find a feather
There’s something ancient about you,
buried deep in your badland bones
Hoodoo voodoo queen,
your heavenly body sings aurora high notes –
flood lights,
I ignite - this night - firefly rare
I am tongue tied, moonified,
I am sanctified, satisfied as a studified mare
By your light – Oh Alberta, your light turns me on –
Bar Bonbon
My big horse Mini, is of course,
all a’ whinny, all a shimmy beneath me, over you
Oh yeah,
I want to drink from your milky-way river
I want to bucking-bronc scream from your highest peak
Mount Columbia 13,000 feet
Hey lucky stars up there…thanks for birthing me here…
Certified Albertafied – Grade A Canadian girl
I fell for you as a kid
Stubbed my toes on your gopher holes
Shucked the pearl from your prairie oyster, witnessed first-time eyes of newborn foals, picked whole bouquets of full rushes for my mother, played hide-n-seek between jails and hails and bales of hay like none other, like every other, tumbling tumbleweed
Looked into the forbidden eyes of grizzly, bare
Alberta bound baby,
stars fall in the mischief of your eyes as we drop off
Like late season flies,
or crab-apples wind plucked from their branches
And when we rise, in the morning,
ad manum from more
You Chinook arch above the foothill floor,
merge and diverge, animal to the core
Through dawn’s early dew,
we roll against the earth moving earth
Like a couple of crazy coyotes,
howling with instinct
Half wrangling, half untangling –
sliding across the slippery Prairie grass
Cacophonous, as one,
in the path of your bright morn-light stream
Cream all buttermilk,
pussy willows and crocuses as we stream-steam
Black gold. Light crude.
You’ve got gas- it’s nasty
It’s natural.
It’s rude
It’s our earth
Our drinking water.
Saddle up ponderosa pony
Pow
Pow Wow
Let’s go
I turn –
And O no, I smell winter in the air
Let’s get home before she snaps her snare
Gotta put the plastic on the windows
Suddenly it’s freezing; my skin is peeling off my face
My only prayer is thermal underwear
Get me out of this hideous place
Alberta, you’re a brutal hard uncompromising crone
And I hate you and I want to leave you,
live somewhere else that’s warm, I moan
And just when I’m ready to throw in the bone,
I smell my first lilac of spring breath –
buzzing bees swarm bring honeycomb
And that’s when I know, these Buffalo plains,
they’re home
Big sky beautiful you
Strong woman in the ruff, oh yeah, of blue
Wild rose tough; you’re my heartland shaman guru
You’re Gods country, for God’s sake
Pow
Pow Wow
You’re a Goddess country, for Goddess’s sake
Goddess
©Sheri-D Wilson
Autopsy of a Turvy World, Frontenac House, 2008
Re:Zoom, CD
Ma and Tight Corners | 2008
Ma and Tight Corners
It was a turquoise
1957 Chevy
with the truck engine.
And Ma would drive that old jalopy
around corners, hell bent
like a Formula One demon on speed,
and she’d yell, Hang on!
We’d be in the back seat
changing from our school clothes
into our brownie uniforms,
and she’d take the corner
with a fighting spirit, on two wheels,
and we’d hang onto the seats
for dear life, gripping with our fingertips
till our lips turned psych ward white,
and then both car doors on one side
would fly open,
no holy shit handles
we’d hang on to that front seat
with the fake fur seat-covers
so we didn’t go flying out…
…and then the corner would be over
and the heavy ’57 Chevy doors
would come flying shut.
Bang!
Bang!
And we’d go back to changing our clothes
and eating our Kentucky Fried Chicken
right out of the barrel, like pros,
finger lickin’ good; before seat belts,
and car seats and sun block and water wings.
Way back when they’d give us
matches to play with
and guns to shoot the bottles
lined up on the fence
for fun.
Back when you could ride without a helmet,
feel the wind in your hair.
Because of Ma
I’ve never been afraid
of the dark. She taught
me how to stay on my toes,
how to dance with danger.
And she’s funny. Damn,
she’s funny. Always
makes me laugh.
Sometimes
it scares me
when I think
I might be
exactly
like her.
©Sheri-D Wilson
Autopsy of a Turvy World, Frontenac House, 2008
Spinsters Hanging In Trees | 2005
Spinsters Hanging In Trees
From high in a tree
over the hill
not so far from Spinsterville
perched on one knee
I pop the question: extraordinary
Will you marry me?
Of course
It will mean you have to compromise
How can I compromise myself?
At what age do you become, a spinster?
We are the spinsters hanging in trees
hanging in trees – at 45 degrees
we are the black holes with no line after us
the women who’ve never wed
at us is where the line stops
dead – old vacuum cleaner bags
o yes
there’s one in every family
bone crones covered in stigma and sags
NASTY
eccentric single aunts who spoil their cats and dogs and birds
from their paltry little rooms and thatched roofed houses
ugly crusty lonely barren infertilians
wrinkled dried-up, shrivelled washed-up infertilians
with warts and facial hair
broken down jalopies sans a spare, disintegrating twigs
in sand shoes, the crypto-relic shrews
with painted on eye brows and old lady perfume
left hanging in trees at 45 degrees
looking petrified, like poster girls of a degenerative disease
mummified, the belles without a ring
SNAP!
Old Maid’s become a new parlour game
NOW
We are the Neo-Spinsters
spin-masters, spin-misters, spin-sisters
spinning
with monkeys and motorcycles
surf boards and string bikinis
with shaved heads and tattooed shoulders
gold credit and trips around the world
uptown downbeat, uptown downbeat
snappy spinster girls
we’re the confetti escapers
doin’ it for ourselves
JUICY
We are the Neo-Spinsters
springs in trees
with the spider monkeys and the birds and the bees
in the trees
we’re butterflies perched in protest
we’re Luna with black-belted keys
o yes
we are hanging in the brittle boned forests of families of trees
we are the eyes of the witches that rustle high in their branches
I am the happy Spinster
broom outside my door
According to the Times
I have more, testosterone
women who never marry
are harmoniously scary
SCARY
I am the happy Spinster
broom outside my door
He asked my father for my hand in marriage
we had the dress, the shoes, the carriage
the rings, and the church
when I said:
I’m not gonna iron your shirts
he had a fit
so when we split
I told him to return my hand to my father
matrimony manikin part
and I went to my father
and I asked if I could have my own hand and heart
to have and to hold and to hang
‘till death do I
I do
Do I?
Do
INFELIX DIDO
We are the Neo-Spinsters
we didn’t make our bed
we made our leer jet
and now
we’re just gonna have to fly in it
©Sheri-D Wilson
Re:Zoom, Frontenac House, 2005
O Hail Thee Mighty Cabby | 1998
O Hail Thee Mighty Cabby
Hail cab O Holy light blinking
beacon on broken night CABBY
Hail to thee mine chariot
into the San Francisco night
O mighty one, blinking cab
holy night coming toward me on this broken night
unforgiving and destructive
hail to thee, blithe spirit
bird thou never wert
hail O thee for me
radiant illuminatrix in all being over there
circle whose circumference is nowhere
and whose centre is everywhere
pick me up and take me into the broken night
and fix it, and fix it
and fix it, and fix it
what is a broken night?
down the crazy inclines of the cities
spilling sight
twelve gold moons are glowing in the heat of holy love
chariot driving CABBY
take me
and pick me up
I said take me, I said pick me up
take me I’m yours
O mighty infinite CABBY
pick me up and take me where I’m going
I’m close enough to the tenderloin to get marinated
I said, I’m close enough to the tenderloin to get marinated
I said, I’m close enough to the tenderloin to get marinated
and on this crazy heat hold night you’re being serenaded
by me, holy night light CABBY
pull over to the curb of me sweet sideswiper of the supreme
and pick me up and meter me
and meter me
and meter me
O bliss CABBY
holy light blinking Signum dei
beacon on a broken night
pray I, to thee, mine creator chariot guide
mine blinking benevolent mighty righteous-one cosmic ride
hail O thee for me divine deity
and take me into the night my blinking baby
and drive me home
and drive me home
and drive me all the way home
through the broken night
O holy love beacon blinking one!
©Sheri-D Wilson
sweet taste of lightning, Arsenal Pulp Press, 1998
sweet taste of lightning, CD
Crow Fusion | 1998
Crow Fusion
Crow hanging upside-down
Noosed by her eerie feet
Wings coven wrong way ‘round
Rigor mortis
In a second degree, delete
Calling me
Through the mid-summer fusion-heat
From the crumbling shambles of a gang house porch
Through the silent shadows of the street lamp torch
The incorporeal corpse
Was calling me
Hanging upside-down
Calling me
To cut her down
To set her free
To give her death some dignity
So
I cast a spell on the gatekeeper key
Used trickster power of crow to aid me
To tame the frothing guard-dog fangs
Chained pit bull to the criminal gangs, haunt
And then
I crept black cat to the crow-cry-crypt
Up the creaking stairs I silent spirit-slipped
And there
I cut lynched crow-woman down
And I carried her home
To my lair with no sound
As a poem in my pocket, in my arms a ghostly child
Unjustly defiled, in a veil of
Black feathers hallowy-wet
Searching for light, that night
I met, a crow who called thru curse’d-blight
And who,
I given taxied Rhea-graven
En route to her funeral flight
I hung crow-woman aloft my altar
Ebony nib pointing down, and I prayed
And the crow started to grow inside my ever-wavering room
And the shadow flexed and the marring flayed
Crow-ghost spreading breath-black wing, death-black wing
And beginning to moan
Of the murder of crow
Murder of Crow
Tearing-wet bleak-blue feathers
Touched by the fingertip of Buddha, together
Our mourning moved down the broken body to the crown
Of the clown-cawing-cry
Down the silky body to the tip of the bleak dark eye
Where the sound screamed, and screamed, and screamed
And the, died
Down
Scraping
Tears fell drop by drop
Scorching-wet-sorrow
Memento mori ’morrow
Onto the altar’s cloudless ground
It rained
And it rained
And it –
At daybreak I took crow-woman
To the secret groves where I gave her back to the earth
Buried in crow graveyard closest to birth
And all the crows came dressed in black
Ghosts of crows and crows still living
And they flew around my head like a Hitchcock halo
Of screaming thorns
Clacking and crowing and
Screaming their thank-filled song
They carried me
They carried me
They carried me,
Along
On a beautiful kind of crow carrion blue
Indigo
©Sheri-D Wilson
sweet taste of lightning, Arsenal Pulp Press, 1998
sweet taste of lightning, CD
From Bunhead to Bard | 1997
From Bunhead to Bard
After a hard day of dancing
I’d pass the Bay Parkade everyday
I’d drag my worn-out bun-head butt home to lucky #3
My seventy-five-dollar-a-month room-tomb
With the shared yellowing bathroom
Sylis, the concert pianist turned junkie, lived down the hall
After a hard day of dancing
I’d pass Chinatown, and
I’d raid the dumpsters for tofu, and
I’d buy a bag of fortune cookies
For a broken moment of hooky from reality
Feeling like a disintegrating princess doll
Castle walls caving in
Tutu askew, and
A slew of unsatisfactory fortunes
In a bowl
After a hard day of dancing
I’d come home to lucky #3, and
I’d crack cookie after cookie
Looking for the perfect fortune, and
I’d dream of being a writer one day, and
Then I’d take my towel and I’d go down the hall
To the shared yellowing bathroom there
And I’d have a bath and I’d laugh to myself
‘Cause I could never spell
How could I be a writer?
Unless
I had a table to write on
Yes
A room of one’s own
Yes
So
The next day
I went to the Sally Ann
To look for a table to take away
Home to lucky #3
To write on
I found the perfect one
Round, with flaps that swing down
I said to the Sally Ann Man:
This is my table
The perfect one for me
But there’s no way I can get it home to lucky #3
And the Sally Ann man said:
Why don’t I tie it onto your back, and you can carry it home
It’s not far, and then you can write a poem, or somethin’
(Seemed like a good idea at the time)
He tied the rope around my leotards and tights
And off I trudged, looking somewhat circus-like, with a twist
By the time I got to the Bay Parkade
I started feeling the table’s weight
Like Gregor in Kafka’s Metamorphosis, and
My bladder was in a slightly urgent state,
When I finally reached lucky #3
I thought I was going to break down and pee
My leotards and tights
All over the floor in front of my door
I reached for my keys des-per-ate-ly
And then in-cred-u-lous-ly
I released I locked myself out
Now,
My worst nightmere kicks in
Which takes this scene on another downward spin
The Sally Ann Man tied the knots on the other side of the flaps
On the other side of my wooden wings, and
There was no way I could reach them to untie the ___ things
Now
I was tied to my own table
In a sense I was eternally trapped
Strapped to my own muse
Standing in front of lucky #3
With the rising necessity to break down and pee
I walked down the hallway to the shared yellowing bathroom there, and
I ripped down my leotards and tights through the roped-up snare
And then I gyrated toward the toilet bowl
Peeing all over myself, missing the whole
How can this be happening to me?
I started to cry
And then I heard myself yelling down the hallway
Why? Why? Why?
I manoeuvred my dance gear back up, and
Now with pee all over me
All I could think of was getting back
To lucky #3
By now the table was just too much to hold
So I thought
I know, I’ll . . . yes . . . yes . . .
. . . just jump backwards onto the table-top for a rest
Yes, just jump backwards, that would be best
Wait for something to happen, yes
Someone will help,
Yes
But once on top there was no way I could get back on my feet, and
When my landlord finally found me
Locked out, tied up, and smelling outhouse sweet
There was absolutely no way, I could be discreet
After he released me from the tables’ ugly hold
He said:
If I could be so bold
How’d’ya like a date sometime?
I said:
Sorry, I haven’t the time
I’ve gotta set up my table and write
Right
I gotta write
I’ve got the right to write
I’ve got the right to write
I’ve gotta write
Right
I’ve gotta write . . .
©Sheri-D Wilson
sweet taste of lightning, Arsenal Pulp Press, 1998
sweet taste of lightning, CD
Writing
