The following poems, Codes, and Purgatory, are published in the Spring 2011 issue of QWERTY literary magazine from The University of New Brunswick in Fredericton.

CODES
for Megan Williston Shay

We speak to each other in a code,
our moment a recipe of cakes and crows
We sing our distant song
without black telephones and
there is no other place to go
as in the distance she needs to hew
a soft wall of fixed vision,
snow monument to
the several freedoms of slavery

She is like a cat in the trees.
She makes frozen faces and pretends
to be blind, deaf, empty…
or stands like a shadow silently,
or is simple geography
like a low carpet of wild ginger

So she cannot be seen. I never see her.
She is a cat static as a slow grown forest,
crouched like a soft green plant
below the distraction
of vaulted canopy and galloping weather

And I cook in the kitchen of my
departed grandmother... or any kitchen…
conversant with a Siamese cat
who eats shrimp sitting down
each red crustacean gripped
in one paw gracefully
nibbled on like a tiny party sandwich…

And this cat has the mannerism
of a person and the woman
who acts like a cat in the forest
and appears to be a tree
or wild carpet of lush ginger treasured
is held in a hollow of cakes and crows;
The secret patience of bread rising.
A freedom of isolation; Enough to suffer.

~March 23 2010

….

PURGATORY for meg shay

I seem to be the night-watchman of purgatory

I sing quiet old songs against the dead hills.

When you come near me with your echo

I don colourful shirts and try to remember a vital dance.

I have first class ferry tickets and yellow absolutions.

The halos are not here, the halos have never been here.

They are up in the attic with the abandoned gift wrap

of goodness, the wobbling promises of new wilderness.

I am never sad long but I record your hidden sadness,

acutely experience your forgotten hidden sadness,

as I might feel an oppressive and cloying moisture in the air

hours before the advent of an engulfing downpour.

Sorrow and waiting are the two kinds of weather here

where there is much slow green moss for sitting,

time to patiently eye the defunct pink clock and

time to click out the missing ‘tick tock’ with mouth and tongue.

I am the watchman of purgatory.

It is always deep night here and the oily coffee

tastes like old lead pencil shavings.

My friends rewrite their examinations as if they’re leaving.