Wine and Doorbells

A winner of the 2011 Downtown Eastside Writers' Jamboree Writing Contest.


She was hiding in a bag of
  clothespins,
Tall as a hammered nail, and slightly
  rusty.
She was ready to hang love boutique
  panties
from the corners of her sprung
  wooden toes.
She wanted the ice. The cool of
  the clutch.
The gathering of princess possessions
in the fist of a threesome. Thirty
  fingers
thirsty to taste what she had in
  the bag.
What she was holding.


Her colouring book divorce had
  smeared past its outlines.
She felt out-of-register, like a
  Warhol portrait,
or the sardonic, oral meltdown
  of Robert Smith’s smile.
Wine and doorbells.
Something to sip on. Something
  to push.
She needed that.


Isn’t it true that a thumping tire means
  it’s deflated, flat?
She felt like that too. Obliged to carry
  the beat in rotating conversation
When what she really needed was
  emergency road repair.
Someone to fix her predicament.
Strong hands on a round of rubber.


I am forgetting my son, and the dog
  bolted to my ex-husband’s shoe.
I am sliding in woollen slippers down
  a Varathane hallway.
I am thinking of you.


Are my breasts the serious faces you
  vowed they would become?
They never smiled for you, and now
  they stick their tongues out,
Mocking you, like cherries out of
  reach on a high, fecund tree.


I suppose, someday, these mercury
  nights will seem benign as
mollusks simpering in their poisonous
  shells.
Let us crack calcium knuckles and roll
  up our sleeves.
Dig in to the armoured meat of
  underwater wombs.
Sucking them down in one, salty gulp.

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Past Writing Contests