Vanderhoof Girls

From Orient. Published by Brick Books in 2014.


After Charles Lillard

sometimes you think of her and her shotgun wedding,
her dad dancing barefoot till his footsteps bled.
you think of her and you think of her sister,
who married a mormon elder when they were both fifteen
and she was the prettiest, smartest girl in the school
before she disappeared and before you thought seriously
of burning the whole thing down, then left instead.

you think of her giant farm truck and apples and peanut butter,
Simon and Garfunkel blaring from popped speakers,
the two of you singing and the road grass all burnt up and hopeless.
you think of her mum, who was quiet and worked with troubled youth,
and then you think of her with her eyes brimming,
the both of you standing dumb in the foyer of the friendship centre
holding eyes, not hands, because her mum was thrown from a horse, killed,
and you knew no other motherless child your same age.

you stop thinking because it hurts.
you’ve spent too much time and words on landscape.
you owe them more, you’ve been pretending you don’t belong
but all along you’ve known: you’re her,
no matter your travels, your schooling, your poems.
you know her too well—her and her and you.

it’s self-preservation, all this writing, reminding yourself
where you’re not, where you could be,
where you’ll finally be: the plot of land above the hospital
your great-grandad bought in 1925 to house the whole ramshackle lot of you
when you die. You lie staring, wide eyes to the ceiling,
remembering, fearing falling to earth, succumbing to the current,
to some hometown boy, or some good old-fashioned home birth
in Vanderhoof, two miles from the family homestead.