Hospital Bracelets/Ambulance Haiku

I had to go to the hospital in an ambulance earlier in the year. I keep trying and failing to articulate this poetically. This is the first thing I wrote, a few days after the incident, in the hopes (since abandoned) of rewriting it into a poem:

The back of an ambulance feels less important than it is. It is a constant moving serenity with the siren going distant but constant. I close my eyes because I’m blacking out anyway. I am not in control. I am passive: rolled around through halls and into cars and out of them, given shots, given the shakes, made drowsy, shot through with side effects. Time rolls away and then stops, wheeled into the ambulance ward. I feel comfortable until they tell me I can leave.

Another attempt made a few days ago, also the first real thing I’ve written since school got out:

Ambulance Haiku
fading in and out
sirens yell, the ground speeds by
faces float above

Springtime, Alone

I can’t find those foil-wrapped chocolate eggs
in bags of yellow netting,
the kind my parents disassembled and sorted by colour:
gold, green, pink, purple, and blue,
divided into four equal groups,
then hidden between black piano keys and under couch cushions.
This year they will be in three equal groups.
This year they may not be hidden at all.
I need to find them.

Dollarama only has atomic pink rabbit-shaped Peeps,
the kind that look soft but will have stale edges
by Easter Monday.
But they also have brooms, sold in three parts:
handle, brush, and dustpan,
for easy assembly by college students
who have never owned a broom before,
but are threatened by dust
in their dormitory corners.
I tie the plastic Dollarama bag
to my new broom handle
and sling it over one shoulder,
ready to hop a train.

Outside Jean Coutu, a boy and a girl say goodbye, or hello.
They hold both hands, outside and mittenless for the first time.
I remember a fourth kiss on a sunny day,
like a chocolate egg, tender and melting.
I smile for them, but wish for my love:
his grass-soft hair, sunny eyes, two lips around an egg.
He’s looking for something larger,
also hidden, but more bitter than sweet.
I wish I could follow him around with a Ziploc bag in hand,
searching under couch cushions and behind chair legs,
but I know it’s more satisfying to search alone.

My mother gave inscrutable hints
about where to find the eggs she hid.
I find them in the pharmacy:
250-gram yellow mesh bags of
gold, green, pink, purple, and blue,
printed with silver flowers that look like eyelashes or stars.
I buy two bags and bring them back to my college dorm.

In the evening, I hide the eggs.
I divide them into equal groups
and place them on ledges and windowsills.
My love, atomic pink, tender and melting,
isn’t there to find them;
but we were getting stale around the edges,
dusty in our corners,
and he had to hop a train.
He told me that when he comes back, he will start again.
He will be rid of the last brown slush piles
and be clean as spring.

I listen to birds’ inscrutable song.
I wish on sand the dustpan can’t pick up.
I unwrap one green chocolate egg,
printed with silver stars like flowers.

Grandmother

Poetry class assignment: write a villanelle.
My grandma recently went blind in one eye, though for dramatic purposes, it’s general blindness.

Bring me back to when you still had your sight.
Time took your vision, but you are still strong.
Look through the darkness to memory light.

Your daughter struggles, but you do not fight;
You remain content. You’ve battled too long.
Bring me back to when you still had your sight.

I wanted to know stories of your plight,
But you said your books would pass them along.
Look through the darkness to memory light.

You will not see gardens in May sunlight,
And yet still you sing. Your voice and your song
Bring me back to when you still had your sight.

When you die your body will burn to white,
And only your image will be passed on.
Look through the darkness to memory light.

Do not go silent into that good night—
I will tell your stories when you are gone.
Bring me back to when you still had your sight.
Look through the darkness to memory light.

Magnetic poetry

or “Nonsense Poems for Teenagers”. Goofing around on my tiny fridge with some magnetic poetry I received for Valentine’s Day.

give me some sugar, baby

Year of the Rat

The sky was blank, but
the light on in your window
looked like a full moon.

Woordbeests (after Theo Jansen’s Beach Animals)

This is Theo Jansen.
This poem is a first draft but I really wanted to post it. Suggestions are welcome.

He builds poems in his basement,
made from pages and pressure and ink:
fist-sized haikus that crawl slowly,
clusters of couplets with flapping sails,
long-legged villanelles kicking in waves.
(He’s working his way up to an epic.)
He practices walking them back and forth,
powered by his little puffs of breath.
One day they will live on their own,
walking away from criticism and
dodging misinterpretation.
For now, they need his help.