Poems by Margaret Gunning
It seems in my life I have always
moved west, New Brunswick, Alberta,
the boardwalk behind the Quay;
it’s a left-handed sort of life
driving me heartwards, though never,
no never,
heartwise.
that
day
when I thought I saw you on the
boardwalk
my guts jumped: it
jerked the hook in my colon
(you always knew about bait)
You know how it was: I wanted
to stand on my desk
on the last day of classes
and shout: o captain! My captain!
But you had your own rotation – I saw
it reel from view, and
(helpless to catch you)
watched your spiralling apogee
What is the remotest segment of an orbit?
Booze, blondes. Too much of
a good thing. But I did love
you.
We wandered, Pooh and Piglet in an
Escher maze, searching for heffalumps.
You calmly said, “Watch this,” and set fire
to my mind.
I saw you as the human yoyo, bobbing up and
down,
sleeping, walking the dog, in and out
and ‘round the world.
I knew you’d be back, like hounds,
like a cycle of blood, like black
fruit springing into tree. When
the
string broke, I hid my eyes, and
said, but it’s only a lute,
it will heal itself,
half-hoping I was wrong.
I don’t know why or how God looks
after you, beached like a Wellfleet whale,
stared at by the curious. I
don’t know
how God manages. It was beyond
me.
And so I kept on moving.
Stalked by surprise
Part A:
Is Sprung the past tense of
Spring?
Is the world (then) forever
sprung
ruptured/like a
cosmic hernia?
Will I in fact (in spite of
Shelley Winters in spite of
everything) fall into the
butter
again?
Part B:
If life is a puckered
Promise,
an orgasm
dipped in alum,
The dire fruit of an
(unsuspecting
(apricot,
A half-born bee,
then: what are you doing
in my
coatcloset, HEY!
Einstein,
Get out of there,/Fondle me,
man
Even with your subconscious
and - even though God
doesn’t throw dice
(dead man)
I’ll throw you (out)
Buzzed
Your hive was a hum of
Cortical surprise; a splendor
(golden fuzz)
Of psalms: a salty of Bee
being. Such passion
in the apiary! Such dizzy repro- (se-?)
Duction! Bee
attitudes frighten me. I will pick
the salacious hairs, the
haloed laughter of swarms
From my bee-blurred eyes.
SPRING-LOADED
April’s where I live,
the place my heart opens
rose-burgeoning,
shinyleaf-new
a smell of bursting peonies,
bumble-dizzy bees bumping
butter-and-eggs
swollen buds thrusting
in the lovesick air.
Leaden, laden, leavened,
lavendered, loaded,
one big quivering nose, a
moist surprise
hatched out in the nest of my
body
April Pegasus-leaps
in my pulse,
sun-shot Pan-piped
heady, relentlessly
tender,
recklessly
sweet.
BIRD IN THE HAND
My bird in the
hand,
My bright dollar,
blonde head
Hard as a dime,
there in your
trench coat streaming
with spring, wet
as new robins
or
Downy as stamens,
all
I would suck up/the
merry contempt in
your sleigh-bell
eyes,
Pepper my salt
with the wit of your
wounds,
Dive into the
iced-over pool
of your
voluptuous
disdain.
GINA
sweet shy
dark girl I’ve seen her
here before
she always wore the best
clothes
(silvery things/bangles
feathered skirts
necklace made
from the teeth of a wolf)
now I see Gina in the ward
kitchen. Still beautiful
big-eyed
part Cree her hair tied back
she shows me the tracings of
partly-healed gashes
sewn back together in
a gridwork
hands/
on her arms, wrists.
She must be twenty or so
No one comes to visit
Once she had a boyfriend
but he got sick too
i) Paul
(Biblical
spinning/verbs,
(so many gulled
fever
dreams swarming
in chaotic
blindness) a blueberry
moment ---
Your
(bees
hasty argument
My slant, (arcing/jerked
dilapidated/heart
Your groin of sweated
blood of the lamb
fire/Leo in a glass
snowstorm
ii) Cancun
gusted
the rustle
of a physics class
aroused
by the
clouded haste
of a subconscious
baritone door:If this
were an opera
(a damp weeping
head as if just
crowning a gush of
birth) orgasmic aria
another
/
dizzy
commingle
/
fruitstone
/
the fingerings
of florence
nightingale
iii) Small fish
/discharging
i may not get there in time
The minute darting
/disengaging
(all of a mind/marineswarm
(salty
severalness(sequence
multiplicity of minnows
stirring severance
/drowsy
dousing in dowsing
dis/ dosing
Persal dis
Proportionate dis
/Persian
passion
(possession
saul’s Slick
silksliver
(Slippery purse
:This is the ship that
iv) a launched a
thousand
clitoris pearl
tiny---briny
faces;
this/mollusc/heart
dampalternate
being/trace of shellfish
/flesh
(repairing its
innerdamage)
The princess and the pea
A glistening
eye/(that never
stops seeing
Points
of departure
What did intelligent women
do
then? When their brains
were squeezed together by
whalebone
prisons,
when sexual lust was still
criminal.
Men breathed and heaved then,
full of leviathan waters
what did intelligent women do then?
did they get examined
by dirty doctors
with a velvet speculum?
Did they speculate
on the nature of existence
and give themselves orgasms
under the sheets?
What did intelligent women
do
then?
You-riff (a favorite)
If mint ice cream could be
made flesh,
(moreover
Gershwin’s
(innocent
piano keys (not the (inanimate:
but the
(hot
very (act of playing) teeth,
a fine Mary-
morning
(could be a bald spot:a hunch
of shoulders)
(all
then I guess this Everywhere
where we (call
the universe/this minimouse,
into the Here
would be exhaling
you/expressing you
daily,
in daily bliss, dally, bless
blush doily
in gaily, earthshivering
Maymess triumphant, in Gerard
Manley Hopkins’
hosiery/then, I guess your
Bashful tigersmile’s a paean
to
“Great Chocolate!” eyes (a-bleeding
(monument to
(hooting hyaena’s
