ADRIENNE BARRETT
The Rusty Toque | Issue 4 | Poetry | February 15, 2013
THE DISINTEGRATION, AS CHILDRENYou would have thought, what a gorgeous kid. You’d have thought, what a sweetheart. Gifted, gifted, they all said it. I had an eye for colour, though now I don’t care. I let things be what they are. What the hell are we talking about? Oh, my tragedies. Well, the big drama was the children’s train but I was only two, so I hardly knew the score. We made it just under the wire. I guess you could call us lucky. Grandma and the rest of them gassed, gone. Is that how you like your luck? I was loved, at least, by my father. It was a bit intense. My mother was a manic stunner, depressive eyeful. She was here and far. They said I had a kick in me like a chorus line. I cried in terror every night, clutched the bed rail. And that was long before the coronary to crown them all, before my mother tipped off the roof. Before the tumours came to roost. Tell me it’s a surprise I have little faith in beauty. THE DISINTEGRATION, AS WRAITH1. You chalk me up ethereal. I didn’t ask for this story. _________Those brittle vessels I collected? They’re mourning, sure, anyone can see it. They nod to one another, bow ever so slightly at the waist; turned face, bent ear. _________Give ‘em a minute. All befuddled dignity at a singles’ event. They’re a bit old for this sort of thing. __________________Wait, did you catch that? Those two, out and out flirting! She thrusts her hip, he leans in. They murmur: what about the ropes? __ what about the wires? 2. What about the mounds of balls? No more clues; I’ve given everything you need. You guys would write an obituary for a wadded-up serviette. 3. The latex weeps on the gallery floor. You’re hanging my stuff all wrong in last-ditch efforts. You quibble: another tragedy versus an apt eventuality. Either way, it was the only outcome. The sheets, they’re out of my hands. If I gave the world a hiccup, good for me. At this point I take what I can get. 4. Without my tools or materials, I’ve learned to kill time. When I’m sick of Departures, I haunt Arrivals. I still know what I’m doing. CRIMSONI’ve compared white paint chips under various lights: ivories, bones, the whites with pinkish undertones; off-whites that read white. Snow White. True White. Whiter than. __________________My two-year-old evolves long-term plans to ripen into Cinderella as I bring her juice, scrub the tub, go diving for oyster nail polish in bins, _____________99 cents, ___________just the shade ________ for half-pint fingers.____My lungs pool red as she drills for silver and gold as well__she drills____but I don’t flee or call for the woodcutter. This is the job. _______ I long for an island in the kitchen, regularly take the car to travel three blocks. Under the bus goes the Walmart boycott-- ___________________we need to baptize the baby _in the waterfall __ of a white noise machine. ____________________It’s me that wants a dunking. In the darkening cream of the baby’s room, he looks like my father’s mother and my mother-in-law’s brother: elf to dinner roll and back again. This one? Flip. Or that. Mine? Or not. __ If mine, how much? How long? ________________________I pray we’re doing right by you. Heck, this town is white. White son, white daughter, would you believe we were bohemians? Time will tell. ______I nurse every other hour, rock this salt body, don’t die, don’t die._________Morning’s early. The light, the sheet covering my head. _____________Gone the tender ____________dark, but there’s a well ___________of a different colour. I go to face them. Diaper, milk, bra, bread, knuckles-- however they shriek I can drown them out. |
ADRIENNE BARRETT is a writer and bricklayer living in Woodstock, Ontario. “The disintegration” poems, which riff on the life and art of Eva Hesse, belong to a set of poems about various disparate public figures “as children”. They, along with “Crimson”, are taken from The house is still standing, to be released in late April under the Ice House imprint of Goose Lane Editions.
