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CATHERINE GRAHAM

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The Rusty Toque | Issue 3| Poetry | October 12, 2012

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BERRIES

Wild strawberries I picked for him,
fairy berries; a crop;
I filled a whole thimble, right to the
top. A silver container,
                             “Last night the itch,” Dorothy Molloy


No god smiles on sidewalk
cracks around the quarry,
only fossils like moles                                                                                  
or freckles that make                                                                             
a face a rock. Tattoo
curls of permanent.
Can’t hold them with
my hand. Let touch
slip time between these
wild strawberries I picked for him
in the goldenrod field.
Plump-ripe heads
see breezes that
rustle the reddening.
Don’t stuff so many
in your mouth. But who
can resist? Poppies
in a field, these
fairy berries—a crop
of how much I love him.
But my tongue holds
no language for that.
So I pick wild
berries to fill
our loss, the her
we no longer have,
the dead red that lives
in the living-room silence.
I filled a whole thimble, right to the
tip of the end of my thumb
where her finger used to sit
like a head in a hat,
safe from pins and needles.
The sewing click is silent
in her nook.
Clothes are store bought now.
No hands 
like hers. Thimble
top. A silver container.

TOURNIQUET

Nobody can say she can’t
beat him
on the tennis court. Her shots
land safely on lines and
chalk flies up
in puffs of surrender. But take him home
and he’s the ref. His whistle
lives inside his mouth
between the pink of his teeth. Like a drawbridge she lowers
on a string,
makes waves at the moat
she can no longer cross.
Come back, come pull me up.
Can’t straighten herself
in her flattened state
or feel his foot
pumping her back.
Can’t see a thing until he signals:
over.
Cotton is cover--
what clothes are for,
and hair that falls
across forehead and shoulders.
She knows the pain a hospital hides
like the red on her arm
now blue now white.
She makes a tourniquet
out of his next attack.
One day he leaves.
She is lying on the floor
though she’s standing up
in the house of herself,
cornered and quiet.

CATHERINE GRAHAM is the author of four acclaimed poetry collections: The Watch, and the poetry trilogy Pupa, The Red Element, and Winterkill. Her work has appeared in The Malahat Review, Poetry Ireland, Descant, The Fiddlehead, Joyland: a hub for short fiction, Poetry is Public is Poetry, LRC, and The New Quarterly. She teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies. Her next collection will appear fall, 2013 with Wolsak & Wynn. Website: www.catherinegraham.com