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CATHERINE GRAHAM


The Rusty Toque | Issue 10 | Poetry | June 30, 2016

SENIOR CLASS TRIP


Watch it work through her
sleep, glazed eyes open
to the hotel dark, she bolts
 
upright, mewling. The sight
she sees is not for us,
three roommates. How well
 
does one know the other?
Her white-clenched bedsheets
are knuckled-tight. Caged,
 
she spits gibberish in fast
random, a Zeppelin record
playing backwards and all
 
those touches pulsing from within,
indenting from a core so deep,
whitewashing her face and then--
 
stopstopstop—she pushes
the vastness off--
It comes back. We hear
 
the grunt. Begin
again. We stand
watching what
 
happened happen while
eleven floors below
the red slaughter
 
of New York sirens approaching
some other terror can’t
cut through this one.

MASKS

Nature wore only one mask--
  Since called Chaos.
           Ted Hughes, Tales from Ovid

I entered Chaos through the plastic mask
of anaesthesia. Styx & Stones to bones
that don’t break, just the lessoning landscape
beside a nipple that never milked
 
yet puckers pink. I need a deeper
slit on the left to secure clean
margins plus a sentinel undercut--
Hospital déjà vu a dawn
 
reentering as sun dreams. No nail
polish on hands. Baby naked
beneath a stiff blue gown falling
open at the front without a pre-op
 
grip. How summer dissolves spring and
autumn into masks that seasons make
from spin and tilt. I am made more
uneven above the heart in a holding
 
cell of numb. “Wake up.”
Maternal presence never felt
since her Christmas death.
Inside my age is the age she died.

THE HARD SWEEP


I bring his broom inside me.
The one he used to sweep
clumps of cottonwood-fluff
 
off window screens; sticky as adhesives
over wounds. It blocked his view
to the quarry. It wanted his world
 
to grow white, to match the state
of his heart. Attached to his broom,
his long arm of determination, reach--
 
I hear his mourning
scrapes inside the left
side of my chest, the hard sweep
 
to remove cells survivors
fear most. His unstoppable
chore has come to use.
CATHERINE GRAHAM'S most recent collection Her Red Hair Rises with the Wings of Insects (Wolsak & Wynn, 2013, now in its second printing), was a finalist for the Raymond Souster Poetry Award and the CAA Poetry Award. Winner of the IFOA’s Poetry NOW competition, she teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies where she won an Excellence in Teaching Award. Her next collection will appear fall 2017. Visit: www.catherinegraham.com
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  • Home
    • Issue 1 >
      • Creative Nonfiction: 1
      • Fiction: 1
      • Screenwriting: 1
      • Poetry: 1
      • Contributors: 1
    • Issue 2 >
      • Visual Art: 2
      • Fiction: 2
      • Poetry: 2
      • Masthead: 2
      • Contributors: 2
    • Issue 3 >
      • Poetry: 3
      • Visual Art: 3
      • Comics: 3
      • Fiction: 3
      • Reviews: 3
      • Masthead: 3
      • Contributors: 3
    • Issue 4 >
      • Prose: 4
      • Poetry: 4
      • Reviews: 4
      • Visual Art: 4
      • Contributors: 4
      • Masthead: 4
    • Issue 5 >
      • Nonfiction Kathy Acker & McKenzie Wark
      • Drama: 5
      • Prose: 5
      • Poetry: 5
      • Film: 5
      • Comics: 5
      • Reviews: 5
      • Visual Art: 5
      • Video & Sound: 5
      • Masthead: 5
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    • Issue 9 >
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    • Issue 10 >
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    • Issue 11 >
      • Poetry: 11
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      • Contributors: 11
      • Masthead: 11
    • Issue 12 >
      • Poetry: 12
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    • Issue 13 >
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