Slovenly Love

Slovenly Love
Méira Cook

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Cook, Méira, 1964-
            Slovenly love / Méira Cook.

Poems.

ISBN 1-894078-32-2

          I. Title.

PS8555.O567S56 2003       C811’.54          C2003-903697-9

Copyright©Méira Cook, 2003.

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada
through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP), and the Ontario Arts Council
for their support of our publishing program.

The cover is after a photograph by the author. Robert Doisneau’s photograph “Le baiser de l’hôtel
de ville”, (©Estate of Robert Dolisneau) is used courtesy of Agence Rapho.

Brick Books
Box 20081
431 Boler Road
London, Ontario
N6K 4G6
Canada

www.brickbooks.ca

for Shoshana

CONTENTS

A Year of Birds

Blue Lines

Trawling: A Biography of the River

Kiss by the Hôtel de Ville, 1950, and Other Kisses Various

Tempestuous

A Year of Birds

Little bird you flutter-flutter in my arms, tick

thick milk and blood, cheeks

flying red flags where the unsheathed teeth

live. Outside geese scatter across sky,

iron filings thickening at the magnetic line

of horizon. This moment won’t recur,

a sky rubbed thin

beneath the barefoot feet

of last summer’s children. The window

is a frame stretching that paper-thin sky

along the bias of geese prejudiced

by weather. Little bird your unfinished head

crooks my arm, keeps my heart

coniferous. Even the horizon

exerts no pull. Instead a need

to bear witness. Like the man

on a bridge who sees the first

of the summer raptors, who calls

to the woman pushing her stroller below,

look up, up! Tilts her head, observes

their windpocked feathers, his mouth

spread in the shape of the word eagle

swooping towards her on the wind.

                                              As for me,

little bird, I am no longer hollow

boned, audacious. Gravity

keeps me buoyant, bright

anklet of teeth about the bone.

In the dark I hear little eyes

fly open, the glazed

where am I? of your stare louder

than wails that peel from your curly

mouth, shavings

off the narrow wedge of my sleep. Don’t cry

little bird, honey-girl, sweet-and-bright.

                                              Listen you,

I will work the stars loose

from their clasps, I will

douse that good-night moon

dares blah-blah in your too-big

but-you’ll-grow-into-them ears. Here’s

the thing: I am not so young nor so prone

to metamorphoses as once I was. Joints

need oil something dreadful, skin too tight

stuffed sausage-full with unrequited

sleep. (An elegant Greek epigram

escapes me, lees

of wine staining the wineskin

would do for my breasts

if I could remember.) Compose

yourself baby, I say, but you turn

bird, flap the corners of the room

to panic and tussle, pinfeathers

whirling. In the morning,

thin drifts of word, the letter

V for good-bye in the sky.

What can you be smiling at in your sleep?

Milk, the crook of our arms. The la-la-la

tongue running across bare gum,

popped thumb, bowl of spoon. Broken

veins of sky behind my eyes. The colour

blue for which you have no name. A new

song to do with buses and wheels

you hated at first, being fretful

of anatomy, end rhymes, the transit

system for all I know. I know

all about incorrigible wheels, little spokes

dividing sunlight into wedges. The sweet

round of sleep curves the bow

of your lips, slips

between the uncut pages your mother

thumbs her way out of, losing

her place in the night’s inflection. The metaphor

no substitute for what it replaces: sleep

spilling like milk over which

she has been cautioned not to cry, and night

slipping its stitches, unravelling

the soft knitted toy in her head.

How she hovers above the parenthesis

of your smile, casting off.

Your smile, baby, is a rind

protects the sweetest, most tender

flesh. Hush-puppy suede

your tongue, crisp

apple-crunch your cheek. Smile,

baby, at the tickle of word

growing to seed pearl and pout

in your oysterish mouth.

Two kinds of smiling: with teeth,

without. Yours a strawberry

compromise of gum and tooth pick-picking

your way from the egg. Half

a moon, Cheshire-girl, split to melon

with mirth at that yolk-eyed

marauding boy-baby, his

peach-cleft chin, his grin. Bodes well

for a future where agreement is the hinge

between upper and lower jaw, resistance

what takes up the slack of lip and cringe,

and smiling, baby, is the difference between.

Baby scat along

with Ella and me, sweet

heart, swee-tart sweet

and low. Oh-oh, over

and over we go. Hmmm-hmm.

Percussion-baby kicking out of time

to internal rhyme of pulse, breath,

your heart a jazz line spiked

between doo-be-doo and do-re

me and you. White notes, black

keys, everything contrary-wise

and left-handed (but that’s the way

it crumbles, cookie-wise

and pound-foolish.) Or dark, dark

as teeth in photo negative. Days

hamstrung and out-of-joint, cumulus

gathering to a point of exasperation,

and nights shuffled between stiff fingers

like a deck of cards coming up red red red

as the Queen of Spades. Swing it girl,

like Ella an’ Louis, unfurl. Teach

me, knot by knot, to loosen

the throat’s slow noose. Here

we go then, baby! Un-re-hearsed —