A WALKER IN THE CITY

A WALKER IN THE CITY

Méira Cook

Brick Books

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Cook, Méira, 1964-

A walker in the city / Méira Cook.

Poems.

ISBN 978-1-926829-72-2

I. Title.

PS8555.O567W35 2011         C811’.54         C2011-904257-6

Copyright © Méira Cook, 2011

We acknowledge the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund, and the Ontario Arts Council for their support of our publishing program.

Cover design by Cheryl Dipede.

The author photo was taken by Mark Libin.

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

www.brickbooks.ca

For my loves —
Mark and Shoshana
and
Misha and Shai

Contents

A Walker in the City

The Beautiful Assassin: A Poem Noir

Being Dead

Posthumous

Appendix A: The Keyhole Poems

Appendix B: Follow Me

Last Poems

Acknowledgements

Biographical Note

A Walker in the City

Where to send her, this walker?

Go little mine book. She sets off

coat swinging wide. Stars

in her wake and moons in theirs

collide.

— from Loitering With Intent

by F. Kulperstein

Astringent day in early winter

when all the angels have been let out

of their cages. The wet blue beak

of morning, sky skidding on ahead

or flying — the sky — flying laundry.

Shunting cirrus back and forth (sky)

swerving its tracks boing-boing,

rubber as a ball highing

the bluest bit of hush at the centre

of a jaunty girl’s jaunty eye.

Callooh! Callay! arias she out (but soft

away). Then, shining all

and sure, vaults she the wind’s

cathedral, stamping booted feet,

lifting a hand unmittened, yes,

the better to balance welterweight

wind (flying fists) on a wet fingertip.

Hello again, hello. It’s me (it’s only me).

City bristlin’ gloves today, handless,

cut off at the wrist. That’s

supplication at best, at worst

the bait ’n grab of a supple leather

up-yours beneath her seat on the no.18

uptown. As blue as that mitten

flash-frozen into prayer on this morning’s

path. Yes, gloves gathering

in all the world’s soiled places

where she’s too long stared

herself down. Dear termagant,

like all collectors despairing

the end of the collection. Left

hand to match bleating calfskin

(no. 5 ½) or missing hand-

combed angora in damson

& plush. Brisk brisk, a walker

in the city stoops & strides, blush

blush away, glove clutched jittery

in hand, hand in hand.

That girl again, ho! A walker

in the city measures distance in feet,

defeats lengthening lamppost gaps,

width of a line scrawled

on a hasty page. As if walking

merely to conjugate the season’s

crackling yellow declensions.

But winter now . . . winter

and the world funnels inwards,

declines, ah, elegant

within cagey astrakhan, between

closed lids, lips. Let’s

catch her, moth-girl, against the lit

page, against flying leaves,

herself, selving, angular & awkward.

Girl with a name like a shrug,

a one-handed wave, terse

in the fly-leaf of some book

of posthumous queries. How many

shoes did Dante wear out

while writing the Commedia?

Breathes she a prayer (a curse)

cast visible in discrete

indiscreet puffs before sweeping

to heaven on an updraft. Then,

thighs she hard & trim

the street to her stride, alive

alive-o! A spasm of agape

gaping open in her throat

and morning

swinging sideways, flaring open

with her coat.

Like the last of the summer bees,

dazed, dashing for hothouse interiors,

bumbling the pockets of windbreakers,

satchel linings. This longing

for God that springs unholy water

gushing to the mouth as if

at the scent of meat grilling. Every year

’round this time summer tenses

past, a frantic bird flying

out of her mouth, flying south.

Well-cut eyes, curt temples: she loses

her temper more & moreish, allowing

thus everyone else to keep theirs.

Darkens, then, penitential violets

beneath her eyes. The people in this city

are like strike-anywhere matches,

blazing friendships on street corners,

in elevators. Ready to rub heads

with anyone, everyone, flaring briefly

in the dusk. Ah recompose

my disquiet. (Observe now

how she licks her fingers

between the pages of a book.) Look,

just as well, considering the darkness

falls each year not all of which

can extinguish the light

from a single cigarette, not

all the darkness. One day

mid-winters she a fist, pocket-

deep. Pulls out, frail & brown,

blown, the corpse of a thought

lost months ago

                  buzz

            buzz

Comes the night and falls the snow.

That disproportion, snow,

resolved to perfect

the collapsing scaffold of winter.

Nothing else, not love or grief,

not anger or etiquette, Lordy, so