Brick Books
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: I am the big heart / Sarah Venart.
Names: Venart, Sarah, 1968- author.
Description: Poems.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200220535 | Canadiana (ebook) 2020022056X | ISBN 9781771315364 (softcover) | ISBN 9781771315371 (HTML) | ISBN 9781771315388 (PDF)
Classification: LCC PS8643.E53 I2 2020 | DDC C811/.6—dc23
Copyright © Sarah Venart, 2020
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.
The author photo was taken by Cristina Lugo.
The cover image is Carey, by Janet Werner.
Brick Books
487 King St. W.
Kingston, ON
K7L 2X7
www.brickbooks.ca
For Joanne, Catherine, Jennifer, Michael, Madelaine, and Emily
It is called feeling but is its real name thought?
—Denise Riley
Epiphany
Attenborough
Walk to School
The Chauffeur
The Midwife Advises Me
This Strange Thing Happened the Day You Were Born
The Difficult Ones
Origami
Fox’s Sleep
Murmuration Digression
On the Resourcefulness of Others
All Hands on Deck
The Widening
Albert County Breeder
A White Tent Goes Up
Troy
What Are You Waiting For?
The Heart Speaks
I Believe You Still Have My Key
Sonnet in Waiting Room
Against Confession
How It Worked
Falling in Love
Octopus Laser
Stun Guns
Then
The Rising Action
Wild Exile
At the Foundling Home
Back to the Land
Lambing Season
Wedding in Rimouski
Juice
The Dress
It Comes Back
Dénouement
Flowers for All Occasions
The Falling Action
The News
Mink Attack
You Can’t Take It with You
As a Pigeon in Its Dovecote
The Art of Waiting
The End
The Saving of Things
On Being a Sculptor
Room 317, Chateau de Champlain
A Visitation
Tell Me What to Do
The Heiress
Fox’s Sleep Revisited
Woolf Digression
Chance Harbour
Nor Do I Want To
Valentine
Overheard at the Sports Centre
The Residency
Blanche
You Bring It Home with You
Supper Hour
The Standstill
Killing the Dream
In the Figurative Barn
When in Pompeii
The Row House
Domestic Scene
Darling Citizen
Joy in the Cloisters
Here I am, with one hour to find it.
Here I am in this tenth month, the peeler of pears,
the slicer of hot dogs, cutting them into strips
smaller than a child’s windpipe.
Here’s my apologetic smile, accepted by the daycare
in return for my children. So what is there to find
in one hour on my desk’s shallow surface?
I’ve mislaid all of it somewhere among
my mind’s tiny grey flags, in the millions of scraps
piling up. I left it behind in the dark bleeding gums
of the dog that I loved, watching her clench yet another rock
from the tide. That was twelve years ago.
What was she looking for?
What if she’d stopped looking?
Metaphors were easy then, not only the sky,
but migrating everywhere. And now everyone is arrow
arrow, arrows. Everyone harpoons.
And I am the big heart, aren’t I?
When my black dog was being put down, in her last
second I whispered, Squirrel.
First month of kindergarten, out of the blue,
slabs appear at the bottom of her artwork.
Ocean, she informs me. A second wedge
appears, light blue, a sky in which a two-inch kea
soars downward for his lunch: red stripe of fish on a box
with wheels and windows. I am the smartest animal
on earth, she chants. I am the smartest animal.
Okay, I concede. But to debate her thesis,
I press play on YouTube, where birds of paradise
do the work of pop-up pomp,
firework faces appearing on the black stage
of their wings. They’re puppets, she bluffs.
But! The strongest muscle in my body is my tongue!
Just like that, she flutters off to the mirror down the hall
where her reflection flips a glittering headband
back and forth between its palms.
It’s best if I stay hidden behind the laundry basket.
Bowerbird! she’s singing, her quick hands ruffling the air—
Giraffes can clean their ears with their tongue,
this infant human says to her reflection
before she shapes her fingers into a heart
using her twenty-nine hand bones.
My daughter runs into the wet light of morning.
She’ll want to use the iron rail up ahead
as a tightrope. If I don’t let her
we’ll risk the siren windup of the scream,
the plump collapse on sidewalk.
Feelings must be heard, I’ve learned, so I overhear
my daughter’s crayoned frantic faces on leg sticks
as code for love now, love more.
The errant hair clip flapping forward in her hair
means leave me be.
As the dog worries after groundhogs,
my daughter pushes through
seedling weed maples, boots wetted by the spurs
of sward.
She chants up ahead with a sting in her tail:
I hate dew, I hate dew, I hate dew—
I look up and it’s time to go. All ambulance, I fetch
one daughter at daycare, the other at kindergarten,
though I’m too early. So I see the heartbreak—
class lights out, the children, even mine,
small heads laid out on desks waiting
for the signal of dismissal. Even so, we are let go.
And even though so many signs
discourage us, one bearded father slows his car
in the middle of the street and leans past
his steering wheel to ask me
about camp registration. I open the back door
to buckle someone in. Then I buckle someone else.
Is his the last call into the backwoods
of my radiance? I grip the door handle
as the wasteland between my hips fills rapidly—
I don’t know how to stop myself
from turning to answer him, flowing
from domestic into feral
just like that.
To go rogue, stop holding onto
what hurts, indulge in this minute, make
room for what’s good.
I eat deli meat rolled into fat cigars.
No raw food, no shellfish! The sushi chef
shakes his wet finger when I pop in
to stop holding on to what hurts. One more
Edomae, Saint-Honoré cheese, a raw rind
I break open with the spoon,
making room for what’s good.
I eat my way through it, indulge
in this minute, worm my way into joy.
Or not joy. Stop holding on,
just stop. I know better—umbilically
speaking—below my own gut, inside the womb
you nurture yourself, making room
for what’s better. You’re a mystery
growing placidly despite the metallic taunt
of that last lobster roll. Go rogue, make room.
Stop holding on to the rules. You come out
coil. You’re quiet and jaundiced with questions:
Why hold on to what hurts? The blue milk
of your eyes says, Make room for what’s good.