Chafe - Short Histories of Light

SHORT HISTORIES OF LIGHT THE HUGH M AC LENNAN POETRY SERIES Editors: Allan Hepburn and Carolyn Smart TITLES IN THE SERIES Waterglass Jeffery Donaldson All the God-Sized Fruit Shawna Lemay Chess Pieces David Solway Giving My Body to Science Rachel Rose The Asparagus Feast S.P. Zitner The Thin Smoke of the Heart Tim Bowling What Really Matters Thomas OGrady A Dream of Sulphur Aurian Haller Credo Carmine Starnino Her Festival Clothes Mavis Jones The Afterlife of Trees Brian Bartlett Before We Had Words S.P. Zitner Bamboo Church Ricardo Sternberg Franklins Passage David Solway The Ishtar Gate Diana Brebner Hurt Thyself Andrew Steinmetz The Silver Palace Restaurant Mark Abley Wet Apples, White Blood Naomi Guttman Palilalia Jeffery Donaldson Mosaic Orpheus Peter Dale Scott Cast from Bells Suzanne Hancock Blindfold John Mikhail Asfour Particles Michael Penny A Lovely Gutting Robin Durnford The Little Yellow House Heather Simeney MacLeod Wavelengths of Your Song Eleonore Schnmaier But for Now Gordon Johnston Some Dance Ricardo Sternberg Outside, Inside Michael Penny The Winter Count Dilys Leman Tablature Bruce Whiteman Trio Sarah Tolmie hook nancy viva davis halifax Where We Live John Reibetanz The Unlit Path Behind the House Margo Wheaton Small Fires Kelly Norah Drukker Knots Edward Carson The Rules of the Kingdom Julie Paul Dust Blown Side of the Journey Eleonore Schnmaier slow war Benjamin Hertwig The Art of Dying Sarah Tolmie Short Histories of Light Aidan Chafe Short Histories of Light Aidan Chafe McGill-Queens University Press Montreal & Kingston London Chicago Copyright Aidan Chafe 2018 ISBN 978-0-7735-5276-0 (paper)
ISBN 978-0-7735-5288-3 (e PDF )
ISBN 978-0-7735-5289-0 (e PUB ) Legal deposit first quarter 2018
Bibliothque nationale du Qubec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest
free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to
Canadians throughout the country. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. Lan dernier, le Conseil a investi 153 millions de dollars pour mettre de lart dans la vie des Canadiennes et des Canadiens de tout le pays. (The Hugh MacLennan poetry series)
Poems.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-0-7735-5276-0 (softcover).
ISBN 978-0-7735-5288-3 ( e PDF ).
ISBN 978-0-7735-5289-0 ( e PUB ) I. Title. II. II.

Series: Hugh MacLennan poetry series PS 8605. H S 56 2018 C ' .6 C 2017-905695-6
C 2017-905696-4 This book was typeset by Marquis Interscript. for Alfred, Margaret & Marjali CONTENTS BREATHING LESSONS THETIS My father, greatest swimmer, swam in the ocean of grandmas womb for nine months before opening his eyes to the sun. Nurses ran water over him, a baptism, so he could teach
grandpa to search for more than a bottle. Grandpa held my father, confirmed his genes inside his heavy hands
while grandma hushed the animal inside
him to sleep. Before the sky fell she held my fathers chest below water, bathed his body until the thought of Achilles drowned.

DISCONNECTION My fathers room is a field of wires. Lightbulbs flicker in and out of sleep. Pills populate the desk. Empties inhabit a hardwood floor. Through drywall I hear the sound of fingers flit along luminescent letters his face glowing in the dark. I lounge in mothers garden of stories, smelling flowers, gathering pages from her books.

They are dense like the flood of fathers imagination. Downstairs the basement is a forgotten lake. Backyard a wilderness of vine. Here we converge at the mouth of a doorway, disquietude inhibits our thoughts, damming us within. FATHERS HAND My fathers right hand is a scarlet letter, is a soft blanket, is plantation purple. Was made in Gods tattoo parlour.

Was dipped in Turkish rug. Is co-inventor of the freight train hug: it hits you hard. Fathers hand works at the factory of spare parts: piecing joints, glueing limbs, weaving open wounds. Fathers right hand is the first aid kit of a suture king, is operation-on-call. Works delivery room standby. Emergency room graveyard.

Fathers hand is first touch at daylight, is last sight before nightfall. Is the one to pick up the phone, begin with the words Im sorry to inform you NIGHT OWL Under the nights shade when the family is turned off, he is wound up like a toy. Whiles away the oldest hours, dancing his fingers over the alphabet, dipping his eyes into the boxs bright glow. When string thins to handle, he collapses like a felled tree. Pulled up again by frightened keys, he startles to feet, creaking the stairs, retiring to bed. Trapped inside an oxygen machine, sleeping swiftly to catch up to his kind, he sings a sweet hurricane to his wife.

BREATHING LESSONS Grandma had the habit of driving me to her sisters house. They lit cigarettes on the couch, while I played toy cars in the face of a warm fire. Underneath the smoke, I watched as everything born burned, glowing until the last ember died. After we left, grandma screeched away with me in her rusty station wagon, a choke of exhaust echoing the winter fog. I asked what smoking felt like. She said, Like breathing .

GRANDMAS APARTMENT Sister and I avoided her dark questions by shoving jelly donuts in our mouths, staring into the voids between appliances. So good we had it, worthy of witnessing her own self-destruction. The way she cycled through emotions like loose change in a washing machine. Her hobbyhorse head rocking. Heart, a post office of unsent letters. Forgotten girl on a Ferris wheel of feelings.

Our mouths singing sugar in a room flowered with rosemary beads, a fistful of pills spread into a garden of colour on the bedside table. As gunfire ghosted through AM radio, dialled to the frequency of Iraq, we were captives in her bunker, listening to the white noise generator of her youth. RITA A kitchen knife between cuts reveals grandma in mothers blood red herring among family servants of God: flirting with Jesus Saturday, dropping him onto her tongue like a lemon lozenge Sunday. Monday sorting him into a bouquet, ornamented in a single vase with all the men in her life, teaching us grandchildren to count using boyfriends buried in her backyard. DIARY OF A REDHEAD Mother called me Aidan. Father called me son.

Ireland called me Little Fire. In kindergarten they called me Freckle Face. Third grade, Carrot Top. Ninth grade, Fire Crotch. On the sporting fields, Fiery. At the oceanside summer camp, Lobster Boy.

Around the neighbourhood parents knew me as hot-tempered. On the beach, blinding. In snow, camouflage. In mythology they called me Thor. After death they thought me vampire. In cinema, wild and tangled.

After posting a fresh-haircut profile picture, a college friend said I reminded her of Tintin. On Robson Street they called me Daniel. On Granville they called me Henrik. In England they called me Rooney. In China, Red Devil. In Australia, Ginger.

You, You call me Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful, the way you repeat it until the word extinguishes everything else. PSYCH WARD HYMNAL MAJOR utterly dispirited DEPRESS reduce level strength of activity DEPRESS push pull down lower DEPRESS causing feelings of no hope DEPRESSIVE severe despondency dejection hopelessness inadequacy DEPRESSION condition mental disturbance characterized DEPRESSION greater degree warranted by DEPRESSION external circumstances lack of energy DEPRESSION difficulty maintaining difficulty maintaining DEPRESSION concentration or interest in life DEPRESSION long severe recession economy Great DEPRESSION financial industrial slump of 1929 DEPRESSION act lowering pressing down DEPRESSION sunken place hollow surface DEPRESSION angular distance of object below horizon DEPRESSION region of lower atmospheric pressure DEPRESSION feeling miserable dejection damaging reduction DEPRESSION HELL HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH FIRE Windowless room to perform a stack Of tasks that never goes down Nail a clock to the wall Numbers that connect to nothing Imagining different high places to jump off Despite prayers and effort Dusts the desk with his cuff Thinks beach when he starts to get antsy With enough practice and concentration You could stop your heart at will The same way you hold your breath Impossibly slow the sound Of ripping paper again and again A SHORT HISTORY OF LIGHT A student in my third grade gym class