Mouré - Domestic Fuel

Domestic Fuel

Books by Erin Mour:
Empire, York Street
Whisky Vigil
Wanted Alive
Domestic Fuel

ERIN MOUR

Toronto Buffalo London Sydney

Copyright 1985 Erin Mour.

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotation for purposes of review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without permission from the publisher.

The author and publisher are grateful for the support of The Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council.

Author photo: Ken Mour

Made in Canada for
House of Anansi Press Limited
35 Britain Street
Toronto, Ontario MSA 1R7

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

Mour, Erin, 1955
Domestic fuel

(House of Anansi poetry series; HAP 45)
Poems.
ISBN 0-88784-143-0.

I. Title. II. Series.

PS8576.0892D651985 C811.54 C85-098404-1
PR9199.3.M68D65 1985

Arc
Blue Buffalo
Canadian Forum
Canadian Literature
Cross-Canada Writers Quarterly
Dandelion
Descant
Ethos
Event
Fiddlehead
Fireweed
Four By Four
Prism international
Quarry
Rubicon
Saturday Night
The Malahat Review
This Magazine
Writing
Zest

Domestic Fuel first appeared as a broadside published by
Flat Singles Press, Vancouver.

Some of these poems were anthologized in:
Anything Is Possible, ed. Mary di Michele, Mosaic Press,
1984.
Canadian Poetry Now: 20 Poets of the 80s, ed. Ken Norris,
House of Anansi, 1984.
Women & Words: The Anthology/Les Femmes et les Mots:
Une Anthologie, Harbour Publishing, 1984.

A short term grant from the Canada Council in October 1983 enabled me to work on some of these poems.

Alguien limpia un fusil en su cocina.
Con qu calor hablar del ms ali?

Someone cleans a rifle in his kitchen.
How dare one speak about the beyond?

Csar Vallejo

All of a sudden you find out there isnt enough time.
You find out there was never enough time.
You find out you shouldnt have washed the dishes.

Over & over, so many dishes, the wet cloth, the spill
across the counter, window, bird out there
or not, the clean house, begin

& you find out you shouldnt have bought the clocks.
You shouldnt have bothered buying clocks.
You never had what they had to measure.

You leap up & throw them face-down into the trash.

There is not enough time to cry about this.
The pain in your back is very deep
& pointless.
You find out that all this time they said
you were part of the working class
there was no time.
The real working class in this country was always unemployed,
& you always had a job, the same one.

You find out there is no such thing as enough time
& still you dont have any of it.
You shouldnt have craved the arms of women.
You shouldnt have slept with men.
You shouldnt have dreamed Philosophy, or
the heart monitor screen in your apartment bedroom,
just like in emergency.
Its all shit. Merde. This, & hey, & you others.

Time for the medicine. You fast cure. You fuck-up mad dog. You you. You lunge over the table. In mid-lunge. Going for the adrenalin again, going for keeps, prose, boots, the sandwich you couldnt eat, you bit & spit out, you thought it would make you sick again. Lunge for the dogs stale portion of sleep, your legs straight off the chair, your hair stuck out, the clatter of the chair falling backward, zone five, zone six, the sound of

Your arms make

Amicus, object, referrent

Points of or- der

The core that eludes me, the words
un-spoken, pulled back into the tongue.
It is the tear-space inside the wall, where
the seventy years are waiting,
their mouths round with os.
It is the seven nights of the body.
The beginning of the spine.
Sleep without measure.
Sash flung up & down.
Outside in.
It is the air.
When it meets my face, my mouth opens.
It is not fear.
It is what we fear.
It is the green trees rushing upward from the boulevard.
It is green everywhere.
It is not the hung figure.
It is not maleness.
It is grass. It is the tree.
It is the sound of hands.

A woman describes her
life as the decreasing width
of beds
King-size bed, double bed, & now single bed
Measures the air with her hands
Hot air
Islands of air
When the morning comes what does it matter
the woman ends, laughing,

& directs the music in the restaurant for her friends

Upside-down music, she says
like theatre

Shock troop
shock exercise
Knife is a verb
Bayonet a verb
Coat a verb
Absolute is a conjunction
Now get up & pay for the coffee,
make a sentence, fool

She knife, she coat, absolute she bayonet
he said
incomprehensible as
shock troops blowing the door in
& taking the TV down stairs to a truck

You dont pay me, you live here
she said, pushing his money back, the tip, too

One dream or another.
The belly fat bent over, a body poised on the lakeshore.
Sleep, industry!
Sleep, Ontario.
Your punch, cut, & weld plants are sorry to be closing,
sorry to unemploy so many.
Your rivers crave the shut-down industry, knowing
the fish have empty, hurt mouths
& the water echoes with their thinking
Pulp & paper
Hydro power
The revolution is over!
There is no more sense in teaching it
in schools.
There is no more sense in teaching your children
to earn money, to desire cars or lawsuits
or expensive ease
Teach them to live on little, to take apart Chryslers
& boil them, to eat their shirt starch,
teach the unemployed to go south
& struggle
with guerrilla armies in the backyard of America,
teach them to stay home & stop electing
the CIA.
Sleep, Ontario.
Your industry has leaped out of its cradle &
lunged into its grave, without whining,
except in the Globe & Mail.
Sleep, industry.
Your people will go home & forget,
& wait for the seeds of their lives to burst open,
& speak to the rivers, & fish the brown water
& leave you to dream alone, Ontario

I am one survivor
who would envy the dead
In the midst of nuclear predicament, not
its aftermath
Our bright lawns strewn with garbage,
so much rot
I hide away from it, my face in my hands, listen
to the motor of wasps lunging
thru the open window, into old cups of
honeyed tea:
The mire of our being connects for one moment.
I hear them plunge in, & the motor
stops,
& the sun goes on as ever before, making its
tracks on linoleum,
& the schools are out for Easter so
the neighbourhoods quiet
& the white seltzer has settled in my glass, undrinkable
The world ends at last for one wasp
as I sit
citizen, imbecile, reading newspapers
Unable to empty my head of predicament:

Third
degree bums, five miles from
the point of detonation.

Trick air, trick
colours, like camouflage, magenta as a