Note to Self, Breathe
ENGL470/670 Winter 2021 UNBC
Note to Self, Breathe
ENGL470/670 Winter 2021
copyright ©the authors, 2021 ENGL470/670 Winter 2021 UNBC is printed in 11 pt Cambria font. Published by wink books. Printed and bound at UNBC Copy Services. wink books 1728 6th Avenue Prince George BC / Lheidli T’enneh territory V2L 3N6 rbudde@unbc.ca
Note to Self,
Breathe
What would happen if I ignored the gas light and drove down a gravel road until my car ran out If I steered it into a garden and let vines grow over the wheels and weeds cover the windshield I could live off the peas that dangled through the open window pop them between my teeth like escargot What if I stayed there for a hundred years and bloomed with the dandelions and hummed with the bees One day an old man might dig me up turn me over brush off the dirt and say ah yes, this one's ripe
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potatoes don’t need therapy to grow
Oh No, Here We Go Again my first thoughts when i see her: she’s too pretty to be here the tiny village built on sawdust and ash violets strangled by blackberry thorns poisoned until they have their own venom it’s easy to see how i’ve been shaped by the sawdust village my hands are calloused and striped with the pale scars i’ve collected from pulling out weeds the punk songs were right when they called me terrified and desperate i don’t know what i’m doing and i sure as hell don’t know what i’m doing wrong she collects seashells, but not starfish because making jewelry out of a corpse is just a little too much for her she’s so excited when she finds an entire mouse skeleton behind the shed that she painted two years ago the ribs became my favourite earrings and i forget about starfish
i think she’d taste like hazelnut because she puts way too much of it in her coffee every day she sings like she paints with watercolour like she really loved bees as a kid like the sunflower tattooed on her thigh is more than a flower it’s a promise sunflowers point toward the sun and i’m trying not think about what she’ll look like underground
Familiar Sights teeth are another concern the dentist warned me against biting nails of both biological and industrial composition though this is sound advice, beyond the black page not one further lick need be spoken of these teeth or bad humours, no idyllic shape for noses, breasts, the bodies and points of nails here are the ones that bear no rust they’re used for building modest things that serve me and not always others all worries, the weathers of the head dissipate and decompose, redistributed over a long stretch of simple pastures filled with easy to understand objects the tractor, tilling and ploughing I sow imaginary lines regularly, going far west
on Tuesday morning and true north come that same evening to find parameters, broken fences that suggest another someone, perhaps someone like you early, too early
Notion too high to even direct the straw to the line of k in the dark tent is helping them find their way to more drugs being a friend they are friends but I am not just a whore at a festival one convulses we laugh it off I try to sleep but hear whispers nobody there saying my name but the drugs tell me otherwise
Birthday It’s 9:58 and I’m hovering above our pale bodies which are sheltered by the blankets of my bed although there is a sharp chill when a gust blows in from outside. You are asleep and I am not. I am aware of the cool sheets on my skin and your warm breath on my skin and the moonlight streaming through the blinds, but I’m not really there anymore. I can still remember when I was content with being a daughter and a student and you were content with being a batter and a friend. I can still remember when we would laugh a little without quite knowing why and the bell-like note in your burgeoning voice guided me through the days. We told every story while running a maze of sidewalks and for a while that’s all we did; that’s all we needed. Now I question whether you are what I really want. It never hurts to wait longer but it always feels impossible to turn back. I know I probably shouldn’t have invited you into this place, but you are still an intruder, still a sprinter who starts running before the gunshot, still a slicer of cake whose candles are still lit.
Cowardly Snarl Calves burning, almost home. So short in a car One last hill, until home and AC Scrabbling up on root and branch, then down some snarling beast now whining carefully climbing, to see my dog Kowtowing “Didn’t think you had it in you, Meeka” I scratch her ears, glad she keeps The house safe
Taste Like Home The rain of this eve, feels like a breath of my freshly painted home. The tiny droplets of rain hitting the attic like a hot lungful of air released onto my already blistering skin. I can see the homeless guy running in a shade to protect himself from the rain. He is half drunk and amusing like if he has won, the twenty-dollar lottery: he is rich today. I opened the window of my room and one tiny droplet speckled on my eyes. I wake up from the dream. It was just raining, salty in taste and nothing like home. Salty as question: "How Did You came here?” --This is not a sense of curiosity! It is a question of interrogation! Hastened breathe escaped from my lips that taste like Home.
You don’t just call this a breakup grieving you looks like the dust that collects on the top of a notebook. no way to trust blank pages with rage. i blame my hands. those shameless demands. write like no one is watching. ruin me and say I love you in a way that makes me feel like i had the option to say no. close the door. drown caution with bordeaux so your murder glows like the red of my cheeks. name me
your bloody lover and pretend like it hurts that i’m gone. set the dusty notebook into flames and i will never name you again.
/#notallmen/ little mushrooms scattered around a circle, etched naturally by Earth Mother. faeries, that’s what my Nana said to be wary of. i don’t think the fae are the ones to be cautious of. watching through the blinds of the café, memorizing habits. slipping sugar into her drink, dissolving on impact. missing person’s on milk cartons, the highway of tears, feet in shoes washing up on shore. even when a girl walks down a well-lit street she can be taken. the fae don’t take people unless provoked by ill-intent what does that say about men?
Tickets I hate planning trips, I said, you ignored you replied with something chipper always packing. Why choose the ocean, I said, you ignored you replied with something empty always sighing. You’re always sighing, I said, you ignored you replied with nothing, again, ignored. You eye up the tickets alone my dad is sick again, you said, I heard always coughing. The water will be good for you because I’m sick of you, you said, I heard always wailing. You put the tickets on my floor something something something else, was now you, ignored.
Cold Toes Toes submerged in snow, neurons firing, yelling “take them out!”. The conscious mind is with me, mindful of the earth around me. The unconscious, however, somewhere much different. Keeping me busy, I follow. On Earth, my toes near frostbite. My unconscious, however, is giving me a tour of a complex network of thoughts and feelings where one emotion may trigger or remove another. I follow the unconscious deeper, a bottomless mine of connections. Not even a cave diver would be equipped for this venture. My vision begins to blur, my anxiety combines with confusion as I lose sight of my unconscious. Bang! Now flat on my face, I search for injury. No broken bones, no swollen eyes, just an exhausted psyche and some cold toes.
Chestnuts Chestnuts in the graveyard scattered like bones. Titters and giggles with no source but always close behind. A sodden crawl space where wet earth lay. Once prized possessions now covered in muck. Eyes peering from the darkness. Treasures in the barn covered in dust, breathing softly. Perhaps I will take them home, or maybe they will follow.
Mania I want some fries Maybe a McDouble Oh, you’re still open? Can I get uhhhhhhhhh What do you want? Blizzard! Yeah Hi Can I get a blizzard? Do I mean a McFlurry? Ahaha yeah I do Yeah one of those Uhhhhhhhhh Anything else? Ok and then some fries please That’s everything Thank you Have a good night
No
The Call of the Domesticated Wild Serenade me through the night with your shrill, screeching cries. Summon me forth towards your blown out pupils, a symbol of mischief before nails meet tender, innocent ankles. Ravish me with your purring hymns, your loving caresses, before you get sick of me. Cook me up a concoction of fur and food, then dress me down with hairy clothes, because black and fur is the new fashion rave. Bask in your sunshine abyss where time means nothing and lazy days turn into frenzied-filled nights. You tuna-smelling, litter-flinging, furball with a face believing you're some wildcat wonder, strutting across hardwood floors, like a runway model or some deity from above. Owning the joint as if you alone were Cleopatra’s muse. Let forth your wail of the wild as I pretend to believe that you are a fierce panther inhabiting the flowerbeds, and not a cowardly kitty who is afraid of the dreaded, evil vacuum cleaner.
an excerpt from Catherine of Texas I She embraces me, feeding me grapefruit video nights and orange kisses, light to touch. She brings me herself, shows me her violet eyes. We plan photos for our wedding with legs upright and splayed tandem in the air. She, Catherine of Texas, takes me dancing the tango. She tells me I smoke them all. She tells me to make it twirl while we head up the stairs and into our own secret night. She thinks of me seated at a café with tartan perfection sipping foam and the fog of London in conversation with myself. I find her at two pm making the same turmeric chicken soup I simmer upstairs, and we share separate bowls with the same mind. Hers is always better for me than mine. I’m invited to watch seafood linguini with capers, and to taste the salt. All I need is lemon, the principle of acid to find the moment sweet. We eat rich buttered garlic and help ourselves to the taste of us.
What Happens When You Click Refresh Sometimes at night, when the cool dark kisses your forehead like your mother once did and the sirens outside tell bedtime stories, while dreams seep into your pillow for a moment the planet stops spinning. Pause for the constellations to breathe in and out all the dust collected on the universe’s shelf to scatter down upon street lamps and parked cars so finger prints leave marks on their hoods like maps of sleeplessness. Your breath stops. The room quiets.
Then
the Earth resumes its pace, sirens and buzzing insects in their odd routines fly over your head and high rises reach for that breath of starlight. Longing and tired, the world moves on while you flip your pillow to the cool side.
an excerpt from Else long langues trailing behind languette over what’s over you spoke the words into the dust the future lies devirginized before the backs of your heels scabs heeling loyally alongside as you go you knew few commands sit stay stray but there is no return no theo reticle re(course to complete or replete with content meant to heal the past is a(head without a mouth you can’t speak to it what was as what could be or will have been a testament to restless hope a test, a call a ball to roll
a round in your hands get over what’s over? the past presents future of course of course as a series of obstacles or a selection of homes: over come or come over but never without appropriate acommandations speak your tracks into having been spread out before you all this time
I lose it all the time like if sanity was virginity I’d be the perfect neurodiverse slut splayed out on 3rd Ave crotch to the sky lost bones, lost calm, lost my way on the way to you, like if baskets were hearts I’d be tumbling down the stairs socks and silences spilling into the cat litter only your laugh catching my fall at all, all the time, like a long gravel alley wobbling toward the destination of my stumbly feet moving in time to the memory of you standing there, dusty blubbery and dishevelled, picking up my pieces as if they were ever together, as if we were ever together I lose it because when I lose it, it really means I never had it and that is okay, that is okay here, I am lost, squatting, unsure which way is back downtown, and I wait for the waves of loss to pass, waiting here with a half bottle of Guinness and a fist-full of back alley flowers, here I am, lost, scattered, really alive.
Dear ENGL470/670
thank you / for breathing and / being / really alive / at a trying / time until next / time
<3 RB
wink books 2021