::Spezzato::

Non-Artsy Entry

Do you read this anymore? I've been kept away myself lately: by grad school, visits and illnesses, living overseas and travelling a lot. I'm writing one sort of book, and then I'll be writing another.

How are you?

I know comments are still broken. My webmaster forgot to tell me how to log in. I really only asked once. Email mo.evans over at gmail in the meantime, if you'd like to say hello, or send post to Castle Chester / 34 Marine Pde. / Whitehead, co. Antrim, UK / BT389QN. I tend to write letters.

I've penned plenty of poems while in Ireland, and I'll eventually get around to sorting and posting them. Until then, expect intermittent scribblings, just like the good old days.

Thanks, stranger!

μικρόςσκοπεῖν

This summer I dreamed
and spoke to you in dreams
not really there, leaning towards
the sleeping real you as a seedling
towards a dream sun, that is, the only
one we know of; the spectre of our own
begetting and begot, all we forgot somewhere
in the space between telescope and slide, the one
that holds the cells that write your fate, the light in your
eyes. Too late, I met you. We spoke few words close together
and stitched this lifetime through a dark facade of waiting to see.

Unsent Letters

pour la photographe

[Lunaria]

Do you have your glasses on; do they touch your face and leave
a faint mark, self-portrait as tender as toothbites on the wrist
of someone with whom you only intended to say goodbye?
Does the light glancing off them move towards or away?

[Dracaena]

With the insistence of palm fronds,
I am a smooth, flat, pliant thing, wound up
to such an extent of tension, to such a hard point
that my mind is neither giving nor receiving, neither
space nor substance. My mind is a mould for a tool.

[Palmata]

Some of this dulse bears calciferous patterns, like stone honeycombs; others, neon green nipples, indiscernibly floral or faunal. I lose myself consuming long tatters; I knit them through my teeth and down the gullet, warts and all, wondering how such things let me live off them, as you do � simple, necessary, and redemptive even of the general ambivalence of life.

[Thuja]

The air of forests in the north
is always cold as heavy cloth

laid over the clay of one's own
heart in the cautious studio of time,

to gauge the capacity of the animal
you will become once kilned into

hard imperviousness, then forced
to utter human words that crack

the mask of all your wilderness
into pocketable pieces of lore.

righteousness

in sleep your hand is
warm and heavy, soft across
my breast; just a dream

in wakefulness, when
your hand's a bullet, it could
punch right through my chest

Mirror haiku: two true but opposite images illuminate one subject.

First Words

My mother spoke to me
early; I was swaddled in words.
�Will I? Am I? Do you think�
she said, until I understood these
were questions I was being asked.
I took my mother in soft mouthfuls
emitted to me alone in a room.
I heard my own name and kicked
free of myself like a knitted boot.
My mother spoke to me all the time.
She wept and cast me to the ground
like dice, until fate changed one day
and I not only listened, but heard.
It was summer on the prairies.
Locusts sang, until in their winter
silence, I could ﬁnally speak back.
My mother spoke to me, but it was
long before I understood that
although she was saying �daughter�,
what she meant was �sister�, and
the only one listening was me.

Pre-occupation

In sight of paradise, but out of reach of gods,
we don�t blame the girls, or try to tame their
unkilled wanting, their gazing outwards,

nor stop them when they go to the highway
beneath veils of snow and passage, capes
of thick black hair across their shoulders.

It�s said they never wash their light-thieving hair �
otter-gleam, androgyne, cedar smoke � but instead
pour oil over each other�s scalps, work in ribbons

of warm liquid: oolichan, Oregon grape and larch.
Drawn down by comb and hand, soft ﬁngers of family
migrate bone beneath head skin, shine each strand.

What oils, what answers? Salal, hemlock or spruce?
Their eyes skirt questions and are heavy with unknown
resolution; they�re set upon the highway, while I look

to them, gathering something sweet from the frostbitten
wild. How I long to bury my mouth against their napes
and apologise for the guillotine of our very presence.

Salton

Beneath the big, just-lit sky, the desert. Miles and miles, prickles and stones.
The sun already a hot shock across our cheekbones. It was a dry quiet,
so profound we made love in the open, clothed only by dove call. Near noon
we were packing the tent when he appeared: soft, full, dust-nuzzled gut;
chest like a dried mango. Sunburnt, once-wine, now-coral shorts. Everywhere
scaling skin and tousles of grey sweaty hair. Red face at once swollen and dry,
pebbly white teeth and eyes� his eyes�

�Got two bucks?��I didn�t understand this, there.

His eyes: two blue pools in the desert, sad and clear.

Alice

to rise with the sun
her sleep-hot feet
must hit the ﬂoor
kicking for slippers

her sleep-hot feet
dry as old oranges
kicking for slippers
full of cold stiffness

dry as old oranges
after all these years
full of cold stiffness
as she lights a smoke

after all these years
still thinking of Mac
as she lights a smoke
awake on her tongue

still thinking of Mac
in clouds of her breath
awake on her tongue
outside the screen door

in clouds of her breath
she feeds winter birds
outside the screen door
catches seed in her hand

she feeds winter birds
remembering hunger
catches seed in her hand
to crack with her teeth

remembering hunger
their singing cuts winter
to crack with her teeth
to rise with the sun

]]> NB: a (non-rhymed) pantoum for my great grandmother, who lived in Dauphin, Manitoba.

Spicy Pear Chutney

Golden, thick and intense. Makes about six 250ml jars.

In a heavy pot over medium heat, saut� until golden:

5 Tbs olive oil
1 onion (finely diced)
1 thumb of ginger root (grated)
4 large cloves garlic (minced)
Tbs garam masala (or mixed pie spice)
tsp freshly ground black pepper
tsp chili flakes (or 1/4 tsp cayenne)
1 large bay leaf
1 sprig rosemary

Lower the heat and stir in:

6 pears (diced)
2 green apples (diced)
zest of 1 lemon
zest of 1 orange
cup celery (finely diced)
cup apple cider vinegar
1 tsp salt

At the same time, add 2 cups dried fruits; for example:

.5 cup dried dates (diced)
.5 cup dried apricots (diced)
.5 cup dried cranberries
.5 cup sultana raisins

Simmer partly-covered for 30 minutes, stirring frequently. When all is stewed together, add:

juice of the zested lemon
juice of the zested orange
T Worcestershire sauce

Taste for flavour -- add more spice, vinegar, or a touch of brown sugar if necessary; just cook in for 3 more minutes.

Funnel chutney into metal-top jars. Fill up to the shoulders. Wipe spatters from the rims and close firmly.

Immerse jars in a pot of boiling water for 15 minutes. Remove from the hot water (this is tricky; use tongs), and let jars cool completely before storing.

Fauna

I never even noticed that door
until she walked through it, grace
herself casting earthworm magic
through inscrutable muck.

I'd been stuck for days. My eyes
were caked with mud, mercilessly
rich and fertile, as I twisted lamely
in the root grasp of myrtle.

So that when she appeared,
a cup of warm wine half-ﬁnished
in her hand, the other outstretched
like a kite working the storm

and winning, she passed through
a door I hadn't seen. I was stultiﬁed
and in love. I forgot myself, and her eyes
touched mine as though passing the salt.

So comfortable, so cold. Then she was gone,
and I cannot ﬁnd the door. I recall that she bore
snake bites for bracelets, knives at her knees,
burrs laced in her hair, herself like a key.

]]> NB: Fauna, whose name was taboo, was known by Romans as Bona Dea, was a sort of goddess of empowered female fertility. She was worshipped by lower-class citizens, especially slaves and oppressed women. She is variously the daughter/sister/wife of the god of fertility, Faunus (aka Bacchus). She is understood as a sexual but chaste woman.

Macrobius reports that Faunus tried to force her to have sex with him, and beat her with myrtle twigs when she resisted. He prevailed over her by turning into a serpent and penetrating her in this form. Plutarch explains that Faunus killed her with myrtle rods when he discovered she had been secretly been drinking wine�a pleasure forbidden to women under old Roman law.

By all accounts, Fauna struggles against a male in authority over her, who responds with violence. This injustice symbolized women's oppression to her seceret votaries. No mention of man, myrtle nor wine was permitted in her rites of worship.

Fauna represents the thin line between the wild from the untamed. She brings prophecy through dreams and voices in the wild, and her association with dreams and nightmares again connects to humanity's dark and untamed nature. Read more about Fauna here: http://bit.ly/fauna .

Englishness

We sometimes
ate breakfast for dinner.
We broke fulvous yolks
against puddled beans,
subsumed salty Marmite
with swallows of tea
that my mother had brewed
in an effort to understand
my father�English
by birth and letter;
but long as Canadian
as any of us.

In truth, he had no such
hunger. He'd run away
from home as a boy,
before love of food
could catch up with him,
as his mother had run
from England before him.
Instead, he craved open
space, consoled himself
on sugar sandwiches
and rye�recipes he
would later deny.

To this day, I'm prone
to Scotch and reading
menus carefully. Then,
when the waitress arrives,
I order something other
than what I thought I wanted.

In a Belfast Arcade

I saw a black boy
in deerskin and headdress.
He wore moccasins on his feet,
beads about his brow.

Young and working
for the wild west, he was
hired for his dark skin,
in another's for a while.

This was his break.
Spurred by the moment,
he tread among Saturday strollers.
Shoppers stared at the Indian boy.

How they became him,
his skins, fringes and feathers
like foreign letters for the sacred
or absurd. Magic was bound

to him, however cheaply.
He had no time to lose. He strode
through, easily now, then danced
a conjurer's dance away, smiling.

Action Without Illusion

"Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way:
stop participating in it." -Noam Chomsky

[Hat tip to Poor Mojo's Newswire for the video.]

Apples

I lift each apple
from the tree,
stack my basket
carefully; cart
them indoors.

I watch each apple-
scape for scars,
blow the spiders
from the stars; wrap
them in dry twists --

the paper method of preserving
losses lost, and lusts forgotten:
the over-wintered sugar of fruit.

Selections from a Medbh McGuckian Interview

I'm excited to finally be going to study in Belfast with this person. Interview by Heidi Lynn Staples of The Argoist Online. I think their repartee reads like the love child of a Language poem and Bazooka Joe comic.

HLS: What do you think of the category "woman poet" into which many people place you?

MM: Hate the term. Hate those two words together they are so unwomanly and unpoetic together they cancel each other out. "Poet" I don't like or "woman" or "man" none of these words although I have had to use them. "Female" not much better. "Poetess" actually I like the sound.

...

HLS: I've heard a bit about the escalation of violence of late there and am hoping that you haven't been directly affected.

MM: One always is directly affected but thank you it is quiet again just now...

HLS: Glad to hear you're all right. I apologize for my ignorance about the sort of suffering and struggle you endure.

MM: Look at what you people have endured!

HLS: I can think of many ways you mean that, but could you say more?

MM: Well I mean, just now, New Orleans, then Sept 11 back to the horrible civil war. So many from Vietnam and Korea. Your young sacrificed. How you all are tarred by the Iraq invasion. How hard it is to live freely in freedom.

...

HLS: What�s your writing process like? I'm wondering how often you write; under what circumstances; starting with a word, image or idea; with or without coffee, that sort of thing.

MM : My process. I don't see it as process. Sounds too recipe or technical. I want it or need it. Life gets disordered and choked with not saying to anyone as here only confusion words inadequate as tools of exploration. So, I clinically collect images, thoughts, ideas, series of words -- not single. Over a period. Then when I feel I have enough for a page of poetry. I sort them. I sift and shape. There is a dynamic between my state and the material. I have to be alone but not alone in the building. There are people, my family but not there. It takes an hour or so. Never any food or coffee. Usually night or sunrise if it is beautiful. A desk. A dictionary. For any odd words. It is all up to the dance and play of the words. I just fold them into sentences like puff pastry layers. It is fun. Sad too. The last poem I knew what I had to say but that is rare.