In the days before
seatbelts we came to a bridge
through a fine, dark
rain. You held the baby on your lap,
as mothers did then,
nearly crushing her as we swerved
into the guardrail then
hung there over the river, swollen
and waiting for us to
fall. Which is when fate first held
and loved me. Just three,
I’d flown through the gap
in the bucket seats and
bruised my temple on the dash.
Your shins were gashed,
and a familiar tool shed smell
blossomed to mix with rye
fumes steaming from his skin
and leather jacket. A
smell I did not, then, identify as blood.
In the hush of rain still
falling onto the back
of our shiny black bug, its
wings folded, oncoming lights
found cracks in the
windshield. And soon, the reassuring
scream of sirens. Beyond
that, the other side of the bridge,
a blurred and swaying
expanse of years I would find hard to navigate.
Ash
It was put to me one time
that to every story there
are two sides.
It takes two to tango and
so on.
Sure, she had that filthy
habit.
She chain-smoked Rothmans
by the window for
thirteen years,
got stoned on Triavil, a
little something
from Dr. Wilson for the
nerves.
But no, as I recall,
it was he who came home
drunk
each night and struck
a match, burned down all
our days
with us inside them.
Now listen up all you
A-holes
who couldn’t make it with
the missus,
who ran off, got down on
your luck, did time,
came crawling back, begged
forgiveness
then did it all over
again.
Fuck you for singing your
suck-ass songs
up and down my childhood
hall.
For the nap he’d take after
on the couch,
going down like the
winter sun as the last twang faded
and the hurt bars of silence
clanked shut.
Holding us all prisoner
till black-windowed dark
and supper.
The hours he dreamed of
horses with two heads
or being dragged through
a forest
by the feet
and who knows what other
horrors
he could never tell
anyone about.
Deanna Young is the author of
two books of poems, The Still Before a Storm (Moonstone Press) and Drunkard’s Path (Gaspereau Press), with a third
forthcoming from Brick Books in the fall of 2014. In 2013 she won the PRISM international Poetry Contest. She lives
in Ottawa, Ontario, where she is artistic co-director of the Tree Reading
Series. “Black Bug” was previously published in Arc magazine; “Country Music” at Ottawater.com.
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