Truck

Liz Solo

I Will Dance

You will fail

And I will grow wealthy

Your hair will drop out

And I will laugh all day long

Your house will fall into ruins

And I will sunbathe in my garden

Your children will run away and beg to be given to foster families

And I will feed my grand babies crumpets and jam

You will be lonely and friendless and even dogs will avoid your door

And I will flourish and grow flowers

You will choke on your own bloated rage until you pop an artery and keel over

And I will write songs of celebration

You will die and be buried in the dirt where you belong

And I will wear a velvet dress and dance

agnes pratt

my mother has a black eye

they called on the phone

they said there was an accident

they said a bottle of hair conditioner

flew out of someone’s hands

during bath time

and hit her in the eye

they put makeup on it

to try and hide the bruise

but it does no good

the bruise shines through

purple and mean

brown around the edges

my mother is propped up in the bed

her hands are rigid

yet trembling

clasped in front of her

on the royal red bedspread

hands that were once

always working

sketching and making

sculpting and painting

pulling landscapes and faces

on to the blank page

filling emptiness

with secret messages

and flower gardens

and moments captured

in graphite

and watercolour

daily chronicles

in oil and clay

next to the bed

are esther’s lotions

made from newfoundland berries

and essential oils and essences

extracted from native plants

you can smell the forest

the juniper and the moss

the chamomile

it creates a shield

against the cloying stink

of the agnes pratt nursing home

i work rose geranium

and lavender

into her hands

pushing them gently open

her fingers still narrow and fine

her skin

thin as paper

her veins

narrow faded threads

pink and fragile

today her hair is down

she says

when it was being brushed

she looked up

and her mother was there

holding the brush

running it through her hair

i massage the clary sage

onto her forehead

rub her temples

smooth out her worry lines

stroke her cheeks

and wipe the cheap drug store makeup

from underneath her eye

apply a cold cloth

she is looking over

into the other world

she is not sure

it is me who is here

but she knows

i am someone to her

someone close

she starts to tell me stories

and her sentences trail off

but i know that the endings

to most of them

will tell of the bad man

who torments her at night

and the woman

who sabotages her meals

and puts glass in her bed

so that she can’t sleep

heart murmur

the edge is in front of me. the edge of the world. whatever lies beyond is enshrouded in a shifting grey mist that shimmers with mysterious glinting light. i can taste salt. sweat dribbles down my back. there is the sound of the cold ocean churning far below.

you and i stood here many times, on the edge of these cliffs. we’d climb up here along the bluffs, after hours spent exploring the length of the beach. a favorite old pass time. i would pick up white beach rocks when they shone among the round grey ones, collecting them as they led me in a meandering path along the shoreline. white rocks for healing. sometimes I sought black rocks to bind my enemies, or coloured ones to amuse the kids, or rocks with fossils or formations that contained magical symbols.

we walked along many other beaches, too - all those summers when we did long tour runs. before you became old overnight. before you gave up. before you were not there anymore. back when we were still fearless. back when the people would come from miles around to see the shows, and when, on our precious time off, we would follow unknown roads to find out where they led.

we discovered many shorelines to wander over those distant summers. there was a beach where big hunks of lime coloured talc had been strewn, out of place on the grey rocks. there was the beach of only red rocks and one of pure white sand and another with small polished ovals of grey and green. we walked the coastline of the island, exploring every nook and cove and bay.

one afternoon we traveled through three rock cove and lourdes and winterhouse to a rarely run road at the edge of black duck brook and we decided to follow it as far as it would go. we travelled for miles along a headland until reaching the end - the bottom of a steep gravel hill.

there we found an abandoned cove where fishermen sometimes lived during the crab season – a few grimy work gloves hung on lines strung between the bowing shacks. rusted out crab boats listed on the grumbling harbour, and we got out of the car and sat on the rotting wharf and smoked. the beach was a pile of jagged maroon shards and you named the place he cove. driving up out of the deep incline, the wheels skidded in the gravel and we couldn’t gain traction. we feared we might have to spend the night in he cove until finally, haltingly, we lurched up and out and made our getaway into an orange-purple sunset.

isle aux morts, the isle of the dead. margaree. foxes roost. st luniere. griquet. englee. great harbor deep. bear cove. savage cove. cape ray. burnt islands. rose blanche. bay d’espoir, bay despair.

we drove past scores of derelict villages and towns, each with its own church and graveyard still standing, defiantly marking the places where generations had come and gone. we walked among the headstones, looking for clues etched there. we visited the ruins of the viking settlers, their reconstructed grass houses lining the plains by the wide ocean. we searched the flat shale beaches for the ancient fossils preserved there and walked together on the rim of the pre-historic seabed.

that night i dreamed i was a great queen, dressed in gold, set upon a high seat and holding a crystal wand. it had been so real that i felt strangely different about myself the next day. it’s a sign, you said. maybe a past life or a vision to decipher. you said you were sure it was significant and i did not doubt that you were right.

when we saw the rainbow we hopped into the car and decided to follow it, to see where it began, or ended, to see what was really at the end of the rainbow. we drove madly, criss-crossing roads, chasing the rainbow for a half an hour. when we finally found the end we drove underneath it and the colours dissipated above our heads. i looked back and thought i could see the rainbow's edge bathing at the lip of the ocean. we got out of the car and tried to see the colours, to touch them, but only the mist caught the light and made our faces glisten. make a wish you said and i closed my eyes and wished for money.

we walked the shore for hours one afternoon and found a hidden beach where all the stones were in the shape of ragged hearts. a lost beach of distorted stone hearts and that day we devised a magic spell to drive out old hurts and dispel bad things. we casually wandered to our own separate places and i picked up a stone and hurled it into the water. then another and another, eventually filling a dozen knurled rocks with my aches and casting them away. down the beach i could see that you were doing the same.

on the way back up the path to the road a bright red rock stood out in the mud. i picked it up – a small and perfectly heart-shaped stone, symmetrical and light. it had been flung up from the beach away from its misshapen relations. i washed the dirt off in a puddle and it grew soft and pink as the water evaporated from the surface. that one is for you to keep, you said, and i put it in my pocket.

now i am standing in the clouds. seagulls bawl and plunge into the haze, their voices rising in long melancholic wails. i am holding the perfect pink heart and warming it between my hands. I breathe on it and the surface blushes slightly and i know that it was never for me to keep. no thing is for keeping. i open my hands and throw the stone up into the glittery mist and watch it arc and fall out of sight.