Ariel Gordon's Blog, page 62
June 21, 2012
Wingless females
I wanted a single flower
in a vase
for the party
I sent the girl to cut
the first peony from the volunteer
on our gravel driveway
she hesitated
wanting to use the big scissors
but not sure where to cut
or how to insinuate herself
into the peony’s wet stalks
its outstretched fists
swollen with small red ants
she looked at me
her face a crumpled tissue.
Here. Look. I said.
I took the kitchen shears
from her small hand
dew on my legs, dirty car
still warm at my back
I reached down into the heart
of the shrub
and cut the stalk long
stripping away extra leaves
with practiced impatience
as a smoker would strip plastic
from a fresh pack:
the bathroom
still needed cleaning
inside.
Before going back in
I shook off the dew
and a small brown spider.
Later one of my sisters killed
three ants –
wingless sterile females
called workers –
on the table
and when the party was finished
I saw two ants floating
in the vase
and the peony was as shabby
as the jumbled mass
of factory-made valentines
I’d unearthed that morning
from a drawer,
my daughter’s name
everywhere.[image error]
in a vase
for the party
I sent the girl to cut
the first peony from the volunteer
on our gravel driveway
she hesitated
wanting to use the big scissors
but not sure where to cut
or how to insinuate herself
into the peony’s wet stalks
its outstretched fists
swollen with small red ants
she looked at me
her face a crumpled tissue.
Here. Look. I said.
I took the kitchen shears
from her small hand
dew on my legs, dirty car
still warm at my back
I reached down into the heart
of the shrub
and cut the stalk long
stripping away extra leaves
with practiced impatience
as a smoker would strip plastic
from a fresh pack:
the bathroom
still needed cleaning
inside.
Before going back in
I shook off the dew
and a small brown spider.
Later one of my sisters killed
three ants –
wingless sterile females
called workers –
on the table
and when the party was finished
I saw two ants floating
in the vase
and the peony was as shabby
as the jumbled mass
of factory-made valentines
I’d unearthed that morning
from a drawer,
my daughter’s name
everywhere.[image error]
June 8, 2012
SPORED: Darryl Joel Berger
* * * From Darryl Joel Berger's short fiction "Beulah" in his Punishing Ugly Children (Killick Press, 2010).
* * *
I've been collaborating with visual artist/writer DJ Berger the last few months. Which has been nifty...but our exchange has been strictly one-way: he sends me artworks, I send him poems.
But Darryl's also a writer, so I thought I'd bring his words into our realm, if only by desecrating them with mushrooms.
Working with fiction is different from poetry. Usually I pick something nature-y, or something COMPLETELY non-nature-y, and then play with what the mushrooms cover up. Because some mushrooms rain spores down in profusion and others, depending on their age, do not.
So I can control when I remove the mushroom but largely I wait and see what's what. An evening of pulpy mushrooms-on-paper will usually do it...
Anyways, I was happy to see that this piece was thematically right, given the boulevard volunteers, but also the piece's use of the page (i.e. it was short).
Oh Beulah. Buck up.[image error]
June 7, 2012
Heart attack
for MVR, 1968-2011.
Wormy apple.
Balled fist, fingers going white,
bloody marks on your palm –
suckerpunch.
Meat on a plate,
spoiling.
Fussy dud.
To be disposed of.
Red/blue wires crossed.
House
on fire.
Rotten egg and the hand cupping it
and the arm pitching it.
Bloody handful.
Jack in the box
with a bent lid. Its jaunty tune.
Fine print.
Boy in the closet
with a gun.
[image error]
June 3, 2012
Eggy
* * *
I've also developed a bit of a thing for these mushrooms too. They're hard to photograph - this one, for instance, isn't quite sharp - but there's something so alien about them.
I mean, orange styrofoam turds. On a log.
Toothy
All photos Assiniboine Forest, Wpg, MB. June 3, 2012.* * *Last summer was dry. And there wasn't much snow this winter. So I was worried that this spring there wouldn't be much of anything, mushroom wise.
I've been walking the forest the last few weeks and there's been the odd LBJ but mostly I've been contenting myself with the tree mushrooms that survived from last year...
But this past week, we've had a couple of good days of rain and a couple of hot days too - and the boulevards in my neighbourhood have started to fill with clumps of mushrooms - so I figured that the forest would be filling too.
So, while the girl was at a birthday party, I did the hour loop. Which is all mulch path. And I found my two favourite spring mushrooms. Neither of which I have names for, of course...and my mushroom book is in the car.
But this one reminds me of teeth coming through gums. And the myth of Cadmus and the dragon's teeth.
The other is a bright white pulpy mushroom whose gills are often full of bugs. And it's so big and so exuberant. It's a handful of shaving cream covering your palm or white yeasty dough overflowing a cake pan...and when I see it tells me that the forest is happy. Or at least the mushrooms in the forest.[image error]
June 2, 2012
SPORED: Brenda Schmidt
* * *
From Brenda Schmidt's poem "A Field of Round Bales" in her Grid (Hagios Press, 2012).
* * *
This is the second spore print I've done on a poem of Brenda's. Let's just say that I'm honoured to desecrate her work. With mushrooms.
These ones are from the glorious boulevard mushrooms that have sprouted up this week. I'm off to the forest tomorrow to see what's what but for now, it's been good to see how green - and mushroomy - the neighbourhood has gotten.
