All That Desire by Betsy Struthers.
Title: All That Desire.
Author: Betsy Struthers.
Genre: Poetry, family, death, romance.
Country: Canada.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 2012.
Summary: Collects works from nine of Besty Struthers' previously published books of poetry, from 1984 until the present, alongside a selection of 15 brand new poems. The bodies that inhabit Struthers' writing cycle through birth, life, and death, families coming together and falling apart.
My rating: 8/10.
♥ The Traveller
She dozes underneath a creaking fan, dreams helicopters thrum, guns stutter, stench of fire. Wakes cramped, stupid with the heat. Horizon dimmed by clouds. Not clouds, smoke of slash-and-burn. Evening sky a scarlet haze. That’s what destruction does, makes beauty from what passes. White blossoms fall. A gentle rain of ashes.
♥ High Five
A tide stronger than reason compels us
together, to part, together.
♥ Barrier Reef
Blind without glasses, she can’t snorkel, lies beached
near the first-aid sign warning of jellyfish stings.
On the radio: hazardous marine life sightings.
He’s under the water, hooked on the lure
of rainbow coral, kaleidoscope fish. She thinks
moray eel, manta ray, shark. She thinks
heat stroke, skin cancer.
The sun is a weight she can’t lift
with coconut oil, straw hat, umbrella. Even
the water is tepid, a salt bath eroding
land. He comes up with the tide
monstrous in mask and flippers, flops
on the sand, gasping. There are not
enough words for such beauty, he says.
She says, They are synonyms for fear.
♥ Baby Blues
This is the comfort of the childless: to lie late
in bed on winter mornings, the wide room full
of gray light, the duvet a nest for naked bodies
that curl, that turn into each other. This
is for breakfast before the fire, good coffee,
croissants, cognac-flavoured jam, the newspaper
in sections on the floor. Long walks in the afternoon
along the river, black water grumbling to itself, tree shadows
pointing out the clarity of snow.
Quiet occurs, pages whisper as they turn,
ice cubes settle in the glass. And the nights,
the nights, let me tell you about the nights,
when our eyes are open and our mouths filled,
knees bent and spread wide, hands gripping
hands in fists of effort. The pelvis thrusts
for the push, we can’t help it, we grunt
out loud, we cry out for jesus, we want it
to stop and last forever, we breathe
heavily and in unison, we mourn when the cock
slips out, so small now, leaving us empty,
out nipples hard, his lips
so tender on this breast.
♥ Running Out of Time
By now she’s organized so many memorials,
news of one more death immediately
evokes pot luck and phone numbers.
The boys she watched dancing
sicken one by one, she notes
their absence at meetings, at parties.
She can at least sing lullabies
to babies born doomed, addicted,
try to pacify their tiny flailing limbs
with love their mothers only kept
for needles. Suffer little children.
The darkness deepens
though she runs and runs,
heart swelling, hands held high
as if in prayer, such naked, useless fists.
♥ Cut Throat
So save your life, your throat is cut.
Four years old: the doctor faints
when the incision is successful. Your
mother is banned from the room
where you play inside a plastic tent,
tube snaking from your neck. You
can see her still, peeking in the door,
you flap your little arms, baby bird
mouth opening and closing. No
sound comes out and no one comes.
She doesn’t come. This is how
you learn to be quiet. This
is how you learn that even love
can keep itself away.
♥ What Remains
At our friend’s funeral we sang for her: dust in the wind.
The lake laps up her ashes, shards of bones. It’s what
she wanted, what we say we want for our remains. Still
her husband stood the longest time at water’s edge (as we
will come to stand) holding on to all that’s left of her
in his cupped palms. And nowhere firm to kneel.
♥ Leave it unsaid
As for dating boys, I mixed up four-letter words,
lust/love, the one a bridle on the other. Until
we met. Between us no ellipsis: walk
led to touch, breath to kiss.
♥ In God’s Country
..to the silvered lake, its rocks, bulrushes, glow
of neighbours’ porches, oil lamp in our cottage,
and us, here
watching the meteors shower, all our senses in the open
on alert, as a nipple rises to the lightest finger
touch
heavens blaze and our bodies find abandon,
we say god, god, god, and never once
in vain.