by Justin Robinson
i am left collecting bones
jackknifed big rig leaking fuel. whiffs of decomposition. with two
gloved hands i pull up the cat,
out from its plastic graveyard. i can almost hear
the purr of its last breath. the yowls and spittle. he could’ve been
the world’s fiercest chorister.
i make maps out of muscle, pin notes to a muted heart. all winter,
i’ve wandered these leathery streets
waiting to be touched, again. you smoke
cigarettes in the doorway. i use a scalpel to open up skin.
pliers to pull me back to god. i don’t understand
the reason a cervix can only hold back water, holy,
for so long, but when our son stares out the window,
whispering to himself, i wonder how to explain
that i’ve outlived my usefulness.
there will never be another brother. grief is a sin.
you bury my books in the yard.
i am left collecting bones.
Outside/r
I walk the shore today searching for something dead, something soft & easy
to sink into, a wave, a hole, a sea cave would be nice. But there is only
the fleas, your tears, my legs, knee deep in waste. I know
what it is like to be separated from water.
It is easy to love the son, born winged as a sawed-off body. But the daughter?
Long limbs, dark words. Like me. The daughter pleads for a different/mother.
I am an animal readied for slaughter. She turns away like a hallelujah
forced off the lips.
What happens to a photo forgotten on a counter? Have you ever seen a house –
wiped clean of its own history. Depression. My quiet undoing. They used to
sterilize people like us, broken. I don’t want to be anyone’s savior.
When you leave, I rearrange the furniture.
Broken, Do Not Use
So many powers within me are tied to a stake,
which might possibly grow into a green tree. Kafka
Dear God, how does a self-unwind? Before the care, control,
the naming of children, I am a girl with blue Ditto jeans,
yearning for recognition. Clear, clean, new, my body is a
sacrament to the act of becoming sacred. Never mind her
rape as an excuse, or grandma’s suicide, Mother says “only
certain kinds of daughters are worthy.” Those that get out
early, confidently ascend into holy/submission. Over & over
the boys fight, but the girls, oh, the girls, they bloom. At 15,
I tire of pure intentions. What kind of sacrament are we if we
limit the types of bodies that can access our sacred spaces?
Prayers don’t work. Mother talks to me about suffering. God
has lost his bargaining power. When I tell her about the hands,
warm/soft, caressing smooth/pink, how I am reborn in her, there
is a fracture/sharp as a wishbone/snapping. She doesn’t mother
well, under duress. I climb out the window in search of a new church.
My Body. Your Body. Your Arms. My Arms. Your Mouth. My Mouth.
I worship the mountains & valleys of you, a landscape of skin, only
to be subsumed by a brisk wind blowing from the east, shredding &
damning our inheritance. I spend my nights trying to reimagine a
feminine face of God. Wake in absence trying to raise the dead.
Sheree La Puma is an award-winning writer whose personal essays, fiction, and poetry have appeared in or are forthcoming in The American Journal of Poetry, WSQ: Feminist Press, Chiron Review, Juxtaprose, The Rumpus, Plainsongs, Into The Void, and I-70 Review, among others. She has a micro-chapbook, The Politics of Love, due out in August and a chapbook, Broken: Do Not Use, due out in Fall. She received an MFA in Writing from California Institute of the Arts and taught poetry to former gang members.
After questing across Canada, for the last four years Justin Robinson has settled in Toronto to focus on creating Expressionist Art; through Portraiture, nature, figure drawing, and ‘the living moment’/Narrative Expressionism. With a special interest in exploring atmosphere and the human condition, often the subject material is vastly different from the next and flows from a creative-intuitive perspective. Realized in the form of rich tonal values, color, and brush strokes, the works share a quality between abstract-emotionalism and a structure provided by realism. Former student of; Kwalikum Secondary Schools Art Program, School Creative – Institute of the Arts, and currently a student of London Art College.