Roxanna Bennett
THE DEVIL'S RITUAL*
Diamond in dendrites and anchors and ashes
and blood growths swell cyclical, smother
skulls the size of teacups, sagging plaid
pockets ripped crinoline "my other other
son" my mother introduced me as. I model
a medication compliant client, I medicate
a client's compliance, I comply with the medical
model that keeps me titrating titrating titrating
to an old man's idea of normal. Will worship
the warder, her codes and level chemicals
a chessboard of privileges that strip, spit
slivers of splints with singed lips, call
diabolical the ritual of clock, cup, check-in –
at the nurse's station, wilting, one violet hyacinth.
* * *
HOUR OF RAT
Hour of Rat
What reason for bearing unbearable
burden of being unloved ugly—
If I had to live like that I'd kill
myself. Fuck love, really. No really,
the way we say love when we mean
can you see me. I don't mourn, I grieve
in increments, between stanzas, between
doses; mourning has a dignity
I can't afford, an allotment of time,
costumes, ritual recitations. Hour
of water, hour of metal, hour of fire,
hour of wood, hour of glass, hour
of rat crouching in the cage of my face
chewing through reasons to wait.
* * *
UNCHASTENED
Needing to eat, I slide soft bullets of Valium
inside myself to slow cysts in the system
that sticks like stones, swans, sycamores,
intent on the inarticulate. Let me here
without apology, isms only matter
outside. Let me be body chastened,
chimerical, flee needing to be named.
Let me be free of all the moments
leading to the moment I wasn't there.
But why not be here on this cat fur covered
secondhand Ikea couch from Craigslist,
birdsong leaking through the window like the dying
battery of a smoke detector, once every 45 seconds
and inaccessible.
Roxanna Bennett gratefully lives on the
traditional territory of the Mississaugas of Scugog Island First
Nations covered by the Upper Canada Treaties (Whitby, Ontario).
She is a disabled poet and the author of The Uncertainty
Principle (Tightrope Books, 2014), unseen
garden (chapbook, knife | fork | book, 2018), ) and
Unmeaningable, forthcoming from Gordon Hill
Press in fall 2019.
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