behind us the ocean

I have been terribly remiss in not posting this a long time ago. As many of you are aware I am a huge fan of the poetry of Katia Grubisic. The fact that she is a dear, dear friend is a huge bonus but it doesn't alter the fact that I am blown away by her poetic voice.
This is, as far as I know, the second of her poems to be featured on the Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate's website - It's been there for about a year and I've been meaning to post a link to it for about a year, but my good-intention-paved-road is well worn. Anyway, read and enjoy.


Behind Us the Ocean
by Katia Grubisic

Imagine arms you never want to get out of; imagine
a road that rises up to meet you and knows
exactly where you’re set to

before it comes. At the start of the highway, behind us the cliff
and the ocean’s creeping furor,
we photographed the mile marker of atlassed places.

Cardiff or Liverpool? you asked. On the sign the mermaid
laughed and we could not help
but follow. Now I can smell you

coming back, the trace in the shirt I wrap around
each same wavering time of night.
Is it a ploy to keep me

going? Meanwhile we never visited the local saint;
he still waits in his cave to slap us upside the head, wise
guy witness to my misplaced faith in a letter

posted from the mouth
of the river. I'll just put man in a car
possibly with troubled eyes, somewhere

between Cardiff and Liverpool. It is night I'll put
and they’ll find you. Would you believe
that, meticulously, fate would have someone else

at that junction, bizarrely suntanned arms
typing in the darkness? There is a typewriter
at the corner and I have been looking.

I can smell thunder beginning. You were there
when I dervished slow-mo in my wedding dress;
you saw me iridescent

like a street in the rain’s silence. Again the mermaid laughs;
we are drowning in it, her upside-down peals of lightning
and thunder that pass, but only diffusely,

into a misspelled late-nite coffee shop someplace
in the southwest. Where for?
Make your car comfortable, I say, take another

notion. Outside it is written
bikers welcome. Nope, we’re here
for the diffusion. I wouldn't worry too much; I accept as true

all kinds of things I shouldn't, you say. When I leave
I take the still-white sheet from the typewriter,
with its carbon and square familiar letters;

I take it all. Off we wander
across our respective suspension bridge
sat opposite ends of the world. Light stabs

through. Our shadows together on the rock face
indicate we are with each other. We are trespassing.
We have not decided for certain. Will we

recognise ourselves? Wear a fake yellow rose,
a mink stole. I will know you. The letters blow off, catch fire
on the way and one more time

the mermaid laughs. The storm has started, I type.
Possibly stormless, I put; in need of wrack
and calm, and you’ll be found. It has started. Enjoy your storm.

________________________________________
© Katia Grubisic.

Love Song for the End of the World

This is a poem that has been posted on the Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate's website as one of the poems of the week this week. I'm especially interested in it as it was written by a friend of mine. I can't say I necessarily agree with some of her philosophical views on grace but I think she is a wonderful poet who can write no wrong. And so I give you Love Song for the End of the World by Katia Grubisic.

Love Song for the End of the World
by Katia Grubisic

Don’t worry — this is a poem
entirely without grace. Instead we will conceive
together of the possible ways
to end the world. Since we have managed
to make even fission
banal, let me design something like
scorpions, like vociferating recklessly
into a sandstorm, or like the sudden discovery
that a mole on your hip is a
detonator. Let us have
all of our hands and fingers cut off, be disfigured
by acid and thrown into a pigpen
in the manner of just so many concubines;
let us be the victims of the flailing
of our limbs against our own limbs,
until we tire of the carnage and walk away.
Let us die of mange, of blues guitar, of very bad puns—
whatever I come up with will never be worse
or more spectacular than the dark,
where our bodies should be left at angles—graceless,
though with some perspective
the whole pile of us could be read
like tea leaves in an inverted china cup.

If I dreamed your death
it would be in a great wind (nothing
like what you have feared)
and you would swing out like a crane
over the world, grow a skin of feathers and go
to ashes—
________________________________________

© Katia Grubisic. Unpublished poem