The ceiling dissolves into sky,
sun reflected in the frozen basement.

An unboiled kettle,
a bird’s nest,
a door handle,
a closet full of shirts.

The tree presses itself close enough to the window
for the branches to pass through the glass.

(From a writing/dance/film project I’m working on in Saskatchewan…

And more on this haunting house published in the newest edition of The Lampeter Review.)

(From a writing/dance/film project I’m working on in Saskatchewan…)

I am afraid of the coyotes
and deer I was warned about while I tied
double knots in my boot laces,
so I leave the screen door closed,
and avoid the basement steps.

Instead, I lean close to the storm windows
that have not broken,
close enough for my reflection to disappear,
a kitchen surfacing –
an emptied, open dishwasher,
and emptied, open cupboards,
a tangle of grass and mud and twigs
over the sink.

I used to be able to hear a car a quarter of a mile away, across the grid road, or a train passing through, two miles away at the highway, but I listen less now, and find myself surprised when a car pulls into the driveway.

(From a writing/dance/film project I’m working on in Saskatchewan…)

AAAAND, we made the Yorkton paper. Read the article here!

I really and truly can’t get enough of these prairie skies. Here, I can see further than my eyes can make sense of.

It is the simplest province to look at,
its borders straight and nearly parallel,
scattered with lake blue
and the thick lines of highways.
They say there’s a road every mile in Saskatchewan.

If you travel west for long enough, Highway 10 hits the TransCanada,
and to the east it stretches into Manitoba, the flatter of the two provinces,
We take 10 in from town,
turning left onto the grid road,
a gravel stretch with deep ditches on both sides,
until the road lilts upwards,
and the barn speaks red at the end of the long driveway,
the house patient and grey
at the very end.

(From a writing/dance/film project I’m working on in Saskatchewan…)

Shannon’s written more about the project (and performance!) here.

~

I’ve also been trading poems daily with the ever-inspiring Rhya, something we spent years doing. There’s something about reading new, new words, and someone else’s words that reframes my own writing. I’ve spent so long working on a novel manuscript, I was afraid the poetry lens would have disappeared forever, but it’s returning, slowly, slowly…

created by Lisa Solomon ~ doily body : brain, 2006, colored pencil and embroidery on duralar, 12 x 9 inches

It is the colour of the inside of
an eyelid
when eyes are closed
and lights are loud,
this knot of red that shifts left
against
careful circling ribs.

It is an uneven fist that opens and closes
and opens and closes,
two questions,
two answers,
more questions,
more answers.

created by Lisa Solomon ~ doily body : lungs, 2006, colored pencil and embroidery on duralar, 12 x 9 inches

Years ago,
her doctor drew
an upside down tree,
the trunk tracing her throat
then spreading
wide into branches dividing into smaller
branches and smaller
branches,
until they are too small to
split,
and the tips where the leaves would grow
curling in on themselves, refusing,
until the muscles between her ribs ache
and the space between her collar bones
hollows.

created by Lisa Solomon ~ doily body : brain, 2006, colored pencil and embroidery on duralar, 12 x 9 inches

She has only ever seen
a pencil-drawn brain,
an illustration from her old
lifeguarding manual,
with a clot the size of a thumbnail
lodged
like an unlucky penny
where the memory of that July afternoon
on the edge of the lake
used to be.

[All images used with permission from the extraordinary and gracious artist Lisa Solomon, poems written by Lindsay Zier-Vogel]

Untangling concession roads
from three o’clock shadows,
where the snow is up past my knees and drifting,
the edges of the afternoon
are sharper than
a quick breath in,
the blue and white
and leftover.

Once upon a time, when my dad and I drove across the country, we stopped off somewhere in Manitoba where the sky was enormous and there was a really old cemetery that I didn’t want to leave. He found one that reminded him of that cemetery out near where he lives – northeast of Toronto – and we drove out there, armed with cameras (and knitting)…