i never knew what a bloodbath would look like. at first i wasn't entirely convinced i was dreaming. floating up to the surface of the swimming pool, long, wide ribbons of red viscous fluid drifting over my eyes and nose, my hands swirling through the lifeblood of the people that had been swimming there before me. and my children, unconcious, their limp bodies surfacing with me, and me not sure if they are still living, either.

it began as a normal afternoon, me taking my children, and mother, and old highschool friend, shaminder, to an indoor swimming pool. it was almost unbearably crowded. i felt panicked from the start, trying to keep an eye on my kids in seething mass of people. but everything soon took on a very disturbing tone. the light changed from bright, shiny sunlight beaming in on us through the skylights above the water to something sickly. the colour of dying flourescents. the colour of seeping urine. it became night instantaneously. my heart froze in my chest and although the rest of the pool's patrons continued to splash and play, i felt evil coming and knew there was only one way to escape it. i gathered my children to my damp chest, my heart thudding within, and told them to take deep breaths, because we had to hide under the water until whatever evil was coming, had passed. they both looked terrified. i cannot forget the look in their bright blue eyes as i swam down to the bottom of the deep end of the pool with them. we sank. i waited. i tried to convey calm and rationality to them but they quickly became panicked for air. it was heartbreaking, holding them down there as they struggled against me, as they tried to climb up through the suffocation to the surface. but i could look up and see how the water was roiling. i could look up and see body parts flying and sinking and spinning through the pool. great gouts of blood sprayed across my field of vision. i could not imagine what thing it was that had attacked the pool-goers. and soon my children were still in my arms, and soon i had lost conciousness as well.

i came to as we nearly broke the surface. my children would not wake and i shook them and screamed. the gore was painted evenly across the cement landscape that surrounded us. people lay, dead, across every inch of dry surface, and pieces of them floated around us. i screamed and shook my babies and tried to breathe life back into them. they began to stir. their faces were blue and smeared with other people's blood. i cried and cried and tried to pick our way out of the pool without touching too many pieces of corpses. on the stairs lay my friend, shaminder, her face nearly chewed off and her hands missing. she was awake and in shock. "help me," she said, pitifully. "i cannot lift your mother." she motioned to the side of the pool where my mother lay on her stomach. at first i thought she was half in the water because i could not see her legs. then it came to me: i could not see her legs because she no longer had legs. the stumps that once were her thighs were ripped and raw. blood was pumping from arteries into the pool. i did not scream out loud but my mind was reeling and i rushed to her. she did not move when i touched her and spoke to her. shaminder tried to pull herself up to a standing position, but she fell. my children were coughing up pool water tinged pink with the blood of a hundred strangers. i was ready to give up. too many loved ones needed me to save them.

cut to several days later. still there is no understanding on my behalf of what exactly happened at the pool, but all the survivors had been moved into an abandoned high school. i was wandering the halls, looking for the room where my mother and shaminder were being cared for. i found shaminder first. she was reclining on a couch. she would not speak to me. she was angry that i had not forced her to the bottom of the pool with the children and that she had ended up with a mutilated face and no hands as a result. i wept, kneeling at her feet, begging her forgiveness. she would not look at me. i was dead to her. i crawled out of the room on all fours, wishing i could go back in time. in the next room my mother reclined on a sofa. a blanket covered up her lack of legs. she was pale but not angry. i tried to curl up against her but the lack of form beneath the blanket horrified me and i ended up in the same position i had been in with shaminder, on the floor, kneeling. i grasped my mother's hands and poured tears onto it. she did not ignore me. she placed her hand on my head and said that she forgave me for not warning everyone. that it was understandable that i was focused on saving my babies. that she would never blame her loss of limbs on me. that i could not be held responsible for the actions of demons. none of this consoled me. i sobbed until i thought i would throw up.

night time swimming with a whale

be pacific beat specifics cold salt up between your breasts
you float naked in symbiosis with her
great white muzzle great cold nuzzle bumps you up into the air
gooseflesh forms as mother storms
all around you
she could pull you down to be pacific cold salt up between your nostrils
but you're nudged instead by a behemoth head into the sky
a tiny eye as mother blinks
all around you
orchestra to be pacific rushing roar of waves specific cold salt bath floods your eyes
they call her gentle giant: a willing client in the blubber trade
but the nuzzle of her wide rubber muzzle
resignation as mother rages
all around you

we were talking about the distances between things

we were talking about the distances between things:
god and buddha
(next door as the crow flies)
paper and wind
(eleven stories high)
bedsheets and the gloaming
(this remains undetermined)
monet and joey skaggs
(something like ochre and naked rats)


new york and la
(4500 kilometers)
my breath and the stars
(more than a million heartbeats)
your heart and the canadian shield
(eons of evolution)
our voices and electricity
(14 steps to the telephone)
we were talking about the distances between things.

cheshire girl

Ow! The way she strides across an ocean in paralyzing beauty!
The way she digs a thick hip into each of her steps
I’m gonna fall over myself following her.
Woo, mama! Her stunning gaze is a binding contract!
Lids rimmed in dark black coal and languid blinks
I’m ripped apart by her backwards glance.
Shee-it! Look at the way she leans across the sidewalk!
The hollow under her arm is shady, smooth, cool
She’s perfected the art of infatuation.
There! See how the city pauses around her; her body wades
Through a sea of malcontents, a Cheshire Girl
Her grin…oh! The state I’m in.
The state I’m in.
OH.
The state I’m in.

i dreamed last night that i woke up this morning and decided to just drive down to LA for the last day of the gathering.

i got there in a few hours, and it was being held in this big old ramshackle house. it was literally filled with mamas, inside and out, and i couldn't recognize anyone and no one recognized me, until i walked into a sitting room and spotted three mamas eating some food and talking on a couch, and one of them was [info]ubershti! we recognized each other right away and she jumped off her seat and ran up to me and we hugged and started crying, we were so excited to see each other. suddenly, though, she recoiled from me, with her nose wrinkled up, and i realized that my breath smelled really bad! i was mortified and excused myself to the bathroom where i was going to brush my teeth. she had her nostrils pinched shut and was waving me off.

i got to the bathroom and peered into the mirror and opened my mouth. suddenly i remembered that several months beforehand, when i'd been visiting friends on a remote island, i'd developed tooth pain and a pseudo-dentist had given me a pair of dentures to wear so that chewing wouldn't be too painful (and he told me to go see a real dentist as soon as i got back into the city), and i'd forgotten completely that i'd been wearing them this whole time-months and months--without taking them out and cleaning them. so while this big mama party is going on outside the bathroom door, i very slowly and carefully pop the dentures out of my mouth and discover, to my horror, that the inside of them is literally filled with fuzzy black and blue mold, and that my real teeth are all rotting and falling out and my gums are bleeding and oozing pus everywhere. three of my top front-ish teeth are completely gone, and only big deep dark, smelly holes are left. i quickly rinse out the dentures and i have to pry some of the mold out with my fingers, and i slip them back in, but now they feel uncomfortable and make me talk funny. i go through the rest of the party like this, and i can't find ubershti again, anywhere.

tyger tyger

i was stirring soup. the children were climbing on the couch, laughing. i hear keys in the lock and leon opens the front door. "hello, dear," he says, "i brought home something kind of interesting." i hear an odd noise, like a small, deep engine with a little snort at the end and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up immediately. i hold my hands to my breast, and peek my head around the corner to where leon is standing, with a fifteen foot long bengal tiger by his side. its head is the size of jupiter, its yellow eyes roll around to look at me curiously. its huge pink noise wrinkles up and i see teeth; big, long, tawny-coloured teeth, as long as my index finger.

i back away slowly, out towards the diningroom, calling the children to me. but they are too excited, they have seen the tiger. they want to pet it, kiss it, ride it. leon is laughing, and pushing them away gently. the tiger looks hungrily at them and i beg leon to keep the big cat away from them, but he waves his hand at me scornfully, like i am being irrational.

frustrated and frightened and not willing to take responsibility for his recklessness, i storm up the stairs to our bedroom. he calls after me, "i had to bring him home, honey! the zoo closed! they were going to put him to sleep! this is the only way he can live!" i feel heartless and angry at him. how could this tiger's life mean more to him than the safety and sanctity of our family? i slam the bedroom door and curl up under the blankets, the pillows over my head. i don't want to hear the tiger anymore. it's rumbling voice, it's occasionally snarling, all of it, terrifies me.

i wake up in the morning, and leon is fixing breakfast for the children. i ask him where the tiger is, worried it is running free in the backyard. he says he came to his senses and realized it was a bad idea to keep him in our home, and that he went up to the wooded parkland a short distance from our house before dawn, and released him into the trees. i tell him that although his heart is in the right place, he did a stupid thing. the authorities know he adopted the tiger, and if there is an attack on another person or their dog as they walk the wooded trails, we'll be held responsible. he seems unaffected by this news. he doesn't think the tiger is potentially harmful. i wake up worrying.

moth queen

there's something different about the humidity in the forest. in the forest, humidity hovers around you at eye-level, smothering your nose and mouth, filling the air with the dark, dank, sexy smells of mulch and rainforest and mud and puddles seething with breeding mosquitos. the sweet, slightly astringent perfumes from gaultheria shallon and cedar tree fronds hanging down into your eyes; the daisies bobbing along the sides of the almost-overgrown logging road looking so bright and playful but letting off their fecund stench, all of this, filling the damp air. you sweat as you trudge up through the brush. fallen trees litter the ex-road; sometimes you are forced to go over them, and sometimes under, and the whole way the boy is ahead of you. he doesn't notice things like humidity or the beautiful sylvan entropy or mosquito bites. his eyes are on the prize: the glimmering meadow.

it's like the forest spits you out. you skid/tumble down the final stretch of trail and its salmagundi of scents, and there you are, blinking in the sudden and wickedly clear sunlight of the meadow. as far as your eye can see is waist-to-armpit high grass. you rub your eyes, maybe. it looks like the last five miles to avalon would, with the sun beaming down, and the breeze pushing the rushy stalks over on themselves in waves that make the whole landscape look sentient, look like it's breathing. there's no describing this without at least admitting that the wildness of the place, while overwhelmingly beautiful, cradles some intimidating undertones in it's hay-scented reality. what lurks in those grasses? snakes and mice and spiders and wasps' nests, no doubt. here there is no path, no overgrown logging road to simultaneously loathe and feel grateful for. here you must move through the grasses, unguided except by your own nose, which tells you the sea is only over the next rise or two.

the boy has no trepidation. he plunges into the grass, his head nearly disappearing from view in the golden shield it provides, and you have no choice but to follow. the ground is uneven, and you stumble, but still, the breeze, and still, the humidity, this makes it all a tiny paradise. and then, while he is calling out to you from a few yards ahead and to the right, completely unseen, you notice.

with every step each of you takes, a cloud of tiny white moths explodes from the grass, rising up around you and above you like silvery smoke, like glittering diamonds in the sunshine, like feathery flowers startled off their stalks. the boy is still ahead of you, laughing now, his voice becoming more distant, and you can keep track of where he's moving by the clouds of moths bursting up from the ground and fluttering desperately away from the noise and movement you've created. you feel like a lady, a magical lady, as you move through the whispering grass and flickering white air. your cloak is made of tiny, soft, white moths. they rest in your hair. they kiss your cheeks with their wings. they breathe away the humidity from your neck and backs of your knees. they love you, because you are their gentle moth queen.