Wednesday, August 4, 2021

Liam Siemens : Two poems

 

 

 

 

Find a Family

 

Ottessa Moshfegh was my therapist
the summer I wanted fame

She looked at me like a dullard,
pulled cockroaches out of her incisors,

“You think you know something,”
she said, “you don’t know anything at all”

I held my ground and twiddled my thumbs
but she looked unimpressed, might have

imagined my suffocation, one
stiletto on my throat, two burgers in hand.

Her first instruction was self-immolation
by the beachside

She gathered twigs and almond oil and
looked bored while she loaded a hotdog

with all the relish she could muster,
ketchup and pig fat on her lips while I completed my pyre

“This is what I should do?” I asked
“When will you learn?” she countered

I took this as gospel and meditated
in a squat, lit the match

until it was all fire for a good second,
a good minute, bikram hot, dribbling,

but she hosed me down with an extinguisher,
and shook her head with a scowl

“You’re a fucking idiot,” she said
“Is that good?” I asked.

She was slow to show her emotions
but I knew she was happy

when I wore my bomber hat
and showed up crying

at her paper-scattered loft
on the city’s dead outskirts

she gave me two pill bottles
to eat while I stared at

ancient statues alone, finally said
“maybe we’re getting somewhere”

For three days I wandered the city
with cocktails and cigarettes

until I was shirtless
and sinking into the pavement

There were signs everywhere
that only some people understood

shirts said words that weren’t
in the dictionary, and god,

if you’d weighed all that flesh,
performed ten million brain scans

maybe you’d understand the future
I didn’t even remember my name

Ottessa was pleased, but she’d eaten
a lot of aspirin that day

She showed me a new reality TV show
where people starved themselves

to the edge of their final death
while we had something to eat.

Where was it all going?
My eyes were popping out

on their little flesh strings,
my lower back was ninety years

old, at least, cancer was on its way and
every capillary was stuffed and exhausted,

even my internal monologue sounded
like some lobotomized aristocrat

Ottessa would probably be dead
in a few decades, wouldn’t she?

Anyone with a shock of pulse remaining
would know it was time for a change

I backed away from the busted
direction, made eye-contact

with stones, slipped out of my shoes,
put on a hood, took it off, made a garland

of pines and wore it like a fragrant noose,
and when Ottessa turned

the corner with blood make-up I turned away,
put an image of myself

over a ceramic over a hood
covering my face and walked with abandon.

Where do you end up when you reject the rejector?
Me, finally falling in a field, my face-pot cracking open,

my eyes dazzling and dilating in a grassy meadow
and there, over there in a broken line, writers

that drank tea with yuzu oil, blue flowers,
some were trying on and taking off their masks,

and I watched them for a while,
and I imitated them for a while,

and then we just sat there, together,
taking turns doing this and that,

something was opening, Ottessa
was becoming one of many.

 

 

 

I Thought I Saw Joaquin Phoenix

  

I thought I saw him

he was on the sidewalk 

his eyes were squinted

you know what I mean

it was Joaquin Phoenix.

 

Joaquin Phoenix,

I wanted to say, 

Maybe it will be okay

Maybe the oceans will sink 

Yellowstone might be a dud

Trees will grow like mega-churches 

And with that I took him in for a hug,

his musty paranoid smell and knotty muscles 

Thank you, he said. I’m Joaquin Phoenix.

 

I was at a yoga session 

sprung out in down dog,

neck softening, legs lengthening, 

when I thought I saw Sappho

She wasn’t very good at yoga. 

 

Her best pose was child’s pose

Wait, I thought, child’s pose? 

I was so distracted that the teacher

came over to my mat as my mother. Stop  

focusing on Sappho’s practice and

get a move on, she said. What? 

I asked, waking up.

  

It’s time for a transformation, someone said

What? I asked 

You heard me

I looked around the room 

but couldn’t see anyone;

This made the pronouncement seem true 

I packed my bags and walked into the ocean

It was cold, and I needed to dry off, 

and I didn’t know if I’d learned what I was supposed to,

so I climbed to the top of a very tall and windy tree.

  

Of course it was nostalgic

It couldn’t have been incidental 

that a beam of light was parting the clouds &

lighting up on my forehead, but I wasn't sure 

what it was supposed to mean.

 

I walked home 

depressed &

found a woman 

with a crown

and goth boots 

& a tattoo of a

heart on her foot 

sitting on my couch.

I can see you now, I said 

I was hiding on your couch the whole time, you idiot, she said.

 

How do you respond to that? 

 

I didn’t. Instead I applied

for a gameshow and travelled to L.A. 

Soon I was sitting in the contestants

chair and — I couldn’t believe it — 

Joaquin was standing on the stage with ribbons

all over his dress clothes. Swipe right and I’m yours, 

he said, smiling shyly, but adorably, batting

his eyelashes just a smidge. 

 

He must have known I would swipe right,

but he was wrong. 

 

I saw others behind him

and I was feeling choosy, 

and I’m nothing if not curious.

 

Is that Bill Murray? 

No, it was Christopher Walken.

 

Is that Sinead O’Connor? 

No, an imitator.

 

I kept swiping left, 

dropping one sad start after another,

until the audience started to grow electric cords 

and turn on me.

 

I ran to grab whatever I could, 

but all that was left was one pencil,

and Joaquin, laying on the burning floor.

  

Help me, he said. Please.

The audience was turning into a frenzy 

Twelve year-old girls were kicking up Starbucks cups &

rating the noses of celebrities. Men were clipping their toe nails & 

screaming at everyone who told them to stop what they were doing.

 

Please help me, he said, as a group 

of hip kids locked him in a cage

 

He stared at me, helplessly, lugubriously, 

while he was carried away for selfies.

 

Write about me, he mouthed, crying, 

Write about me with that pencil.

 

I turned away emotionally  

and walked all the way home,

making sense of one more day, 

and I wrote it all down.

 

 

 

Liam Siemens is a writer from Saskatoon. Find his work at the Literary Review of Canada, SAD Mag, VICE, and elsewhere. If not there, here.