Monday, March 23, 2026

Forty-five Ottawa poets : Michelle Desbarats : Two poems

folio : Forty-five Ottawa poets

 

 

Untitled

My sister sends me
a photo
of her cat on
a rug beside her home's
fireplace
and a photo
of her Christmas tree
all decorated for this year.
She has some of
our mom's Christmas
ornaments.
That we saw
while we were growing up.
That I saw
in the years before
my heart was broken.
There are two,
a small mostly paper angel
who seems to hover
above a tiny succinct
and bristled wreath for
the size of a door.
And now I remember
that a dream
has a door.
And now I remember
the size of that door.

 

 

Fisher-Price Sets
 

The universe has
given me a new
Fisher-Price boyfriend set. 

The benevolence of the
universe to realize
I still need to play with 

what could hurt me.
The new set, so like the
old set; now I know 

I'm not ready, when
I'm ready, the corners
will be sharper, 

the words will mean
what they say. But now
it's just Fisher-Price set. 

The tears, little plastic
drops that can also
only be rain.

 

 

 

I am working on several manuscripts including one for publication as a chapbook. There are writers who have shown me, since from when I was a child, that there are times when, upon opening a book’s cover, one discovers one is opening a gate. To a place. That, to me, is incredible and inspirational.

 

 

 

 

Michelle Desbarats is the author of Last Child to Come Inside, book of poetry, Carleton University Press and McGill-Queen’s University Press, and Eve’n Adam, chapbook, above/ground Press. Her work appears also in anthologies.


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