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.