Forty-five Ottawa poets : Dessa Bayrock : Two poems

folio: Forty-five Ottawa poets

And the bartender

I am slow, and tired,
and coaxing a single beer into myself
over the course of an hour. 

It's that time of week, of night,
when everything takes longer than it ought
and I dully wish I were somewhere else
or that I'd brought a book — damned old Graham Greene,
as dusty and luminescent as the gleam of the bartop. 

But here my hands are empty, useless.
The bartender turns the lights down, and down. 

The Senators score and a man slaps the counter
in triumph, maybe, or else in grief.
He swallows his dregs, he pays, and he leaves.
I used to understand drinking, and I barely understand hockey,
but I’ve never understood strangers — their grief or their awe. 

With the game over, the screen mindlessly reels:
a documentary about the Amazon, a steamship,
the perils of driving against the current,
the perils of trying to film it. It heaves itself forward,
merciless, as progress must be merciless,
carving through sandbanks, through jungle, through bush,
through a man whose body splits cleanly in half,
and I cradle my beer glass as though it is more than it is,
as though it is less. 

And the bartender turns the lights down,
and down.

 

 

 

dessa dips into the water with the molluscs, disappears 

I tried to write you a poem about molluscs and it turned out
like this: river, water, water, river, river, water, water, river
and you get the gist. I put your dog in the poem. I put
myself in the poem too, obviously, I always do, and this time
I put myself beneath the water — fully beneath it, unlike
your dog, who is only partially beneath it. I wrote about
his paws, the puncture of a claw through shell, the gentle
and inexorable crush of a heel against a mussel or a clam.
There’s a metaphor there I don’t like, don’t want. Instead
I am writing this poem, the one where the molluscs remain
whole, unharmed, unpunctured, serene. I write myself into
these creatures, just like I did in the last poem: I grow
molluscs up and over my fingers until my fists become hard
and pearlescent as the river itself. And maybe I become
the river: mussels shingling into my bloodstream, anchored
inexorably, slimed and stubborn. And what happens
next? says the you in my head, now a you in this poem.
I can’t say I know for sure, says the me in this poem.
But the me outside of this poem does know, knows for sure:
river, water, water, river. River, water. Water. River. 

 

 

 

 

What are you working on and through, Dessa?

I am currently and slowly working through a long, Canada Council-funded poetic project responding to the research question: what if we live in a simulation? We surround ourselves with simulations, after all, all the time: movies and soundstages, social media and main character syndrome, daydreams and yearnings and intentions that never come to light but nevertheless feel real. Does life mean less if some of it is fake? Is curation and obfuscation a kind of fakery? Is art? Is emotion? In what ways, large and small, do we shape reality without thinking? The result is a collection that swings from training simulation manuals to Star Trek’s holodeck to the prisoner’s dilemma, always and ever asking: is this real? Does it matter? The poems in this collection provide little direct answer to these questions, but their answer is, nevertheless, and surprisingly, optimistic.

 

  

 

Dessa Bayrock has lived in Ottawa for a decade even though she only intended to stay a single year, because time sneaks up on you and at least the sun shines here in the winter. She was the editor of post ghost press for three years and is currently the prose editor for Arc Poetry Magazine, where she is almost always accepting pitches for essays about poetry. She has published two chapbooks and plays a solid third base in softball.

 

Dessa Bayrock : Ben Robinson and a coffee shop crowded with soldiers

The Cruelty-Free Ivory Tower: a recovering grad student presents tongue-in-cheek semi-academic poetry reviews

Like so many other writers and academics, I used to be a barista. Aside from the fact that I needed the money to live, there was something calming about it, something meditative: steps repeated as faithfully as yoga poses. Cup. Steamed milk. Espresso, tamped, cranked into the machine. You can lose yourself in those small moments. You can turn your brain off; you can feel invisible. It’s a strange feeling, almost like dissociation, made even odder by the hustle and bustle of the coffee shop around you; strangers ordering coffee, yes, but also having spirited discussions, bombing first dates, organizing into study groups, yelling about yoghurt, vomiting, apologizing, and moving around one another in indecipherable, zoo-like patterns. 

In “Democracy Is Just the Name of Another Café,” Ben Robinson somehow manages to capture both parts of this experience: a list of odd observations and uncanny interactions conveyed with absolute calm. A meditation on chaos. We, too, are in this crowded coffee shop, overflowing with strangers and strange occurrences. 

But is it really only a coffee shop? The title of the poem is flippant, maybe: democracy is just the name of another café. Democracy would be a great name for a coffee shop, after all. Extremely hip; a logo something like a simplified coat of arms, two crossed arrows dividing a book, a gavel, a mug, a coffee bean. But what happens when we think of this metaphor as a metaphor? What would democracy — cast-your-ballot, everyone-has-a-voice, try-to-build-a-better-world-together democracy — look like as a coffee shop?

In this poem, Robinson writes it “full of cops / and soldiers in uniform”. He writes it with a parade outside. Democracy, he seems to say, has become a militarized space, and while cops and soldiers celebrate in the streets and coffee shop alike, an unnamed and un-uniformed stranger “vomits at the bus stop”.  

I want to tell this stranger that, more and more, this is how democracy makes me feel, too. Months deep in both a pandemic and the largest civil rights movement of our time, the actions and inactions of our government feel nauseating to the touch. How else to rebel, to refuse, to exorcise? 

And meanwhile this café — this hip, hipster Democracy — continues serving cappuccinos. I imagine the clientele would be much the same as my old coffee shop: businessmen with starched cuffs rolled companionably to the elbows, hot young moms with yoga mats strapped to their backs, students with laptops and headphones that cost more than a full month’s rent. Sure, Democracy has a ramp fitted over the front step for accessibility; it has washrooms large enough to fit a wheelchair; it has multilingual and patient baristas. But who is Democracy serving? 

Like my old coffee shop, I suspect the patrons are largely white, and comfortably employed, and able-bodied. Like my old coffee shop, I’m sure the baristas are thankful that they work at Democracy in this location, and not the sister café location a mere six blocks further downtown — a store we fondly referred to as “the pointy shoe district,” where the customers are richer, and even more uptight, and tip even worse. Because it can always get worse. 

Meanwhile this coffee shop is crowded with soldiers. The other patrons in the coffee shop diminish, become something less than human. “A raccoon buys me a cappuccino,” Robinson narrates, although of course it’s not a raccoon but a person, a man who regales Robinson with “stories of his life / as a young Sandinista” — which is to say, a man who was a member of a socialist political party which ruled Nicaragua in the 80s and 90s. According to Wikipedia, the Sandinista National Liberation Front “instituted a policy of mass literacy, devoted significant resources to health care, and promoted gender equality, but came under international criticism for human rights abuses, mass execution and oppression of indigenous peoples” (np).* This man is no longer a soldier, we gather. He has given up his uniform and become something else. He buys Ben Robinson a cappuccino. Disguised as — or transformed into — a raccoon, he poses no risk to the soldiers, to us, or to Democracy. But here the lesson feels underscored: to trust in those in power is a mistake. It is tempting to overlook the bad in favour of the good, but this spells danger for those unable to escape into the safety of a coffee shop and a good cappuccino.

I can so perfectly imagine sitting in my old café and watching the parade go by. I can feel Ben Robinson leaning over my shoulder and whispering in my ear as we watch thousands of uniformed men pacing as one, their many legs like an unending centipede. “And remember,” Robinson says under his breath, “if it barks like a dog / and has 40,000 unflappable teeth / tread carefully”. It is a good lesson. We would perhaps be wise to remember the sharp teeth hidden in the soft mouths of the soldiers parading outside, their canines sheathed but hungry nonetheless.

But who am I to say that Democracy is an exclusive space? No one walks around policing the students who spent $3 on a drip coffee five hours ago, or the woman who comes in and pours the whole container of milk into her travel mug, or the man who smells horribly of urine. Belonging can be easy, Robinson seems to say, or else safety can be faked; he walks to the carafe of icy, lemon-scented water put out by the employees every morning and pours some into one of the small plastic tumblers stacked beside it. It is the single free beverage available to all, here in Democracy, and you may help yourself even when every other thing on the menu remains tauntingly out of reach. When the soldiers grow bored with the street and enter the coffee shop, Robinson passes this glass to you swiftly. “Quick, take this cup / of water and pour it inside yourself” Robinson says, “or you shall surely die.” 

The soldiers see your mouth meet the rim of the glass and pass over you harmlessly. You are a customer. You are above reproach. 

Democracy, after all, welcomes everyone. 

*“Sandinista National Liberation Front.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 28 July 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandinista_National_Liberation_Front.

Please do not cite Wikipedia in actual academic papers. This is a bad practice and probably shouldn’t even be popularized even in this small way. Love, your friendly neighbourhood PhD candidate. 

Dessa Bayrock lives in Ottawa with two cats and a variety of succulents, one of which occasionally blooms. She used to fold and unfold paper for a living at Library and Archives Canada, and is currently a PhD student in English, where she continues to fold and unfold paper. Her work has appeared in Funicular, PRISM, and Poetry Is Dead, among others, and her work was recently shortlisted for the Metatron Prize for Rising Authors. She is the editor of post ghost press. You can find her, or at least more about her, at dessabayrock.com, or on Twitter at @yodessa.

Dessa Bayrock : Misha Solomon, milk envy, and other riddles of parenting and jealousy

The Cruelty-Free Ivory Tower: a recovering grad student presents tongue-in-cheek semi-academic poetry reviews

For a long time, I disliked children. What, really, is to like about them? They’re tiny people who don’t have their shit together, and don’t know how to get it together, and — worst of all — have almost zero impetus to get it together. They’re loud, scattered, overemotional, and constantly in need of attention. 

And yet: children are also creative, and hilarious, and occasionally fill their little bodies with so much love and surprising tenderness that their capacity for goodness seems impossible, illegal, miraculous. Children, somehow, are the best and worst of us: tiny tornadoes of unrestrained impulsivity, whether for good or ill. 

Misha Solomon’s poem “Milk Envy” perfectly sums up these feelings about children: how irritating and horrible they are, and yet how vital and precious. It’s a fine balance to strike, and one that most poems about children seem to shy away from; it’s hard to write about hatred and make it into a poem about love, and yet Solomon does exactly that. “Milk Envy” is brilliant, honest, and also, frankly, a relief — to witness someone else’s confession that yes, children are truly unlikeable, and that these feelings of annoyance can exist simultaneously with loving them.

Although it’s not explicitly stated, I imagine this poem takes place in a waiting room — the kind of waiting room we’ve all been in, time after time, in which a child just won’t stop crying. “your child is screaming,” Solomon writes, the first line of the first and longest stanza. “he’s not even crying / just screaming / in a vague imitation of sadness”. There are so many things to dislike about this scene, and Solomon dives deeply into what can be uncomfortable or even taboo territory: that children are annoying, and we, the innocent bystanders, are expected to endure it. “your child keeps dropping his numbered tiles,” Solomon writes, in a tone both vicious and bored. “your child can’t seem to put his tiles in order / your child is a fucking idiot / untalented at both art and science”. 

This is where the poem begins to build its complexity; after all, this isn’t just about hating loud children and their half-hearted bad-actor screams for attention, although it is definitely also that, but also about the ways in which this feeling of intense dislike can be shared or transformed — even by parents themselves. “and you / you don’t even seem to like him / all that much” Solomon realizes, addressing the parent in question, seemingly shocked, satisfied, and annoyed by this development. “you look at me and smile sheepishly and roll your eyes in his direction / as if to say: / sorry about my fucking idiot child / he is untalented at art and science / I know / and I hate him for it”. 

For a second, it feels as if this shared hatred will bring these two strangers together — a tender moment of connection at the expense of this annoying kid. The poem could end here, if it wanted to, in this perfect vignette of commiseration. 

But Solomon isn’t done yet; rather than allow the parent the easy escape of commiseration, he spits out another satisfyingly mean take-down of the parent, insulting their “balding husband” and his “slimy cock” which “produced / the worst actor I’ve ever seen” – namely, this screaming child who isn’t even sad, but merely imitating sadness, and doing it badly.

But here comes a surprising shift in tone within the same stanza, before the reader can catch their breath to laugh at the proverbial slimy cock.

“I’ve been fucked too you know / and I’ve fucked”, Solomon says, quieter now, a confession that reads as strangely mournful. “and never have I produced / a child”. 

There is something like a muted pride in these lines, but also somehow a confession of loss, of unsurity, of possibilities which have been avoided or unanswered. never have I produced a child. Is this Solomon’s way of apologizing, condemning, or mourning? It could be any of the above. In many ways, it feels like all three. 

This shift cracks something open in the poem, and here we begin to crest the last loop of the roller coaster, ripping away the facade of Solomon’s judgmental dislike and beginning to show us, the reader, what this scene has perhaps been about from the first. Because this parent does love their child — a depth of emotion that can’t be undone or obscured by sheepish smile or a roll of the eyes. “You hug your screaming, idiot child,” Solomon narrates, which at first reads as a critique but then, perhaps, as a realization. “You hug your screaming, idiot child, / hold him close to your breast, / where he surely suckled you raw, // and my nipples ache with jealous rage.” 

Here, then, finally, is where the riddle unravels: the place where hatred shields love, or else belies love as the other side of a shared coin. The jealous truth hides behind intense dislike, behind pride, behind rage, behind aching nipples, but emerges to be heard: every “screaming, idiot child” has a place on this earth, even if it is not with us. This realization is both a blessing, for those of us who never want to produce children, and a moment of grief, for those whose “nipples ache with jealous rage”. It is a poignant moment, amidst the satisfying meanness and hilarity of Solomon’s diatribe against this horrible actor, this screaming kid in this hypothetical waiting room, and it sits quietly at the end of the poem on its own. The truth revealed, there is nothing more to be said on the matter, and so, too, the poem winds to its finish: “You hold him close, / and exchange smiles, / and I get up and go.”

Dessa Bayrock lives in Ottawa with two cats and a variety of succulents, one of which occasionally blooms. She used to fold and unfold paper for a living at Library and Archives Canada, and is currently a PhD student in English, where she continues to fold and unfold paper. Her work has appeared in Funicular, PRISM, and Poetry Is Dead, among others, and her work was recently shortlisted for the Metatron Prize for Rising Authors. She is the editor of post ghost press. You can find her, or at least more about her, at dessabayrock.com, or on Twitter at @yodessa.