Casus Belli
The nurses grumble in with saline sacks, pinched metrics, needlepoint faces he prods for a casus belli, turn bumptious backs to his howls; ignored, he summons ghosts, gods, stonewalls his living guests, flipflops and nods yes to cocktails, cigarettes, private yachts not proffered, flinches from a firing squad of light, holds forth. Time-lapsed, lucid, he rots apace, weeps; like an open sore, or apricots. From his bed, oblong squares of gauze unfurl like shitstained kites. He calls for grapes, thrusts, deflects, his intellect a bloated pearl lustrous with malice. Settled in its dust, silted. His arms punctured vellum, unpuffed sails, slack with promise. His surgeon he bests with apt puns; he stymies nous, compels trust and love from richer men who acquiesce to his tall truths, his eyes unspooled as mangled nests. He says The sun has ice cold fangs and I can't. He says it's morning. E-mails he sends come out all moonfaced yellow suns that cry, leer, wear party hats. Chickenshit, false friends. Favours crowd him. The neighbour boy who lends sweat marked banknotes, students, cousins, paid nurse. He types a row of question marks; and bends forth from his lips a skein of English verse. He claws the air. The unseen ship he hails – a hearse.
On the Subject II
Describe the body, if you wish to collect it. Say it could have been no other. Because it could have been and was instead someone five foot six, dimples tits Fernet, mom-patched jeans, ballcap for all occasions, blackbirds on the house, scars finger-thick. Cleavage of skinned treebranch edging her throat, beau soleil. Semi-permanent shiner – because her Atlantic runoff baby greys rolled cloudward, mussel shell. Bouctouche River silt in her sass. Fuck right off, tell me another one. What else you need to know about this one of many women, a shovelful of carbon? Friday night special, how now to distinguish her, our molecule of molecules, ragged shrine on a Dundas West stoop, crossword puzzle waterlogged. Halfcut the flowers tear themselves apart for free. The bereavements die of rain and rain. Because she read true crime and couldn’t sleep, comics, jaundiced leaves of Portnoy’s Complaint. The click of her claws on instagram’s carousel blur, trailing carnival of red. Cheek chipmunked with chickenwing, serious ink blooming on her cream like a neck-down haematoma. Incisor glinting in the barlight. You’d remember that. You’d recognise men’s handiwork all over her body. Remember the afterburn? Dust of any other cinderella. Her shards. Gold tooth on a shop floor, lining a lockdown pocket. Cunts. Judy said you could also mention bowlegged if you were so inclined. Her Chiac-flecked French, Rs that roll forever, skyline-bent – past the bend in river or road, past the horizon of herself, why should a woman? Go on. Her Acadian laugh. (Judy says A whisky in her name.) You miss her, don’t you? As if that meant a thing.
Eva H.D. wrote Rotten Perfect Mouth and The Natural Hustle; also the short film “Jackals & Fireflies.” Her latest film with Charlie is “How To Shoot A Ghost.”
Eva H.D. writes the newsletter holes of beauty in the grit: poetry aloud:
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Nice! The bereavements die of rain and rain.