OPEN RELATIONSHIP WITH THE FIRE IN MY
BODY THAT KEEPS ME UP AT NIGHT
I unlearn trust like a sheet
sneaks off a corner of my bed
while my partner sleeps soundly
years ago I covered “Skinny Love”
on the piano and found a growl
deep in my throat as I sang,
then who the hell was I?
The bridge between delusions
of grandeur and self-effacement
isn’t patience or kindness
but something akin to a smolder
that erupts into endorphins
when I feel the edges of a good
mood, when my body flushes
with generous flames,
when I throw a dart into the bull’s
eye, when I hand you a knife
to carve a heart into my thigh
I CAN’T EXTRACT THE DREAM FROM THE POEM
on Buffy Angel murders Ms. Calendar in a dream
I resurrect her into a terrible half-life and decide
to bury my love for her in a poem
I send to some outpost of the Internet
by mail I receive an offer of publication
in an anthology my parents identify as a scam
they worry about me writing about death
I explain the poem’s about trips to the hospital
to see my sister who is suffering from a mysterious
stomach injury which shuts them up
I discover Sylvia Plath who reminds me of my mother
who writes poems and short stories in French
about the Acadian diaspora and islands of wild horses
metaphors for her abandonment and displacement
as a French Moroccan immigrant
she animates errands and chores in English
and French on a communal white board
with doodles of the cat whereas my father
keeps a monthly agenda of serious ink scribbles
and lists with circles and underlines
one day I find chapters of his science fiction novel
on the family computer in a style that feels
very early twentieth-century exploratory Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle with Cold War anxiety set in South America
there’s something about gold and the relationship
between scholarly adventurous men
RUFUS SINGS THE GAY MESSIAH IS COMING
I was wearing a pink Rufus Wainwright
concert T-shirt that said, Better pray for your sins
because the gay messiah is coming
I remember thinking, If I turn out to be gay
this will be funny
Two years later he apologized for date-raping me
to this day he still sometimes posts
that Rufus song on Facebook
I unlearn trust like a sheet
sneaks off a corner of my bed
while my partner sleeps soundly
years ago I covered “Skinny Love”
on the piano and found a growl
deep in my throat as I sang,
then who the hell was I?
The bridge between delusions
of grandeur and self-effacement
isn’t patience or kindness
but something akin to a smolder
that erupts into endorphins
when I feel the edges of a good
mood, when my body flushes
with generous flames,
when I throw a dart into the bull’s
eye, when I hand you a knife
to carve a heart into my thigh
I CAN’T EXTRACT THE DREAM FROM THE POEM
on Buffy Angel murders Ms. Calendar in a dream
I resurrect her into a terrible half-life and decide
to bury my love for her in a poem
I send to some outpost of the Internet
by mail I receive an offer of publication
in an anthology my parents identify as a scam
they worry about me writing about death
I explain the poem’s about trips to the hospital
to see my sister who is suffering from a mysterious
stomach injury which shuts them up
I discover Sylvia Plath who reminds me of my mother
who writes poems and short stories in French
about the Acadian diaspora and islands of wild horses
metaphors for her abandonment and displacement
as a French Moroccan immigrant
she animates errands and chores in English
and French on a communal white board
with doodles of the cat whereas my father
keeps a monthly agenda of serious ink scribbles
and lists with circles and underlines
one day I find chapters of his science fiction novel
on the family computer in a style that feels
very early twentieth-century exploratory Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle with Cold War anxiety set in South America
there’s something about gold and the relationship
between scholarly adventurous men
RUFUS SINGS THE GAY MESSIAH IS COMING
I was wearing a pink Rufus Wainwright
concert T-shirt that said, Better pray for your sins
because the gay messiah is coming
I remember thinking, If I turn out to be gay
this will be funny
Two years later he apologized for date-raping me
to this day he still sometimes posts
that Rufus song on Facebook
Adèle Barclay’s writing has appeared in The Fiddlehead, The Heavy Feather
Review, The Pinch, Fog Machine, The Puritan, PRISM international, and elsewhere. She is the
recipient of the 2016 Lit POP Award for Poetry and the 2016 Walrus Readers’ Choice Award for
Poetry and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her debut poetry
collection, If I Were in a Cage I’d Reach Out for You, (Nightwood, 2016) won the
2017 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Her second collection of poetry, Renaissance
Normcore, is
forthcoming from Nightwood Editions in October 2019.