the landlady asks if I’m Slavic and I say yes, at least the last name is. And she says Slavic women are the best— at what exactly, I can only guess. But I’m not really. Slavic, I mean. It was my grandfather’s name, my father’s father, and he died when I was six. He was Latvian, rural born, fought in the war, went to England first, and came to Canada for the land. Mostly, I recall that he would walk his fingers across the kitchen table to make me laugh when I was small. The landlady hands me the keys with a secretive smile and a wink as though we’re inextricably linked by some murky trail of shared history. I smile back, even as I realize how little I know of the intricacies of this past— just a vague point on a map, a few handpicked details and this, the passing down of names.
poetry
Children of the Revolution
To you The children of the revolution I offer my deepest sympathy To the bell-bottomed Love-beaded Flower-children Who died on barren fields That oozed socio-political decay When all you wanted was To light your truth-filled pipe To breathe in And watch your own mind Playing with stars To Kodak a Soho thigh And fill a worn out knapsack With the sufferings of a dying world To lose yourself In existential nothingness And make love To the world Under a psychedelic sky What an absurdity That you should forget Where you are And that here Such things Are almost impossible.
This is poem is a sample from Andrea Thompson’s earlier years.
Strip Down and Face Me
Strip Down and Face me Shed all those defences, those misconceptions, those memories that hold you back Those were in the past, we are the present Strip Down and Face me Smudge off all that make-up and lipstick Take off all those expensive threads you wrap yourself around so neatly Peel off any last layer of skin you got on Strip Down and Face me Show me the core of your soul The ideas and beliefs and aspirations you revolve around With a blindfold on, your sight is temporarily disabled Feel my breath on the back of your neck The way the warmth works its way down, making your spine melt, melt into me Hear my secrets gently pouring down your ear Smell my perfume: Dolce & Gabbana Light Blue for Men Ten Thousand kisses have been laid upon you; I’ll try my best to break that record every time With every person I’ve encountered I take away from each experience And in return, I leave behind a piece of me Find me in the grains of time You can find these little pieces and find me, fix me Map out my whole life story Or better yet, why don’t I do it for myself?
The Sun Never Sets
The sun never sets in this city. Light clings to the horizon like a jealous King gripping his crown as he banishes every illegal glimmer, each gratuitous glow. It is a sky radiance raped and bright abandoned; dark, empty, no longer alight. Here, stars are fallen knights imprisoned by street lamps and concrete walls cocooned in expired posters and stale graffiti. There are no sparkling sapphire nights, no constellations to connect the images of childhood dreams birthed on Islands; only a dull orange haze hanging low in the distance and a lot of people who never look up because there’s nothing to see. It is a place where new faces, like mine, go as unnoticed as a misplaced moon.
Revolution
Her love lies listless in the bosom of a bedroom Between dust and dirtied sheets Emptied drawers and lonely, closeted spaces Unwashed windows and the widow woman’s tears Water she now knows the taste of Behind wandering walls, beneath unfamiliar floors Her desire slips silently unseen Around toes, over hands, through words Balancing uneasy on the tip of anxious lips To be swallowed whole and undigested In the middle of the night, it moves Voiceless amongst forgotten names and unwanted numbers Creeping – Creaking under the weight of foreign feet As it is carried across candlelit cityscapes, Scraping concrete against open mouths Clothes slip too easily from her borrowed body His absent sweat stinging memories As her rhythm clings to the sound of moans Hidden in graves dug belly-deep She sleeps to dream its freedom.
House-Sitting/In Joy’s Bed
Months ago we woke snorting up brown and lime green snot We held hands and laughed about it lay beside each other in bed Took turns soaking the sheets with contagious sweat At the bleating horn of the other’s alarm on mornings he or I could have slept in Instead, grabbing at the other before the day tore away to laces undone fumbling down Livingstone Street’s steps Cold feet scalded sweetly on hot water bottles sainted long johns undershorts worn three days in a row piles of clean and dirty laundry on the floor The first night unpacked we lay on the bed looked out the window to ocean cranes The mattress didn’t spring it absorbed our shapes When he and I were in it it was hard to roll around so we pressed legs to legs licked each other like ice cream cones lost hairs in the sheets held on while we drifted off