My Ariel
Sina Queyras
Coach House Books, Toronto
copyright © Sina Queyras, 2017
first edition
Published with the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Coach House Books also acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit.
Please note: these poems offer an engagement with the life and work of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes; they do not claim to be the truth of their lives, only the truth of my own engagement.
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Queyras, Sina, 1963-, author
My Ariel / Sina Queyras.
Poems.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-55245-354-4 (softcover).-- ISBN 978-1-55245-360-5 (hardcover).
I. Title.
PS8583.U3414M9 2017 C811′.6 C2017-905074-5
My Ariel is available as an ebook: ISBN 978 1 77056 533 3 (EPUB), ISBN 978 1 77056 533 3 (PDF)
Purchase of the print version of this book entitles you to a free digital copy. To claim your ebook of this title, please email [email protected] with proof of purchase. (Coach House Books reserves the right to terminate the free digital download offer at any time.)
I once knew a lady from Mass.
Who was sometimes a pain in the ass.
Every damn comma
Was really high drama
But she was quite a talented lass.
– Roz Chast
Look at your works, you asshole, and despair.
–Damian Rogers
All the Dainty Broads
Morning Song
A love procedure set me going like a big fat lie.
An IT specialist slapped a motherboard
And my first bald Tweet slid into the feed.
All night Instagrams and updates Flickr
In pixellated dreams. I wake to a beep, stumble
Out in my men’s nightshirt and stare, blank as a gull,
Into the liquid crystal display.
Am I any more authentic than the account
That Tweets your verse?
Or the cloud that archives your words?
Or the screen on which your poems float?
Dickinson says to fill a gap, insert the thing that caused it.
What thing? This sleek app that brightens
And swallows my thoughts? These two moons
That fill my palms and eat my hours?
Vowels rise and hover like drones.
What is missing in me? Refresh. Refresh.
I can’t stop searching for love here.
The Couriers
Words from a leaf on the shell of a snail?
Tenderness as reciprocity etched in shale.
Communion wafers wrapped in sealskin?
Accept it, so little is genuine.
A box on a meteor compelled by earth?
Lies, emptiness, and grief: do your worst.
Frost on the dock at Penetanguishene?
Tears from lakes Huron, Erie, and Michigan.
Not a moment to yourself? Spread the cards,
Tarot will help.
A preponderance of biographers?
The soft one sucks her rivers.
RTS, RTS, RTS have their reason.
Affirmation, affirmation, affirmation is the season.
Women in Fog
Labels descend into blankness.
Avatars are never sad
And rarely disappoint.
Tweets leave their trail of
Exhaustion; potential
Cantors grey and slow
As mules. She would like
Suits with bells and sweet,
Whimsical Fluevog feet.
She opened the window
And bid her walk into
Optimism. Do not lie
About love, do not
Make these difficult
Waters a heavenly blur!
They led each other
To the screen, spread
The rim, and dove.
The Jailer
Feelings
