Buoyancy Control Read online

  I can shift molecules, sever cells. I can bully

  the strain in your calves to collapse. Stop examining

  your sunned chest, the coils of dark hair.

  Stop wiping the sweat from your brow.

  Stars fixate on blackened water. Nails dig

  scabs of mosquito scarring. Meanwhile, you exist,

  unaware that I have never found you

  more beautiful. Spark-plugged limbs

  meat of dry mouth. The past is an undertow;

  we do not know how we got here.

  Your simple bum, tight in train-conductor trunks.

  The strain of this balancing act, each of us

  worthy of that beauty somehow.

  Flash Flood

  The pizza comes in triangles.

  Each wedge with minced garlic and olives.

  We sprawl the bed in holey underwear.

  Cheese strings stretch from our lips.

  Unabashedly human.

  The bath fills with untamed fluid.

  Razor in one hand.

  Frothy brush in the other.

  He lingers.

  Coarse ringlets wash up against inlet groin.

  High tide weeps.

  Sweeps dead things to shore.

  Roll my body over.

  Note the rise of my bum

  The camber of back.

  Splash of awkward shape.

  Towel dry my delicates.

  The bed stains with the cleanest skin.

  I sink deep and dark and bloated with heat.

  His face between my limbs.

  Performed burial.

  Strength steams in when least expected.

  Water surges down my thighs.

  I let my breath out for the first time.

  Mimic

  The Indonesian mimic octopus, Thaumoctopus mimicus, is a species of octopus that has a strong ability to mimic other creatures. It grows up to 60 cm (2 feet) in length. Its normal colouring consists of brown and white stripes or spots. Living in the tropical seas of Southeast Asia, it was not discovered officially until 1998, off the coast of Sulawesi. The octopus mimics the physical likeness and movements of more than fifteen different species, including sea snakes, lionfish, flatfish, brittle stars, giant crabs, sea shells, stingrays, flounders, jellyfish, sea anemones, and mantis shrimp. It accomplishes this by contorting its body and arms, and changing colour.

  —Wikipedia, 2010

  Circus

  In a house of mirrors a zebra-streaked mollusk stretches like the Big Top.

  All the children flock to your stripes, desire candy floss, the trapeze man. Carnies step aside, their gritty lungs cough obscenities as all the women gather to watch you change shape before their eyes. Waving two arms like white flags you whisk along the silted bottom. Flirt with the damselfish in distress. All eight of your arms meant for lovemaking.

  The Freak Show

  I regenerate lost limbs.

  Actual or metaphorical, amputate

  myself—take what you will;

  what’s left behind

  will grow another animal.

  I carry an invisible set of spikes

  along my spine. Hard-caked

  calluses on my underside.

  A retractable heart. I’ll leave

  an appendage behind if need be.

  I’ve got resources.

  I’m just saying.

  The Sideshow

  Watching you on the patio

  drill holes into our bed frame,

  tentacles wrap around the windowsill

  suction onto glass, my beak

  bone-hard. You stain two-by-fours, curse

  the bruise of rain clouds. My true form threatens

  to betray. Cluster of fishhooks

  suckle the imitation flesh out of me. I bang

  into foreign objects, barriers, a landfill

  of your objections and desires.

  The After Show

  We drag the futon mattress into the living room

  and I read to you. Peace at Last, the book

  my mother used to read at bedtime.

  I do the voices,

  then agitate the duvet and hide beneath it.

  You’ve become fluent

  in sleep. No buzzing fan or growl

  of restless cats to burden you.

  I am flattened stiff in our bed.

  Thick cartilage of vigil.

  Fighting Preservation is Harlequin

  hours past dawn and I fake sleep lack-lustre avoidance

  of your morning rigamarole tongue on tongue

  water to fuse my lungs

  a placenta stuck to the wall of the sea

  stiff flecked polyp

  the hollow heart in

  disguise

  sticky pickle jar of ocean my love

  harpooned sweet and oozing my cavity

  is your cavity darling

  this body we share curved moon sickle

  tenuous space that dissipates

  this melancholy

  stench of longing

  you and I planting roots

  stake into ground

  how Darwinian of us

  how we attach is umbilical

  tentacle

  our skins uncovering

  I’ll buy the eggs and milk you wheel the suitcase

  full of dirty laundry down the street

  We Are Considered Complete on Our Own

  In spite of the temptation to perform a disappearing act

  or use your eight arms

  to impersonate Jesus, the show must go on. There is no

  slamming door temper-tantrum defeat

  no climbing down from the balcony after a

  pseudo-romanticized declaration

  of love. Our apartment stands solid

  in its crumbled foundation,

  sprinkle of decay, stain and lacquer. Cubed rooms

  with our belongings. Smatter

  of tiny water balloons explode on showering bodies,

  race down backs like bile. We slip under—

  mass of greedy pincers. We move lazily—

  the drippings of pancake batter.

  Take inventory: the jaundiced bed lamp, collection

  of cat-litter crumbs; our

  stalemate affections. There is mimicry in sleep.

  You toss at my turn.

  Prologue

  I hobble gingerly along stones to the second beach at Lake Superior.

  Fossilized imprints sketch the bottoms of my feet into Rorschachs.

  The tide’s pulse soothes a cluster of rock formations.

  Here, I lay myself down.

  Warm breath against naked gleam.

  Flutter in my vulva. Groin oscillates.

  Lonely sun pounds against shoulders.

  I am ridged with contusions.

  My fingers are beach hoppers. Skitter and quarry.

  Glacial flood baptizes my goose hair.

  The new world rushes in.

  I peed when I came. Everything water.

  A mari usque ad maria

  Oyster

  Drink it slow, says the girl who takes you

  on her Vespa along the freeways of Manhattan, who dresses

  all in black, face a sharp-eyed cat. Oyster juice

  dribbles down her chin and she catches it with a napkin. Can you

  taste it? she asks, and you nod, not at all sure what she means.

  The ocean, she says. Now close your eyes, and you do.

  Sip the salty water, granules of the shell roll around

  in your mouth. Nibble the oyster like touching tongues.

/>   Open your eyes. She tilts her head back and pours the fleshy

  meat down her throat. A bathtub made of marble, legs stretched

  in lukewarm, the girl sprawled against your solid frame. It is this

  and every image like it that prevents you from moving forward.

  You take a cautious bite, pulp against your teeth. The summer

  in Tofino, the afternoon at Long Beach, your face dry and sunburnt.

  Find shells and smell their insides. Musky. The girl’s eyes watch

  your mouth as you chew small plump bites. You can’t bear

  to swallow something so raw, so full of life.

  Dickie Lake 1

  Launch upright, slip into the water.

  Murky drink tongues the edges of doubt.

  A held breath, swirl of milky clarity. The remainder

  of days are lonely as a motel ship painting.

  Sky stretches; the toffee-flux of time.

  Heart jeers; queer as a French Horn.

  Moon billows and purges light, a shroud. The roundness

  of full-figured flesh against gloomy trunks.

  I pull myself out. Plunk these dumb feet

  into the lake. Wet back smacks against rough boards,

  thighs fissured. The words will come

  spit-shined and polished.

  Klaus Ricardo

  Sister (swathed in damp towels, flailing brat, sour-tempered beast) pushes away all hands. Coerces Mum for pots of hot water, warm milk with honey. Swallows crusts of cold toast while forehead secretes. Scrambles from standing to squatting to down-on-all-fours. Glazed eyelids droop in sullen defiance.

  Just three hours, eight hours, eleven hours earlier she plucks chile pequins from dried bushes. Pilfers limes under an aching sun; one hand lazy on her bulge. Between thrashing and sleep, Sister longs for a Russian water birth. Women with sexy contracted moans. Toddlers bounce like dumplings in bloody baths, finger the spongy suckling crown.

  Sister claws the headboard, hair strung in spools. Imagines herself a molting snake. Swore she would not scream, but her cries are turbulent, louder than grief, than the groan of cervix. An audience of cocked spines rock anxiously to the orchestra. Tepid coffee between sharp, atomized shrieks. Outside, a cow wails.

  This slippery sunken treasure, this niño, this place between silence and screams. Come. This murky swamp, this lover’s hand against Sister’s damp neck. Come. Condensation hangs as indecision in the air. Come. Pale glow of morning peaks her defeated shoulders. Come. All thought blasted into the night sky.

  The Summer I Capsized You

  A Dolly Parton remix or the moisture of club sweat or bodies unsteady

  under disco lighting. The beer loosens limbs. Bump up against queens

  and dykes, twinks making out with vigour; one pulls his shirt off,

  reveals a hoop harnessing a doughy nipple.

  A documentary about forest kindergarten in Switzerland plays while

  we fool ourselves on the couch. An old doll’s appendage digs into

  my spine. Her hair froths wild. She pulls us both into the bedroom.

  My body capsized. The raft hardly big enough for two.

  The waves roll in. The shoreline is a fixed point. We wash up

  drenched, salt-sputtering. Heave our bodies onto dry land.

  I’ve never shivered and convulsed as hard in my life.

  The Swimmer Vignettes

  You can tell a lot about a person from seeing them in the water.

  —Lidia Yuknavitch

  1.

  Just like Mother, I threw myself

  in the coldest lakes and rivers. Unafraid, we’d languish

  in hypothermia, surface with goose pimples and smirks.

  Sister, a smaller, paler version of me, dark hair, stick legs,

  inched her way into that rush of liquid ice

  the way one approaches the mouth of a cave.

  It took an hour to make it to her belly button.

  She’d scoop handfuls against her white thighs

  grimace at the assault on skin.

  2.

  The first time we swam together you became an eight-year-old boy.

  Demeanor once calm, business-like, your body threw itself again

  into the surge, limbs akimbo. A disturbance approached and

  all the children fled to their mothers. I hovered at the shoreline

  snapping stills as white foam submerged my toes.

  The murky sky churned my hair, blended drink of brine and

  surf and bedraggled weeds woven from sea clutches. You emerged

  garrulous, victorious as though you’d run a marathon. Your load

  lightened. The shame deep in your obese belly

  the calm before the storm.

  3.

  He is birthed in the blue plastic pool.

  A born swimmer. The harbour forgotten.

  4.

  Your face like a clown, laughter

  between my legs. It only takes two

  inches of water to drown.

  5.

  Under our smiles, fear.

  If only water didn’t equal loss.

  Our awkward limbs.

  No gills. No fins.

  Dickie Lake 2

  The curtains spread, breach

  of flesh. The black room. Crisp debris

  of barbequed yams. Light flickers

  from a half-dead bulb.

  Dirty pond browning in the sink.

  The sinkhole in the dark

  is this cleft of hip.

  Count ribs with a drift of index finger.

  Sheets flap in the wind,

  orchestra of brass and strings.

  Everything moans

  reproduction. Unending

  creation. Juggernaut.

  Arrest my fingers.

  Spread wide and deep.

  The cellist runs the bow

  along pelvis. Horsehair

  gentle against thighs.

  Outside the canoe thrashes.

  Spasms from the scent of lake.

  The Near-Death Experiences You Inevitably Hear While Learning How to Dive

  Mike’s best friend takes his new weight belt diving

  at Whytecliff and finds himself in an uncontrolled descent—

  claws the rock wall, jaw clicks side to side.

  Vision distorted. Static rises in his chest

  as white noise fills the pockets between his teeth.

  He pulls the quick release on his belt and propels up,

  lungs full of ground glass.

  You may find, in an emergency situation,

  you must drop your weights.

  All Mike says to me is watch out

  for bursting lungs. He has a talent

  for increasing my paranoia.

  He’s an opera singer,

  what does he know about lungs?

  There Are Times When Gravity Comes in Handy

  We sink a little before we float, says Bernie. No kidding. Choke on my first breath. Bodies float among square tiles. Chlorine at the back of my throat. Air enters lungs through a tube. The guy with the tiki shorts and shaved chest is doing fine. Asshole. I swam before I could walk. Thigh-deep in Lake Superior, water lapped my diaper as I gnawed on an iceberg. My family played Frisbee on the shore. It was November. Water’s my thing. Bernie claps his hands. Two fingers to his eyes. His mask is off, hair sways above his head. He’s known people to vomit into their regulators. Swallowing must be okay. Ignore my arms, uncontrollable tentacles, useless in the management of technology. Resistant against the regulator. Try not to notice the agility of those around me. The movie I watched in high school: Men and women floating around the aircraft eating space
food. A man peels a banana, twirls it and lets go. It spirals across the cabin and into a woman’s mouth. I’m sure when the lights are off he unzips his spacesuit. With one hand cupped, twirls his body until he reaches the woman. He only has one shot.

  Open Water

  As though blown up from the tail,

  a puffer inflates. Water fills

  the elasticity of his stomach. Eyes bulge,

  pectoral fins frantic. Lower teeth jut.

  There are no mollusks to gouge.

  His two-chambered heart pumps

  bloody terror. There must be

  a hand to take. A pair of eyes to

  lock with.

  Buoyancy Control

  Studies show your demographic does well to take up hobbies.

  —Karen Solie

  Deflate. Weighted hips allow you to sink.

  Bubbles rise to the surface. Descent is an act

  of control. Swallow. Move through metres of water

  and calculate. Swallow again. Stop here. Pinch your nose.

  A forced drowning. Fins erect. I am not a fish. I am

  not equipped. Jaw jiggle. It’s unnatural—

  canned air. Drift up a few feet and settle. The birth

  of each breath is recycled. Dead air finds its way

  through clefts in the lungs. The evidence trapped—bubble

  in the brain. Below, surface direction is lost.

  The drone of a motor occupies the space where gravity remains

  a trick question. Don’t ask. Instead, note your surroundings.

  Clear the mask and sing a stream of bubbles to the sky.

  The instrument used to stay alive constricts

  your lungs. Swallow. Recycled air. Claustrophobic

  haze. Think possibilities. Running out of breath, gloom