Sally

ITO

Portrait of Snow Country

Brown house-shacks cluster together as

flakes float and settle upon their wooden roofs;

silence in this valley slowly creeps in and moves.

Winter has finally arrived. Snow, cold weather.

Black trains pull in, bleating faraway calls,

their billowed smoke fading into the white air

as more passengers arrive to this ‘somewhere’

interior built of nature’s shale and limestone walls.

A mountain sketch reveals white sentinel peaks

looming over an old man and his young son,

squatting on their porch, looking into the darkened horizon;

faces flat and dull, colour faded from their cheeks.

A photograph taken, words later scribbled in the corner,

‘Father and I on the porch, Winter of ’42, New Denver.’

From Frogs in The Rain Barrel, 1995, Nightwood Editions

These texts are published with the kind authorization of the author. 
All rights reserved

Alta

IFLAND

The Snail’s Song

 I know a Snail like no other. In summertime he lives on a leaf whose tree is perched on a cliff above the blue-green sea; in winters he lives within himself. But be it summer or winter he sings and plays all day, he plays an instrument with no strings, no brass, no wind; he plays his own house. He is himself his own house, which he always carries with him, and he is himself his own instrument, which he plays with such passion that his friend, the Turtle, opens her eyes wide with astonishment, nodding and wiggling her green head. She too is her own house, though her house is no instrument. Not having the gift of song, the Turtle stays quiet by her friend, as he delivers his homemade melodies, which can’t go anywhere because the house-instrument keeps them within its coiled shell. But how much song can a home take?

One day, filled with too much music, the shell cracked at the heart of its coil, and from that minuscule wound sounds spilled into the world. Day after day the Snail’s song pours from the wound, and day after day his body, home and music are made anew, all one, in the secret darkness of the coiled, broken shell. His song comes from a broken home.

From The Snail’s Song, 2011, Spuyten Duyvil

First Memory?

She is three years old. Her parents appear not to be home; her nanny, an old woman with a funny name, isn’t with her either, but she is surely in one of the other rooms.

The girl is sitting at a table too big for her, a bowl of soup before her. In her right hand she is holding a spoon also too big, with which she clumsily attempts to eat the soup. She drops the spoon on the table. The soup is too hot. She climbs on a chair and manages to seize from the wooden cabinet a cup or a jar—here the film fades and the image gets blurry—then off the chair and back to the table. How did she manage to fill the cup with water?

She pours the water into the bowl of soup and tastes again. Now it’s too cold. And the taste is different. She looks at the soup as if it were an untamed animal with which no communication is possible.

From The Snail’s Song, 2011, Spuyten Duyvil

These texts are published with the kind authorization of the author. 
All rights reserved

Deborah

TEMPLETON

Dustboy

Scrub and pale and rough my garden. I am out now, soft-soled on the sift of it. Away and get some air, there's a good boy. Our yard all scrubble and dust. Bone dry, dries a bone, a wee bit breeze. We could use some weather. 

Bright my eyes. Sun hot on my top. Scaldy now. I put my hand, I feel the buzz of it. Scruffed and shorn, no curls. I dig a little hole with my toe in the scuff dirt. Stubble head. Stubble ground. I make dust clouds in the sunshout, in the summer still. All hush and shush. I am a slow swirl, a dust whirl, wee tatterscrap.

Here is someone now. Wide foot, black jacket, peak face beaking in the gravel sand, in the sand soil, in the dust scuff. He is a little man in a big coat. He sees me with his swirly bead eye. He is a man what come in a black car that time and that was when. That was then. He is gone little but I know him by his long black, his swagger back, how here he comes web-foot, claw toe, to scratch in my soil. I watch, I whisper, I squint my eyes at the little man pulling a worm in his peaky beck.

In the before, he was the crow flown into the now of that day, and his wings, his beak, his craw call all - that's what made the before and made the after and made me the tatterscrap left dust scuffing.

Here comes my Pa, my Da. All tall, long, long. Come see me. His face up high in the sky brights. Spindle legs. He comes down on his hunkers, folds up like a paper man. Brings me in, wraps me up in him. I smell his warm, his tobacco sharps. I itch my nose. Big hand heavy on my head, pulls me in. He puts out the sun and we are a dark hug, and I stand stockstill in my stocking feet. I am a stickboy, shoulderbones. Poor Pappy makes a snivel sound, a shudder shake. Then he is up and I am up and out and into fresh and bright and sun spinning on stones. He wipes his eyes. He cleans my face with his fingers. Wet cheeks and smudgy.

And that is when. What see we on the lane. A mangly dog, all skin bones. Would you look, Pappy say, Who come get you? And he makes a whistle in his teeth and she come lollop. Flop ear, sticky fur, cry eyes.

My black crow, he gone high in the hawthorn tree.

These texts are published with the kind authorization of the author. 
All rights reserved