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Betsy Struthers



Betsy Struthers has published eight books of poetry and three mystery novels. Her book Still won the 2004 Pat Lowther Memorial Award for the best book of poetry by a Canadian woman. A former president of the League of Canadian Poets, she lives in Peterborough, Ontario, where she works as a freelance editor of academic texts.

The Fantasist

Meets a man in Mexico who'd left 
his highrise office in the city 
to live the literary life 
in a building in a plaza dripping 
bougainvillea.  He does his writing 
long hand with a fountain pen 
to feel his words imprint the paper, 
adds pages to his novel every day, 
subtracting none.  To make ends meet 
he sells hats to tourists in Oaxaca.  
"Straw?" he asks.  "Fedora?"

He follows her to Winnipeg 
though she tells him not to, warns 
about the cold, the floods, the 
venomous mosquitoes.  He stands outside 
the bungalow she hides in, serenades 
her in a tongue she does not know, his 
voice a howl under his black brows.

Truth is, she's never been to Mexico 
and to Winnipeg only once 
for a writers' reading in a bar 
where hookers take their breaks.  One 
shows a tit, fished from his bra 
to show off its construction.  It's hard 
to be a woman when your thing
keeps slipping from its thong, he says, 
patting parts in place, high heels 
clicking castanets.

From her table in the centre 
of the room, she sees a tattooed boy 
lounging in a vinyl booth, serape 
folded on the bench beside him, his 
open mouth a slash of silver teeth.  That 
grin remains when all else 
has faded into story: the man 
not met in Mexico, the trickster 
on the prowl in Winnipeg.
 

The Couple

Barking of the dogs next door wakes them.  And 
the crows.  Awhile after that, a bus wheezes to its stop 
across the street.  Everyone around them leaves, 
for work, for school, on vacation to the farthest east.  
They can stay in bed, they're on sabbatical, they're 
free to snuggle in their duvet's nest and dream.

Awhile after that, the nudge of feet.  Then hands.  Then 
hips.  They move in silence as if not to disturb, this 
rental has such thin communal walls, though no one else 
is home to hear them.  Such stillness 
makes the most familiar magic: like walking 
in the first snowfall in the park, the trail they follow 
muffled.  They come to the lip of the hill and let go, 
roll over in a flail of limbs and sheets 
until momentum leaves them gasping and 
apart.  Awhile after that, one gets up 
to crack the blind, to let the gray light in.
 

Robbed

When we came back 
from a weekend away, nothing 
illicit, a visit with family, fraught 
as that always was 
with what was said and 
unsaid, five hours 
on the freeway mostly 
silent, FM loud 
to cover up 
the Volvo's choking.

When we saw 
a light on though we left 
no light burning.  
When the door opened
with a single push: stereo
gone, wedding silver 
gone, the pearls your mother
willed me: gone.

When I could no longer 
face the faces on the bus.
When the office kept
phoning.  When I was beached
on the unmade bed
in the curtained apartment.
When I could not
open the door.  When
you found me.

I remember 
when the black dog barked.  
When everything seemed 
taken from me.  When you 
held me 
as you hold me still.
 

Second Sitting

So many of their names begin with "M" and 
so many are or sound the same—at least 
four Margery's (or Marjorie's), three
Margarets, two Mary's, a Martha, a
Marilyn, a Marie.  No wonder 
they forget who they are, where 
they've come from, what they've 
done and been.  Words 
choke up on them, they 
can't hear each other speak, Stop 
whispering, they hiss.  Well, excuse 
me.   One coughs into her napkin, one 
wipes her weeping eye.  Canes 
hooked on chair backs, walkers
parked against the wall.  

A daughter joins her mother for lunch,
is introduced as the youngest, the
oldest, or the one in the middle.  She
sits with her knees pressed tightly
under the drape of white linen, feet 
on the floor, elbows off the table.  
They watch her chew and swallow, 
note how often she empties 
her water glass.  If she wears beads 
or pearls.  If her fingers
are ring-less.  

In her own world, the daughter
is Mom, and runs her own 
business.  Here she is introduced
to Margery again.  Who asks
which one are you? Who says 
beware of the second floor.  Who 
says time to be going.  Who says
home.



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