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. |