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Samantha Reynolds


Second Day

​We talked about it
all summer
and we walked by
the daycare often
slowing down to show you
the slide and the apple tree

we made our voices all bouncy

and told you how fun it would be

and then at night we read the books

about llamas and raccoons
going to school for the first time
and how they cry sometimes
but then the mamas
always come back

we let you pick out

new boots and we gave you
your brother’s old lunchbox

and the morning of your first day

we hugged you so long
you squirmed out from under us

you were quiet

but played with the toys
as the kids ran
around you

and when you told me at dinner

about your new friend Dominic
I added it to the invisible column
of things that went well

but the next morning

when you asked me
what car we’d take today
and I reminded you
that your new daycare
is just at the end of our block

you looked at me

confident and calm

but mama I already went

and I realized

we never mentioned
you would go every day

so that after all the books

and that long hug
you must have thought

what a peculiar fuss.
​

One step ahead of the quiz

He looks up at me

calmly waiting

trusting that if he is patient

I will unpack

an explanation

of life.

I expected this steely faith

to make me anxious.

I would hoard books from the library on igloos

        galaxies

how spider webs hold up

against tornadoes

why we die.

Trying to stay one

step ahead

of the quiz.

But it’s not like that.

The little questions are treasures

we will hunt down with

flashlights and notepads.

As for the big questions

we will build a fort

each time

in the living room

a quiet wooly womb

where we will lay down

side by side

and imagine out loud

if we had answers

what they would be.
​

     One sense at a time

                My sister-in-law’s new baby
                curls into her neck
                pink as fruit

                her eyes are still closed
                unfolding one sense
                at a time

                I touch her little fist
                and as she grabs on
                it occurs to me
                that if I fell out
                of someone’s body
                I’d be ready
                to grab on too

                today my son rides his bike
                for the first time
                and falls at the playground
                mouth of gravel and blood

                I clean him gently
                with my glove
                and then he tears off
                to try the tire swing

                was it so long ago
                that he was that new
                when even putting clothes
                on his skin

                felt too rough.

The Last Page

The novel sits inside me like an elephant
taking up all the room
I obsess about the characters
as though they are family
depending on me for advice

how will they get through this

I cry for them
the kind of crying that heaves
and leaves you sore

and then the last page comes
as it always does
how can I miss people I’ve never known
I suppress the urge to track down the author

just a few questions

weeks later
it is all so diluted
bits of emotion hang on
like plastic bags in trees

I feel guilty for moving on
and I want to tell them

you reminded me how to weep
in this way

you existed.


      Connecticut

        I picture the parents

        mangled by a grief so heavy

        it is hard to breathe

        but hearing about it in my car

        I am the opposite

        hollowed out by the impossibility

        of so much anguish

        I float above the facts

        desperate to un-know them

        my son sings his ABCs

        in French

        in the backseat

        I want to sing with him

        to laugh

        to call somebody’s God down

        to undo this

        but part of me also wants to yell at him

        wants him to stop painting joy

        on top of this day of thrashing souls

        I pull over instead

        I am late for a meeting

        but I climb in the backseat

        my face close to his

        I try not to cry

        as he looks at me

        his hands on my face

        as wretched images

        fill me up

        I whisper

        no no no

        and try to focus on the gift

        of his breath.
​
Picture

Go to page 2 of Samantha Reynolds' poetry
​
Go to page 3 of Samantha Reynolds' poetry
Samantha Reynolds' profile

My own self

Every day
you order me to wait
on the top floor
out of sight
while you climb
down our steep stairs
as you say it

with my own self

and every day
I tell you I can’t
how it’s my job
to make sure
you don’t break
like Humpty Dumpty
and wine glasses

but it isn’t this
that convinces you

it’s the final part
that you make me repeat
over and over
while we sit together
on the top step
late for wherever
we’re going

the part
about how much
your grandpa and grannies

would cry.
​

The art of fending off angry people

An angry woman sent
all her rage to me today
which turned my limbs
into liquid and made me
imagine the worst
like the girl on the screen
that you yell at
because didn’t she know
it would end this way
that girl would be me
and my son wouldn’t know me
and
and
I suddenly remember
that smiling tricks
your cells into believing
all is well
so I try it
I dance in the shower
belting out ballads
wringing the nerves
from my throat
I fake it until my feet
look familiar
and I actually feel
like sending
some love

her way.

Love song

He went there to sing
for his wife’s grandmother.
The place smelled sour
like an old stairwell, scrubbed
but the piss lingers.
The residents looked waxy
and slack, like they had all just
woken up.

He sang a few oldies to the grandmother
and she sang along quietly,
a  toothless back-up.
Then she asked for the same song again,
unaware she’d just heard it,
and so he played
it over and over
until her head fell back
mouth open in mid-song
fast asleep.

He would have left
tiptoed out guitar in hand
but a voice
old like tree bark
screeched out a command:
Hey, good-looking, get back here and sing me a pretty one!
Her face was like crumpled tinfoil
lipstick seeping into a hundred tiny streams
around her pink mouth.
Under thin yellow hair
patches of scalp revealed
as naked as breasts.

He pulled up a chair in front of her
she smiled
winked and wheeled closer.
He didn’t play Oh Susanna and Daisy Bell
as planned
he played one of his own
a love song
and as he sang to her
she wheeled even closer
and he leaned in
her eyes not blinking
he imagined her young and desirable
and he sang to that girl
staring into her eyes
that he later said were as bright as eyes he’d ever seen
and when the song was finished
she didn’t move
and he sang another
until her eyes closed
not asleep
he knew
just knowing this moment would soon be a memory
and tasting it already.

He found out months later
that she’d died
a few days after his visit.
They said they didn’t know
she was dead
for hours
because she just lay there
smiling.

      Counting seconds

        The hand on the clock twitches forward

        skinny little spider leg

        counting seconds with devotion

        assembly line of tiny jewels

        proof we are still here

        yet we swat at them like mosquitoes

        when we are running late

        or worse

        we ignore them

        focusing only when they stack

        into the heap of a day

        I remember the first time I read

        that four babies are born

        every second

        I couldn’t take my eyes off the clock

        so much enormousness

        squeezed through the eye

        of each tick tick tick

        you’d think it would grind

        the magic of new life

        into a smear of commonness

        but if you step inside the fact of it

        it does the opposite

        it’s enough to break your heart

        the insistence

        of all that hope.

The curious urge to implicate myself in a suspicious plot for no reason

I feel my composure blur
like a thick tongue in wine

my steady block reason
frays like an old sock

I am suddenly dressed
in an urge
to say irreversible things

I cannot bear
the easiness of it

the guards ask
their dull questions

none of them suspecting
that I am biting off the words
as they try to chew through my teeth

inventions of defiance
and fascination
at how fate would rush in
while I watched
aghast at what invisible thing

could not be undone.

​
Picture

                                                 Confessions of a thought bandit


​I know people who write in cafés for the distraction
as though their thoughts are too shy
for eye contact
with their own brains.

I’m there for the noise too
but it’s more crooked than that

I’m there to plunder their thoughts.

I’ve always done it
tuned in to the rivers of images
pouring out of strangers
peculiar silent stories
with no beginning or end.

I can’t help it
sometimes I even try not to do it
to focus on my own poem about pirates
but suddenly I’m thinking about Michael J. Fox
and how humour makes a man sexy.

There’s no reason for me to think about Michael J. Fox
which is why I know
that girl over there is thinking about him
because she watched a Family Ties re-run this morning
or she’s writing a paper on Parkinson’s
anyways
I can’t help it
like I said.

​Today the café was packed
as usual
a tide of ideas
leaking into my head
onto my page

and suddenly
jammed right up against Michael J. Fox
emerged a bloated sadness
as if the roar of the ocean
was actually
every whale
moaning together
a harrowing song
of grief.

I couldn’t be sure if it was him
but the old man in the corner
had been sitting there a long time
his coffee cold by now
untouched
which made my face pinch in that way it does
when you don’t want to cry in public
so when he got up to use the washroom
I wrote a quick note

she was crazy about you

I tucked it under his mug
and fled.
​
Go to page 2 of Samantha Reynold's poetry
Go to page 3 of Samantha Reynolds' poetry

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