Teaching Poetry

McKeen, Assignment 2 Close Read

Favourite Place to Be

I’ve traveled the world

And there’s many more places I’d still like to see.

I’m sitting here wondering, whats the one place that really resonates with me?

Is it the Burnaby mountain view top? Where I feel isolated and at peace?

Or is it a beach where the endless water makes me feel so tiny yet complete?

Could it be up in the clouds, closer my angels that constantly surround me?

I sit here and ponder, whats my favourite place to be?

Where do I feel peace, clarity and security?

And then all of a sudden it comes to me

Wrapped in your arms, is the only place I want to be.

By Tejinder Rai

Place poem: My imagination

A place hidden from the rest of the world

At times eagerly desiring visitors

To experience its wonders and thrills

Other times too dark and horrendous

Safer to pass on by and ignore

A sanctuary when reality is too disappointing or dull

But also a prison to punish the most heinous crimes

Go there, and see what creations unfold

Stranger on the train

I sit,
in stone cold stillness.
Even my breath seems to stay within the invisible bubble I have created around me.
My hands,
they fold neatly on top of my thighs,
which are pressed together so tightly they have become one.

I am breathing,
but my breaths are short and stiff
Labour breaths minus the noise.
And the labour.

My eyes.
Focused dead ahead.
Unwavering. Un-easy.

I have judged you.
We all have judged you.

No not YOU
The exterior of you.

From the moment you walked through those sliding doors,
you feel it too.

You sit on the edge of the seat.
You try to make the invisible bubble around you,
stop the people from staring,
from grimacing,
from gratifying themselves that they
are not sitting beside you.

You get off at the next stop.
My bubble is broken.
But so is yours.

Swings

In the midst of stars, books, dreams and dust

An amicable ghost pushing the swings

Back and forth

Back and forth.

A swing that is surely more than a decade old

Carrying the anthology of local romance stories

Breakups and closures

As if marking their stories

On a steel-made infrastructure

Would make them permanent.

The ghost, now, the only one

To hear and feel the stories

Returning for the same ones

Again and again

Again and again.

@1450 Parkway Blvd, Coquitlam, BC V3E 3L2

A home should be nice and neat

Spic and span

Clutter and mess I cannot stand!

Ow! Lego under feet

Next put the laundry away

Drawers tied together with moose gut cordage

Ugh! In the way

The cedar weaving we’ve had no time for

But….

I don’t clear that clutter from the counter

Nerf bullets underfoot mark the place where you ambushed me

Such glee

Lego in the Ficus tree – the world you imagined and related

So animatedly

Smears on the mirror

Your Xs and Os to me

A home should be neat and tidy

Spic and span

Clutter and mess I cannot stand!

But tidying this space

Erases You from this place

So I wait for you to come home

And try to remember

Not to reprimand

A home should be full of glee

Crap and clutter

You and me

~ CDG

All tucked in

The moonlight shining on the window pain

When the sky opens up and it starts to rain

The rooster crows

The day is ready to go

The smell of the rain lingers

The sun’s rays are like tiny fingers

Massaging me with their warmth

All tucked in

The moonlight shining through the window pain

When the sky opens up and it starts to rain

Fresh cut grass

Blowing in the gentle breeze

Listening carefully

To the sound of the trees

As they whisper just for me

All tucked in

The moonlight shining through the window pain

When the sky opens up and it starts to rain

I came across an old photo from my childhood.

Blond ash Ikea book shelves in the background. They are still in mom’s basement.

Allen key assembly, but real wood.

Our Ikea shelving unit is black, wood based laminate over a cardboard honeycomb filler

I know this, because I put my knee through the middle of the first one I bought.

Hastily assembled during the sleep deprived first months of parenthood.

Each visit is an assault on my reader’s brain.

Fricatives, fullstops and retroflexes all freak my flygel, my grundtal, my Godmorgon

My neighbour calls you the marriage breaker.

Indeed, I saw a childhood friend, pulling two screaming children across the parking lot while his wife yelled at him.

I hadn’t seen him in fifteen years. Today would not be our reunion.

Why were they fighting?

Perhaps a misunderstanding of length and depth?

an hour misspent in the ballpit?

As I manoeuvre through the store, there is an angst, that creeps down the back of my Fyrkantig and rests in my malm.

So much choice should be liberating, but it paralyzes. Have all measurements really been made and no electrical outlet ignored?

NÄCKTEN! I don’t know.

We knew what we wanted before we came in, but things have changed as we wandered the labyrinthine market place.

Make a choice!

I can’t!

GODMORGON! NÄCKTEN!

Spruce Woods Provincial Park

If you wanted one less reason to visit Manitoba then make it Spruce Woods Provincial Park.

We arrive on a suffocating day in August and can’t find the Main Office.

When we do, it seems friendly Manitobans are, more accurately, indifferent Manitobans.

Lungs strain between low hanging dust from gravel trucks rocketing down the nearby highway and air like steam.

We seek refuge in the shade of the campground beneath twisted, stumpy trees where rectangular sand plots have been carved out of knotted, dark, thorny brush.

We’re told the provincial bird is the mosquito which seems to check out.

Crows laugh at us like malevolent, old drunk men.

We think that a swim in Kiche Manitou Lake will offer respite.

It offers stagnant, muddy water and more mosquitos.

We hope the widow makers hanging in every dying oak tree don’t impale us during our walk out of the park.

The park is adjacent to The Spirit Sands, where rogue sand dunes rise 30 metres into relentless prairie sky.

By “adjacent,” Manitoba Parks means “about a 2 K walk along a busy highway, over a dusty bridge crossing a wide, brown stretch of the Assiniboine River.”

First Nations in this area believed the sands were sacred.

It was a place of peace and diplomacy for feuding Nations to talk.

A sign barks at us to stay on the trails because there are live artillery shells from mid-twentieth century military drills lying undetonated throughout the area.

They should have fired them into the campground.

We never do find the gift shop but a T-shirt can never fully express despair anyway.

The kitchen in his place was sort of a bust.

The windows didn’t open all the way

and the low set ceiling meant that

stagnant air set off fire alarms every time we

cooked.

But still, when he spun me round,

my toes sliding across cracked linoleum,

I didn’t notice.

Because when he touched me I didn’t

notice anything else at all.

You slipped from my fingers

as though greased with the pain

of every memory I put to rest.

Now I love you like I love

all things that are not meant for me:

quietly,

with enough silent passion to flood lakes.