Kath MacLean | TALKING APPLE

Talking Apple

Another night like this I’ll be split
nerve. Say it’s the wind’s rattle,
somethin’ crazy, juddering.

The limping house quivers
a bone, bruises a calf,
& humming a pretty heel, breaks

my mistress’s shoe. A feeble dance.
Broadway’s fumble–up-the-stairs;
its blunder –back-to-bed.

Fraying the carpet’s thread. Beating
wool & silk. Unravel
blunder. Cloud
a blot of ink. Shadow

possibilities. Trembling, still.
Ask if it’s proper
to loosen a rusted bolt, or shift
the dark & twist it free?

Ah,
the quill extracts.

Hand me the rolling pin.
Sugar the peel. Whatever
creeps in the cellar confounds
me. ……………You can’t
know everything. You can’t be
…………sure.

Six, eight, ten hairy legs worm
last year’s apples. Inch
under stairs. Shy of light,
the moon sulks
the colour of apricot.

Shedding skins, a knife rags
time. Turn a mirror. Someone is
down there tangling the roots.

Riffing curtains knuckle a fist.
Night knocks morning. Come
in.

Again,
I’m talking apple, tapping
heels. A robin sings crimson,
gleams air now
………………deliciously crisp—


Author’s Bio

Kath MacLean is an award winning multimedia artist and the author of three books of poetry. Her most recent book, Translating Air (McGill-Queen’s 2018) imagines H.D.’s conversations with Freud during her sessions with him in the 1930s. Formerly a professor of English and Creative Writing in Edmonton, she now teaches kindergarten in Toronto.