Just announced: Marcia is one of the top ten winners

who will be published in Infuze Magazine: The Best of 2006

To receive Marcia's column, The Spur

by email, contact 

Marcia@ vinemarc.com (delete space when emailing)

Get the Best of The Spur in

The Spur of The Moment 

Click the link to order now 

Jacob

The bruise of healing is fresh

the blow a memory

only the limp remains.

I cannot answer

when they ask, "what happened?"

my tongue thickens

like a thorned cactus

engorged with sudden rain

How can I tell them

I wrestled with our God

I, the deceiver they know too well.

How can I tell them

the scent of heaven on his chest

made me gasp, made me

wrap my arms around Him until

the words sighed from His lips

a breath of blessing in my ear

I, the chosen

I cannot even utter, yet

the new name He gave me

I bow under it

like a slave under the eye

of a beneficent master

the burden of my people is too much

my brother cried out

at the theft of his inheritance

I cry out at the weight of it

my father’s hand upon my head

now feels like the soles of innumerable feet

pounding upon the first step of

their pathway to eternity.

When I returned to Canaan,

bidden by this God of choice

in fear I sent my wives and children before me

to appease the anger of kindred men.

I did not know that He had risen in them,

as long-awaited rain that

swells from hidden springs and mends

the ragged fissures of a hardening drought.

How my brother’s kiss lingers on my cheek,

the sting of forgiveness sings in my flesh!

I erected more towers of remembrance,

re-named the places of my childhood and praised

on my face before such a God

who directs the course even

of the undeserving,

sets him on a destined path and

pours mercy upon him for the journey.

Yes, I still stammer, confounded

before the questioning eyes of my people

but soon I will speak

soon the words will be given

words that have begun to surge

in my loins, words to create my creed

to raise me up until

I can bear such goodness

the burden of this blessing

and believe

even unto the making of a nation

from my mere sinew and bone.

In Silence

the world is creeping

spiders, slugs

and microscopic things

within the humus at my feet

in darkness the worm works

But above,

the canopy of green sings,

white cockatoos

wheel and call to life

hornbills announce their

flight, their lack of silent wing

raking air with cacophony

Oh Father lift me up

Into that light

Let my lack announce me

Let it stir my brothers, my sisters

Under your sight

To joy, to song, to flight.

AWAY

How is it I could know this land,

embrace it

as one loved long

and only

How is it I could know these

trees unnamed but dreamed of

peeling bark, bleeding colour

How is it I could know this song of

leaves, wide banana and fraying palm,

this air tasting of perfume

How is it I could know this incessancy of

cicada and locusts’ wing

drilling sound boring into bone.

How is it I could know these men, these women

dark as the gorges of their mountain jungle

clear as ocean water giving up its secrets

when its heart is calm

How is it

I am no more alien here

than walking on the soil of my home?

SUSA* 

(a Prose Poem)

The first day we met I had to coax you to my table, perhaps because I stared too long at blue lines and stars tattooed across your cheeks, looked too earnestly for depth behind your hazel eyes, such surprises, changelings set in skin like darkened honey.

I met your man first. That stood between us, uncomfortable familiarity. I knew it by the way you laughed, dropped your head when he tried to speak to me in English. I answered in Pidgin haltingly hoping you would look at me again. I gave you a skirt for your daughter.

The next time you came you brought her, proud of her shyness, to help weed the garden trim the hedge, your Gadsup tongue a soft mumble of direction. I prepared sweet bread with cheese for you both to eat, gave you rice to take home, prayed no-one would take it from you on the way.

You brought me strawberries the day your "Papa" was attacked, told me they pulled the arrows from his back but could not stop the blood from seeping away. I saw the burden pulling the song from your throat, sadness sitting in your eyes like the hardened pit of a dying fruit. I gave you coffee sugar powdered milk for his family.

The day they burned your village and you didn’t come at all I wished I could be the magician you seemed to want me to be, wished I could sweep my hand across your life, erase the pain like chalk, sift the evil out like weevils from flour. I wanted to see your shoulders rise your back straighten your eyes meet mine.

On the last day, you brought me a string bag made of red and black and yellow threads knotted into your country’s flag, took my hand called me "Susa" and I had nothing to say nothing to give but "Susa" in return.

• Susa means Sister in Melanesian Pidgin

PRAIRIE

There is nothing

out there

my mind tells me,

yet the eye lingers

on penciled horizon,

a pale line of sky. There is

something out there

my heart tells me,

drawn to fall of shadow

and light on wheat,

the infrequent vertical of trees.

There is some One.

my soul soars

out there

beyond the barriers

self imposed,

I search for what

is missing.

SOMEWHERE THE SUN

The Sun

dances

somewhere

but Ellesmere night sings her victory,

laughs at frailty of machines that must

forever hum with lives tied to them by

fear of silence unspoken

The Sun

dances

somewhere

but Ellesmere white surrounds terror

screams Stop everything until

mind grips reality safety lies

in staying still

The Sun

dances

somewhere

but Ellesmere lies inside

under artificial light God,

never let the light go out but keep

the colour from magazines cut

pasted to walls glossy imagined memories of

places where somewhere

The Sun

does

dance.

EYE OF THE WHALE

Sleek slim kyak line.

Still water.

A slow swell of movement,

The promise of something

Under.

Paddle resting,

straight-edged with metal,

dripping beads of silver

that slip, then touch,

then disappear

beyond the mirror.

Then -

The eye

rising,

my pulse

pounding,

filling mind, body,

air around me,

until it holds,

takes in this other,

this being who is staring,

seeing

knowing me.

BURN UNIT

I cannot bear

your pain, your labour

in breathing

makes me moan.

Your bloodied body

brands me as a searing light

behind eyes closed tight.

I grasp for trivialities; count

I.V.s, intrusions, watch

the jagged line monitor

your heart and

mine pounds.

I jerk my mind

around your puffed and

oozing skin

to deal with apparatus,

close my ears to suck of

mechanisms breathing, clicking

for you,

listen as through a megaphone

to descriptions of medications.

I squirm

to unhook connections

clutching at

my inmost parts.

I pray

and wonder

that I can

turn to the God I dread

to trust.

RESPONSE

Our worlds are never fatherless

though we try to cut them

out with thin-edged blades as

from a photograph,

exclude them,

refuse them life even in

our minds

they are still there

negative space

between, around

every one.

Never fatherless

our eyes forever seek the edges

of the holes they leave

seek the depth of that darkness

defining

our shape.

RETURNING

Dreaming

on the train to Hearst

dreaming of porters and passports

of jumbled foreign sounds

and spice-filled smells

I wake

hoping for a dining car

tables draped with thick white linens

hoping for complimentary wine,

and strong dark coffee

I turn

see the agent taking tickets

jacket half undone

cigarette hung from lower lip as

he stops, helps a man with long black hair

load a green canoe.

Miles of rock and rivers later

the train stops somewhere in the centre

of Swamp Spruce the man steps down

shoulders his canoe away.

Later, at Esnagi

floating, dozing, the lake clear

and dark at its centre

Again, I am dreaming

dreaming of red–tiled European roofs and

narrow streets bannered with laundry

of humming market conversation

smell of chickens singed on charcoal burners

I dream the screams of children

Then wake

to a wall of trees

black-green and silent as

their colour clinging

to lichened rock, lap

of water.

My mind stops

gropes for some familiarity

my foot slips from the float,

touches cold

cold water

Oh.

Canada.

I’m home.

PRAIRIE HAIKU

Poppies blooming red, fresh

against the grain fields

machines beating wheat from chaff.

Graphite feeds

a soft black line onto white.

I must never look away

but move my hand around his form

continuously, smooth reality

into art

starting with the chair, his chair,

high backed, foot rest up,

my line edges his leg, bends over his knee,

unnatural angle

of one leg broken long ago.

I loosen my grip,

loop the folds of his sweater, baggy

over his arm, descend to the

hand, short-lined fingers curled,

pipe cradled in the palm.

one quick stroke cuts

across his stomach, belting him in

then softens again to fold the other arm

and on to his shoulder, slouched,

the chin on chest,

glasses foward, I round his nose

sweep back his hair in

one final black wave

the flow of line is over

but I dare not look away, aware

I have begun to see

I have created

my father.

WINK

mischievous,

you threw it

over heads bent to silent pursuits

a pebble of grace

tossed

just for the purpose

of making a ripple

THE DAY GRANDMA MET THE QUEEN

deliberately she

placed herself

before the royal carriage

before the horses stepping proud

before midmorning tea

before she thought

the act might

kill her or perhaps

just after.

She held a duster

in her hand

flicked it with

a flourish as

she curtsied

clutched it to her

breast, her eyes meeting

those of

Elizabeth Rex

she staggered at

the mirrored image there

her duster fluttered to the ground as

recognition floundered between them

like a fish caught

on the wrong hook

horses snorting derision

The Queen reached down

and touched her hand.

In the repetitious telling

over many years

my Grandma always said she

was absolutely sure

the woman

wanted more.

We welcome your comments

Email Marcia@ vinemarc.com (delete space when emailing)