Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Kitchen” by Chantel Lavoie.

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Kitchen

By Chantel Lavoie

The dog Blue knows the sound of water

as rejection: this one bowl will not

be his for the licking, the liking

of batter or dough, or some other sticking

to roof-of-mouth treat. Mean—

that woman who arbitrates

when to bestow, when to withhold.

Blue the dog doesn’t know

chocolate apart from the smell

and why not? She who trusts him

with other scraps, butter eggs sugar flour

turns the tap on this one.

The bowl fills and the pleasure

that might have been

washes right down the drain

with its untasted scent

like rain in a garden

round a tree full of snake.

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Copyright © Chantel Lavoie

Previously published in Arc Poetry.

Chantel Lavoie is a Professor at the Royal Military College of Canada. Her short fiction and her poetry have appeared in numerous journals as well as in three poetry collections, most recently This is About Angels, Women, and Men. Born and raised in Saskatchewan, she lives in Kingston, Ontario, on the ancestral homelands of the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe, and Huron-Wendat peoples. Her debut novel will be out in the spring.

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