“It’s the Dead He Can’t Sit With” by Rayanne Haines
Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “It’s the Dead He Can’t Sit With” by Rayanne Haines.
It’s the Dead He Can’t Sit With
by Rayanne Haines
i.
after my mother died,
i wore her hoarding like a veil
so i wouldn’t have to see
a future without her.
ii.
my father is living inside her leftovers.
iii.
my siblings and i let him purge
because we want to hold onto everything
he doesn’t, take back the things we bought
her from trips, both abroad,
and closer to home. we claim
child rights so he doesn’t pitch
her chipped china set out the back door
with the other broken things covered
in dust and her thumbprints. we are, in part,
fueled by anger and sorrow, and also,
iv.
a desire to finally, now, control what we couldn’t
before. i brought mom a magnet to add
to her collection whenever i travelled.
on the fridge, scenes from:
Athens
Peru
The Galapagos Islands
Rome
Seville
Sardinia
Santorini
Costa Rica
Ecuador,
told tales of places she’d never see.
i bring dad one from my latest trip to Scotland—
because i wear tradition like a veil as well.
he tells me he’s planning to throw out
her magnets. right there
at his granddaughter’s junior high school concert
(which is the place i tell him about
my gift, in between
the profoundly terrible acts two and three).
as my mouth hangs open, he says, “unless you
want them? you can come have them.” and i
must reconcile (right there
during my niece’s solo song about loving
god), that some pieces of mom must be let go.
v.
at the back of the freezer, we found
one unsmoked cigarette, frozen,
in saran wrap. she quit smoking
thirty years ago. kept the trophy
always said, “i might start again. i haven’t decided.”
vi.
undecided on where her final resting
place will be, us siblings carry mom’s urn
from house to house to house, holding her in stasis
from month to month to month. dad, unable to sit
with the dead, leaves her to us.
vii.
still, he cares about living things—
the dogs, two fish tanks full,
the ancient horses in the back pen.
the mausoleum of pigeons he’s started hoarding
Rayanne Haines (she/her) is an award-winning author, educator, and cultural producer. She is the creator and host of the literary podcast Crow Reads, is the President for the League of Canadian Poets, and teaches with MacEwan University. Her third poetry collection, Tell the Birds Your Body is Not a Gun won the 2022 Stephan G. Stephansson Alberta Literary Award and was shortlisted for both the Robert Kroetch award and the ReLit Award. She’s been published in the Globe and Mail, Minola Review, Fiddlehead, Grain, Prairie Fire and others. A poetry and essay collection exploring grief, identity, and gendered trauma is forthcoming from Frontenac house September 2024.
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