“Remind Me to Bring My Earplugs to the Orgy” by Tracy Wai de Boer
Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets' daily poetry dispatch. Read "Remind Me to Bring My Earplugs to the Orgy" by Tracy Wai de Boer.
Remind Me to Bring My Earplugs to the Orgy
By Tracy Wai de Boer
I say as we walk out the door.
With wings and twigs in our hair,
we don these thorny crowns,
arrive beaded with braids of praise.
Remind me I don’t like the loud noises,
but I’ll sit and watch and later,
(when I’m alone)
I’ll relive it quietly in my mind palace—
That treehouse of dreams and bubbly wisdom,
which somehow always finds me,
washes up on me while I lay in the dark.
Remind me I don’t like the performance of it,
but I like the way they whisper
those stolen solid moments
of a soul finding its face, as Dean would say.
You always say there’s no rush
but here— take my hand, feel its urgent weight.
How the fingers dissolve in yours, like sugar in a glass.
Why pretend?
No—
we’re sacks of meat and on a good day
She does more than I ask.
I’m full of stuff— muck held together with those same twigs
A flap, a flock bursting forth from blended cloud
but beautiful too.
You can fingerpaint with my blood because I said so,
You can watch me make that ugly face when I come.
Just don’t forget to invite me to the party.
Copyright © Tracy Wai de Boer
Previously published in Petal Projections, Spring 2024.
Tracy Wai de Boer is an award-winning writer, poet, and multidisciplinary artist. She has co-authored multiple books including Impact: Women Writing After Concussion, which won the Book Publishers of Alberta Best Non-Fiction Award and was named one of CBC’s Best Non-Fiction Books of 2021. Her chapbook, maybe, basically, was published with Anstruther Press in 2020 and was nominated for the bpNichol Award. Tracy was a resident at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (2017, 2023) and her work has been featured internationally in outlets such as Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, Catapult, Plenitude Magazine, Ricepaper Magazine, G U E S T, canthius, Prude Magazine, Petal Projections, and Unearthed Online Literary Journal. Tracy's book, Nostos, a collection of poetry and experimental photography, will be out in Spring 2025 with Palimpsest Press.
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