POETRY: MARTA BALCEWICZ

DISCOURSE OF THE LAST BLADE OF SENSITIVE SHY GRASS

Oceans recede and Henry Darger
was tracing all along.
Boys are carrying banners and I am
not home.
If my bedroom light is burning
you’re hallucinating
electricity and the on-switch.
Your dryer is done,
go on.
That’s not a claxon.
Wind blows that way—alright,
wind blows other way—okay
 
 

BOYS

In 1940, four teenaged boys discovered the Lascaux Cave
and triggered the destruction 
of its fragile ecosystem.

We are the four
who discover Lascaux
 
we bring lichens and
mold to the dun horse and stag
 
we turn bison to talc,
choke the longest living duck.
 
When our mothers
see the clay
 
we part our arms,
like curtains at the opera
 
when they insist,
we grow antlers
 
cut them off and
let them have it:
 
the head of a stag,
branched as lightning,
 
is the new forest,
centerpiece of her dining room
 
supper to her feast.

Marta Balcewicz's poems and stories appear in Tin House Online, AGNI Online, The Malahat Review, and elsewhere. She is the fiction editor for Minola Review and lives in Toronto. Find her at www.martabalcewicz.com.