The Poetry Marathon

“mens sana in corpore sano”

Coffee comfort upper
Register my complaints
In the downstairs office
no light switch on walls of black paint
You have to feel your way

“Could you become your own comfort?”
she asks, I lean
legs crossed on the black couch
covered with a white bottom sheet
the appearance of COVID safety

It may not do anything
But it makes us feel better
I feel along the walls and floors
For the hidden scarlet letter
force stillness on the go getter

“The hearts metanoia on the other hand, turns without regret, turns not so much away as towards” – Scott Cairns

When I was two years old my parents bought a red brick building

I will return even after I have left
to finish emptying out the enduring things
Shelves hold the dust of grade six, seven, twelve, all of university,
my early work years and my first return to gain strength,
and my swift return in lockdown,
“I can’t seem to escape this place!”

I will return even after I have left
Helping with boxes of books, glass, history
Until we stand in the emptiness and the glowing floors
Piles of dust and detritus
Keys never identified for all the French doors
someone will have a broom and miss the moment
The end of endless returning

I will return even after I have left,
I know what hurts here, at least
Turn you can never come home again
Into this place is no longer home
Yield to what I cannot know
Turn towards three months in the east 

Go

When I was thirty they sold it.

11/

11/

When I was sixteen, my math teacher slipped me clues during tests
“Ka-hi-li, calme toi”, he’d say,
adding an extra syllable to my name
That math was an abstraction

It was another eight years before I got my driver’s license
The first time I drove the car alone
I swung it wide in my parent’s drive
and put a pole-shaped dent in the side door

It was a green 1992 mustang
When my gramma bought it, I was one,
wearing the clothes my niece wears now:
cute waving frills of pink striped cotton.

She was born seven months ago, 
weighing less than seven pounds
five months before you asked me to marry you,
and flew to a three day job somewhere in middle America

two days before they closed
the world’s longest continuous unguarded border,

three and a half months ago now.

10/

In the event of
Everything being too much
(it always was)
Cultivate the virtue of vanishing

On the occasion of
Everything being too rough
(it always was)
Cultivate the virtue of resistance

In light of
Current events
(it’s new and it isn’t)
Cultivate beans, carrots, kale

(and buy chicks – if they are back in stock)



9/

halfway

I sat, crying
concussion brain reeling
feelings, feelings, feelings

halfway

up the steep saddle
between two smallish mountains
above Taylor Lake

halfway

you let me decide
to go on or just cry

6/

Sunwarmed butter
Bread torn in hunks
Black coffee, fresh ground
Green grass smell strong
Four hours of sunshine
Only one shadow

3/

bullet blender breaks
floating flakes freeze frame
shit storm surges surely
memories mornings make

2/

At night fall,
Turn on a gentle white whirring
Hang a large black cloth over each window
Squeeze orange foam to stop the ear drum’s resonance with the dark
In blue ballpoint, write the day’s missed marks
Burn the list

Embrace the virtue of vanishing

1/

Momma, I am quarantine in your house
You are far away from this contagion
Writing to you, I want to sprinkle but I douse
I remove skin, no gentle microdermabrasion

Two bridal magazines from the one in my mess
Who I can’t help but let all the way in
Everything pink and white: pink (“white”) skin, white dress
Four hundred years of unacknowledged sin

I need the full hour but I was slow to rise
I forget that first words are hard to recover from
I forget that I need to fully clear my eyes
Of a life’s worth of never joining the scrum

Come to me, muse of the one I no longer choose
I am tired, awake early, and the coffee is slow to brew

Hello,

I’m Kaili. I’m a singer and songwriter from Toronto, Canada. This is my fourth time participating in the poetry marathon. I’m doing the half marathon this year!