Photos and Poetry by Catherine Owen
Pop
Shopper’s Drug Mart on 118th avenue
His cart is so cornucopia’d, things ditch
onto the arrowed floor of Shoppers, the metal maw
stuffed (mostly) with stacks of pop, layers of bright plastic,
half-price.
Women, he starts, and there is a shrinking in me from the beginning of time -
how will he now define, dismiss us, how will he,
like my father, make me feel I should have been a man, or perhaps
am one?
Women, he continues, what we do for them, and I disappear
as a witness, resist the imprecations, while
acknowledging the need to feel heroic in these men, who have lifted
so many bottles of Sprite, Coke, solely (it seems)
for the ladies in their lives.
Women, he finishes, we carry all their heavy stuff and I think
of the rape-abortion-loss-sorrows-births inside my gut,
squatting within my mouth that no man has hefted from the weighed
cart of my body, but ok -
you have schlepped these items of forgetfulness into the house
so I can drink, drink this false sweetness
down.
Spray
In the year of the plague, a woman in Shoppers steals - something -
a minor perfume, a body spray - too pricy for her to purchase -
is caught and at the cash register told to give it back, to leave
it behind. Her mouth is husked in a mask and so when hate spouts out
it remains inside the small cave of cloth - doesn’t but seems to -
the words, You effing N…addressed to the security guard, who has been calm
& kind, reminding her she is wasting time and should just let it go, should relinquish
the tiny vial of beauty she can’t afford -You effing N…. she yells, spits, but
the rage is muffled by the soft armor across her mouth, the words huddle hard against
her lips, the fabric now visibly damp - is she feeling her anger ricochet back down
her throat or is her partially-anonymous face making her brave,
brave enough to hate loudly - there are at least four sources of pain here as the store
takes back its product and righteous or sorrowful customers wait in their own
agony-masks
to pay.
Ms. Lyric's Poetry Outlaws
Join poet Catherine Owen as she reads poems, talks about the poetry world and interviews poets.
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About the Artist:
Catherine Owen is the author of 15 collections of poetry and prose. Her latest books are Riven (ECW, 2020) and Locations of Grief: an emotional geography, 24 memoirs on loss and place (Wolsak & Wynn, 2020). Raised in Vancouver BC, she lives in Edmonton, AB, Canada. You can read Catherine's poetry reviews on her blog "Marrow Reviews" at https://crowgirl11.wordpress.com/
Catherine's literary magazine, thethe, is currently accepting poetry submissions: