After John Berryman, Dream Song 29
Wednesday is the day for worries: how many
plastic bags did you use this week? Is your medication
out? Will rent be late this month? What will we do
when we inherit the earth?
Stuck in remembering where nobody is ever missing,
this Wednesday it is three days since my mother told
me she has cancer, stuck at a gas station on my way
to Sudbury. The bus rides each snow squall, and this
Wednesday is no different from any other Wednesday
on the bus. The woman in front of me with blue star
tattoos on her face is travelling west two weeks after
her boyfriend overdosed at an army base.
Before I left, the man I thought I loved
gave me gifts,
turtle dove hearts engraved on a box, a Contigo mug,
a band shirt, and claimed half my front tooth with a fist.
Love after all is not practical, it’s surviving necessity.
Today I’m going to the mountains where I can mourn
a life that was never mine, where what I can’t write
about you wakens me, where I can believe the mind
is in the head and nobody is ever missing.
Ashley-Elizabeth Best is from Kingston, ON. Her work has been published internationally in CV2, Ambit, The Literary Review of Canada, The Columbia Review, and Glasgow Review of Books, among many others. In 2015 she was a finalist for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry, and her debut collection of poetry was published with ECW Press.