Poetry by FJ Doucet

                         ​Chiara Cremaschi CC




​Ode to My Mother's Overdose


can i show you night's shape without exposing the black root 
of blame? no other way to tell this story. the child

twisted by the woman's shame. her stillness: grotesque,
open-mouthed on the living room sofa. no way, no

mama! get up! i’ll be good now. please. my baby-self bargaining 
with God. just how long did I stand there shaking 

her arms? terror competed with awe in her loveliness. the poster-girl
for heroin-chic modelling death. was an hour enough 

that she might at last wake? gasping, she sat up. but after 
thirty years, i still hear myself screaming through the throws

of our same re-birth in terror. that night 
was the last of my childhood. ever since, I think 

I've always known what Leonard Cohen meant 
when he sang the holy dove. and still

the cry that splits the starless night above--
the cold and then the broken hallelujah.





In the Event

I read about the maloxone kit. I
read about it, I thought--I need
to call Mum.        I need

to warn her. I need--
I will tell her 
in the event of an overdose. Get this 

thing, the kit. Open the box, 
the saving of your life. Inject grace

and breath, until such time 
as you can put the needle down 
for good. I need 

to call her. But what’s this

busy signal, the abrupt closure/
click of the line. The number

you have dialed has not been assigned.

FJ Doucet's poetry has most recently been published in Andromeda Spaceways Magazine, Beliveau Review, Yolk, Martin Lake Journal, and Literary Mama, while her work in Prometheus Dreaming magazine was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her prose appears in the Retellings of the Inland Seas anthology from Candlemark and Gleam press, with more fiction forthcoming through Endless Ink Publishing House. She is a member of The Wild Nellies women's creative collective and the newest president of the Brooklin Poetry Society, just outside of Toronto, Canada. 

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