Poetry by Jaime Speed

                           Eugene Zagidullin CC



Summer - ie. the time capsule

It was the summer of spray tan / burials / the summer we decided not to bare the toxic / relationship to ourselves anymore / apathy shaken free / as swimsuits off our sweating skin / diving into wild waters / like learning other bodies / could deliver us our own / to feel the squeeze of freezing water / forcing out our last breath / mocking our unfamiliar mortality / to feel our feet / against the slip of stones / the sand / we wiggle off our toes / before flip flops wield us off again / on new ways / to find ourselves / long before I’d struggle for sixteen years to sleep / we’d stay up all night / our wildness exposed / in cahoots with the moon / a stolen piece of the heavens //
 
It was the summer we palmed our packs of du Maurier and Export A / an addendum to our sadness / or adultness / no one knew for sure / what we were waiting for / we moved frantically / in jeans biting at our waists / a frenzy of hips / sucking our teeth like girls on a diet / like the urgency to shrink beyond ourselves / was our only momentum / the summer C95 / stopped being the cool radio station / and on Saturdays we’d get a dime bag from the local guy / stretching the night out long like taffy / ignoring the open mouths of garage doors / calling us by name / choosing to leave / our starched streets / in old cars with open windows / in search / of a sky we could sleep under //
 
Sometimes I catch the scent of those summers / washed over in a whiff of open windows and salty bodies / preserved in resin-coated images / I keep them awake with me / charting out a map of moments like stars / burning out too fast / a whole sky bursting / into empty night / sometimes I remember it was that way / for us too / someone always dies / someone always gets married too soon / someone skips the stone / and forgets the count / doesn’t matter / it was always sinking anyway / we were always asking for directions / moving in circles / a dance we could trust / like falling / like the sound of metal twisting / the crash / someone always drives drunk / the shrapnel we collected in the ditches / cupping our hands / and blowing for warmth / like we could revive this / the wreckage / we gathered / our version of cosmic treasure / long buried in the yard / who lives there now / has certainly dug us up like last summer’s tulip bulbs / swept away in the leaves //





Playing catch on the sidelines of my brother’s ball game - ie. paper airplanes 

You blacked my eye
though it was only an accident a slip
of the ball or maybe my mind caught
by a nearby tree branch and thrown back short
before I know it, I’m on the ground with the wind
knocked outta me and uncracked
sunflower seed still in the side of my cheek
the runner crossing third never slows
I hear the cheers erupt like the coughing dust of red shale
when he slides long into home
 
I made up this memory I have
of you as a boy, caught in a tree
wide as auntie’s hips
in the heat of 200 years
before being locked in the car
before her hands went cold
before the spirits
filled her head, every corner
cabinet & glass after glass
I imagine you a boy outside
the bar, day growing hotter as you waited
you let dusty tornados distract you
following a paper airplane of leaves
straying too far
and it cost you
the end of a belt buckle
the flashing red mark
of her practiced regrets
the trembling hands and need
to steady herself at the elbow
the impulse to watch the leaves
falling from the branches
long before you learned to keep your eye on the ball
 
You brought ice to the bruise
appeals and sacrifices
a frozen steak for the shiner
and still it spread
in peeling purples hugging my face
tucked into bed
a kiss planted
just kitty corner to this pain

​


​
On the edge of town, where we grew up

In the moments when I try not to clear my throat
the rabbit’s scream cuts louder
than the gun’s bellow
I long for the ache of empty replies
but trampling through constellations I forget
my dad’s dinged up tin can of rusted nails
I forget to build a fort of all the fallen trees
I dream thickets into years
I dream choking into ghosts
I dream your short arms aiming
at the moon
I dream gun into lover
riding my legs
I dream your shrill laughter staining my boots
Waking moonless, I go on screaming

​

Jaime Speed lives, works, and plays in Saskatchewan, Canada. A fan of reading, gardening, throwing weights, and dancing badly, she has recently been published in The Rat’s Ass Review, Dear Loneliness Project, and Hobo Camp Review, with work forthcoming in Psaltery & Lyre and OyeDrum Magazine.

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