Poetry by Mary Anne Griffiths

     Vincent Parsons CC




When you tell me I come second to alcohol

The provision of love is as short as the rope I use
to bind my own foot to the locust tree whose
thorns pierce the night.

Starlight leaks through.
Why does the moon even try?
There are no crossroads
just this interminable road, stretching.

You give me the permission to leave
to unhook myself.
Yet I swing in the breeze,

face serene.  Blood rushes to my head.
It glows.  I am a saint.  Cold air lies
against me.  I am used to it.

Suspended, I hallucinate of the moment
spent gazing upon the upright card on the table.

I live in this liminal hour, day after day,
free will holding me up, not love.  
Dawn will come.  They will find me
with one foot kicking,
kicking the shadows out from beneath me.






Disappearing Act

I fell in love with a magician
always pulling from his hat
all I ever wanted.

He laid his cards on the table
always able to tell
which one I favored.

When he found coins behind
my ears, I felt rich

but when he sawed me 
in half he forgot 
to put me back together

and he disappeared into
the bottle, like a genie
in reverse.






The Casserole

All my life I took my guilt
sat in a quiet, dark closet
and nourished myself.

Now I am an adult
brought up on the goodness of it.
Is it not a wonder I am so thin?
Is it not a wonder my mother followed me in
to the bathroom to wait form my retching?

But I have never purged
only swallowed and assimilated it.
I could not bring it back up--
the acid of others would have burned me alive.

I have used its great, black, metallic minerals
its viscous vitamins and weary salts and waters.
Everyone asks, what’s your diet?

I tell them—repressed feelings
lovingly stewed, braised and sweated in a pot
a crucible--
a fine dish at that.

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Mary Anne Griffiths is a writer and poet living in Ingersoll, Ontario, Canada.  She shares space with her husband, a tortie and tuxie.
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