Apart
Missing, you are missing
I don’t know real from unreal
anymore
or maybe
I do.
That is the problem
knowing too much
infernal fires
undo the clasps
of a black gown
dropped.
I fall only to rise
I must be careful not to
over-extend
the choir of angels sings
slow
Silk
Is it black or is it dark-brown
I can almost feel the silk
but it is not body that I see
now, only a whisper
and a cry, a song and
we are asleep in a grand hallway
where light and dark collide
tear out the empty
replace it with the full
I want to be near, to feel it
living or beyond
there are answers that we
don’t know
the silk wraps around me
I can breathe it in,
the dark bliss
STATUE
inside the blood clots
the white is a figment, an illusion
statue–
at the centre of everything
snow sheltering
she can see the precise hand raised
the other, on extended knee
it is worship, this monument, this
frozen alabaster trick
still, she stops and listens to the ex-
cavated statue’s outer shell
the face immovable, the hand
that chiselled is long-gone
what is a memory?
in the midst of this invincibility
she unleashes flesh, blood at the centre
red heart across statue, snow
certain, there is something
in the ice
that moves
Bionote
Eleni Zisimatos is a widely published Canadian poet living in Montreal. She has been a finalist in the National Magazine Awards for her poetry and the Irving Layton Awards for both her poetry and fiction. She is currently co-editor-in-chief of the poetry magazine, Vallum: Contemporary Poetry. www.vallummag.com
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