Catherine Graham – 7 Poems w/art by Robert Frede Kenter

My Eurydice

They say his look
back
locked her in

I tip my hand
towards the sun
see

tender lines
unfold inside
the M

always an O
slowly
to escape from

that love
that lyre—
obsessing head

the Furies fate
my want
is her

release
his back
after that faithless

look
his step into
upper

light
her entry
owning dark.

Horse of Cerberus

My three-ringed prayer
falls flat on its face.

The three hills I slide down
can’t escape my shape:

a horse with three heads—
two sprout from my neck.

Look hard enough, the edge
cracks into three songs.

Three tinny crickets
sing the dead back to us

and the oyster of the sun
steals three pearls from the moon.

Chimera

I absorbed you—
my cells, my twin—
fused in the womb.

Ambidextrous—
my nights alive
with double-dreams—

pain inside
pain, thought
behind thought.

I talk
twice—twice
in silence, echo

I hear—
this hollow I hold
can never be filled.

Cassandra

My eyes move
in story, black

orbs dilate
to a night cloak.

Blue rain
I say: tears, tear, horror.                                                  A gift given—discarded
                                                                                            to a curse—
The serpent licks—                                                          Nobody believes—
Open into my ear—
                                                                                             Apollo. Or the licking snake—
                                                                                                                              whispering
I spit in Apollo’s mouth—
                                                                                             cries hold
                                                                                             no relief—only I know the embrace
                                                                                             he did not hold

Persephone

Fast through fire, my dream
nuzzles escape. The orange ruby
burns his molten language.

Night branches—
I follow the storm.
Crepuscular light

runs counter to seconds.
His thumbprint seeps—
I pull through

the river slips—
ghost a go-away route
parched with pink magic.

Syphon air from his hissful sheets—
Skyroam a pace so quick
stars carry my eyes.

Ice

Sometimes I see the quarry’s eye
seal into ice. It happens as it happens
in my sleep. Cataract, darkling with greys,

I place spring flowers as colour guides
for fish and mud-nuzzling turtles.
Mermaids and mermen. Why not?

There’s room for all with fins and scales—
                                 my unknowing swims in.

Little Red Hood

It would be sweet if she wore one—red
as the sass pushing out her dead mother’s hair.

Cape-ached with promise—long
as the line dangling ancestry.

That screech the night owl makes
opens the moon but the girl can’t connect.

Shadows cast unnoticed. She cuts
through scratchy grasses into the garden

where ghosts sew time into mist—
the path ends where the wolf waits.

Images: robert frede kenter (c) 2023.

Banner: Gossamer Trace
1. Little Sprite
2. Three Tree
3. Storm
4. Cassandra Beacon
5. The Landscape of Knives
6. froth, a landscape
7. in the mountains

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Photo credit: Marion Voysey.

Catherine Graham is a poet, novelist, podcast host and creative writing instructor based in Toronto. Her eighth book, Æther: An Out-of-Body Lyric,was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award, Toronto Book Award, and won the Fred Kerner Book Award. The Celery Forest was named a CBC Best Book of the Year and was a finalist for the Fred Cogswell Award for Poetry. Her debut novel Quarry won an IPPY gold medal for fiction and was a finalist for the Sarton Women’s Book Award for Contemporary Fiction. The Most Cunning Heart and Quarry were both Miramichi Reader Best Books and finalists for the Fred Kerner Book Award. She teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto where she won an Excellence in Teaching Award, leads the Toronto International Festival of Authors’ Book Club, co-hosts The Hummingbird Podcast—part of the WNED PBS Amplify app, and is a judge for the CBC Poetry Prize. Put Flowers Around Us and Pretend We’re Dead: New and Selected Poems is her latest book. www.catherinegraham.com Twitter: @catgrahampoet

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Robert Frede Kenter (b) Hamilton, Ont. lived for over a decade in the U.S of A. immersed in experimental theatre, returned home for a party, only to get ME/CFS. A widely published writer & visual artist and the EIC/publisher of Ice Floe Press, Robert has work recently in: Otoliths, The Storms Journal, Wombwell Rainbow, Cherita, talking about strawberries, Watch Your Head, Olney Magazine and many other venues, in print and web-based. Eden (2021) is a vispo collection, Audacity of Form (2019) is text and image based, and a collaborative work. Robert is featured in The Book of Penteract (Penteract Press, 2022). Forthcoming in Glisk and Glimmer (Sidhe Press, 2023), Recalibrating the Pain Scale (Olney Books), Seeing in Tongues (Steel Incisors, 2023), & more.
Twitter: @frede_kenter. IG: r.f.k.vispocityshuffle, plus, plus…