Kitchen Party Poetry: September 7th, 2022
Thank you to all the new people that made it out this past week! We were able to welcome ten new individuals to our reading series, four of whom shared original work. We hope to have them all back soon!
After a plethora of great pieces from returning readers Sheldon Cooper, Dean Vukovic, James Dunnigan, Zach Da Costa, and myself, and some great chats and drinks all around, the seats of the old Cloak and Dagger pub post-reading never felt so comfortable.
Below you will find a poem by James Dunnigan and a cross-medium play meets poem meets prose piece by Dean Vukovic.
We hope you enjoy.
Grievance Addressed to Fellow Tourists and Cherry Blossoms
James Dunnigan
“there were dozens at Robarts, they were all taking selfies” -Diego vain beauty not the one that vanishes but lasts and why we ask must you unskin yourselves so brightly in the rain clothed as you are in scales of near ashperfect blush vain beauty that which lasts but why must we in vanity unending like the rain drench your impermanence with such distress vain beauty only lasts
MOLD HOUSE
Dean Vukovic
Someone stands in a room. He’s in a cold sweat, catching his breath. Yellowed residential light. The walls are peeling. The window is open. A sculpture of a woman, tattered with fabric and wire and burnt wax hangs from the ceiling. It is crafted as if someone were taking out their frustrations upon it. It’s destroyed and deeply indulgent. A song plays softly from a CD in the corner. “(It Will Have to Do) Until the Real Thing Comes Along” by the Ink Spots. Soundscape: unintelligible voices, trying to say a word. Cars passing by. Faint sirens. Creaking of floorboards above. There are bugs in my apartment and I keep seeing this woman in the hallway. She looks like me and she’s rotting. She’s wearing my clothes, and she’s looking at me like she’s sorry, and her eyes are gutted out. She’s saying something I remember, but I can't figure out what, and I’m picking out the ends of verbs and phrases from my cupboard while I look for roaches. I am on the brink of becoming a man. Which is to say, I am on the brink of drawing blood. The truth is, I don’t know much about manhood. What I know is what I’ve picked up off the ground and nurtured quietly, without remorse. I have taped down & bound myself up & drawn on mustaches & stuffed my boxers & tried to speak with less woman in my throat & smiled less & drowned in the fabric of passed-down wrinkled, cuffed and collared shirts. I’m about to hit the concrete and everyone can see it. There are nights where I feel as though I’m rotting too, and the fuzz of decomposition has grown over my chest. And the sensible thing to do, the well-adjusted thing to do, is to remove it. Like a tumour. You have to cut away the mold. No one wants something past its expiration date. But there just aren’t enough doctors, and too long of wait times. So I go to work and I sleep in my bed, staining it with mold. There’s only so many times I can do laundry. Only so many showers I can take, and now it’s growing under my skin. Now, I think I could have been a beautiful woman. Probably a good mother too. I wasn’t a perfect daughter, but I was alright. I didn’t know this is who I’d become. If I did, I would have prepared better. I would have fought harder. But I was young, starving, and stupid, and I wanted the fear. I was angry, restless, trying to survive in spite of myself. Which is to say I was already a father’s son. But I was also deathly afraid, and bitter, and gave myself to everybody else. So I was also a daughter. And it was vicious, this empty pursuit to figure out who I’d be for the rest of my life. It’s all so boring now. And yet, I’m left repeating all of this to professionals that watch a crisis case in front of them and decide that a breast reduction is a better, less invasive choice. He pauses, his gaze taken by the woman. Blood rushes to his face, and it’s hard to breathe. He takes off a layer and tries to regain his words. It's hard not to get bitter. To be so hungry and left so hollow. To have to put yourself on a spit roast to marinate and ache and burn, having to say: This is something of what I am. Please believe me. I know I'm not who I used to be. Like me anyway. I was walking on the street from the subway station, past this evangelical church, and the preacher or pastor or volunteer or villain says, hello ma’am can i interest you in a pamphlet ma’am? god bless you ma’am and it’s like I was shot. I almost fell onto the pavement and crawled home. Because what did I even do it all for? I go to a men’s barber in Kensington every three months, I wear men’s clothes, I use a compression binder that I bought online alone in my father’s office two Octobers ago I don’t even smile in public Do you know how fucking sad that is? I don’t smile? I just let my gaze harden into clay, immovable across streets and sidewalks. I don’t know what I’ll look like in a year. I don’t know where the bugs are coming from. I don’t know how not to make it eat me alive. And if in the morning I am still nothing, if I am still fragile and open and weeping - then what? What if the soreness continues? How will I get to sleep? Who will take away my mirrors and put me in my softest clothes? Who can I hold while the television plays, among the mold and the throb and the weariness of a final day?