Quartet, Blood and Dead Woman’s Daughter

"March - a self portrait" (CC BY-SA 2.0) ClickFlashPhotos / Nicki Varkevisser

“March – a self portrait” (CC BY-SA 2.0) ClickFlashPhotos / Nicki Varkevisser

Quartet

I shot myself

But I can’t seem to recall how it felt

I memorized a bullet while I held the feather-light handgun

Through my pallet as a knife through my throat

 

I gazed at the sky-rises

Long and gray blocks which nurtured or propagated

in front of my eyes

They seemed to believe they were steps on a slow tedious ascent

Later they all crashed, one after the former,

into a whirlwind of ashes

 

I felt myself on a trip

My breath was small, my nerves jittery as if I’d run away

The last wagon on a chain, hissing through peaks, parishes and hail

I felt the drops of sea as I sat on the windowsill of my dray,

a rectangle with a single wooden frame.

 

It was a ballroom dance

Beside a man I cannot see

Who dragged me to a bathroom stall and took me

in a never-ending way

Again, and again, and again, you would say.

 

Blood

Nothing matters more than blood; they say

Colour pink, red in a purple haze

Treacherous, lying, thieving

But nothing matters more than blood; they say

Colour of love, doom and despair

Rhythmic beating, streaming free and cheating

Cries and misunderstandings

In a world of differences

Nothing to say, no way to care

But blood.

Nothing matters more than blood; they say

 

Give me something more; I say

 

Dead Woman’s Daughter

I sit on my silky smooth silver-laced chair.

And they come and go,

Scents of cheap perfume in clouds of smoke

I wait.

 

I sense the first approach

Pouty red acrylic lips escorted by a cacophony of gold

You have her smile she whispers.

And so I beam.

 

I feel the second one behind my ear

Breath of expensive Single Malt and morsels of the Bread of Life

You have her hair he whispers

And so I put my fleece down.

 

The third glowers from afar

Ginger shaved arms coloured with pearls and a shinny gown

You have her figure she smirks

And so I sit up square.

 

The fourth taps my shoulder crudely

Coat as grey as smog, Cuban cigar and pointy fangs

You have her legs he whispers

And so I open them wide.


Nada El-Omari is a Quebecer-Palestinian-Montrealer. She completed her CEGEP studies in music and social science, and is currently living in Toronto, pursuing her degree in film production at York University.