 Glasgow autumn was. Always. … My uncle’s wood bare floors and pale vases green. A child’s upright piano bust, his mother done by. Another clay beside figure it (androgynous. Perhaps unfinished. Perhaps) My uncle’s own and bedroom aunt and my guest mother a room. The crib child’s room shared and I. Long uncle-legged, a teacher lean artist. Dull breaking plaster wall-space (grey between hung painting one his. A man) chair sitting blue, head propped hand. Waiting his. … Glasgow flew to we, my I mother. Clouds close hovered, tails by wisping patch spectral. My stuck suction face a cup to small glass window fish bowl. Ocean I below could. Vast. And distant. Unreal and. … Apple child-cheeked (and ringlet mopped inky. He) naked cold flat white. Pitched yowl high the corner every piercing. Dance ritual or an absurd. Music machine strained cheap, dappled he and scratchy, in one round place turning. (And round. Expressionless. A between) cross music. Holy box shaman and. Mother my child aunt, great sweaters inhabited. Usually hair brown covered straight. A kerchief by and. Stray or two the strand always like. Threads: escaping light. … Father off airport saw us. A lounge was chair arms and couches with. And sand standing ashtrays filled with. Crushed sprouting cacti butts in well desert-spaced. Huge were runway seen windows through (which. My I mother) as walked tarmac passengers with across. People glass airplanes behind the watching. The land and the take off. One father of my. Waving. His. … Early uncle’s flat I would room mornings creep mother’s in my. Half floor darkness sighed boards heavy weight under my. Snickering door her: opening hinges of. Rolling bed’s bundled body the topography my I mother’s outline against curled the cold. Whispering slipped not to wake so as covers her under. Formed air lips like words frost a winter in. Waited. And. Movement for a. Murmur, half her eyes opening dark. And distant. Unreal shuddered body her tighter and hugged herself she. Stuttering throat her rattled like. Engine. Broke jagged. Coughing raw (fits into of. Growing. Worse.) … Museum a Glasgow in. There was. There a boy my was friend. Two older years was than he I. High we hollow through walked and corridors. The whale of inside a. Tools of (and exhibit weapons swallowed. History). Whole. And room then there the. Was. Dinosaurs. Repetition skeletons; a bone reconstructed of. Room the pointing. Blanks. The fill in. Curve to run each hand my along bump, each… still to search sleeping out the marrow, unearthed even after have the bones been. … White I night that as bone lay my bed in. Dreamed and. A moon under. … Past the morning and in crept the I breathing child’s crib. Books piano past and, the parroting. Blue silence (phonograph. My room’s mother) crept toward. Open finding. Door, the and flat bed smooth. Uncle my beside was me standing his. Red. Eyes drawn face his. Hair. My long touched fingers (gentle. Telepathy) some if impart could they, by. What me. To tell. He had. ABOUT THE POET Steven Mayoff was born and raised in Montreal, later on lived in Toronto and moved to the bucolic splendor of Prince Edward Island, Canada in 2001. His fiction and poetry have appeared in literary journals across Canada and the U.S. as well as in Ireland, Algeria, France, Wales and Croatia. He published two books of fiction: the story collection Fatted Calf Blues (Turnstone Press, 2009), which won a PEI Book Award, and the novel Our Lady Of Steerage (Bunim & Bannigan, 2015). Upcoming is a poetry collection Swinging Between Water And Stone to be published by Guernica Editions in 2019. Find out more about Steven Mayoff on his website. Feature image © Rebecca Chitticks, 2016
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