Lesley Pasquin is both an educator and a poet. She had read at The National Library of Canada, The Yellow Door, and The Arts Cafe. Her poems reflect an intermingling of myth and fairly tale and reflect the influence of emotion on the body.

After Words

And so I will write you a love poem.

You are tired of angst

and melodrama and

glimpses into the future by fortunetellers

with their wise caution.

Rather I will write about

the threads stretched between us

that you follow like Perseus

to reach me, to cup your hands

around my face

easing yourself into me;

the space between us so small

not even a breath can fill it.

We will no longer speak in poetry.

Our tongues will carry

secrets only understood by lovers.

And afterwards, there will

be no need for after words.

All our language will be spent.

 

Communion Day

We are not worthy so much

as to gather up the

crumbs from under your table.

The echo of the kneelers

hits the stone floor:

you slip from your pew

and fold your hands;

twelve years old,

what do you know about prayer?

You observe the soles

of the shoes in front,

the women’s dresses crushed,

lint clinging from their discarded coats,

and the Kleenex they have

pushed up their sleeves.

Your veil itches and if John McMullen

would kiss you, you would never

have need for prayer again.

Matthew Seven: whatsoever ye

would that men should do

unto you, even so, do unto them.

Your stomach falling,

your sister’s tights

half way down your thighs,

you are going to drink the Blood of Christ,

and his body will be

laid upon your tongue;

a wafer; no taste of salt or sweat or

tears or semen, most

unlike the other bodies

that will meet your tongue:

the real flesh and the real

blood you will come to know;

the real supplications

you will come to make:

the prayers for an ordinary life.

 

Selkie

It is said that drowning is a peaceful death.

Float. Lay your head and

be filled with silence;

with echoes of silence,

and when you speak

your voice will resonate

as if in a foreign tongue.

Surely you would not

drown with pockets full of stones.

Surely you would slip from your clothes,

From your selkie skin; escape to shore.

Wouldn’t you have one last chance as

your mother calls you from the bath

where you lay below the surface,

looking up to see her startled face.

No tattooed cross upon your breast

You have shed seven times seven tears.

Stand at the edge of the sea and let

The old and familiar reclaim you.

 

© Lesley Pasquin