It's this paper, this pen, this hand, all these poems I'll never write. It's
the houses on all the streets, one light, one person
up before the dawn. It's this town, this street,
this house taking all this time from
days that hold words like a sieve.

There's a contest on the radio, Kiss
the Subaru, keep lips locked
on metal to win a car. My
lips lock on ten years ago, before
I entered this purgatory of raising words:

time enough for kisses
waiting, waiting, just
waiting for time to catch us,
one step forward, two back,
and who cares; the smell
of fresh coffee, rising slow
and slow rising, up by
noon on weekends and loll-
ing, lolling around all day.

It's this paper, this pen, this hand that won't move, these words that slip
on the soft mush of 5 a.m., but

there's nowhere else to find time to write.

It's the kids, the getting them to school; it's
the husband, the making lunch, the missing a kiss goodbye;
it's the three-year-old, the morning cartoons, the struggling, struggling
into clothes; it's this dry cleaning, this day care, this
"pick up something for dinner" this day this day this
bloody workday. It's "you
forgot this . . . forgot this . . .
time, time, time and . . .

words stuck in my mouth.

Time is money
and a kiss
is a bright red
Subaru.

Wonderland

My friend traveled three hundred miles
to take her kids to Wonderland. I

tracked a bird's song through the trees
and found an oriole; caught

a garter snake longer than my arm
held it up for my son to see, both

screaming as it coiled round and round
spraying feces on my skin; found

a dead dog in our woods, called
the SPCA and waited for them to come

feeling like the witness to a murder;
saw a rabbit white as snow in

the middle of this summer, must
be albino, my son said, as he

explained to me in layman's terms
and I tried to look serious. We

were arranging wild flowers when my
friend called, my son carrying a

confused bee out in a jar. Her voice
sounded used-up, stressed. We

saw it all,
she said.

Made in Taiwan

A child
encased in ivory
her hair uncoiling
into her eyes
shudders in mid-air.
Her body bent
under the night;
her scream silenced
by etiquette.

Copyright © 2000 by Joy Hewitt Mann

About the Poet

Joy Hewitt Mann has been writing poetry and fiction since 1989 when her youngest son started school. She has since had over 400 poems published in magazines such as Amelia, Whetstone and The Malahat Review, and has had haiku -- which she began writing five years ago -- published in such magazines as Cicada, black bough, and Modern Haiku. Her first fiction collection, Clinging to Water, will be published by Boheme Press, Toronto, Canada, in June 2000. She is also the editor of a bi-monthly writers' newsletter. In 1997 she was awarded the $5,000 Leacock Award for Poetry. After ten years, Joy still stands in awe at the power of writing; how it can change the writer as much as, if not more than, the reader: "I still have no idea where this wonderful gift comes from." When not writing, Joy runs a large junkstore in Spencerville, Ontario, Canada where she lives in an old, stone mill-house with her husband and three children.

E-Mail: joyhm@ripnet.com

Copyright © 2000-2001 by Denis M. Garrison.