Poetry

Julie Hartley is an award-winning writer whose poetry has been published in literary magazines across Canada, including CV2, The Antigonish Review and This Magazine. She is currently working on a poetry collection entitled Flying Backwards with Pelicans.   A sample of recent poetry is included below. For permission to copy or publish, in part or whole, please contact Julie.        

 

All poems Copyright Julie Hartley. For permission to copy or publish, in part or whole, please contact Julie.

 

Clown Queen　

What you see here is a

bunch of child-balloons

bright-ribboned and

deflated as puckered bellies,

crow-winged and caught,

flapping from wires, outside

the window of a girl who

let go. The child’s face is

pressed into the disappointment

of a grey day, her nose flat

as a gravestone. There is a

woman on the street

below balloons, beneath the

window, who is England’s

Queen. Head held aloft,

one hand hooked onto fox skin

bag and twisting in a royal wave,

She is propelled by invisible

corgis. The Queen pauses

underneath the television screen

of the child’s window and

switches channels. In the window,

gravestone nose becomes

a trunk, skin puckered and

so long it curls in fossil whorls

against window glass in a hoped-for

glass smashing, a mournful

reaching out for lost balloons.

The Queen switches channels.

Now the balloons are a nest of

ostriches and the child

one of those monkeys with

hand-suckers sticking to glass.

The Queen switches channels

and the child is a slug. The child

is the slug it will become in

thirty years, sloth-sunk

into sofas, waving the

munched leaf of a TV remote.

The Queen switches channels

and the child is a baby ostrich

trapped the wrong side of the

glass, blinking. The ostrich blinks.

Down in the street now is a

Multi-coloured clown held aloft

by a grape-bunch of bright

balloons, dancing on helium

air, bayed at by foxes, propelled

by a cart-pull of corgis. Here. Look.

The clown-queen tightropes

between telegraph poles

outside the nose-pressing

window of a child.

Do you see?

　

　

The Forbidding City

Enter the inner sanctum of the

ancient Chinese Character

backwards, through the Gate of

Heavenly Peace. Rest awhile in the

House of Yearbound Delight

before Walking Upright through

the Terrace of Five Colour Earth,

aiming for Prosperous Harmony

and Enhanced Righteousness.

On your long journey to the

Gate of Character Cultivation

join the human push and pulse for the

garden of Kindliness and Tranquility;

the Palace of Peace and Longevity.

　

You may find the search for

inner exactitude too forbidding:

in which case, follow the forwards

pull, the great leap, the strong

march southward through the

wasteland, and into the comfort of

the first circle of hutong-Hell. Here,

long bearded smiles rise out of

smoke and stone. A child with

rotting legs and perfect teeth is

crocheting elephants and eternal

love meets sudden squeal of

pneumatic drill, facing obliteration.

Soon, Character Cultivation will be

the only choice in the Great March

Forward and more will wither in a

future replete with capitalised

Harmony, Longevity and Enhanced

Righteousness than the two tree stumps

of a small girl’s gangrenous feet.

　

　

Reading Together

Hank is reading an article

and Mary is watching him read:

noting how his drooping eyes

slow slip to a snooze like birds

sliding from trees or a grey day

soft sloping to night. Hank is reading

his article and Mary is reading

her Hank: how the white chin-

bristles stand out like needlepoints,

the brown shoulders bear-hunched

to an antique desk. Hank is reading

this article but Hank is also

watching Mary watching him

age and the words dance into

a wreath of funeral flowers

and he wants to cover himself

with them, feeling the shame

he once felt (thrill-mixed, then)

as a last article of clothing slipped

to the floor: but now this fire

has sighed into ash. There is no

pleasure in shame, this time,

and nothing to hide behind: not

youthful bravado or desire; not

even a hiding to be had in his article,

an article he was savouring only

moments before; an article on

the true nature of identity theft.

 

All poems Copyright Julie Hartley.
For permission to copy or publish, in part or whole, please contact Julie.