-------------------------------------------------------------------------- Queer-e Vol. 1. no. 1 Creative Writing 11. Deborah Pletsch-Owen ________________________________________________ Copyright (c) 1995 by Author, all rights reserved. This text may be freely shared among individuals, but it may not be republished in any medium without express written consent from the authors and advance notification of the editors of Queer-e . ------------------------------------------------ Heaven I dreamt while dancing in my crocus youth of heaven, steeples rising from the trees - obscurring leaves protecting mortal truth familial roots to bend me to my knees and chapelled nature deaf before my pleas - 'mid burning crosses falling from the oaks igniting doubts full fuelled by the breeze swept by, a hand outstretched to gently coax me Christ-ward through the bushes blackened smoke past life and limb, though foul defense it seems; the branch that guides may be the vine that chokes, that sunlight dims, that kills my crocus dreams, I dreat of heaven straining through the leaves but dappled truth that sunlit forest weaves. * * * 'Til Death In dreams of night, into your bed I creep with wroth intent and hungry killing knife. Sweet blood I let in silence while you sleep and wrest from her the burden of your life; wet scarlet stained I subjugate your wife Embalmbed between the sticky sheets we mesh as one, and change my thickened breaths of strife to hard soft bursts expired onto your flesh, and cloaked in darkness finalize our sin. Unknownst to thee, we spoil thy nuptual creche with neither lust; beneath your weight I win the marriage bed your spousal love did bless. In blackness kept, I muse to trade my soul and wake as she, possesor of her role. * * * Commandments The echo of your god commands your faith and beckons you to hold your heart in stay 'til night, yet daylight shows desire that lays upon a breast not thine; and so you pray to him that made you - Take this lust away! Tempt not the fire which deep in my heart lies with apple white firm flesh and female way! - you pray. But light tells want within your eyes and far below, the love that sometimes dies allowed to grow. Kiss me! For I've no church to sin against. My heart from prison cries to take your flesh and wrest from you your perch - I long to break us from our spousal bands and feast of pleasures lying at our hands! * * * Speaking I My telephone is magenta My friends laugh and point but I haven't got the time, the grey one is broken and I haven't got a dime, so until I've time and money. . . you'll all just have to live with it. and If you want to know the truth, In all your black and white and they grey of the day, I'm really beginning to appreciate - I've really grown to like - You know, I'm awfully kinda glad that My telephone is magenta. II I used to have a telephone coloured robin's egg blue. What could be more ridiculous? well I don't use it anymore. It's actually in my closet because my bunny ate it. III Christmas 1993. Magenta phone ousted in beige touch-tone coup. Push to the norm disguised as parental assistance. No help in sight. _Thou shalt no longer be the only person on the planet with dial service. Thine decor shall no longer be unsightly blemished by the fushia fantasy phone._ Now about this off-white monstrosity, _not_ beige really, beige being a real colour, albeit the very defining colour of boredom and conformity, yet nevertheless existant, but off-white - much wore by non-virtue of being defined solely by its notness, as in 'not white but so bleedingly conservative that we've no desire to notice it long enough to take the time to actually bother naming it as we did eggplant and chartreuse' (truly exhilarating experiences by the way) . . . and don't give me that old _ecru_ business; this is so much more so. Mind, it _has_ already converted my flighty fingers and my eager ears: _they_ make repeated and lengthy long distance calls to people they don't know just to make the electronic music of push buttons ring out across the land. They are firm traitors already, yes; I fear my easily swayed lips may soon follow . . . p.s. . . . and it's really my own business if I want to sleep with an old magenta telly-o-phone under my faithful mooshy pillow; we're all old friends here you see . . . * * * Proceed I am on a trolley, more than a bed, parked in a wayward breezway I wait. Mary Kay nurses speak over me - one has been abroad; in the next spot lies an empty cart soaked through with curdled blood, pungent meaty smells mingling with cheap American perfume - nursemaids exchanging gifts over my pale carcass. I am not spoken to. No one addresses the meat in the butcher shop. Two hours later the table is clean; I awake with a craving. No one mentions the procedure - I've had a procedure; friends stand by my side speaking to fill the void - I've had a procedure, I'm to have a void now. _The grunting boar has run long ago through the woods . . . who cares._ I finish my lunch In the antiseptic hallway we pass another mother and a child. Everyone looks but me; I proceed quickly ahead. About the author: Deborah Pletsch-Owen did her undergrad at the University of Waterloo, where she's currently finishing her MA in 20th century lit, especially British. She HOPES to be PhD-ing next year, pursuing a big interest in Welsh/Scottish/Irish lit. and postcolonial theory, and a not-quite-so-big interest in chaos. She will attend her first academic conference at Yale in April 1995 with the Edith Wharton Society, where she will present her paper "Form Follows Fashion: (Postcolonial) Interiors in _The Age of Innocence_." She has been writing poetry (good and bad) since she picked up her first crayola. She expects to write more, and maybe publish a great Canadian novel and spend the rest of her days living off the movie rights in some remote but tropical corner of Algonquin Park, Ontario. She is from Guelph, but have lived in Waterloo forever with her husband Andrew, lots of books, and many assorted coming-and-going friends. No kids, no pets, no steady job. Happier generally than she has any right to be. Writing = hobby, catharsis, joy, one-day-livelihood. No vices. --------------------------------------------------------------------------