Snowing on West Broadway

My phone tells me that it is snowing on West Broadway.
Even though I haven’t been to Winnipeg in eight months,
the app never fails to alert me to weather conditions on your street.

I still think about your shithole apartment,
and I wonder if you ever cleaned the wax off the mattress from that time we played with the Shabbat candles,
and if there is piss still on the bathroom floor,
and if the food-encrusted dishes are still piled high in the sink.
I can recall the smell of cheap weed and dirty laundry that hung in the air like an unanswered question,
the sound of sirens, honking cars, and breaking beer bottles that accompanied our conversations in your bed
– the only available free space in your whole home-
and the way the cobwebs of your depression glimmered in the sunlight that shone through the dirty windows over our heads…
in the corners, but always present.

Sometimes, in my dreams, I still wheeze and limp my way up the huge flights of stairs in your building,
looking for the apartment with the giant grease stain in front of the door.
I knock, but I always wake up before I hear any signs of life within.
Would you answer? Would you let me into your messy space once more?

It’s snowing on West Broadway again.

I hope that you are warm.

Photograph by Winnipeg Transit

 

 
This work, “Snowing on West Broadway” by Beth Murch, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Oh, Right! I Have A Blog!

Hello, my Precious Blueberries!

I come to you from the land of social isolation, during these times of Covid – 19.  It’s April  1st today, the first day of National Poetry Writing Month, and although I always fail to make it through the entire challenge, I am giving it the old college try once again, because I  need something creative and constructive to help me occupy my time.

I haven’t really written anything since the fall. I have still been busy performing and doing workshops, but I didn’t feel the urge to write. In fact, I felt the opposite. But recently, I am starting to feel the urge once more, which is good, because now that I am quarantined, I need something to do. 

A few months ago, someone told me that love poems are cliche, and that they don’t offer anything “new” in terms of contributing to the zeitgeist. Perhaps that is true, but I am a romantic at heart, and I happen to enjoy a good love poem…and this is MY blog, so phooey on them. Enjoy this love poem.

He Asks What I Want to Talk About

“I choose to love you in silence, for in silence I find no rejection.
I choose to love you in loneliness, for in loneliness no one owns you but me.
I choose to adore you from a distance, for distance will shield me from pain.
I choose to kiss you in the wind, because the wind is gentler than my lips.
I choose to hold you in my dreams, for in my dreams you have no end.” – Rumi 

When my eyes are tributaries
tears leaping like spawning silver, pink-bellied salmon
I want to tell you that I need you like beech trees rely on each other for survival
but my voice always cracks like wood splitting in a fire
and smoke builds up in my lungs causing me to choke.

You ask me what I am afraid of
I don’t know how to tell you that the space between each of your breaths is the loneliest silence
and I want to wail mournfully at the top of my lungs like a loon paddling a glassy lake at dusk
calling for her mate to sing back to her, to tell her that she’s not alone
I don’t know how to tell you that I want you to sing back to my calls songs older than words
I want you to reassure me that you will return like dawn
inhalations and exhalations painting the indigo sky flaming orange.

I want us intertwined like gnarled old roots
I want you to wash over me like ripples of water on cattails
I want to be as near to you as resin on bark.

I would like to say that I can resist my feelings for you
that I can form an invisible line indicating the separation between protected wetlands and urban sprawl
but the truth is that you permeate me like minerals in rock
even though I am as inarticulate as lichen.

You ask me what I want to say
What I want to say is that I love you
but my berry-stained lips cannot form the words
out of fear that you will turn cold like summer fades to autumn
out of fear that you will leave me like geese migrating south.
So many others have left before.

But to not speak a thing doesn’t mean it isn’t true
falling cedars snap like lightening even when no one is there to hear them
I am trying to graft words to my tongue
trying to sprout courage from last season’s pine cones.

In the meantime, I weep like a flooded creek in spring
soaking the land around me while my heart melts like the snow
Some day, I will be oak-like
standing tall in my truth and ancient in wisdom
impervious to rejection
Until then, I write a world of forests to obscure my vulnerability
much like a doe lays her fawn down in an overgrown thicket.

Until then, accept these wildflower words that I picked from the meadow of my mind.
May they allude to the beauty that comes after  rainfall.

Stock photo.

This work, “He Asks What I Want To Talk About” by Beth Murch, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Interview With Reclaiming The Wild: Hump Day Hiatus

https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Freclaiming.the.wild%2Fvideos%2F245178849731580%2F&show_text=0&width=560

In case you weren’t able to catch my interview with Reclaiming the Wild for her Hump Day Hiatus podcast, here’s a recording for you to enjoy! It includes an impromptu performance of my poem, “F.A.T.” and some juicy discussions about body positivity.

Hump Day Hiatus Interview

Prairie Tour!

Hello Precious Blueberries!

I am reaching out to you because I am currently fundraising to get my tuchus out to the Canadian Prairies, where I have been asked to do some performances and workshops, as well as to fund my newest chapbook, which is chock-full of the earthy, sensuous, feisty, feminist, confessional poetry that you love.

I’d sure be grateful if you could spare a buck or two (or, hey, maybe a little more) in order to help me make this dream trip a possibility. I’m really overjoyed and honoured to be asked to share my poetry in other provinces, so I want to take advantage of this amazing opportunity.

Bethy’s Fundly Campaign

Saskatoon Poetic Arts Festival 2018

Hello, Precious Blueberries! So, here’s a thing that you might not know about me: all next week, I’ll be in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, performing at the Saskatoon Poetic Arts Festival, alongside several very talented poets! Our heroine is feeling a little intimidated by her colleagues, but she is looking forward to learning so much from them. We’ll be up to all kinds of adventures: workshops, performances, group writing experiences…you name it! We’ll experience a performance and workshop by Sabrina Benaim, of “Explaining My Depression to my Mother” and Depression & Other Magic Tricks fame.

This is a tremendous opportunity for me, and it is one that I would not have had the privilege to experience were it not for the support and generousity of my incredible friends, lovers, dears, queers, and beloved anonymous fans. I am profoundly grateful to everyone who contributed to my YouCaring campaign (whose funding goal was met so quickly I didn’t even have time to make a blog post promoting it!). Plane tickets and other travel expenses are not cheap, and your donations have left this poetess humbled and grateful.

I will take lots of pictures, and I will be sure to keep you all updated on my adventures in Saskatoon!

Trees, Bees, & Babies!

Peace and Blessings,

Beth

 Photo Credit: Sherri-Lyn Finley of Little Bird Beginnings Doula Services.

NaPoWriMo Day Twelve

I have missed a few days of the NaPoWriMo challenge due to a combination of not feeling the prompts and Life “stuff”, but I’m trying to get back on the wagon. Warning: I’ve totally gone rogue. I’ll be posting things out of order and I’ll probably disregard most of the prompts.

Prompt 12/30: Write a Haibun

April Ice Storm

The robins are building a nest on the windowsill again. Their wings beat against the glass, a feathery knocking. The bathroom faucet is dripping, each wasted water droplet splattering the one before it, a wet smack. Snow from the April ice storm is drifting against the side of the building, wave after wave of whooshing, a ghostly echo of frozen beaches. In the bedroom, in this noisy silence, your rough hand gently scrapes up the white nectarine flesh of my thigh, leaving no mark and yet marking what is your own. Here the unspoken says what words do not.

Spring comes late this year
my heart races against your palm
flowers wait for warmth

 Is this your image? If so, let me know so that I  may credit you.

This work, “April Ice Storm” by Beth Murch, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

NaPoWriMo Day Eight

Prompt 8/30: Describe an Event that Can’t be Understood Literally

BabyNotBaby

In the end, we buried it in the garden.

She used the trowel and emptied the whipped topping container that was repurposed into a makeshift casket into the hole.

I said a prayer to a G-d that was as silent as Life’s potential cut short before us.

Together, we placed a rosebush to mark the spot where something almost happened but didn’t…

…and yet, it kind of did, anyway.

Is this your picture? If so, let me know so that I may credit you.

 
This work, “BabyNotBaby” by Beth Murch, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

NaPoWriMo Day Seven

Prompt 7/30: Write a Poem Where One Identity Contends or Discusses With another Identity

Warrior queen
crawls through forest,
single breast exposed,
dagger strapped to thigh,
calls for stags and wolves to be her companions.

Heroine needs no one,
rides off into golden sunsets alone
with naught but horse for companionship,
or
hides in thatched-roof cottages, disguised as hag living alone
except for spooky cats that come when beckoned by hands wizened by age.

Leather-tough and hard as nails,
princess needs no one to rescue her
when she slays her own dragons
and turn their hides into leather handbags.

But yet –
night falls.
Your arms open wide.
Suddenly,
warrior queen becomes tender lover
and lays down her sword and shield.

Is this your photo? Let me know so that I may credit you.

This work, “Untitled” by Beth Murch, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

NaPoWriMo Day Five

5/30 Prompt: Write a Poem That Reacts to Both Photography and to Words in a Language Not Your Own

Poem: 4 o’clock in the Morning

Language: Hebrew

Photograph: http://www.funcage.com/blog/interesting-facts-to-boost-your-general-knowledge-26-photos/

Gastrolith

At 4 o’clock in the morning, the river stones are cool and slick.
I hear the water lapping at them, waves tongue-kissing the shoreline with heavy breathing.
The crocodiles swallow the rocks, sliding them down their pink throats so that they can dive deeper,
And the crows gather them in their beaks to leave as presents for worthy recipients.
Somewhere, Virginia Woolf is collecting stones to fill her pockets, each rock clacking against the other, and I am listening to her hum her final tune.

At 4 o’clock in the morning, you are silent as a river stone,
your breathing like the sound of water rushing downstream.
I want to caress your edges,
finger the chips and cracks along your surface.
I want to place you on my altar with my other treasured and sacred possessions: feathers, shells, and plugs of tobacco,
but you lay in bed next to me, your back to my face.
I wonder if I bring you stones like a crow, lowering my head in deference, spreading my wings into a graceful bow,
if you would eat them like a crocodile to keep a part of me inside of you,
and if they would weigh you down like Virginia’s coat.

Photograph by Michael Pike, copyright 2007.

This work, “Gastrolith” by Beth Murch, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.