Anthem

Anthem

ANTHEM

HELEN HUMPHREYS

Brick Books

CANADIAN CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Humphreys, Helen, 1961-

    Anthem

Poems.

ISBN 1-894078-02-0

I. Title.

PS8565.U558A87 1999    c8n′.54    C99-931042-9

PR9199.3.H852A67 1999

Copyright © Helen Humphreys, 1999.

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing programme. The support of the Ontario Arts Council is also gratefully acknowledged.

Photograph of the author is by Jerry Bauer.

Brick Books

www.brickbooks.ca

Box 20081

431 Boler Road

London, Ontario

N6K 4G6

Canada

[email protected]

Contents

Bluewater

Beneath the Sea

By Definition

Installation

This Far

Narrative

Variations

Chinchilla

For Jackie, Who Will Never Read This

Leaving

Climatology

Anthem

What Is Truly There

Reunion

Body Double

The Place That Is You

Architecture of the Everyday

House

Factory

Port

Suburbs

Stairwell

Roof

Window

Arch

August

After a Poem by Elizabeth Bishop

After a Poem by Louise Bogan

After a Poem by Sylvia Plath

Yaddo

Joshua Tree

The Anatomy of Trees

False Alarms

Witness

Beneath the Sea

Foxes

Reading

Coda

Notes

Acknowledgements

Bluewater

Three girls on the rail track. I'm the one

in the middle. Sun wobbles through trees. The sisters

smoke and swear. It's no one's fault

that our mothers are friends, we all know and don't

know this. The younger sister sucks cocks

for money. And sometimes for free, she says, and

laughs. By the time we get to the water it's night

and the bridge is a huge, shiny staple arched over dark,

crumpled riverbanks. This is where you come

to die, says the older sister. We stand in the mud

under steel crosses, look for bodies

bumping in the current. Bluewater bridge. We can't see

the colour of the water. The bridge is silver. Going

back, a spike of moonlight through our thin chests.

The older sister holds my hand all the way, without

my asking. Next year, when she is seventeen, she will plunge

from the hood of a moving car. Skull wired together,

teeth gone. Brain damage, skin grafts, someone else's

rebuilt face. The younger sister will marry

a man who hates her,