P O E M SL O R N A C R O Z I E R

W H A TT H ES O U LD O E S N ’ TW A N T

“New poems by Lorna Crozier are always a reason for rejoicing.”G L O B E A N D M A I L

In her newest collection, Lorna Crozier

describes the passage of time in the way that

only she can. Her arresting, edgy poems

about aging and grief are surprising and

invigorating: a defiant balm. At the same

time, she revels in the quirkiness and whimsy

of the natural world: the vision of a fly, the

naming of an eggplant, and a woman who —

not unhappily — finds that cockroaches are

drawn to her.

“God draws a life. Then rubs it out / with

the eraser on his pencil.” Lorna Crozier

draws a world in What the Soul Doesn’t Want,

and then beckons us in. Crozier’s signature

wit and striking imagery are on display

as she stretches her wings and reminds us

that we haven’t yet seen all that she can do.

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$16.95 ISBN 978-1-988298-12-2

Review Copy

Copyright © Lorna Crozier, 2017.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical — including photocopying, recording, taping, or through the use of information storage and retrieval systems — without prior written permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright), One Yonge Street, Suite 800, Toronto, on, Canada, m5 e 1 e5 .

Published with the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Alberta Media Fund.

Freehand Books515 – 815 1st Street s w Calgary, Alberta t 2p 1 n3www.freehand-books.com

Book orders: LitDistCo8300 Lawson Road Milton, Ontario L9t 0A 4t : 1-800-591-6250 F : 1-800-591-6251 orders@litdistco.cawww.litdistco.ca

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Crozier, Lorna, authorWhat the soul doesn’t want / Lorna Crozier.Poems.Issued in print and electronic formats.I s Bn 978-1-988298-12-2 (softcover).I s Bn 978-1-988298-13-9 (epub).I s Bn 978-1-988298-14-6 (pdf)I . Title.ps8555.R72w46 2017 C811'.54 C2017-900969-9 C2017-900970-2

Edited by Elizabeth PhilipsBook design by Natalie Olsen, Kisscut DesignCover photo by Hazel Buchan (hazelbuchan.co.za)Author photo by Kamil BialousPrinted on F s C® recycled paper and bound in Canada by Marquis

25

SOUVENIRS

(“Souvenirs only reminded you of buying them.” — DAV I D B E R M A N )

He walked away from the vase in Beijing

but brought home the word celadon.

He’d been gone so long his wife made him

the wrong kind of weather for breakfast. Sunny Side Up.

Snow began to forget him. No one shovelled the walks

or put stones in the bellies of the fallen angels.

Celadon. After his wife left for good, the morning sky took on

that green, China rising right outside his window.

He could’ve bought a village stitched from silk

for less than what he’d pay for a tailored suit back home.

26

ST. FR ANCIS

Even St. Francis gets tired of the animals

on his heels. He’d like to come upon

a field of horses he doesn’t know, mares

who haven’t named him. The children persuaded him

to keep the puppies. Now there are seven dogs

who chase him down the road when he drives off

and hours later, when he returns from blessing

every living thing, the pack hears him coming and runs

the grid to greet him. Except for the lone Great Pyrenees

he’s had to train not to kill the coyotes who he’s trained

not to eat the lambs. All this gentleness keeps him

awake at night. Given the god he knows, he worries

what will fall upon the world next. Every time

the creek rises he assures himself it’s only snow

melting in the mountains. He won’t have to save

the two by two and thus condemn the rest.

He won’t have to shoot the extra ewe.

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27

WHAT THE SOUL DOESN ’T WANT

Not a plastic bucket. Not a logging truck.

Not homemade wine wrung from turnips.

Not a fox with rabies.

The soul might accept a rat mother,

an eel basket woven from wicker, a leather collar

that reeks of goat.

Not a gas station with the lights shot out.

Not gravity.

Not a mask that keeps the body

breathing. The soul doesn’t want

another face,

not even the face of a snowy owl.

28

NIGHT SHIFT

Death punches the clock and time lies

broken. Night scans Death’s irises

and lets him in. What work is.

No one knows better.

He’s gone through five pairs

of steel-toed boots in less than a month.

Saved from himself only by his hard hat,

his visor, his inflammable suit. Asbestos.

He likes the sound of its crystals

building interminable winters in his lungs.

Is Death immortal? He can’t tell you.

But short of breath, he’s getting slower,

he drags one foot. Some say

they can hear him coming. So what?

His dog, gone deaf and blind,

still knows him when she lifts her head

and sniffs the dark, no matter how long

he’s been away, no matter what smell

his soiled, troubled hands

bring lately home.

29

A MARE CALLED SASSAFR AS

If I had one more finger on each hand,

I’d hum like Glenn Gould on my little stool.

Does your eye open only to beauty?

Then you’ll never look at me.

Rumi wrote: behind every jewel, 1,000 horses.

I want only one, a mare called Sassafras.

I’m going to make shoes instead of music;

their cotton heels make no sound.

Don’t you like it when two unlike words

converge? Spider monkey, sea urchin, butcher bird.

A chickadee buffets the wind like a rowboat,

too small for such a swell yet he never has to bail.

30

ALGORITHM: THE WAY OUT

Start in the north corner of the field.

Let the wind unroll its scroll, winterly, un-

written. The snow is deepest here.

Head south, head down, limbs heavy.

Boots break through, your spine

shudders. Don’t worry

if you go under. Grief’s

a snowdrift that thickens

as you walk. Weather it.

There’s no if in the coldest season.

Just numbness in the four directions,

in the heart. Here be whiteout, be shatter.

Footfall after footfall, on fallen nimbus;

your mother’s bones across your eyes

so you won’t go blind.

31

EGGPL ANT

1.

A Martian heart.

A Sicilian winesack (don’t insult it).

A summer trumpet that makes no sound

yet your peasant mouth

closes wetly

around the stem-end

and blows.

2.

Long after Adam named the animals,

Eve worked on the plants: potato, so

substantial on the palm and tongue,

pea the perfect monosyllable

for the pellets in the pod.

Eggplant? She coined it in a dream.

Sun-warm and pendulous, the word drew

on something deep inside. Though she

didn’t know the plant was signature

for the womb, when she woke

it seemed right to her

like the lumpkin unmindfulness

she yclept cabbage, the green

armour-plated armadillo

she called artichoke.

32

3.

What would hatch from the eggs

of such a plant? A wooden duck

with wheels, miniature opera glasses,

a bar of soap that smells of lavender?

No matter what incubates and breaks through the shells,

the eggplant won’t take mothering

seriously.

4.

In a time of scarcity, the boy saved one eggplant.

He tucked it under his shirt and now he’s walking

down the country road to where he wants a girl

to be waiting. The road is long and he doesn’t know

the end of it. Below his heart, the vegetable

grows slick and shiny with his sweat.

Up ahead someone is standing in the heat.

He hopes this is the start of the story

that has no north or south, no drought or plenty.

Under his shirt, the eggplant is another

lung, withholding and holding its breath.

33

5.

The big-city fashion reporter got it wrong

when she said the woman whom the people

chose as queen was wearing aubergine,

the shade that marries blue and red.

She was wearing aubergines.

Old women from the village

rolled them on their thighs

to bring out the lustre and toughen the skin

before they shaved away the peels.

They laid them in the sun to dry, then neatly

joined each piece to make the cloth.

Now she can go anywhere, ageless and unafraid,

draped in the colour of sunset, the colour of oxblood,

the colour of dried placenta.

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