Two poems
by Conyer Clayton
Chaudière Falls
I can never remember the difference between ligaments
and tendons. It all has to do with what you're attached to.
Liquid slipping
over rocks. The sound of water is the same
as silence. What oils surface when I settle
and sense nothing over the drone?
No crepitus, lubrication—things
only heard, not felt. I could almost
believe I'm brand new, in the making,
just emerging like a swell that fell far
below the white high-water mark
on the dam where splash survives.
The top ridge is already drying
even though the sun is weak today.
It's not even noon and already I can tell the day is over.
Signs spell out danger, but they only draw me nearer.
The older the staircase the looser the joint. I move
my knees in tiny circles every time the horizon
brightens. The moment I woke up,
I heard something.
The ropey fascia of my happiness connects to the bone of quiet.
Is that how these things work again?
My mood is aching.
Smol bird
Tiny birds swarm a crow, swallows
or swifts or a sense of surety.
They undulate, new
navy sheets on the bed, slicker than
the others. We unconsciously
steal from each other all night,
every night.
Who is the swallow and who is the crow?
I hate to say it, but I'm the large one
in this blue, sometimes I need
several of you to remind me that
those are not my eggs.
Afterwards, the swallows
return to the lawn and peck insects
among the bare dandelion stalks.
You make the bed, like
every morning, I leave
it and sip coffee, long winged
and looming. I pretend
I'm just a smol bird, a nice bird, the squawk
jammed in my throat like unchewed meat.
ABOUT THE CREATOR
Conyer Clayton's debut collection, We Shed Our Skin Like Dynamite (Guernica Editions, 2020), won an Ottawa Book Award. Her most recent chapbooks are: Sprawl (Collusion Books, 2020), written with Manahil Bandukwala and shortlisted for the bpNichol Award, and Towers (Collusion Books, 2021) by VII, of which she is a member. Her second book, But the sun, and the ships, and the fish, and the waves (A Feed Dog Book, Anvil Press) is forthcoming Spring 2022. @conyerclayton on Instagram and Twitter.