3 Poems by Ali Riley
the Heart is a lonely long-distance runner
You were such a lucky boy, but you wanted to be
luckier. Range-fed and tight-boxed. You climbed
trees to knock out the baby crows. Your stick play:
legendary. Your backwoods talk: believable. You
took in stray glances and registered them for later.
You chalked names on your blackboard heart. Easily
erased, easily banged out behind the portables.
I was shy girl. Stayed inside. Grub. Bookworm. Feeling
like lunkhead crud, I was a staring lump. I could be
the new pointless craze—I could be pet rock. Gag gift.
A couple of googly eyes stuck in a gray lump of over-
handled dough. A raisin mouth. Bloomless baby.
I’d like to believe I’m sitting on a gold mine.
Body—check. Head—check. Heart, somewhat
intact. The heart—long-shot winner of all the
races. Woo! Limping into first, the other runners
dead on the field behind. Shot by arrows—whose?
Someone romantic enough to want the heart to
win. Otherwise: raw need could take it. Guts. Any
nameless organs that could be fried up for extra
iron and whatnot. Let’s not even discuss brains.
Or top-of-the-pole, much revered reason. Drive.
Cut everything down to size—hell, lobotomize—
and you still got that reptilian stick-to-itiveness to
contend with. Lizard man. Lizard man. There just
aren’t enough Leonard Cohens to go around.
Hausfrau
1.
Women decorate with an eye to how the world should be.
Mother of Pearl, Arms of Mary—what is worse than the
dresser-top detritus of a man? His clutter is driving me
mental. While he works out of town I redecorate. I want
magic. I fuss around altars. I arrange things. I place bits
of bone, second-hand fur and Nana-bling, put glitter over
everything—heads of the Virgin (the statues
break so easily), a
pebble, a smudge stick from an old
hippie on Commercial—he
told me I was beautiful, and non-ironic tears came to my
eyes. Truthfully—this is embarrassing—I am kind of a
homemaker. I like to decorate and cook. It’s the one thing I
really know how to do. Growing up, in my family, a wife was
not considered a decent thing for a woman to want to be.
2.
Men decorate with representations of themselves. See,
that’s what guys don’t understand. You wonder why your
girl-roomie keeps moving your plastic Frankenstein
toy back to your bedroom—even though it’s the only
object that’s yours in the realm of pink-fluff and faux
surfaces. The plastic toy is so male, so clearly you—
monster hands held helpless in front of your face.
Well-meaning kitten-strangler. Unwitting child-murderer.
3.
You call. The date is made. I wait on the back porch. I
practise meditation though I’m not fit to breathe. My
throat seizes with larcenous wow and flutter. My heart
pounds like a shoplifter’s. I maintain outward silence, try
to fight the gibbering brain-innards of monkey-mind.
4.
The lady next door waters her Astroturf™ while I wait for
you. She sprays the sidewalks, goes to the bay window and
polishes her Hümmel figurines—Dutch children kissing.
They remind her of the Old Country. The distance between
This und That. A place where everyone behaves behind lace
curtains. A flat-earth world outside these treacherous ranges.
A woman’s memory is spiked silver claws piercing a
mattress, Freddie-style. Show-dog sex is my Old Country.
We war horses are ponies that never forget a trick.
5.
I continue to wait, dry-mouthed, for the black
reeds and uncharted marshes of your body. The
sun is scary so I wind-bathe in the shadow of a
cedar. I flip through The Mapping of Canada.
A rumble of thunder perks my ears: it could be crunchy
gravel. A reason to run, poodle-like, to the picture
window. I am hungry to delineate your spacious gaze.
You arrive. You smile. I walk away and you catch my sleeve
like stucco. Your twinkle disappears with the promise of
a riding. Your eyes matte with porno-glaze. Shell-shock.
6.
We lock and roll. We are our own stunt doubles. We step
into our lost sluttiness like a Comeback Special, Liza-
style—arms outstretched—thank you—in the spotlight,
promising the crowd I’ll never leave show-biz again…
An affair is a playground, not a house. Show-dog sex keeps our
hearts safe. We pull all our old specialties out of mothballs.
Later I hide my ripped knickers at the bottom of the trash can.
We are triple digit, triple threat. Man-Eater and Lady-
Killer. Cannibal and felon, both former addicts to the
Playing Field. We left the Wide World of Sport long ago
but today we are Soop-ah-Stars! Of slag. Of shag.
Snow White Spills
Anaheim, 1999
Welcome to Over-Stimu-Land. I’m sick of it
all—the herky-jerk Lincoln that makes the kids
cry, the vomitous primary colors of my outfit, the
free samples of icky sticky gelatin brought to you
by Vitamin Upjohn—eww. Bile-melt. A chemical
blob…plus there is a split-shift evening Troll that is
seriously impeding my ability to think straight.
Lately when I come to work numbers keep popping
into my head, how many jobs, apartments, men, how
many lipstick containers are landfill because of this
stupid gig. I can’t work here much longer. Luckily I’m
top of the Princess pile—the Dwarves are humanoid, if
theoretically eunuch. Cinderella, all she has are house
mice. Beauty is the worst—she’s like a ’50s housewife
on Benzedrine. Objects coming alive, the Beast asleep
in the next room and she’s all Candlesticks are singing to
me! Teapots are giving me advice! I just zip my dress and
hit my trademark stride, my lips unwaveringly crimson;
my hair getting darker every year, against all odds.
There are rumours of a Secret Room here, possibly
Masonic. Why? This is the place where every child begs
to go. What if some of them are “lost” and taken to a
Secret Room? Fitted with tracking devices? Chosen,
marked, tagged—to walk through life troubled, sought
out, like the freak magnets they will eventually be.
I bet there is a Secret Room in the Kingdom of the
Mouse. You can trace invisible lines of connection that
implicate the highest office in the land. Not to mention
Kris Kristofferson, and someone also told me Willie
Nelson, but I don’t like to think of him as doing all the
sex stuff, probably he was just drinking in the kitchen.
Oh yeah, they’ve got it all. The Pop Princess, the Boy
with the Iron Nose. Man—they’ve probably got a real
unicorn down there. It all boils down to—listen—the
guys that run this machine are men, you know? You
don’t think they’d have scientists and G-men working
around the clock to create the perfect sex slave?
I’m just surprised I haven’t got a call.
