to walk incredulous
in these immobile places
where catching sight of her
is impossible risk

i move forward in my children
not forgetting their voices
or the sensation of their skin
slipping under my fingers

it escapes me
a certain absence
of certain memories

under my skin, fearless
i remember her
dissolve in me
slowly
in amicable love

and my children rattle round
my ankles
against me
in the absence
of roots in my malaise
amid shifting foundations

i speak no more, i listen
to the effect of ice that fissures
my burnt face
where hate trickles away
toward laws blown askew
by gusts of snow

i love all of you soldered tight
maybe i'm dead
and transfuse my blood
so that i'll go cold
so as not to
expire in my children
whom i miss
i feel her now
under perverse sun
stripping grief
down to its smile

her eyes are
hot as the crook of our hands
where our blizzards melt away
where our silly whirlwinds
drift off
where our ideals
veer close
from here i see
the cross on Mont Royal
flirting with clouds
shading my body
that, black to blue
from wounds to vomit
can't always sit still
i pierce you everywhere
and buy you a beer
on the boardwalk of souls

outside, Ontario Street
finds me charming

i'm a better customer
than the moon
and the wide river pools
in my eyes too frank
where ruptures meet up
with admissions too beautiful
like rotting logs
negotiating the surface
on banal waves

i see you
like a flash in the sea
you disinterest me
inaccessible delivered up
the one who emanates loss
and i publish your intimacies
on billboards

i write your name
on my canoe
paddling through the patio doors
of the bourgeois
you exist
you're ugly
and wear clothes
from another
past
we should make
an omelette out of posterity
mate on a bed of eggs
spurt on the walls
or on the grille of my Chevy
modern hitchhiker
climb into my bra
don't be scared, my breast
is shy before it loves
i tell you of
my mother's death
and you cry, ambulance
you lift the squashed
pigeon up to the sky
against naïve hope
i ave-maria-ize you
at the altar of whores
my mother would have
loved my children
i'd just love that
they recognize me
in the street someday

i dance like a jackal
on the roof
of the confessional
i play the bass
and seek attention
my children
living someplace

my mother loved me
over the shoulder
of her madness
she still sings
with me
a youth in all beauty
my mother smokes and drinks Coke
i watch her
dream for me
future castles
with televisions everywhere
revealing the winning numbers
for 50¢ lottery tickets

back then my mother
said: "Take out
the garbage,
don't walk through it!"
and i left clean
combed with water
dawdling toward school
and from the second floor
she'd yell after me:
"have you got your binder?"
i was a bit put out
in my Stones t-shirt

my mother told me
there was monkey business
in the schoolyard
without however telling me
there were also strippers
sucking off
the li'l dicks
of the li'l guys for free
if she'd known
i think she'd have told me
that these fancy-women were
drugged by profiteers
using beers sipped
through a straw

i still see my mother
wakeful
when i come in late
smelling of pussy
my mother told me
not to waste money
on little girls
wearing too much make-up
but to save it
and buy Coffee Crisp
my mother believed
the Beatles were out of tune
when i sang along
in grade five
with the record player
my mother loved me
like she loved
painting by numbers
and marshmallows toasted
on the stove burner
my mother offered country life
on Drolet Street
and Canadian cheese
as a tip
for the grocery boy
who cursed
but who came as she did
from the Beauce
my mother, always, smiled
even to rip-off artists
even to my girlfriends
even to my dad
my mother
loved

translated by by Erín Moure