Alice's Moths

Marianne Bluger
From:   Summer Grass. London, Ontario: Brick Books, 1992.

Laying ruinous eggs
in the claret velvet drape
dusty moths
on mute pulleys
Victorian things
rise and descend

beyond is the night
all silvery fragments
glimmering in the void
needle stars
      cloud scarves—

there still exist parlours as such
and this is one
in these quarters set
down a black-blocked street
dating from Dodgson long gone

over there is his tripod
and that's the curtain
plush I can feel
it's the same one still
he pulled into folds at my back
as with his toad-knobbed cane
he would motion 'dear niece, come'

then take my fresh frock down

of no use to anyone this confession
or my quaint distress
that having bred here in the dust
they're not weaker not done
but thrive now they throng ever stronger

in fury in shame
when I open this door
I am fixed once again
a bug on a pin
in a rictus of pain

even now may I show you
the rusty round stain

Poem 1 | Poem 2 | Poem 3 | Poem 4 | Poem 5 | Poem 6 | Poem 7

Marianne Bluger's works copyright © to The Estate of Marianne Bluger.