Published!

My poem "Repetition" appears in the June issue of Open Heart Forgery, a Halifax-based, free, monthly poetry journal. You can find a copy of this month's issue online, or, if you are in the Halifax area, pick up a paper copy in coffee shops and public libraries around the HRM.

Repetition

Say it.

Say it over and over and over again.

Say it like a mantra.
Say it like a magic spell.

Say it until you believe it.

Say it until it sounds wrong.
Say it until the words twist in on themselves.

Say it until it makes sense.

Say it until your voice runs out.
Say it until your throat is raw.
Say it until you're swallowing blood.

Say it until you can't breathe.

Say it until it's true.

Say it.

Say it.

Say it.

Say it until it stops being true.

Say it.

Say it.

Say it over and over and over again.

Insomnia

1 a.m.
The coffee pot hisses.
You couldn't sleep anyway.


I am a lover of tinywords, so I've been giving micropoetry a try lately. It's challenging and delightful and wonderfully suited to my current mental state.

She knew it probably made her seem crazy. And not in the way her other little quirks made her seem crazy. No, this was a public kind of crazy. This wasn't talking-to-her-plants, sleeping-with-a-teddy-bear, matching-her-socks-to-her-outfit crazy. This was more like talking-to-herself-on-the-subway, taking-her-teddy-bear-to-work, asking-other-people-whether-their-socks-matched-their-outfits crazy. Not that she ever talked to herself on the subway or brought Teddy to work or inquired about strangers' socks. At least not often.

Tequila and Galoshes

The land mines went off.

I show up at her door
armed with rainboots
and tequila.
"Honey," I tell her,
"life is gonna give you lemons,
so break out the tequila and dance on the table."
And so we do.
And when we've finished one bottle,
maybe two,
when we've listened to very 90s album she owns
and broken the table in two,
we collapse on the couch,
laughing.
And I say, "Baby,
life is gonna give you rainstorms,
so break out the galoshes and dance in the puddles."
And so we do.
And when we've traipsed down the street,
around the neighbourhood,
when we've scared the children who live next door,
and scandalized the old man down the street,
we stumble back home,
laughing.

A quick poem for a friend who is having a rough go of it right now.

[IMAGE SOURCE]

Not Always Like This

Edgar Degas, Ballet Rehearsal, 1873, oil on canvas

It's not always like this.

I promise you, love,
it's not always like this.
It's not always a mess.
It's not always a disaster.
It's not always hard,
and exhausting,
and endless.
It's not always missed steps.
It's not always falling down.
It's not always feeling one step behind.

It's not always like this.

Eventually, my dear,
it gets better,
and some of the things,
the things that matter,
work out just fine.


Remember this poem? Well, it started me off on an ekphrastic project working with Degas' ballet paintings. So, here's another product of my attempts.

The Blind Cartographers

We were both poets.
There was never any money to pay the bills.

We lay in the dark,
wrapped in blankets,
making maps for the blind.
The blind cartographers.
The blind leading the blind.

We told stories,
traced the topographies of who we were,
mapped the treeline that cut across your face like a scar,
the rocky seashore of my spine,
the mountain ranges of your skull,
the endless prairies of my wrists.
We whispered places into being
there in our tiny apartment
spoke ourselves into existence,
revealed paths to our hearts,
fought through thickets,
traversed deserts,
until we found the core of our selves,
until we each knew the other's soul
the way we knew the landscape of our childhood,
until we could navigate by instinct,
until it no longer mattered that we were blind.

Night Driving

Stars burn holes
in expansive darkness,
carpeting the sky
in fire.

The night is liquid,
and we fly.

This poem has been an exercise in minimalism for me. It started out this summer as a much longer piece, and I've been paring it back ever since. But I also feel like it is only part way through it's process; it had to be pruned back in order to grow into something new. I wanted to share this particular moment in it's development with you, because I feel good about it's current simplicity.

I could write a poem about you

I could write a poem about you.

This is something no one has ever said to me before.

I imagine that if someone ever does
it will be whispered,
a confession that leaks out in the moments before sleep
when reality is suspended
and judgment impaired
so that in the morning we will both wonder if it actually happened
but be too embarrassed to ask
or too afraid of the answer.
I imagine that it will carry echoes of "I love you"
so loud that they will silence the constant stream of thoughts
that runs through my head like a television news crawl.
I imagine that it will be awful in the true sense of the word,
that is that it will be awe-full,
so much so that I will think it is a lie
because there are no words that could contain that emotion,
at least not properly, not completely.
I imagine that it will be a little bit frightening
because I know I am not a goddess to be worshipped
and no temples should be built in my name.
I imagine that it will really mean "I could never write a poem about you"
and "Every poem I write is about you."

I could write a poem about you.

This is something no one has ever said to me before.

If someone ever does,
I am afraid it will not be like I imagine,
that it will really mean "I want to have sex with you,"
or "You broke my heart, bitch,"
or "I pity you,"
or "You're too weak to speak for yourself, so I will speak for you,"
or "You're kind of funny looking, so maybe a poem about you will make a profound statement,"
or "I'm too scared to say this myself, so I am going to pretend you feel this way too,"
or "You aren't someone poems should be written about, so this will really impress my professor."
I am scared that it will come out of the wrong mouth,
in the wrong place,
at the wrong time.
I am scared it won't mean anything at all.
I am scared it will mean everything.

I could write a poem about you.

This is something no one has ever said to me before.

I hope that no one does.
Not unless he understands the weight that statement carries,
realizes that it is completely terrifying,
but also completely exhilarating,
wants to hear it as much as I do,
but will also run away from it as fast as I do.
Not unless it is more than just another pickup line,
but is whispered every morning, every night, every time we part.
Not unless it is used to replace "I love you."

I could write a poem about you.

This is something no one has ever said to me before.

This Life

It snuck up on me in a simple question,
"Is that home for you?"

I opened my mouth to respond
and



nothing.



Just silence,
a foolish look on my face,
and an awkward pause in the conversation.

When you live this life,
home is a difficult concept.
You end up with loved ones scattered
across countries and continents.
You fall in love with so many places,
put down roots,
dig up roots,
so many times
that you don't know whether you left your heart
in London, England,
or London, Ontario.

There are so many cities,
so many apartments,
so many coffee shops and grocery stores and parks.
So many graveyards.

Each place seeps into the next.
A face on the edge of vision,
confuses space and time.
Eyes light up,
a hand is raised in greeting,
a smile breaks open,
all for someone who is thousands of miles away,
who left or was left
in a time and place far removed from this one.
The past masquerades as the present,
whispering to you until every place seems like home,
or no place seems like home.
Until you find yourself in a conversation
with yet another new face
that looks so familiar:
"Is that home for you?"
And



nothing.



Just silence,
a foolish look on your face,
and an awkward pause in the conversation.

Home

Home packed up and left,
slipping into the boy's suitcase
and hopping a flight to somewhere else,
somewhere far away from you.
So you wrote letters everyday for a year, two, three,
until you realized
he wasn't coming back.

Home crept up on you in the middle of the night
in between a dream about the ocean
and waking up to a dog curled up by your feet.
There he was,
acting like he had never left,
like you had never abandoned him.
Like he had been there all along,
and you had just refused to see him.

Home was abandoned,
hanging out with a can of tuna and half a bag of rice
in a cupboard you forgot to empty.

Home was waiting for you outside your door
the day that you left the office
and suddenly found yourself standing in your hallway
unaware of how exactly you got there.
The day you didn't have to remember to cut across the parking lot
and turn left at the house with the lawn ornaments.
The day you didn't have to find your way.

Home was misplaced
like a set of car keys or a pair of reading glasses.
Sure, you have spares,
but no one wants to use those,
they don't have the same feel,
the right amount of wear on the leather keychain.
They don't have the right prescription,
and their frames are so last year.

Home was found in an unexpected place
on the day in October
when you had stopped looking for him,
stopped believing he existed.
When you had lost your faith
and found yourself sitting in the middle of a graveyard
while it rained.

The Anywhere-but-here Girl

I have always been taught,
a cultural osmosis beginning at birth,
to never get too attached
to anyone or anything.
I was told to stay on the move,
and always leave a suitcase packed,
to run,
far and fast,
to burn my bridges,
cut all my ties,
and never put down any roots.

I am nothing if not a good student.
I've learned my lessons.
I've etched them on my heart.
I have become the anywhere-but-here girl.
Restless.
Listless.
Aimless.
Lost.

I wrote the first iteration of this poem as part of an assignment in January of 2010. Every so often I come back to it, trying to hone it a little bit more each time. Rootlessness is something I've been thinking about a lot lately, so it seemed like an appropriate moment to pull it out again.

She Had Always Wanted Words

She had always wanted words, she loved them, grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape. -- Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

She had always wanted words,
craved them like others craved chocolate,
or potato chips,
or steak.
She would awake in the middle of the night
longing for the soft
marshmallow-fluff consistency
of the sh sound,
that comfort food of language
so crucial in the hush hush hushing
away of nightmares.
In her anger she would want words
sharp as barbs,
knives and daggers
with razor-blade edges
jagged with cacophonous consonants
to hurl at her opponents
or at herself
in some linguistic brand of self-mutilation.
She liked to scream obscenities
appreciating the way the airiness of an f
and the violence of a ck
hooked together with a swooping u
captured a particular mixture
of longing
and desperation
and despair.

She had always wanted words:
acidic, coffee-stained declarations of passion,
bright, lemony promises of adventure,
flaky, buttery jokes between friends,
dry, wine-soaked philosophical musings.

She had always wanted words,
words for everything.
She would find her lips straining forward,
pursing themselves,
opening ever-so-slightly,
ever-so-gently,
as if yearning for a kiss.
Her tongue would roll around her mouth
brushing her cheeks,
her teeth,
her lips,
searching for the right contours,
the corners
and curves
to catch and cut and soothe.
She promised herself
if she found the right words
she could build her world,
structure a life around beauty
and logic
and love.

Instructions for Waiting for a Flight

Take a seat.
Grab the arm rests.
Grip them tightly
until your knuckles turn white.
Think long and hard
about the friends and family,
favourite places,
and countless memories
you are leaving behind.
Fight back tears.
Heave a sigh.

Take a seat.
Tap your fingers.
Beat out a tattoo
until people start staring.
Think long and hard
about the new people,
new places,
and new memories
to meet and explore and make.
Grin ear-to-ear.
Laugh to yourself.


This piece is part of a larger project that I'm currently working on for a friend of mine. It's still in the pretty early stages of development, but from time to time you might see a piece pop up on here.

The Girl Who Loved Language

When it all became too much
when each sentence she wrote
each word
each syll-a-ble
each l  e  t  t  e  r
began to feel too heavy
as if they were carrying
the weight of a thousand generations
the whispering voices of millions
the girl who loved language
would read poems
in tongues she did not speak.

Und du wartest, erwartest das Eine,
das dein Leben unendlich vermehrt;
das Mächtige, Ungemeine,
das Erwachen der Steine,
Tiefen, dir zugekehrt. (1)

A solas con el diccionario
agito el ramo seco,
palabras, muchachas, semillas,
sonido deguijarros
sobre la tierra negra y blanca,
inanimada. (2)

She would speak the words aloud
an incantation
intended to make language nothing
more than sound
and sensation
the weight and shape of words
becoming the movement of tongue
and lips
and teeth.

In the vacuum created
by this most ancient form of magic
she would begin again
relearning her mother tongue
the familiar sounds
now foreign in her mouth
she would carefully shape words
way-ting
luhv
meh-mor-ee
and in their newly acquired oddity
find meaning.


(1) Taken from "Erinnerung" by Rilke. "And you wait, you wait for that one thing / that will infinitely enlarge your life; / the gigantic, the stupendous, / the awakening of stone, / depths turned round toward you."

(2) Taken from "Solo a Dos Voces" by Octavio Paz. "Alone with the dictionary / I shake the dry branch, / words, girls, seeds, / the rattle of pebbles / on the earth black and white, / without life."

Deer Leap

The summer we were sixteen

our bodies became liquid.

We spread ourselves

over the earth

seeping into dirt,

shimmering in sunlight.

We were weightless then,

invincible,

things of beauty.

Our skin could not contain

our radiance.

Light leaked through our pores.

This piece was published in the 2012 edition of Ballyhoo, an annual arts publication of The King's University College.

How to Be a Young Adult


Miss your parents. Be struck with deep, heart-hollowing longing for them at the oddest of moments. Wish your mother was there when you are trying to decide whether a striped shirt should be washed with lights or darks. Feel the absence of your father when you watch a good documentary. Call them for no reason other than to tell them you bought some new storage containers and the grocery store didn't have any good avocados. Be annoyed when your mother does the same. Love when your father emails to tell you about a typo in the newspaper.

Long for home. Be confused about what that means. Fly back to your parents' house. Discover it feels small and cramped, like trying to squeeze back into the shell of your eighteen-year-old self. Return to your apartment. Discover that though you love it, sometimes it feels empty and lonely. Visit friends, family. Look at real estate. Freak out about the possibility of permanently settling somewhere. Freak out about not having roots. Try to find non-traditional manifestations of home. Claim your friends are your home. Have them move away. Move away yourself. Begin to think home is a ludicrous societal construction. Refuse to buy into it. Buy into it anyway.

Have questions. Wonder about things you have never considered before: how to file your taxes, how long before leftovers go bad, how to clean your couch, how to choose the best laundry detergent. Be too embarrassed to actually ask anyone. Research answers on the internet. Stand bewildered in grocery store aisles reading ingredient lists and nutritional information and price tags. Call your mother in tears when you get fruit flies and can't figure out how to get rid of them.

Feel lost. Wonder where your life is going. Panic about the future. Be at a loss for words when people ask what you are going to do with your life. Take up collecting maps and globes. Plot routes to places you have never been. Trace paths to lands that no longer exist. Wander into the self-help sections of bookstores. Look at books about budgeting and career planning. Buy poetry instead.

Dream. Stare out windows in classrooms, in the office, in coffee shops. Plan trips you can't afford. Apply for jobs you aren't qualified for. Write wishlists. Window shop at fancy stores. Create elaborate fantasies for yourself. Be heartbroken when reality slaps you across the face with a rejection letter or credit card bill. Decide there is no point to dreams. Write them off as childish. Swear you will be serious, grown-up, realistic. Find yourself daydreaming again.

Cry. Often. Well up at good news. Sob at bad news. Dissolve into tears when it turns out that life is hard and unfair and overwhelming. Wail when your dreams begin to feel impossible. Barely make it into your apartment, sliding down the door like a character in a movie. Sit down in the shower. Collapse in the midst of cleaning products scattered throughout the kitchen. Burrow under the bed covers. Force yourself to get up off the floor, crawl out of bed, wash your hair. Keep living your life.

-- Bree Keeler, 2012

This is a moment I've been thinking about a lot today as my thesis has been overwhelming me and pushing me toward a very public mental breakdown. In fact, all year D has been serving as a calming and encouraging voice in my head, and this is the moment I return to on a regular basis. I'm not sure if writing this post almost a year and a half ago helped solidify this moment in my memory or if it would have been emblazoned regardless. Either way, I'm glad to have it down in such a physical form. Whatever vibes D was sending me that day seem to still radiate from this little piece.

He strolls past the office door looking like he's on a mission. But he catches my eye as I'm coming out and takes a couple steps back. 

"ENCOURAGEMENT," he says, waving his hands in the air between us as if they are the conduit for positive thoughts and reassurance. 

"I haven't even started," I say, gesturing with my head toward the stack of textbooks in my arms. My voice is tinged with half-crazed laughter. Laughter that teeters on the edge of tears and is born of stress. 

"That's okay," he replies. "ENCOURAGEMENT." Once again, waving his hands. 

He looks a bit foolish, but he makes me smile, and it's the first genuine smile I've given in days. And I actually do feel encouraged.

Breakfast with Regret

Regret slips in quietly
sometime around 3 a.m.
He curls up in your favourite chair,
pulls a blanket over himself
and waits.
When you wake up
there he is
dozing in your living room.
And no matter how silently
you go about your morning ritual,
he will wake up,
he will invite himself to breakfast
and stay much longer.

-- Bree Keeler, 2011


This piece was published in the 2011 edition of Ballyhoo, an annual arts publication of The King's University College.

Sarah Kay says she writes poetry to work things out. I think this is true for a lot of poets. I certainly know it's true for me. I also like that she talks about coming to the end of a poem and suddenly realizing what it has been about. Turns out this little guy was about working through some of my anxieties about the toll my nocturnal habits and writerly/academic tendencies take or could take on my relationships.

Fluorescent Light

You are in the other room
in the bed that I call
mine
or ours
or yours
for you sleep there more than I do
while I sit here
bathed in fluorescent light
writing

You say it is all right
that when darkness comes
my mind retreats
to places
you cannot go
but I can sense the strain
as I sit here
bathed in fluorescent light
writing

I know the day will come
when you will grow tired of waiting
tired of sleeping
alone
in my bed
and so you will leave
and I will sit here
bathed in fluorescent light
writing

-- Bree Keeler, 2012