Intermission

By Heather Simeney MacLeod

Intermission is an uncommon and refreshing excavation of popular culture, memory, and relationship. It offers startling interpretations of the fashionable sitcoms and young-adult novels which were prevalent during the late 1970s while exploring the nuances of belonging, faith, and loss. With a tensile gesture we are moved from the icons of the 1960s Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and the playful insertion of Jim Morrison's documented acronym of his own name, Mr. Mojo Risin' to the cityscapes inherited by Generation X:

& they became icons worn to waste behind our mothers

& our fathers like a cityscape, like a black & white photograph,

like a muted reflection, like a background of a lost era,

like a misplaced decade, like a shaky foundation which has shaped the minds of my own generation.

Intermission is peopled with a richness of character and stories that move from one piece to the next. It is a still and revealing inquiry into the elastic sense of memory. Striking and astounding, this collection of work is a luminous reflection on loss--the loss of childhood, adolescence, relationship, and life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Muses’ Company
• Release date: Oct 5, 2022
• ISBN: 9781990737350

Heather Simeney MacLeod

Heather Simeney MacLeod has two previous collections of poetry, My Flesh the Sound of Rain as well as The Burden of Snow. Her poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and reviews have appeared in many journals and magazines. Her creative nonfiction piece, How to Discover the Various Uses of Things, was a finalist in the 2011 CBC Literary Awards. Heather is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Alberta in the Department of English and Film Studies.

Book preview

Cover: Intermission, written by Heather Simeney MacLeod, shows a cobblestoned pathway with many people walking about. On one side of the road is an open restaurant under a canopy with many people dining and a waiter in white outfit is seen attending to people sitting at a table.

INTERMISSION

HEATHER SIMENEY MACLEOD

Intermission

first published 2012 by

The Muses’ Company

An imprint of J. Gordon Shillingford Publishing Inc.

© 2012 Heather Simeney MacLeod

The Muses’ Company Series Editor: Clarise Foster

Cover design by Terry Gallagher/Doowah Design Inc.

Author photo by Kevin MacLeod

Cover art is The Night Café by Vincent Van Gogh

Printed and bound in Canada on 100% post-consumer recycled paper.

We acknowledge the financial support of the Manitoba Arts Council and The Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from The Muses’ Company, and imprint of J. Gordon Shillingford Publishing Inc., except for brief excerpts and in critical reviews, for any reason, by any means, without the permission of the publisher.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

MacLeod, Heather

Intermission / Heather Simeney MacLeod.

Poems.

ISBN 978-1-897289-75-4

I. Title.

PS8575.L4625I58 2012 C811’.54 C2012-902223-3

J. Gordon Shillingford Publishing

P.O. Box 86, RPO Corydon Avenue, Winnipeg, MB Canada R3M 3S3

For Katy E. Ellis

Contents

I

In the Seasons of my Sixteenth Year

Surrender the Pink

If You’ve Ever Gone Out with One then You’ll Know What I Mean

The Aloha Trailer Park

Playing Charlie’s Angels

Pinky Tuscadero

Pretty in Love

Forever

Me and that Boy from the Black Crow Reserve

She Dreamed her Mother Married a Boar

Murmur

II

Ten Categories of the Faithless

III

By My Kisses

Manifestations

Looking for the Dead

Intermission

Bridges: Suspended in Five Parts

What Might Have Been

All that Waiting

He Dreamed He was a Rhinoceros

He Wonders

She Dreamed She Married a Dragon

IV

Are You Listening

The Heart is a Resilient Muscle

Suck and Swallow You Pink

Being Near Him

He Dreamed He Finds a Blue Bird

The Impossible Perspective

He Dreamed He Built a Cricket

The Twelve Gospels of Saskatchewan

Notes on the Poems

Acknowledgements

Cover

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Contents

Epigraph

I

In the Seasons of my Sixteenth Year

Surrender the Pink

If You’ve Ever Gone Out with One then You’ll Know What I Mean

The Aloha Trailer Park

Playing Charlie’s Angels

Pinky Tuscadero

Pretty in Love

Forever

Me and that Boy from the Black Crow Reserve

She Dreamed her Mother Married a Boar

Murmur

II

Ten Categories of the Faithless

III

By My Kisses

Manifestations

Looking for the Dead

Intermission

Bridges: Suspended in Five Parts

What Might Have Been

All that Waiting

He Dreamed He was a Rhinoceros

He Wonders

She Dreamed She Married a Dragon

IV

Are You Listening

The Heart is a Resilient Muscle

Suck and Swallow You Pink

Being Near Him

He Dreamed He Finds a Blue Bird

The Impossible Perspective

He Dreamed He Built a Cricket

The Twelve Gospels of Saskatchewan

Notes on the Poems

Acknowledgements

Guide

Cover

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Contents

Epigraph

Start of Content

Notes on the Poems

Acknowledgements

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What you think is the sirens singing to lure you to your doom is only the voice of the inevitable welcoming you after so long a wait.

—Elizabeth Smart

As for myself, I am still myself

and my body makes a steady sound.

—Mike White

I

I lie in bed listening to it sing

in the dark about the sweetness

of brief love and