The Exact Middle

My mind goes,
Like Gustave Courbet’s,
To the centre-
A world within itself,
Creator,
Originator-
A flower opening its petals,
Like Georgia O’Keeffe.

Central in my mind,
Not the diabolical temptation it is named-
Rather like the earth itself,
Self-sufficient,
Fruitful if tended,
Capable of fury if scorned.

Like nature’s wrath it can demolish civilisations,
Start wars
(Allegedly)
And end them,
A wave breaking upon the shore,
Sweeping sandcastles,
Towers of fragile symbolism,
Back to the dust of their origins.

Origins.
We all crawled from the ocean,
Yet we poison her,
Despite our dependence,
Teenagers slamming the doors shut on our mothers
Even as she cooks for us,
Takes care of us,
Does our laundry.

We are short-sighted in our juvenile paroxysms,
Ignorant to our own reliance on the springs we bury,
The trees we cut,
The air we pollute.

L’Origine du Monde–
She gave us everything
And she can take it away again.
And like misogynists
We act affronted
By the vengeance
We invite.

Bonnie Calderwood Aspinwall © 2nd April 2021

Ego

Cogito ergo sum–
Cartesian reason dividing us
A guillotine to the throat,
To the brainstem,
Pulling us out of the world,
Out of our bodies,
Out of our communities and relationships,
Empathy drowning in theory,
Rhetoric,
Philosophy.

Philosophy.
Philein Sophia–
As though Sophia is only of the mind,
Forgetting music,
Art,
Community.

A Ulyssean egotist,
Like Narcissus,
All else,
All others,
Dropping away before the mirror.

Cogito ergo sum.

Why not sentio ergo sum?
Thoughts can lie.
Feelings are facts,
Even when our reasoning is off.
To place reason,
One’s own reason,
As the only knowable-
Such audacity.
As though reason were absolute,
Rather than societal,
Cultural,
Temporal.

A masculine erudition,
Patriarchal declaration,
Colonial rule of the mind.

I refuse to live so divided.
I will re-stitch the spinal cord,
Grow roots into my own body,
Reclaim my corporeality.
I am not synapses firing in the dark-
I am skin and muscle,
Blood and breath,
Bone and hormone.
I feel.

I feel the sun upon my face,
Wind curling through my hair,
The heat of another’s skin under my palm.
I feel connection,
Admiration,
Gratitude,
Longing.

I am greater than the sum of my proofs.

Amo ergo sum.
I love, therefore I am.

Bonnie Calderwood Aspinwall © 1st April 2021

Continental drift

I am the bridge, the load bearing structure between two continents, two contexts. The bridge I built to bring these continents, these contexts, back together. I live on their fault line. But nobody will cross this bridge I built, the bridge I slaved over and ruined and lost myself to make. Nobody acknowledges that work, and nobody cares to make it all worthwhile.

But I am also the visceral, bone breaking, flesh tearing transformation, the werewolf change, between these two states, two statuses, I have no control over the transformation – I cannot change when it happens. I am change. I am the unwilling remaking of myself to fit these different moulds. I am the spine snapping bending over backwards to be whoever I sense they want me to be, to see and think the way I am supposed to. But there is a jetlag in my transformation- my mind does not always keep up with these quick scene changes, script changes, and I feel the walls blur and wobble, the concreteness of the reality flickering before it settles over me, and in that flicker I find a whole new world of doubt, mistrust of my own senses, of my own objective truth. I cannot see outside of these worlds and find myself there. I exist in the rip between the two, the pulling tearing bleeding mess of me, rent in all directions like I’m being sucked into a black hole. That is the feeling of trying to see the whole picture at once.

Bonnie Calderwood Aspinwall © 14th April 2020

The guest room

You welcome me
Excited
To your new home.

Home.
The thing you broke.

Show me the living room,
Kitchen,
You ask if I want coffee.

I drink tea.
I have always drunk tea.

You show me a room.
Triumphant,
You tell me
“This is your room!
When you stay.”

When I stay.

I get excited too.
Excited to find home in you again.
Excited to create a home within myself
That fits you.

The next time I come to visit
I bring posters.

They live in their tubes,
Rolled up on themselves,
‘Til they stay that way.

I never decorate.

We both knew
This was always just
The guest room.

Bonnie Calderwood Aspinwall © 14th April 2019

File Not Found

Digging through your own past
Wondering why the person you were is a stranger now.

Mementos,
Physical cues to memories you cannot match,
Like a computer error:
“This shortcut no longer leads to a file.
Locate file manually, or delete shortcut?”

That is the question.
And who has the time for option A,
Or the courage for option B?

We are all doomed to live in our own holding patterns,
Waiting for something to spark joy.

Bonnie Calderwood Aspinwall © 6th April 2019

Spring

It is the ephemeral
Which reminds me of you,
The first firework burst of blossom,
A newly budding tree,
The way the early morning winter light catches and reflects,
The low angles of the sun,
The traverse of bright and shadow.

Every time I notice
A sudden sea of colour,
An ocean of flowers
Opened overnight,
A bloomdrift,
I long to capture it
And deliver it to you.

You are with me in the clouds,
Ever changing shape,
Or the tide
Pulling close and then retreating,
The patterns of offerings left behind
Among sand and stone
The polishing of jagged glass
To soft, luminous jewels.

In the felling of branch or trunk
By time, or rot, or gale-
The changing horizon
Bereft of their silhouette,
Their descendants rising in their place.

Every freshly opened flower,
Every migration of bird
Or amphibian,
The unreplicable formation of ice,
Crystals, stalactites, frost patterns.
A sudden bloom of bright fungus,
An artist’s palette of autumn leaves.

I think of you not because you yourself are mercurial,
But rather
The consistency of inconsistency,
The permanence of impermanence,
The quotidian nature of change,
Describes to me in detail
Your constancy,
Loyalty,
Devotion.

You remind me of change
Because it is the only constant.

Bonnie Calderwood Aspinwall © 3rd April 2019

Horseshoe Crab

You tried to turn me over
To watch me struggle on my back
A beetle

But I am no beetle
I am a horseshoe crab
I can right myself
Without help
I will not struggle for your amusement
I will not bend
Or break.

This walking stick,
My crutch
My aid,
The tail you had hoped to see
Tucked between my legs,
Conceals a weapon.

My strength was forged in the dawn of time
I was strong before you met me
And I will be strong once you have gone.

You are nothing but an obstacle
An imposition
An interruption.

You can take me
Distract me
Drain me

But I will turn the light on you
Catch you
Blue-handed

I don’t need your acknowledgement
To understand my own majesty.

Take what you want from me
I will regrow
Stronger.

You might stab out my eye
But I am no Polyphemus
(Although you are No One)
I can still see you
Eightfold
An eye for each face.

I will shed you
Like an undersized skin
And grow.

Bonnie Calderwood Aspinwall © 3rd April 2018

Rabbit Heart

Your heart, pressed against my ear,
Is racing
Like
A rabbit
Nerves.
Exhilaration.
Breathless wanting.

Fingertips ghost over skin
The line of your neck
Collarbones
The inside of your wrist.

You take my hand.
All uncertainty is mine
On your behalf.
You are sure.

The morning birds were singing when you slipped away.
I lay and listened to their chorus,
Fragile bodies
Belying voices so strong,
As they sing the rabbit home.

Bonnie Calderwood Aspinwall © 25th April 2018

✊

When they tell you it is pointless
Show them the point-
Impale them with it-
Sharpen it on their bones.

When they tell you it is mindless
Show them your mind
Scream it in their face
Write it in bold
In CAPS LOCK.

When they tell you it is heartless
Show them your heart
Bleeding from their wounds
Reach inside yourself and pluck it out,
Shove it, still beating, down their throats
Let your heart be a weapon
Let them choke on your love.

When they tell you it is shameless
Tell them they are right.

Bonnie Calderwood Aspinwall © 8th April 2019