Cheltenham, Ontario, Canada

Jennifer Footman

 

Contemplations of Poetry

Serving the Community

 

Originally from India, Jennifer spent most of her life in Edinburgh and she is a graduate of that university. She came to Canada in 1979.

 

Jennifer’s poetry and fiction have appeared in most of the Canadian literary magazines and many US and UK journals.

She has four collections of poetry and won several competitions, including: The Canadian Authors Okanagan Award, the Envoi poetry award, the LNN short fiction

award and the Alumnus\Scotia McLeod Award.

 

She is also very involved in community writing works, such as being the chair of Brampton Writers' Workshop for many years and participating in many other local outreach programmes.

 

Jennifer teaches part time and offers both workshops and readings. She is a full member of the League of Canadian Poets and served on their executive panel in the past.

 

Jennifer was the Poetry Judge for the Summer 2007 issue of Big Pond Rumour, The Zine.

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Dali's January Moon

 

 

In this pitched vacuum

rainbow lunatics

circle a hungry moon.

 

White edged mouths

suck drips

from empty time.

 

Against shadows of bare maples

tendril fingers sweep

barren fields.

 

Silver road stretches

– lazy elastic coming and going --

from licking light.

 

We play hide and seek

with the ringed moon

while frosted hounds

 

their hoary mouths

green fanged, howl

at misbegotten moon's quickening light.

 

A beat fills thin air,

dimly wakes shadows

lurking in mined depths.

 

Everything waits

the one

final excavation.

 

 

 

This poem appeared in Descant. Winter 91 and California Quarterly Winter 91.

 

 

 

 

Cramond

 

 

Cramond belongs to the Crown

and the oyster catchers

as they swoop and scream

and the dogs as they sniff and leap.

But above all it belongs

to the wind that howls

oh, always howls to Edinburgh, howls to the sea,

howls to the mountains roaring in the unknown distance.

 

Cramond belongs to me:

it is my mind

open to the wind;

it takes me to cold still deeps of primal waters,

love salted;

to caps of frozen snow, never melted;

to the circled darkness rubbing all edges

erasing memory

until Cramond itself possesses

me

takes me

moulds me

and I am lost.

After D.H. Lawrence

 

 

He said, build your ship of death,

for you will need it. Silly me,

arrogant still, thought I had made

my last will and testament. I truly did.

 

Over and over again I wrote my words

in stone – granite, speckled and pure –

and found them crumbled, dust to dust,

back to the beginning. Repetition itself can kill.

 

Once more I took Persephone

by her offered hand. I imagined her to be my friend.

I closed my eyes to see her fluted path,

her cunning lips. The dry asp

 

tongue suckled my breast, I was nearly hers

done for, gone into her darkness,

this trip had to be the final one.

Just one more glance, just one more chance

 

to see the sun and all was lost

my will was broken. I could not cast

this die.

 

 

 

Card Eighteen

 

I fell in love with the face in the moon

looked deep into her clear white eyes and was hooked,

landed, sunk by the woman who sits in the moon.

Bitch of sharpened claw and rosy cheeks

she took my words, made them hers

  –  we all know the way she works.

 

She smiled, blinked, announced her innocence,

love, purity, honour, while she laughed

loud and bright at the lust she saw burning,

yes, burning giant holes, black

holes right through my belly.

 

                          She, holy mother full of grace,

swinging far from my left to my right

swinging low, sweet and low, did not bend

down to carry me home on troikas, not for me,

my love, for me no expulsion

 

through black snow to freeze into selfish death

full of the silent hum heard only by you;

for me a fire here in the dead space

I have carried vacant these many years

waiting for an occupant.

 

She finished polishing the night and said, her head

tilted like a hanged murderer,

             Come, light shall cover your eyes and make you blind.

 

Her halo shone, light as a blind man's stick

while a million angels circled her, all straining

to trap her, hold her, enfold her, forge

from her their very own goddess.

Who said angels need wings? Those wings useless

 

as the semen this old woman collects

when the moon fills and time herself is ripe

for the forgetting of women's ages.

 

Last night she was mine, all mine, for as long

as she could shine, for as long as I craved

her light to sift bones from dust in squandered

 

graves. She was my mercury, streaking

the empty sky with quicksilver; she was my own winged

god running from here to there, handing out true

messages, lighting roads without end.

 

I fell in love with the moon and she was mine,

all mine, private, alone.

 

 

A member since July 2007.

 

All text © Jennifer Footman.

All rights reserved. No part may be reproduced without written permission from Jennifer Footman.

Books:

 

Through a Stained Glass Window. (poetry) 1990 Envoi Press, Wales.

 

Gathering Fuel in Vacant Lots. (1992) HMS Press, Ontario, Canada.

 

St.Valentine's Day. (1995) Broken Jaw Press, New Brunswick, Canada.

 

Mix Six. (1996, poetry anthology) With Bernice Lever, Ted Plantos, Kathy Fretwell, Allan Briesmaster and Judith Stuart. Mekler and Deahl, Ontario, Canada.