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    Your Last Day on Earth
    Your Last Day on Earth
    Your Last Day on Earth
    Ebook113 pages37 minutes

    Your Last Day on Earth

    By Carla Hartsfield

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Longlisted for the 2004 ReLit Awards

    Carla Hartsfield sings praises to the unusual: a rose blooming in December; an angel dancing on a cardiologist's scanner; Glenn Gould playing Brahms at Angelo's Garage. But these are common occurrences in Your Last Day on Earth, the everyday world and the metaphysical realm sharing the same ecstatic poem. Hartsfield transforms the contents of her psyche into music that we can all hear, the kind that replays for days in the dark, dreamy parts of our selves.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrick Books
    Release dateSep 15, 2003
    ISBN9781771313360
    Your Last Day on Earth
    Author

    Carla Hartsfield

    Carla Hartsfield was born in Waxahachie, Texas and now lives in Toronto. She is a classically trained pianist, a singer-songwriter, a self-taught autoharp player, a music teacher, and a visual artist. She has published two previous collections of poetry (The Invisible Moon, 1988 and Fire Never Sleeps, 1995) with Vehicule Press.

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      Book preview

      Your Last Day on Earth - Carla Hartsfield

      Your Last Day on Earth

      Your Last Day on Earth

      Carla Hartsfield

      National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication

      Hartsfield, Carla, 1956-

               Your last day on earth / Carla Hartsfield.

      Poems.

      ISBN 1-894078-31-4

      I. Title.

      PS8565.A675Y68 2003           C811’.54           C2003-903695-2

      Copyright©Carla Hartsfield, 2003.

      We gratefully acknowledge the Canada Council for the Arts,

      the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry

      Development Program (BPIDP), and the Ontario Arts Council

      for their support of our publishing program.

      The cover paintings, (left to right Heat, Chaos, and

      Hibiscus, watercolour on handmade paper), are by Carla

      Hartsfield.

      The author’s photograph is by Kenneth Ross.

      Brick Books

      Box 20081

      431 Boler Road

      London, Ontario

      N6K 4G6

      Canada

      www.brickbooks.ca

      This book is dedicated with loving memory to my father,

      Thomas Eugene Hartsfield

      (1929-1999)

      Contents

      I. FLOWERING

      Flowering

      Stolen Torch

      Towering Hibiscus

      Stranger than Fiction

      Queen Anne’s Lace

      Shining

      The Clearing

      Tea Leaves

      At the Textile Museum

      Anonymous

      Black-Eyed Susans

      Flame Roses

      Daisies

      Empty Beds

      The Dark

      Nightshine

      In the Garden

      II . MUSES

      Angel of Emergency

      When Angels Dance in that Tiny Blackness

      Camouflaged

      Meeting Leon Fleischer at the Corner of Bedford & Bloor

      Ripped Off

      The Princess of Balakirew

      Brahms & Angelo’s Garage

      Playing Mr. J.S. Naked

      Three’s a Charm

      Bound to Silence

      Miss _____

      Black Lace & Trees

      III. GOODBYE

      The Unbearable Lightness of Being

      Plain Geometry

      Commas

      New Moon

      In the Space that My Father Left

      What She Sees

      Smith College, Graduation Day

      Marilyn Monroe on St. Clair Ave.

      The Swimming Mothers

      Shrink-Wrapped

      Karma

      Him

      Goodbye

      Notes on the Poems

      Acknowledgements

      Biography

      I . FLOWERING

      I have come to the borders of sleep,

      The unfathomable deep

      Forest where all must lose

      Their way . . .

      Edward Thomas, Lights Out

      Flowering

      The night we parted

      my drink caught on fire;

      news of your betrayal

      lit the blackness. Before long,

      the whole garden exploded.

      My roses were the first to go,

      thorns popping and smelling

      like a witchhunt.

      I stood beneath the fallout,

      letting the snaking cinders

      sting my arms.

      This was catharsis,

      to rid myself of jealousy,

      your control. Flowering

      is never predictable;

      these small deaths

      have nothing

      to do with the heart.

      Stolen Torch

      Look how this Maple in front of my house

      drops a brooding leaf every few seconds!

      Until there are rings of fallen stars

      orbiting the driveway. I count them

      methodically as they spindle the dwarf

      tree’s arthritic hands, each one

      transformed and torching

      the steps. There’s abuse, too,

      along the fence behind my son’s school—

      leaves splattered

      against that wire-mesh screen

      like photos secreted from a police file;

      I say, I’m sure he did it, no question,

      as a charming pyromaniac

      bends every treebranch back.

      Fire courses down,

      the trees giving up

      their masks, their armour.

      This is who they’re supposed to be.

      Prometheus, performance artist,

      finally set free.

      Towering Hibiscus

      I’ve held your remains.

      They were already dry,

      misshapen, as though

      withered by stroke.

      Your DNA cascaded

      across my bare feet:

      hot confetti, corpuscles,

      red stars. Your 24th hour

      never wanted to stop.

      Were the gods

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