What are you drinking to tonight?

by Tyler Bigney

The needle on my record player is broken,
so the house is quiet except for
the wind and my solicitous breaths.
The birds outside, alive another day,
stomachs full from the seeds I tossed
out to them this morning. I’m praying
for the sun to bleed through the curtains,
and break like yolk across the floor.
I’m drinking until l’m happy,
but once I’m there,  I continue
to drink until I feel worse,
awakened at four a.m. by what feels
like my chest caving in. And
like every horror movie ever made,
turns out I should have left my guard up,
or circled back and asked for help
while I still had the chance.

Oblivion

by Tyler Bigney

I like the way the Asian girl
at Tim Horton’s prepares my
frozen raspberry smoothie, always
an extra shot of syrup. Something
to look forward to, a reason to get
out of bed in the morning, a reason not to
kill myself. Nights I am stirred
awake by lecherous sadness,
listening to the lady below me
coughing up blood, dying of cancer.
We never speak, but it’s become
part of my routine that
when I hear her come home,
I go outside to hold the door
open, help her with her bags,
help her up the stairs. Laying there,
I try to think other things, but
I’m often too tired to think, and
where I once could shake the
sadness, I can no longer. My
dreams drowning in oblivion.
Two mornings ago I stumbled
into the bathroom, following my
heavy heart, standing in front
of the mirror. I stared myself
down like they do in the old
western movies, to see what,
if anything, was left – I whispered
for myself to come up with
one good reason, just one. I held a razor
up to the light, angling it
so that it shined. The lady below
coughed once, twice, three times,
then spit the blood into the
yellow bowl beside her bed.
I put the razor back under the sink.
I flicked off the light, and walked
back to bed, knowing tomorrow
she’d need someone to hold the door open.

Balloons

Tyler Bigney

My loneliness fell in love
with a Polish girl on a bus
from Stanstead, to Heathrow.
It was raining, but I’m not here
to talk about my heart,
or how the rain fell sideways
and battered the window. I want
to fill the world with hummingbirds,
blue ones, let them loose
like balloons, watching
as they move the sky,
the clouds, the sun.

Honesty

by Tyler Bigney

It’s time to be honest with ourselves -
I’ve lived twenty eight years, and chances
are I’ll live twenty eight more, providing
I don’t get so sad I drive my car off a cliff,
or jump, arms spread, from my fourth storey window.
After that it’s a waiting game – watching
the clock, every little rhythm of the heart
has you reaching for the phone, crossing
your fingers they get there in time. I
wonder will my heart or my brain stop
first? I’ve wasted so much of my life
doing nothing – endless hours watching
Asian porn, bad television, driving aimlessly
down dirt roads at two in the morning
lost in thoughts and praying for the dark
to lift like a curtain, and for the sun
to wake up over the spruce. I want to do
good things. I want to fall in love, and
have it mean something. I want to be good.
I watched you sleep fifteen thousand
miles away, your chest rising, and falling
like snow, your hair tangled in sheets,
I stayed so quiet, so still, I thought I had died.

Juárez

by Tyler Bigney

Hundreds, some speculate even thousands
of women, dead, decaying in the sand under the
Mexican sun. Good women who never dreamt
of having sand in their mouths. The man on TV
is speaking about some war on drugs, about becoming

a respectable nation for which one can be proud.
I’ve had a good life, but I’m unhappy for
the most part. I’d like to go back and do things
differently, but I won’t get that chance. This
is the real world, Tyler. There is no such thing

as a time machine, so stop staring into the mirror
as if it has the power to transport you.
The man on the TV is running his tongue over
blood soaked lips. There is a stillness. There is a ghost
lurking in the browns of his eyes. There are many.

Big machine

by Tyler Bigney

I used to be young and naïve enough
to believe you could be anything you wanted
if you put your mind to it.
For the longest time, I wanted
to be a bad guy wrestler,
like Zeus or the Iron Sheik.
I bought wrestling magazines
and saved money for a weight bench
and for the tattoo of a red dragon
I was going to have inked on my chest.
Late at night, I replaced my father’s snores
with the standing ovation of a crowd
and the sound of them chanting my name.
But my father said I didn’t have
the right body type and at the time
I didn’t know what steroids were.
So I gave up and started saving money
for a guitar. It took a year,
and I plucked and strummed
alone in my bedroom, imagining
the sell out crowd singing along
to the songs I wrote
about not accomplishing the goals
I had set out to achieve. But my fingers
wouldn’t move the way
I wanted them to move.
As I grew older I turned my attention
to writing poems, short stories,
and dreamt of a novel. I dropped out
of university and found a job that paid
three dollars above minimum wage
at a plastic factory. A job that gave me
routine, and time alone to write.
I sat on stools tying knots in the tiny strands
of plastic, feeding them through
a big machine, and dreaming of what
I was going to go home to write about.
That was eight years ago, and
I still haven’t written anything,
except the words to this poem
and the acknowledgements
to a novel I couldn’t finish.
So that’s another dream gone to the wayside,
but you should see how many knots
I can tie in under a minute.

The sea in Tangier

by Tyler Bigney

Tangier coastline bathed in sun.
I soak it in.
The bloods the same
in all of us.

Maybe somewhere
over there
is a place
to call home.

You must - a poem for Moscow

by Tyler Bigney

I am here – in Moscow,
rich from smells of flowers,
sea salt, & magic.
A city unrecognizable
from pictures or from above.
You must walk
her streets
in order to know her.
In order to love her,
you must.

My grandmother’s quilt

by Tyler Bigney

I’m watching you sleep,
studying the light brown freckles
on your shoulders. I can feel your feet
press up against me
under the quilt my grandmother
knit me for Christmas.
If she only knew that I met you
hours before
at a bus station
and paid three hundred dollars
for you to sleep
naked next to me
to make me feel
something, or
anything at all -

she’d be disappointed.

County exhibition

by Tyler Bigney

It took a lot of convincing on your part,
but eventually, I gave in, and accompanied you
to the county exhibition, where we walked around
and saw cows, pigs, goats, horses and chickens
that the farmer dyed hot pink.

Stopped at the beer gardens and shared
a pint of Heineken and left to go find out
where the smell of sausages was coming from.

When the sun went down and darkness
enveloped the city, people scurried to their cars
to kiss and caress and to fuck. We walked to the tent
where the old ladies gambled their pension on Bingo.

On the way, I spotted a three legged dog.
I stopped to pick up a stick. I held it in front of me
and tossed it as far as I could.

“Go fetch,” I said, pointing in direction of the stick.

We watched him disappear into the night.
We waited ten minutes, and when he didn’t return
we went to the car.

I was five

by Tyler Bigney

My mother taught me about death
when I was five. I was hiding in the long grass
watching her, as she hoed the garden and picked out
the rocks that strewed the ground.

I stood studying a long green snake
that lay at my feet. It had
bright yellow eyes and
a shiny red tongue that lashed furiously
when I ran my finger along its back.

I picked it up, and holding it in my hands,
I walked over to my mother.

“Look,” I said, dropping the snake
at her feet. “I found it in the grass over there.”

She screamed and she raised the hoe
high above her head, bringing it down
on the snake, chopping him in half.

I cried out, picking up the pieces and running
over to the long grass. I threw away the tail
and shoved the head in my pocket.

I placed it inside the top drawer of my dresser,
next to the hockey cards and my sister’s crayons,
staring at it, unable to believe that my mother
could do such a thing.

Twenty two years later, I can still feel
the long grass against my bare legs
and the sun as it blistered the back of my neck.
And the chill that traversed
down the length of my spine that day
remains.

Svetlana

by Tyler Bigney

I had just laid my head down
when the phone rang.
It rang three times
before I picked it up.
I had a feeling
it was my daughter, and between
silently cursing the time difference
between Nova Scotia
and Moscow,
and clearing the sleep from my throat,
I said hello.

She was calling to ask
when she would see me again.
If she would see me again.

I could hear her mother in the background.

"Tell him that your voice
will haunt his dreams forever."

I drew a deep breath and waited for it.

I thought about riding horses
with my father
through the fields
behind my grandmother's house,
and stopping by the river
where he taught me
how to drink the water
by cupping my hands together.

Memories I would never have
with my daughter.

"Dad," she said. "When will I see you?"

"Soon," I answered. "You'll see me soon."

And like that,
she was gone and I was left
with dial tone
and a night full of sleep
to dream
that my daughter was in my arms
and that her mother and I
were in love.