Published with the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Coach House Books also acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit.

      Please note: these poems offer an engagement with the life and work of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes; they do not claim to be the truth of their lives, only the truth of my own engagement.

      LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

      Queyras, Sina, 1963-, author

      My Ariel / Sina Queyras.

      Poems.

      Issued in print and electronic formats.

      ISBN 978-1-55245-354-4 (softcover).-- ISBN 978-1-55245-360-5 (hardcover).

      I. Title.

      PS8583.U3414M9 2017 C811′.6 C2017-905074-5

      My Ariel is available as an ebook: ISBN 978 1 77056 533 3 (EPUB), ISBN 978 1 77056 533 3 (PDF)

      Purchase of the print version of this book entitles you to a free digital copy. To claim your ebook of this title, please email [email protected] with proof of purchase. (Coach House Books reserves the right to terminate the free digital download offer at any time.)

       I once knew a lady from Mass.

       Who was sometimes a pain in the ass.

       Every damn comma

       Was really high drama

       But she was quite a talented lass.

      – Roz Chast

       Look at your works, you asshole, and despair.

      –Damian Rogers

      All the Dainty Broads

       Morning Song

      A love procedure set me going like a big fat lie.

      An IT specialist slapped a motherboard

      And my first bald Tweet slid into the feed.

      All night Instagrams and updates Flickr

      In pixellated dreams. I wake to a beep, stumble

      Out in my men’s nightshirt and stare, blank as a gull,

      Into the liquid crystal display.

      Am I any more authentic than the account

      That Tweets your verse?

      Or the cloud that archives your words?

      Or the screen on which your poems float?

      Dickinson says to fill a gap, insert the thing that caused it.

      What thing? This sleek app that brightens

      And swallows my thoughts? These two moons

      That fill my palms and eat my hours?

      Vowels rise and hover like drones.

      What is missing in me? Refresh. Refresh.

      I can’t stop searching for love here.

       The Couriers

      Words from a leaf on the shell of a snail?

      Tenderness as reciprocity etched in shale.

      Communion wafers wrapped in sealskin?

      Accept it, so little is genuine.

      A box on a meteor compelled by earth?

      Lies, emptiness, and grief: do your worst.

      Frost on the dock at Penetanguishene?

      Tears from lakes Huron, Erie, and Michigan.

      Not a moment to yourself? Spread the cards,

      Tarot will help.

      A preponderance of biographers?

      The soft one sucks her rivers.

      RTS, RTS, RTS have their reason.

      Affirmation, affirmation, affirmation is the season.

       Women in Fog

      Labels descend into blankness.

      Avatars are never sad

      And rarely disappoint.

      Tweets leave their trail of

      Exhaustion; potential

      Cantors grey and slow

      As mules. She would like

      Suits with bells and sweet,

      Whimsical Fluevog feet.

      She opened the window

      And bid her walk into

      Optimism. Do not lie

      About love, do not

      Make these difficult

      Waters a heavenly blur!

      They led each other

      To the screen, spread

      The rim, and dove.

       The Jailer

      Feelings are a hopeless theory.

      Daily I fall from grace, the big

      Splash, whatever.

      I should have been an epic,

      Eaten footnotes, married

      Architecture, swirling through my twenties

      In classics and couture. Poetry

      Is the big lie. Oh sure, love crashed

      Into my life, a dark pillar of flight,

      A walking muscle with a slick

      Of black hair. Soon it was legal.

      A swoon of potential swelled

      In the bowl of my hips. I stared

      Into his heart but like the emperor

      I was too vain, I said, What a tower,

      What a prize! Brute love that

      Line by line we indulged, so crazed

      We wrote until we tasted

      The last of it and stunned ourselves

      With our emptiness.

      I should have gone to Hollywood.

      If you’re going to be a trophy

      You might as well go for gold.

      Stop at nothing, you who are

      Ambitious.