Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Esther Mazakian: Inside Her Darkest Ice Age

                                                 From under an avalanche of angst-y avoidance they sniffed out
an escape route like it was fresh kill; predators gathering in cool cahoots, they moulded
a smooth globular cake of icy guile
out of instinct, hard
snow, to serve as the first loveball of hot grade 8 infamy; a recess erection
                                for a week straight and architecturally,
a frozen
                                                sherbet of near-
fornication
that caught her breathless one frigid morning ass-
first after Science, protesting disingenuous, gasping with hormonal semi-indecision,
                                her neck a scarf of sweaty mohair, her body a toppled
baby in a snowsuit, nylon arms, legs, hood pointed
                                                                                into a star shooting toward the blue,
                                wintry,
cartoon-cloudy sky,
                                                and her lips pressed to the lips of the maladjusted boy thrown at her
core, core of seedy pubescent entrails, boy from the back
of the class with the scuzzy
hair, plaque-hoary teeth, no wherewithal
to hand                                                                                
anything in, and she kissed him hard, hard with a zealous, crural squeeze that surprised
                                even her, this boy, this boy that her mother
                                                                                                would have taken by the ear like a rat
by its tail
                                and fast chaperoned
out of her daughter’s world, a world that was, until then, a still-frozen sluice of coming
betrayal, that is,
                                                                                                before the cryo-
                                                philic
father’s head caught wind,
                                                                hacked up a squall of encroachment,
                                                                                                                                                 blew.



Esther Mazakian lives in Toronto. In 2006, she published her first book of poetry, All The Lifters (Signature Editions), which was shortlisted for a ReLit Award. She is currently working on a second entitled, The Stain of the Story.
Esther Mazakian has been published in numerous journals, Malahat, Event, Prism, Descant, Fiddlehead and was the winner of the winner of Earle Birney Prize for Poetry 2004 and was an editor's choice in 2002 and 2003 in the ARC Poetry Contest.

No comments: