Susan goes couchsurfing

Lizzie derksen

I crash on my rich friend’s couch in Ritchie,
where the beans are stumbling like
Rachel and I having a fight—I mean
like newborn foals out of the ground.

Thirty-odd years ago
our pre-frontal cortexes lurched into place,
and it turns out there is still everything
to try and understand.

The foolishness of the old neighbour,
soaking his lawn with fertilizer,
eating fall applesauce
under the spring apple trees.

My middle aged initiation into the mystery of
coke floats. The kids in the school field
in their loose summer clothing, doing cartwheels,
also foals.

Ranger settling on my feet when I start
chopping rhubarb. (I feel bad for bringing him
with me.) Our straight friend arriving
in a silk dress with a huge yellow peony.

Is it possible
her husband appreciates her?

And how rich, exactly, do you have to be
to have a garden in this city?

My wife thinks she knows everything.
She’s the coolest janitor on the planet.
Even in someone else’s house,
her philosophical systems remain intact.

I sleep under an unfamiliar afghan for one night
and don’t recognize my life.
Filling the watering can,
I soak the front of my dress.

What can I do with this?
The bracelet I accidentally almost
buy for Rachel, old blood coloured beads
from the Hudson’s Bay Company.

My father, complaining that my mother
never serves him a second cup of coffee.
Rachel and I, the Greek chorus,
saying he should serve himself.

The two of us, for two decades,
rain or shine, every day,
walking our dogs in the Mill Creek ravine,
still not knowing the name of trees.

Tomato leaves.

A jar of cold water.

Rachel and I getting older.
Rachel insisting that it doesn’t matter.

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Lizzie Derksen is a writer and filmmaker from Treaty 6 Territory. She writes poems about Aunt Rachel, Rachel’s wife Susan, and their niece Lucy. She writes prose about the priest class, the worker class, and her childhood spent in a religious community in southern Saskatchewan.

Lizzie has published poems in earlier issues of Funicular and you can read more ‘Aunt Rachel’ poems by her on the Funicular website all this week. You can purchase her chapbook Aunt Rachel Says 13 Poems) here.

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