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BRANDON MCQUADE - POEMS

9/13/2020

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Brandon McQuade is a Canadian poet living in San Antonio, Texas with his wife Jacqlyn, and their son, Nolan. His poems have appeared in BlazeVOX, College Green, Vita Brevis, Rust + Moth, Literary Yard, Elm + Ampersand and Montréal Writes. His debut chapbook, Bleeding Heart, was selected for publication by Kelsay Books, and is scheduled for print in summer 2021. 

​Snow

​The snow never shovels itself
but it melts
if you are willing to wait
 
my grandfather never could
his beard of snow
hardening in the cold
 
the neighbour dog lifts his leg to melt their snow
yellow hole after yellow hole
one steaming piss at a time
 
the little holes are like dead eyes in the white snow
empty and still and
colourless
 
my father joked    don’t eat yellow snow!
my mother showed me the bugs 
I took snow in my hands and watched them crawl
 
the sky in the palm of my hands
 
little stars shining like diamonds in the snow
the bugs moving
little black holes


​2
​It’s hard to tell two five-year-old’s that you are getting a divorce
 
all my twin sisters have ever known
their parents together
alone
 
my grandparents always lived under the same roof
in different beds
in different rooms
 
snow melts slowly in spring
the ground opens and closes like a mouth
 
green blades of grass
green teeth
opening
 
the wet green ground
 
if the snow melted any quicker
if the sky opened up
 
this whole city would drown 

​Fireflies 

It’s really dark and it smells cold so it must be winter
 
we’re playing hide and seek before dinner
 
running out of places to hide
 
my sisters will hide in the same place
 
over and over
and over
 
laughing and whispering and peaking with their legs sticking out
 
my father calls     supper!
 
but they haven’t found me yet
 
I am hiding in their closet
 
like a monster in the dark
 
the only room in the house with the light switched off
 
 

2
 I am surrounded by their tiny clothes
 
folded and hanging
 
like the bodies of children
 
their legs crossed
 
their hands holding the hands of other children
 
one of them has pissed himself again
 
his ass a chemical stain on the blue carpet
 
cloudy and grey
and seeping
 
I listen to knives and forks
 
scraping their plates and teeth
 
through the crack in the closet doors I watch their fish coming up for air
 
their little sea of light
 
fireflies in the dark
 
 

3
​Remember how we would let them crawl across our fingers
 
their bodies like the bodies of angels
 
before their death
 
suffocation in a mason jar
 
hell of a way to go
 
my nightlight danced in the corner
 
a halo fading
 
like a trail of smoke from the candlewick
of a suffocated flame
 
I watched the fireflies flicker
 
ticking like little heartbeats
 
electricity
a pulse
 
I would wake to find them dead
 
in a semi-circle
 
the pads of my fingers swollen
 
glowing
 
bright and
burning
 

​Whale Watching

​Rattlesnakes are to Texas
as Humpbacks are to New Brunswick
 
off the coast of Grand Manan Island
the captain
his mate
his deckhands
all hands on deck
 
wreak
of sea sickness
 
like a hangover
the seeping scent
of beer from the night before
on basement carpet
 
a queasy feeling
like an optical illusion
 
my brothers body moving
in unison
with the white waves
the cusps crashing out of the blue
knocking against each other and the boat
like giant fists on cold wooden doors
 
when I saw one side of the whale’s face
break the surface of the water
 
I could no longer tell if it was me moving first
the boat
the water
or the whale
moving us all
 
the only other time I felt this way
when I shot my little brother
 
blood breaking skin
under the plastic bullet
like spume
blowing water
a whale breathing
misty-warm

​Cocaine

I never did cocaine with my friends because I was afraid to snort anything
 
afraid that I would enjoy it
crave it even
 
like sex at sixteen
 
a pinch of tobacco
after my morning coffee
 
anything that touches the nose and lips
enters the mouth
is intimate
 
leaves an impression
 
still
my friends are never
not doing it
 
even the simplest of gatherings
backyard barbecues
 
any event at all
where there might be alcohol
 
they stay up all night
mixing drinks
 
and biting their tongues
 
forgetting everything
but song lyrics
the cost of an eight
 
 
 

 2
Everyone is still alive
 
everyone wakes up in the morning and drives to work
or school
or both
 
none of my friends are panhandling outside the grocery store
like our parents and teachers told us
 
nothing but a nervous tick
cocaine drip
 
twitching
and clenching
 
of nose and jaw
 
the gentle throb
from head to toe
finger to palm
 
some of the fathers will even join them
 
smoking cigarettes inside the house
blaming the boys
 
for the bottles of beer filled with cigarette butts
 
the cocaine trail lining the bathroom sink
over the toilet
above the fireplace
 
 
 

​Falling Asleep

1
 
Have you ever laid in bed at night
and felt nothing
 
not tired or awake
not even alive
 
just there
your head floating
above your bed
 
your body hovering
like a chandelier
over the floor
 
when I fall asleep it feels like sinking in a boat filled with sand
 
 
 
2
 
I remember falling asleep the way I remember things when I’ve had too much to drink
 
my eyelids flutter like flat rocks
skipping across the surface of a lake
 
my body is a paper boat
taking in water until it sinks
 
the paper plane I built in elementary school flew the furthest
it crashed against the tile like glass
 
falling asleep is kind of like dying
when you think about it
 
billions of candles burning at varied lengths
all burning out in time
 
in a little room somewhere
surrounded by loved ones
the way my grandmother did
 
whispering closely
to those who mean the most
 
our final sounds are not even words
in the moments before the breathing stops
before the silence
 
breath comes out of us
in measured whispers
muffled silence
 
our final breath fizzles out
in short gasps
 
cigarette butts
suffocated in sand
 
 
 
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