Lisa Richter - Three Poems

Breakfast with my Doppelganger

sleepsong

RE / GENESIS

____________________________________________

Breakfast with My Doppelganger

It is awkward at first: this teething of butter-knives,

           uneven slurps of coffee, our handling of silverware

demanding displays of similar posture. The way we hold

           our mugs in both hands and blow across

the surface, the staggered ripples of our breath tipping

           the liquid’s edge. It is like watching

myself in a mirror, only different, because I do not know

           where to look, or where not to, or what for?

Not my animus, my yang, my long-lost Y chromosone, my

           separated double-yolk.

I remember it now: how I had kissed the insides

           of her wrists, how she had held me, how she

said it was okay. My first time caressed by hands

           the size of mine. My doppelganger stares back

over marmalade. Her eyes dark like mine.

           Her gaze darker.

RE/GENESIS

It was not an apple she ate, spilling

cold saliva, whistling alpha

and omega between its

buck teeth, a fat wormy gourd

with polished skin.

It was a blood orange,

pulsing like a heart, whose

burgundy juice chanted dark

requiems to her sun-brushed breasts

and baked clay thighs,

who sang of formulas and knowledge

not yet arcane, of the jelly

of quivering cells, foretelling ice,

flint, flame and wondrous mushrooms

sprouting in early cattle dung.

To unlock the fruit she had to push

her thumbs into it, transcend the

rind, dig deep into chambers hosting

secret elixirs and recipes for

embalming.

And when she reached the juice,

she not only knew she was

naked, but also unafraid.

sleepsong

for A.J.K.

my face in his hands, fingers melt

into cheekbones, molding flesh

molding his flesh into mesh, melding

matter and mind into pure movement,

water. how the body knows its allies

upon contact is divine. how touching,

even in sleep, brings the softest

sigh, slows the pulse from rapid

butterfly stroke to steady crawl as we

swim through dream, interweaving

images, navigate sources. in yellow-paged

midnight a fan circulates air on the

highest setting, 3, a trinity of air

and music and blood. the breeze

arrives on my face and leaves moments

later, inevitably returning, much as

I return to you, the steady knowing

that heat, the stifling air, comes and

goes forth; that love shifts and stirs,

but like energy, can neither be

created nor destroyed, but only

changes its form.

Rock Salt Plum Poetry Review                               Spring 2004        

Lisa Josie Richter was born and raised in Toronto, where she currently teaches English as a Second Language to international students at a private language school. She picked up writing by way of telling herself stories during recess in kindergarten, although her early career choices ranged from “skirt designer” to “famous artist.” She attended a private bilingual high school, made tolerable by acting in various theatrical productions, compulsive journal writing and a new pursuit of poetry, both the craft and reading of it. At this point, she had inherited her mother’s love of e.e.cummings and wrote countless, poor imitations of him. While studying English at McGill University, she contributed to the editorial board of Montage magazine, in which her first published poems appeared.

In the year 2000 she embarked on a year and a half of travel, ending up in Europe and mostly Israel, where she found her passion for teaching English. Her writing has since been informed by the experience of being an “intimate stranger in a strange land,” as a secular, young North American Jewish woman living in Israel during a time of crisis, as well the immediate, sensory yet distinctly spiritual, dynamic and often gut-wrenching intimacy between lovers. She wishes she could write with the grace and simplicity of Elizabeth Bishop, her newest favourite, the fluid warmth of Leonard Cohen, the master word-smithery of Gerald Manley Hopkins, the fire and passion and prophecy of Irving Layton, and the unflinching candor of Sharon Olds or Anne Sexton.

Since returning to Toronto in 2001, she has taken continuing education courses in prose and poetry, organized an ongoing writing group, and acts as moderator of “Word Up,” an online community of writers and readers on the Om Festival Message Board. She is a voracious consumer of fiction and chocolate, loves the music of Nina Simone, and spending glorious time with her boyfriend Alex. Most recently, her writing has appeared in lichen.