2 poems by Cara Losier Chanoine
Doctor’s Office
Do you often have trouble falling asleep?
Do you often experience feelings of hopelessness or despair?
How many days per week does your mind feel like a Scrabble board
tiled in random letters?
Are you taking any prescription medications?
Are you able to see your own reflection?
How frequently do you really know who you are?
Do you exercise regularly?
Does your mind feel safe in your body?
How frequently do you feel unable
to inhabit your own skin?
Have you ever thought about harming yourself or others?
On average, how many knives do you carry in your throat?
How many times per week do you call your life a survival story?
On a scale of one to ten, how haunted are you?
How many times have you revised your personal ideology?
How many digits is the number of your failures?
Do the headstones planted in your chest cause you much discomfort?
How certain are you that you did the right thing?
Do you ever wonder if you’re already dead?
What kind of help
are you looking for?
Marc Bolan Gatecrashes a Séance
You probably don’t remember my name.
You might remember my band;
I named it after a dinosaur.
You know which one.
When you’re five foot-fucking-five, you have to find creative ways
to broadcast your status as an apex predator,
to remind people that you’ll have a bite taken out of their side
before you’ve even broken your stride.
You probably know that one song that everyone seems to know.
You probably think it’s by David Bowie, or Gary Glitter, or Iggy Pop,
or whatever.
It’s not your fault.
I didn’t have enough time
to be taken down by cancer or vice,
to let my body devolve into a cat’s cradle of exposed tendons.
I didn’t have enough time
to be remembered.
I have been immortalized
by casual cases of mistaken identity.
Sometimes, I think it’s the best kind of immortality.
Here’s what you need to know.
I got my first guitar at nine,
and my name isn’t the one I was born with,
but it’s the one that’s real.
I used to play psychedelic rock,
but I took to glam like I’d been born to it.
I was a bisexual Jewish Brit, and I was the smallest and the cutest
of the 70s queens…
or the ugliest, depending on who you ask,
but definitely the smallest.
I looked better than you in a sequined jacket,
and I had a closet full of them.
I wore glitter on the BBC in 1971,
and some people think that was the start of something,
and I hope they’re right.
I loved June, and Grace, and David Bowie.
Sometimes I hated David Bowie, too.
I beat the reaper to thirty,
and you might not remember my name,
but it doesn’t matter
because I can still feel the throat of the world
between the teeth of my jaw.
I am an apex predator.
I am a song on the radio
that you know by heart.
Do you often have trouble falling asleep?
Do you often experience feelings of hopelessness or despair?
How many days per week does your mind feel like a Scrabble board
tiled in random letters?
Are you taking any prescription medications?
Are you able to see your own reflection?
How frequently do you really know who you are?
Do you exercise regularly?
Does your mind feel safe in your body?
How frequently do you feel unable
to inhabit your own skin?
Have you ever thought about harming yourself or others?
On average, how many knives do you carry in your throat?
How many times per week do you call your life a survival story?
On a scale of one to ten, how haunted are you?
How many times have you revised your personal ideology?
How many digits is the number of your failures?
Do the headstones planted in your chest cause you much discomfort?
How certain are you that you did the right thing?
Do you ever wonder if you’re already dead?
What kind of help
are you looking for?
Marc Bolan Gatecrashes a Séance
You probably don’t remember my name.
You might remember my band;
I named it after a dinosaur.
You know which one.
When you’re five foot-fucking-five, you have to find creative ways
to broadcast your status as an apex predator,
to remind people that you’ll have a bite taken out of their side
before you’ve even broken your stride.
You probably know that one song that everyone seems to know.
You probably think it’s by David Bowie, or Gary Glitter, or Iggy Pop,
or whatever.
It’s not your fault.
I didn’t have enough time
to be taken down by cancer or vice,
to let my body devolve into a cat’s cradle of exposed tendons.
I didn’t have enough time
to be remembered.
I have been immortalized
by casual cases of mistaken identity.
Sometimes, I think it’s the best kind of immortality.
Here’s what you need to know.
I got my first guitar at nine,
and my name isn’t the one I was born with,
but it’s the one that’s real.
I used to play psychedelic rock,
but I took to glam like I’d been born to it.
I was a bisexual Jewish Brit, and I was the smallest and the cutest
of the 70s queens…
or the ugliest, depending on who you ask,
but definitely the smallest.
I looked better than you in a sequined jacket,
and I had a closet full of them.
I wore glitter on the BBC in 1971,
and some people think that was the start of something,
and I hope they’re right.
I loved June, and Grace, and David Bowie.
Sometimes I hated David Bowie, too.
I beat the reaper to thirty,
and you might not remember my name,
but it doesn’t matter
because I can still feel the throat of the world
between the teeth of my jaw.
I am an apex predator.
I am a song on the radio
that you know by heart.
Cara Losier Chanoine is the author of How a Bullet Behaves and Bowetry: Found Poetry from David Bowie Lyrics (Scars Publications 2013 and 2016). She is a four-time competitor at the National Poetry Slam, and her work has most recently appeared, or is forthcoming in, Call Me [If You Need Me], Quail Bell Magazine, and The Evening Street Press. She enjoys horror movies and rollerskating.
