Lynne burnett
LAST BREATH
Whether it comes announced—the play by play game ender
or as an old lover at the door—naked and desirous under the coat
of night
whether from a doctor’s lips, portentous, black and winged
or at the slip of his hand
or grabbed in haste from the toolbox of a stranger’s
tortured heart
or as metal colliding with this-world dreams of flesh and bone:
a street-dance complete with flashing lights, loud notes
it’s coming, the last breath inspired by the very first—or
we’ve got it backwards, and there’s more to the story
tell me the body’s just a cigarette—hell, the earth becomes
an ashtray, and holy smoke, I can’t see:
alone with what’s gone, the only comfort—my dear Nan was
and loved me hard
tell me the body’s like a river—and I’m swept toward its end,
clinging to jetsam in the sea: my dear Nan was
half-smiling in the hospital bed, cloudy eyes open,
that freeze of no more wheeze and bustle
a boat becalmed, rocked ever so gently, waving hello,
goodbye, hello
I, at the mercy of the unfathomable, breathing
the there and not-there of her in
her last breath my first death present for, my first intimation of
more—she didn’t look afraid of what she saw
tell me more
CINDY
Under the covers, I was told things
by his fingers and the rosy reach of his tongue—
a language I came to understand:
a mouth that diets
on platitudes is a mouth dumb
to the grunt and groan of pleasure,
can’t abide the strange wailing
at the wall of orgasm, or the taut string
of a body between breaths.
He’d kiss my left foot first
and slipper it
between his hands, oh!
opening my mouth wide.
Glove calf, knee, thigh.
He wouldn’t let go
until I let go. I came to believe
the body’s a hymnal and
sang it blind, deaf to other voices.
Believed any wrongs of his
would here be righted, and called it
love, made him the one.
ON POSTERITY
The ink is fading from an index card
propped up on my desk, inspired words
vanishing at the speed of light
through the room’s big picture window.
And the ink is drying in pens not used.
Strange foreplay then of pressing harder,
trying harder for the small satisfaction
of letters written, trembling my hand.
The body’s a blunt instrument with its
own bloody vocabulary, cracking words
like eggs into the boil and sizzle of a heart
until it runs out of breath, enough said.
But the mind is all wind, turning pages.
Raises the hair on an arm with the dash
of a pen. Marco, it calls, and ages later
Polo comes back. Dear invisible friends.
​​​​​​BIO
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Lynne Burnett lives on Vancouver Island. Her poems have appeared in many magazines and anthologies in the US and Canada. A Best of the Net and Pushcart nominee, she won the 2016 Lauren K. Alleyne Difficult Fruit PP, the 2019 Jack Grapes PP, Kelsay Books’ 2023 Women’s Poetry Contest, and was a finalist for Arc’s 2018 Poem of the Year and the 2022 Montreal International PP. Finishing Line Press published her chapbook Irresistible in 2018.
Visit her at https://lynneburnett.ca/