01-13-2024
Courtney Bates-Hardy
POINT TO WHERE IT HURTS II
After my last accident,
I am scheduled for five appointments
every week.
They slowly decrease
but I keep online booking
open on my phone
like a security blanket.
At a friend’s wedding,
I hop onstage
to plug in the mic
and feel a muscle in my back
clamp down. I spend the night
fighting tears, and
not for the happy couple.
On vacation, my neck locks—
I can’t look up at skyscrapers
or street signs; I can’t turn
my head; I can’t wait
to go home.
I spend the evenings
on the couch with an ice pack,
waiting.
I learn the best time to find
open appointments
is in the morning,
when other people cancel.
I rejoice when I receive
notifications of openings
from the waitlist, and I can stop
checking the website
multiple times a day.
Gradually, my appointments
go down to twice a month,
sometimes even once.
I know I love her
when I offer her
my physio appointment.
HOSPITAL BAG
My mother keeps a bag by her bed
filled with underwear, socks, a charger,
a blanket, a book, a toothbrush,
and a list of her meds.
I remember her early trips,
for my brothers as they were born,
the way she would disappear
in the middle of the night
and I would wake to my Nana
sprinkling brown sugar over oatmeal.
I remember other trips
for migraines, the way
she laid in the dark,
one hand over her eyes.
I remember trips after surgery,
the times I packed her bag,
wrapped her in a blanket,
tucked her into the back seat,
told my brothers it will be ok,
mom’s going to be ok.
The long highway drive at night,
the bright lights of hospital hallways,
the way she screamed,
how I ran to find a nurse:
please someone help,
she’s in so much pain.
Endless waiting,
as night went on somewhere else
darkening around fluorescent lights,
my eyes open wide,
waiting.
Now home, I sit on her bed,
watching the white and gold bag,
willing it to stay in the corner,
surrounded by dirty clothes,
slowly dusting over.
SIBYL
I will not sleep with him,
so he curses me—not
with venomous words or a mouth
full of spit, but with malicious
ambivalence. He does not
speak at all.
I caress the dust
in my hands, and he gives me
what I want: a room to myself,
alone with my words, flying
on aging leaves from
the mouth of my cave.
I cling to the ceiling, speaking
so softly
that he believes I’m
an echo of his own lies.
Defiantly, my voice
lasts even after it cracks
and frays—he despises
that curious rise and lilt,
as if I am always questioning
his right to speech. My body
wastes into the dust
I once held
but my voice remains.
-from Anatomical Venus, selected by PoemoftheWeek.com Fall 2024 Guest Editor, Hollay Ghadery
Courtney Bates-Hardy is the author of Anatomical Venus (Radiant Press, 2024), House of Mystery (2016), and a chapbook, Sea Foam (JackPine Press, 2013). She is the co-editor of apart: a year of pandemic poetry and prose (Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild, 2021).
Her poems have appeared in Event, Vallum, Room, CAROUSEL, PRISM, This Magazine, and the Canadian Medical Association Journal, among others. House of Mystery was nominated for the 2017 Elgin Award. Her poems have been featured in Imaginarium 4: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing and The Best Canadian Poetry 2021, and nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She is queer and disabled, and one-quarter of a writing group called The Pain Poets. You can find her on Twitter (@poetcourtney) or email her at courtney.bates@hotmail.com.
