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Paul Tyler's poems have appeared in Prairie Fire, The Malahat Review, Event, Grain, Canadian Literature, and elsewhere. The poem "Feeding Rena" is based on his experience working in an Alzheimer's care facility.
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Published Spring 2007
 
Feeding Rena
Three times a day we gather them from chairs,
or corners, moving Rena last. Stuck
in permanent squat, she is a rusty jackknife
that won't open, sharp and brittle.
Her hands, clamped tight, unfurl into mine,
wounded and slow, fingers cold
as starving mice. I could lift her
by her fists; she is breath enclosed in a box.
Raising her arms, I yank, pull her up
near dragging, walk her ape-like to the table.
Fork propped fierce in her hand, weeping,
her mouth's dark nebula holds words
round as marbles, gums gnawing
dislocated narratives: that woman is evil.
I remind her how we eat, set the spoon
in her grip until it grafts to her palm,
move it to her lips—her eyes, stones
on a prairie road, watch everything and nothing.
Images replay in her memory's condemned
projection house—the now and the then,
flickering points, drifting in the room, stealing her.
Later, when I need to move her back,
she believes I am someone else,
her face pushing up near the boundary
of a smile, mumbling a name that isn't mine.
Caught in relived joy, deep groans hum her,
the way old ecstasies continue to glow
from ancient statues. She is flesh itself seeing.
Her gaze, tilting, fastens to the small curl
that was her body, and she asks what is this? |
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MR BOOKS
Critics at Work
ed. Jeffrey J. Williams.
Critics at Work offers a guided tour through the central, sometimes confusing and frequently controversial developments in contemporary literary and cultural criticism. The tour guides, however, are not distant observers but have been primary participants in those developments, and they report on theory, cultural studies, the literary canon, the recent focus on race, sexuality, and other identities, the state of the univerisity, and the role of the intellectual. Throughout, they consider the not always easy negotiation of politics and culture.
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