Rhonda Melanson

A graduate of Queen’s University Artist In The Community Education Program, Rhonda Melanson has been published in several print and online magazines, including Juniper, The Boxcar Poetry Review, Quill’s, Philadelphia Poets, Ascent Aspirations, Lummox , and the Windsor Review. In 2011, she published a chapbook called Gracenotes with Beret Days Press, and she is also featured in the Encompass IV anthology, a publication from Beret Days Press and The Ontario Poetry Society. Recently, she was featured in Nasty Women and Bad Hombres, A Poetry Anthology, edited by Deena November and Nina Padolf (Lascaux Editions). She will also be published in Tamaracks, An Anthology of Canadian Poetry, edited by RD Armstrong.

the wall in my classroom that health and safety ripped down

it was tomato red soup

nestled in cream mortar,

swirled, hardened, no

longer malleable

and three rusted nails,

a glaring stigmata, dead

orange nipples too

painful to suck

a thrush that made me

bloated with oblivion, the

only sustenance for my

hungry ten year olds

who submitted to the

ugly wall without

question or regret

that would be mine,the

regret, who would allow

any edifice to stand for

their world, who wouldn't

challenge unwritten history.

recess and four square

I know it's going to be a bad recess

when he tells me to go fuck my coffee cup

What does a ten year old know of fucking:

the in, the out, gin and tonic, mothers ruin

molotov cocktail exploding in utero?

the full penetration, the pull-out.

Or the bump, the grind of peers playing four square

and their arbitrary rules: the line doesn't count, it

has to be out; you can have one do-over

As always, he rages against the arbitrary:

when he's out, he strikes,

captures the ball and salutes;

his checkered pawn cannot believe

they have fallen for him rook, line and sinker.

He retreats to the lost and found box,

curls into its fetal space,

clutches the aborted ball

before calling out for one last liaison

between me and my coffee cup.

The Reality of Cows In A Grade Five Classroom

He’s one of those kids who doodles cows

when he is supposed to be listening.

He pens them passively,

a galaxy of circles in the margin,

boxy barrel and flank, skinny switch,

plump udders, exaggerated teats

He ruminates on their imperfection,

then clams more illicit ink into their

milky spots

they are epic, he proclaims,

so he draws two; and then he announces

his exhibition:

hey, Miss M, did you

know that if a farmer has two cows,

two times four equals eight stomachs?

He proclaims it again

again to uncomfortable

laughter.

He realizes his herd has become

chafed wheat

washed away in the margins, where he now

takes up permanent space

He traces over

his straight pink border in black, recreates

himself as lonely bovine, charcoal and ink.

He practices

regurgitating, regurgitating

plaintive moos from the pasture.