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Callaloo 24.3 (2001) 764



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from Vol. 16, No. 1 (Winter 1993)

Framed

Claire Harris


She is in your painting    the one you bought when the taxi
snarled in market lines    you jumped out and grabbed
a picture of stilted wooden houses against the vivid island
even then there was recognition
She is the woman in a broken pair of men's shoes    her
flesh slipped down like old socks around her ankles    a tray
of laundry on her head    I am there too    but I would not
be like her    at supper she set the one plate and the whole
cup at my place    for herself a mug a bowl my leavings
they said I resembled her    I spent hours before the mirror
training my mouth to different lines
At night while I read    she folded the blanket on her
narrow board    coalfire smooth on her face    she boiled
scrubbed    ironed    musk of soap and others soil like
mist around her head    often she dreamed    I would have
a maid    like her    she laughed    I studied harder harder
she grieved    I was grown a woman    I was grown
without affinity
For the calling    her eroded hands    cupped like a chalice
she offered me the blasted world as if to say    this is our
sacrament    drink    I would not this is all there is    I
could not    I left school    I left she faded
the island faded    styles changed    you hid the dusty
painting in the attic    But I am still there    the one in
middle ground    my face bruising lines of soft white
sheets    my hand raised as if to push against the frame



Reprinted from Claire Harris's Traveling to Find a Remedy (1986) with the permission of the author and the publisher, Fiddlehead Poetry Books and Goose Lane Editions, Ltd.

Claire Harris, a native of Trinidad, is a resident of Calgary, Canada, where she has taught high school English and drama. She began her writing and publishing career in 1975, during a leave of absence in Nigeria. A winner of The Writer's Guild of Alberta Award, she has also received the Alberta Culture Poetry Prize for her book of poetry, Traveling to Find a Remedy and the Commonwealth Award for the Americas region for her book Fables from the Women's Quarters. Her other books include Translation into Fiction, The Conception of Winter, Drawing Down a Daughter, and Dipped in Shadow.

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