LANI BURSHTEIN is a schoolteacher, artist and writer living in Toronto. Her poetic interests include disaster, history, visual arts, opulence, childhood and constructed identities

The following poems explore the literary device of prosopopeia, or giving voice to inanimate objects. But some objects aren’t quite so lifeless as we’d like to think, are they?

TECHNICOLOUR’S ROSE

Romance isn’t dead—I’ve dyed. I’m red.

Twinkle can be tooled. My throat is jewelled.

Vamps have sultry angles. Mine are spangled.

Divas can be lifeless—this one’s priceless.

Technicolour’s rose: refracting bows.

Twins of mirrored face: my soles can pace.

Glamour grows through time. My road rewinds.

Homeward-bound she wheels; clicking heels.

Brick’s iconic trippers; ruby slippers.

QUEEN OF HEARTS

Observe my curves, my cuts, my twinkling facets

Admire my frozen fire, my glassine assets

Regard the artisans that chiselled me thus

Embrace my Cartier case, its velvet must

Be enthralled with all the lives I’ve traced

Applaud the filmic broads whose gowns I’ve laced

Respect the intellect of sparkling science

My sobriquet: the Taylor-Burton Diamond

MORNING ELIXIR

Electrify your sluggish mind with black

Elixir bitter— swirling steam’s attack

on sluggish thinking. Fill your tiny cup

and energize your neurons. Level up.

Blow for cool, then dip me back and drink,

I wake you and upgrade the thoughts you think.

Your concentration is my gift bestowed.

Now, rise and grind my beans. I’m espresso.

FROM DREAMS YOU KNOW MY HALLS

I am the widened space that speaks of naught.

My columns—tilted pines—my mats, your walking

feet upon the forest floor unyielding.

Your camera scribes the silver shadows fleeting.

My dangling boughs, grey pipes, my curling leaf—

abandoned furniture. Your presence: brief.

You interrupt my silences to pry—

I give up nothing. Structures, too, can lie

awake at unclocked hours, knowing nil.

My river—moulding carpet, nest—these sills

of windows rimed in plaque without excuse.

Here, clouds collect so you cannot peek through.

From dreams, you know my halls. I shan’t explain

my provenance. I’m liminal. My lanes—

a shuttered wood around a witch’s hut.

I’m liminal. My gates are always shut.

HMS EREBUS

Who are you to seek me—

you, who have never crunched ice like hardtack

you, without rot, mast or muster.

You think you can desecrate my ribcage,

trampling in cold shock at my collapse,

slicing the sea-rot from my dreads?

Disturbing my bones with bubbles, extinguishing

the darkness I chose?

Yes, I chose it.

A candy trail from brass buttons to bleached bodies

misled you with missives slit between the stones that knew me.

And still do.

A cairn is not a conscience.  How

I rewrote your map in my mordant image: Starvation Cove.

Don’t think the sunken shell

of me can’t wield a spoon greased in blubber;

Crack open one scurvid tin

and find out just how many mouths

a bay can have.

My warning is your invitation.

Oh, to starve again—I dare you.