Carlie Blume
Carlie Blume is posing outside before a blurred backdrop of grass, a tree, and buildings. She is looking into the camera, body tilted camera left, legs crossed. She is wearing a black shirt and plaid patterned pants.
Biography
Carlie Blume was born on the unceded and ancestral lands of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh (Vancouver). She is a 2017 graduate of Simon Fraser University’s The Writer’s Studio. Her work has appeared in The Maynard, Train: a poetry journal, Canthius, Loose Lips Magazine, and more. She is also the author of her debut collection of poetry, Gigglepuss (2022) and currently lives on the traditional territory of the Saanich, Cowichan and Chemainus First Nations (Salt Spring Island) with her husband and two children.
Poetics Statement
“Poetry comes from a place that simultaneously exists and ceases to exist in our physical world. It is held in the spaces where we dream, where desire, song, inquiry, pleasure and longing reside. To fully experience a poem is to eclipse our perceived selves and enter into something more heeding and resolute than the frangible cage of flesh, bone and breath that we exist in. It is an art form allows us to be drawn into an internal dialogue that can further alter and heighten how we perceive ourselves and the world around us.
My poetry dwells in the difficult corners of selfhood that so often house complex emotions such as shame, obsession, lust, despondency and nostalgia. It is here where I sort myself out, where I beckon others to join me. It is in poetry where fear is rejected and the true center of self and existence is found.”
Sample of Poet's Work
Spider Season
This morning is all dew and dust—
autumn’s first declaration
less like the relenting hangover
of our first pandemic summer
disguised as a long spring.
The spiders weave outside our doors
while we turn in our beds
fog squats in the between street signs,
adorns hexagonal web lines
apparitions that vanish with a single step to the right.
Hammock between cable wire and lamppost,
dozens declare their temporary networks erected
above our moon- matted heads.
I think of all the horror movies I’ve seen
that featured killer spiders,
it’s almost laughable now
the slightness of this threat
how as adults we still loiter in the shadow of
old nightmares we had as kids
the soft dance of eight legged scurry down our
ripened bodies.
Now the simplicity in the idea of spiders
taking over seems something so
so close to a feeling I once remember
as comfort.
Dr. Golden
I remember sitting in your office, a glass
bullet shaped building looking out over
Broadway. I was knock-kneed in turquoise,
a whisper of breasts encased in training lace
handpicked from the Sears catalogue, freckles
not yet in fade. I sat in your pleather
office, a gaze-encased sample to be swirled,
examined before a small man with calm feet and Golden curls.
You began: so, - trust issues with men?
You asked if I had a boyfriend.
I answered no. My face a scorch of sun in the sky.
That’s ridiculous, you said to me as I watched
the scum swirl through plastic weeds in your big bright fish tank,
A girl like you, with no boyfriend is like a Ferrari confined to a garage.
Your words soapy residue, like clumped colonies
settling on my skin. For years
the broken pieces of our visits sat in a heap in my
memory, unsolved, unresolved until one evening,
under the cobalt glow of the six o’clock news I heard you had
your medical license revoked.
They called it “Sexual Misconduct” with three of your
teenage patients. They said you groomed them, promised
to marry two of them, intercourse with one on your slippery couch.
Girls that were being treated for eating disorders,
depression. Girls from fragile family backgrounds.
Girls who had lost faith in men. Girls like me.
Little Tart
On my tenth birthday my mother invites our whole family over to dinner. Grandmother, Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, all bring bon-bon colored gifts that look like treats I ache to devour.
Before we eat, the kids play freeze tag out front. We ignore the carpet of pine needles that bites at our heels.
After dinner we do cake, open presents. I unwrap the soundtrack to Aladdin, Lisa Frank stickers, colored pencils for school. I squeal while opening a Western Stampin’ Barbie, marvel at her turquoise ten-gallon hat and jacket, finger silver fringe on sleeves, boots that stamp tiny trails made from B’s.
While my mother cleans up, my cousins and I head to my room where we plan a performance for the adults, a ritual we conjure every time family gets together. I grab my new cassette; press fast-forward a dozen times.
Click stop at the right spot.
We delegate roles, practice moves, pull outfits from squeaking drawers, my cousins wrap their heads in towel turbans, I choose the red camisole and underwear set I got for Christmas. In a troop we march downstairs, declare that the show will soon begin, take our places, cassette set up, towel draped around my middle awaiting reveal.
Music slinks from plastic speakers, rising like white smoke into the air. Warm adult smiles nourish small egos while cymbals pave melodic roads.
I wait for vocals to trill, for song’s climbing crest to release, for words that claim Arabian Nights, are like Arabian days. On cue, I release my grip, grind hips to loping beat, fuzzy legs against tepid air, channeling that particular brand of Disney sex.
I let my camisole’s thin straps fall softly like first snow. When the song ends my mother’s face fades to frown, the others shift, turn quiet eyes toward the ground.
I pick up my discarded towel, avoid disapproving eyes until breakfast the next day,
when my step father brings up my little dance, calls me a little tart.
Then he laughs.
