Melanie Power
Melanie Power, posed before a backdrop of leafy trees. Overhead, bits of light and sun are shining through the foliage. She is wearing a white knitted shirt.
Biography
Melanie Power is the author of Full Moon of Afraid and Craving (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022). Her writing has appeared in various Canadian literary journals. She holds an MA in English Literature and Creative Writing from Concordia University. Originally from Newfoundland, she now lives in Montreal.
Poetics Statement
“A poem is a capsule—simultaneously a record of a moment and a gesture to forever. A poem is a way to work through, or toward, something. A poem is written, and re-written, bearing the marks of the age in which it’s made. A poem can be playful, serious, careful, devious. I like what Moore writes about poetry—that poems are ‘imaginary gardens with real toads in them.’”
Sample of Poet's Work
The Real Pleiades
In our diary lines, they lived
their most epic lives. Nick, Dave,
Brad, Tim, monosyllabic gods
smattered with acne. Their desire
like cirrus clouds stretched over
classrooms, plunging us into shadow.
Leah kept the paper towel
Josh wiped his muddy shoe in,
while Sarah scrawled in Hilroys,
imagining her surname as Justin’s.
The smell of post-hockey hair was
its own semiotics of godly,
and that locker-room gossip urgent &
opaque to us as Delphic prophecies.
With the hours Laura-Lee spent decoding
Brian’s messages, she could’ve picked up
Spanish or German. Against their bravado,
we modulated the pitch of our songs, honing
the art of being watched. Without need for
speech, Angie lent Ashley a sweater
to cover the blood splotch on her jeans.
We stuffed lunches into bedroom
garbage cans, counted a cup of coffee’s calories,
transmitted eating disorders to each other
like airborne diseases. Murray rolled blunts
thick as torches, with hands that ticked
the seconds & minutes of our hearts, as
we seesawed from Appear Offline to Online
to solicit a sup? from him. Some rose
to almost every occasion, even
when uninvited – vigils under desks for
Ms Smith’s rose-scented neck, the mere
suggestion of breasts beneath Stephanie’s
Gap sweater. Our private opals
of desire – swelling pearls, or quartz
behind tissue-stuffed bras. At Booth dances,
arms encircled shoulders while eyes
shifted, love at the price of its indistinct
edges. Except Paul, an artist he was
so sensitive. Steven, too, whose
Axe Body Spray in 2005 perfumed every
centre-city bedroom. He taught Kayla
to drive in abandoned lots with
his pick-up in park. Our bodies
were a city we hoped would one
day be familiar enough to visit.
Your eyes now weather the rainy sting
of hindsight: all those diary pages
wrongly dedicated, your pen mislaying
a hundred ways to call them
beautiful: your stellar friends, the real
Pleiades. Glittering kin of Lip Smackers
and laughing, their nightly landline calls
were electric light against the darkness.
Ode to the ½ Moon
Vachon’s ½ Moon
is a pastry you could take
to deep space. Time or
gravity cannot change
its perfect molecular composition,
individually wrapped, ageless.
Chocolate or vanilla, it stays tender
and moist forever, no, really,
did you ever see one go off?
In 1923, the Vachon family
abandoned farming in Sainte-Marie
to buy a bakery – eventually,
homemade cakes became
industrially automated. Impervious
to mould, decay, these pastries will
outlast most marriages, not excluding
yer parents’. If Catholics’ faith in the church
has waned, the ½ Moon rises in the same,
sacred arc-shape, but Mudder swears
in the sixties they were bigger. At thirteen
in Witless Bay, she would steal out
on lunch breaks to Howlett’s Store,
her stinking fingers froze,
trading her fish plant wage
for a Vachon cake. A quarter then
was sovereignty, when it could still
get you a bun & tin of drink. We prefer
the ½ Moon’s ingredients a secret,
but if you must know, it is part
cumulus cloud, part oxygen, part
edible pillow, yes, it is fitting that Kate
finds them in her dreams, in which
we eat between swigs of Diet Pepsi.
No need for nutritional facts, we know
the moon to rise and set calorie-free.
The ½ Moon is conceived in a lab,
much like a baby is nowadays, and like
a newborn’s head, it is impressionable
to a hasty hand – indelicate fingers will
indelibly dent it. Like Quality Street
candies, each family member has
their favourite Vachon pastry:
Mudder wouldn’t say no to a Billot Log,
but her favourite is the Flakie.
Fabulous Foods over on Merrymeeting
bakes one from scratch but at that price,
she prefers them freshly packaged
from the factory, on sale at Sobeys.
Ian loves the Jos Louis, twin rose-brown
cake rounds fused by a mortar of white icing.
Not sure if it was ever legal
to sell them as singles,
but you could buy them that way
at Red Circle on Dillon Crescent,
freed from their boxes, beside rows
of Chubby Soda. In the early aughts,
the price of a ½ Moon on The Brow
was just short of a loonie, when a loonie
meant golden autonomy. The crinkle
of a Vachon wrapper in your pocket
was plastic happiness as you tore
across concrete, dodging packs
of stray boys, their yapping jaws, your
heart a full moon of afraid & craving,
always pushing your feet homeward
like Atlantic tide toward the beach.
