Magpie Ulysses is a performance poet. An ex-pat Albertan and recent resident of the west coast, she now lives in the cold, mountainous British Columbia North. Her “confessional poems hit hard and take the reader through intense visceral terrain, but never wallow” (Robert Priest, NOW magazine). Over the last ten years, she has performed at hundreds of venues, house parties, high schools, music and word festivals throughout North America. Magpie has been a member of two national champion poetry slam teams, and is the winner of Vancouver’s 2008 CBC poetry Face off. She is an anthropologist of the heart who doesn’t apologize for her vastness when she sets fire to the shade you took for shelter from this thing we call living. magpieulysses.com

~11pm~

At 11pm, a poetry book tells us as that as artists
we like to leave things up to god.
So we did.
By three am we had destroyed my apartment with our teeth.
My belt buckle re-welded itself to the buttons on your new jeans.
My hair, left a burn mark in the shape of a griffin on the honey blond oak wood floor where my hips met the space between your mouth
and every folktale ever spoken;
Even Baba Yagas’ house was silenced.
Under my fingertips your freckles wrote a Wordsworth of poetry.
We
were
a rosewood fret board at a midnight campfire,
all the way from the hops to the whisky.
We were Thieves,
our small breaths captives in each others mouths.
Now in my pocket
I’ve got a stolen palm full of auburn,
a piece of the blue moon,
collections of house cats,
and keys to other people’s boxcars.

From now on,
I will drink my morning coffee in the shower so I feel less alone,

The view
is not the same here anymore.
The old Garry Oak,
the Sooke hills,
my neighbour typing in those awful pink fleece pajamas
all are only curtains made by god
to hide my burning nudity that still blushes
even though you are gone.