I Am A Winning Personality

Sheryda Warrener lives in Vancouver, where she teaches at the University of British Columbia. Her poems have appeared in Arc, the Malahat Review, Even...

“Repetition is not rhyme, missy.”
                 Elizabeth Bachinsky

I am a winning personality.
My personality is Paleozoic:

sea urchin, horn lantern
with the panes of horn

left out. My personality glows
like a lantern aglow

for the last few million years
or so. My face is alive.

My face cloudy as a cluster
of cherry blossoms face-down

in a puddle of discarded rain. I pull
up from the dead pile, drenched,

petals in-tact. At home, a swishy pink
wave from the corner of the room

as the petals dry in the radiator’s shunty
updraft. No longer my face,

just a quivering dumb bouquet
with a couple of buds clenched tight

as fists about to fist bump me. Never
my face in the first place. Everything

will eventually collapse from rain-work
& other festivals of weather unless

I’m there to breathe it in. Herein
lies evidence of my winning personality. I study

the urchin’s briny nature for tips
on how to outlast even the chilliest

millenia. Cold shoulder,
Baby says, giving me the cold shoulder.

Sheryda Warrener lives in Vancouver, where she teaches at the University of British Columbia. Her poems have appeared in Arc, the Malahat Review, Event, and The Believer among other journals, and in the anthology Best Canadian Poetry 2013. Her first collection of poetry is Hard Feelings (Snare/Invisible).