Margot Block has been writing since the age of fourteen and has been published in Zygote Magazine, Contemporary Verse 2, Juice, The Collective Consciousness and in the online journal BlazeVox. She participated in the high school mentorship program sponsored by the Manitoba Writer's Guild, working with poet, Carol Rose and won first prize in a poetry contest sponsored by the Writer's Collective.


“What Happened There”
(a response to Krisjanis Kaktins-Gorsline “Inspector”)

I remember this image
like he was hitting you into the blue and green
as it was sketched
a tiny detail of your heart
full, complex, with its design
and how you will be remembered in these details
and a finished canvas, beautiful but not your soul
the blue of you was thin but not transparent
and into the green, how can I write more of your experience
then I wonder about how badly you touched him
the passive jelly of his skin and arms and if he was bleeding that blue
then about the size of the tears that followed
were they crystal tears or were they black, a cloud of the memory
fuzzy with pain, discolored
then I wonder was there more to the story pressed on canvas
as I recall it
thenI turn to the careful blue like a skeleton key or the memory of it all
and then the pink in you
the peach was a pretty leaf page
like an imprint on my left brain
an imprint that stays in the memory
like the shape of the heart, an aorta bursting
then, how I have loved you
turning everything over in my mind
mulling over and over the painted heartache, the destruction
was the knowledge of the affair
is that what it is called now
the memory of the beatings
and we return to an evergreen forest
the place we were born
we return to the forest with an invitation
then I want to write about you
to put the dark memory to rest
while I see bits and pieces in your paintings
how she was the shattered shamed woman
then became the clouded dream of herself
knowning the spidery shape of blue that was her, in the end
I write about a collage about impact
bits and pieces put back together
scaled over in brown