OCCASUS
  • Home
  • Archives
    • Issue 1
    • Issue 2
    • Issue 3 >
      • Judges: Issue 3
      • Contributors: Issue 3
    • Issue 4 >
      • Judges: Issue 4
      • Contributors: Issue 4
      • Poetry: Krista Bell
      • Poetry: Josh Garrett
      • Poetry: Erica McKeen
      • Poetry: Katharine O'Reilly
      • Poetry: Victoria Wiebe
      • Poetry: Eric Zadrozny
      • Creative Nonfiction: Ryan Bates
      • Creative Nonfiction: Devin Golets
      • Creative Nonfiction: Jonas Trottier
      • Experimental Writing, Film Sound: Rachel Ganzewinkel
      • Creative Nonfiction: Victoria Wiebe
      • Fiction: Raquel Farrington
      • Fiction: Yulia Lobacheva
      • Fiction: Alexander Martin
      • Fiction: Tiffany Shepherd
      • Fiction: Jonas Trottier
      • On the Night Before Your Father's Funeral, By Katharine O'Reilly
      • Market Blooms By Robyn Obermeyer
      • All That Glitters By Julia Cutt
      • Mosaic By Evan Pebesma
      • love song 2 By Joy Zhiqian Xian
      • Student Writer in Residence: Steve Slowka
    • Issue 5 >
      • Judges: Issue 5
      • Contributors: Issue 5
      • Poetry: Rayna Abernethy
      • Poetry: Chelsea Brimstin
      • Poetry: Natalie Franke
      • Poetry: Kevin Heslop
      • Poetry: Katarina Huellemann
      • Poetry: Cara Leung
      • Poetry: Tamara Spencer
      • Poetry: Travis Welowsky
      • Poetry: Victoria Wiebe
      • Creative Nonfiction: Lyndsay Fearnall
      • Creative Nonfiction: Gary Jackson
      • Fiction: Patricia Arhinson
      • Fiction: Lyndsay Fearnall
      • Fiction: Levi Hord
      • Fiction: Richard Joseph
      • Fiction: Erica McKeen
      • Experimental Writing: Laura McKinstry
      • Experimental Writing: Brittany Renaud
      • Short Film: Ethan Radomski
      • ALFRED R. POYNT AWARD IN POETRY >
        • Poynt Award: Emma Croll-Baehre
        • Poynt Award: Robyn Obermeyer
        • Poynt Award: David Witmer
    • Issue 6 >
      • Judges: Issue 6
      • Contributors: Issue 6
      • Ficton: Sam Boer
      • Ficton: Sydney Brooman
      • Ficton: Erica McKeen
      • Ficton: Esther Van Galen
      • Creative Nonficton: Erica McKeen
      • Creative Nonficton: Brittany Tilstra
      • Creative Nonficton: Nathan Wright-Edwards
      • Poetry: Miriam Ahmed-Gawel
      • Poetry: Chelsea Brimstin
      • Poetry: Rachael Hofford
      • Poetry: Elana Katz
      • Poetry: Erica McKeen
      • Poetry: R. A. Robinson
      • Poetry: Elizabeth Sak
      • Experimental Writing: Sydney Brooman
      • Experimental Writing: Erica McKeen
      • Experimental Writing: Brittany Renaud
      • Experimental Writing: Brittany Renaud
      • Short Film: Dejvi Dashi
      • Short Film: Matthew Carr
    • Issue 7 >
      • Contributors: Issue 7
      • Judges: Issue 7
      • Poetry: Michelle Baleka
      • Poetry: Jenny Berkel
      • Poetry: Kevin Heslop
      • Poetry: Katarina Huellemann
      • Poetry: Nathan Little
      • Poetry: Erica McKeen
      • Poetry: Kaela Morin
      • Poetry: Elizabeth Sak
      • Poetry: Kate Zahnow
      • Experimental Writing and Film: Erica McKeen
      • Experimental Writing and Film: Shauna Ruby Valchuk
      • Fiction: James Gagnon
      • Fiction: Megan Levine
      • Fiction: Erica McKeen
      • Fiction: Cassia Pelton
      • Fiction: Julia Rooth
      • Creative NonFiction: Noa Rapaport
      • Screenplays: Sydney Brooman
      • Screenplays: Nathan Wright-Edwards
  • Boomerang
    • The Art >
      • Alisha Ansems "Tangled Memories"
      • Lindsay Athoe "Study I" and "Study II"
      • Melissa Bareham "Suspension"
      • Ronnie Clarke "It Is Hard to Say"
      • Nick Cote "City Parks"
      • Liam Creed "Untitled"
      • Gwen Hovey "Jelly"
      • Marissa Martin "Childhood Wonder"
      • Alexa McKinnon "The Feminine Uncanny"
      • Amy Ngo "Untitled"
      • Jill Smith "Shelf Self String Thing" and "things a, b and c"
      • Rebecca Sun "Untitled 1" and "Untitled 2"
      • Gabriele Tyson (Andrew Fraser) "Strong Strides"
      • Val Vallejo "Digital Scaring"
      • Kewen Yan "Time Traveller"
    • The Art/The Poems >
      • Marissa Martin/Mary McDonald
      • Amy Ngo/Jill O'Craven
      • Rebecca Sun/Mary McDonald
      • Gabriele Tyson (Andrew Fraser)/Hashini Puwakgolle Mudiyanselage
      • Val Vallejo/Elizabeth Sak
      • Kewen Yan/Megan Gerret
    • The Poems >
      • Megan Gerrett "Traveller"
      • Mary McDonald "Beyond"
      • Mary McDonald "Blink Back"
      • Hashini Puwakgolle Mudiyanselage "Silent Battles"
      • Jill O'Craven "She is an Ocean"
      • Elizabeth Sak "Stalemate"
  • Issue 8
    • Judges: Issue 8
    • Contributors: Issue 8
    • Poetry 8: Danielle Bryl-Dam
    • Poetry 8: Leah Kuiack
    • Poetry 8: Jameson Lawson
    • Poetry 8: Maxwell Lucas
    • Poetry 8: Kaela Morin
    • Poetry 8: Joanna Shepherd
    • Fiction 8: Mason Frankel
    • Fiction 8: Rylee Loucks
    • Fiction 8: Celia Kate Shapcott
    • Fiction 8: Amy Wang
    • Fiction 8: Blake Zigrossi
    • Screenplays 8: Naomi Barghel
    • Screenplays 8: Amanda Inglese
    • Screenplays 8: Jeff Simpson
    • Creative Nonfiction 8: Tiffany Austin
    • Creative Nonfiction 8: Jenny Berkel
    • Creative Nonfiction 8: Carolina Jung
    • Creative Nonfiction 8: Leah Kuiack
    • Creative Nonfiction 8: Li-elle Rapaport
    • Creative Nonfiction 8: Amy Wang
    • Experimental 8: Lauren Lee
    • Experimental 8: Kirah Ougniwi
    • Experimental 8: Carlie Thompson-Bockus
    • Plays 8: Camille Inston
  • Facebook
  • Submissions
  • About
    • News
    • Mission
    • Masthead
    • Writing Studies at Western
    • Faculty
    • Contact
  • Writing Studies
September 19, 2016 | Occasus | Issue 6 | Poetry

2 Poems by Erica McKeen:

A Tea Party at the Cemetery

Drugged women around me, too old to laugh
Nodding and losing their teeth in the grass
 
The trees are bent watching, breaking their backs
Choking up acorns and calling us freaks
 
Freaks in the grass, they laugh and they laugh
The trees they sprout molars and chatter and clack
 
Crack in my back, I’m breaking in half
The women are watching and melting their skin
 
In the sun on the hill, it spills on the grass
The teapot is cracking, we’ve spilled every drop
 
We’ve spilled every drop
It was filled to the top
The teapot has cracked, I can’t get it to stop.

While Studying Spanish on a Monday Night

I thrash in the gap
between making love to language
with him
and making love to him.
My bed sheets never were so fluent,
their little mouths nipping and licking, reciting
poetry, laughing, making Spanish
jokes about Bukowski
and how he commands—the imperative.
But if I want to wish, he says, we’ll fuck
with the subjunctive, with Plath
who put her head in an oven because her husband
had offspring with his words, not hers.
She left a stack of paper on the desk
about Nazis and children.
If it were me, mine would be
of sex,
of you a man in bed, mute and writhing,
Bukowski broken and benign,
stripped with a pen.
I shrug in response,
“It would take a suicide to let you in.”
ERICA MCKEEN is a third year student at Western. She was previously completing an Honors Specialization in Creative Writing and English Language Literature, but recently decided to take a less restrictive and altogether more dangerous route: art without an academic degree behind it. Her short story, "Our Eyes, Our Tongue," won the 2016 Lillian Kroll prize in creative writing, and her work has been previously published in Shirley Magazine, Minola Review, Green Blotter, The Voices Project, The Quilliad, This Dark Matter, Nom de Plume, and the fourth and fifth issues of Occasus.   

Western University
Department of English and Writing Studies
© Copyright 2018 | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Picture