PEOPLE'S CHOICE
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I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
The river is famous to the fish.
The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.
The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
After the celebrations,
people, TV channels, telephones,
the year’s recently-corrected digit
finally falls asleep.
Between the final night and the first dawn
a jagged piece of sky
That feeling of my soul getting yanked
I wonder where my soul hides when I’m sick
My heart feels as if it’s getting beat up
Is it because the restless ocean is clumping up?
My heart beats regardless of the pain
I like the lady horses best,
how they make it all look easy,
like running 40 miles per hour
is as fun as taking a nap, or grass.
I like their lady horse swagger,
And when they bombed other people’s houses, we
protested
but not enough, we opposed them but not
enough. I was
in my bed, around my bed America
scurried around a classroom papered with poems.
Even the ceiling, pink and orange quilts of phrase...
they introduced one another, perched on a tiny stage
to read their work, blessed their teacher who
You knock on the door but nobody answers. Cupping your hands around your face you peer through the side-panel of frosted glass. A kettle is whistling, a woman singing as she sets the table. This is a familiar house. You knock again.
Oliver Sacks is going to die,
He tells us blithely in the New York Times.
He’s 81. His liver’s shot.
He’s blind in one eye
Though when both worked fine
Dad reads aloud. I follow his finger across the page.
Sometimes his finger moves past words, tracing white space.
He makes the Moon say something new every night
to his deaf son who slurs his speech.
I was a kid other kids’
parents gossiped about.
They told their children
what I was: too negative.
I get it. Fair to fear
contagion of bad attitudes,
You’ve changed.
You used to be so
and now you’re all
like, you’ve transformed
I don’t know how to describe
it’s like
you don’t like canasta anymore
you text IN ALL CAPS
Thin are the night-skirts left behind
By daybreak hours that onward creep,
And thin, alas! the shred of sleep
You charm’d me not with that fair face
Though it was all divine:
To be another’s is the grace,
Gigantic agenda, this life of ours—
that turned out so different, then after all the same.
We picture ourselves when we close our eyes
in a lift that's counting the years in floors.
It's melting helplessly,
the North Star.
Ten million, or even more,
tons every day
(ice, cold light, gas)
waste away from the frame
of this immense animal.
You will see,
It turns out however that I was deeplyMistaken about the end of the world
The summer she turned seven
they gave her a wooden pencil case
with a pencil and eraser.
The pencil, so she could gnaw the lead
until she found the vagus nerve
of the word.
On the black wet branches of the linden,
still clinging to the umber leaves of late fall,
two crows land. They say, Stop, and still I want
to make them into something they are not.
It turns out there wasn't a door, so she stood looking at the wall, and then
at the ground, and then again at the wall, and then about the sky. The sky
was doorless, which was comforting, especially at night, when she could
I'll tell you how it was, what she remembers:
the scent of rhubarb and strawberries in the wild
where she hid and the cries of the murdered,
they do not want to die away. If possible,
"weeping blooms
It is 2005, just before landfall.
Here I am, a labyrinth, and I am a mess.
Stone Carrier was my grandfather, my father, my brother, andmy son. He was a good and brave man, and he taught me manythings. He shared some of his memories with me, memories
Peace be upon you and under your feet.
Peace be before you like the wind before the wheat.
Peace be within you, yes a peace so sweet
our muscles
grow strong with
everyday use
strong arms can offer
a tender embrace
a heart that is brave
can soften with compassion
a clever mind can
find time to daydream
Squeaking like screen doors
so quick you can barely see who
or what they are -- there,
against the sky, the scudding clouds, high
above the rooftop, they are dusk’s
dark angels
Woot, woot! Come one, Come all!
everybody grab a ball!
Volley, volley, volleyball!
What do you do with a volleyball
I bump the ball with my arms outstretched
i've got a spider way of thinking
I live in light
switches broken fixtures
It helps if you concentrate.
Calm yourself.
Stare.
Fix your mind.
Grip your chair.
Are you ready?
Go!
Twiddle 'em!
Fiddle 'em!
Flail 'em with flair!
Sunbeams aren’t something I notice.
Mostly it’s my own breasts, bobbing with effort
like I’m a man writing the story of a woman
and the way her nipples strain politely
This is a prayer for the dead and dying -
and those that may never know a life on the outside
I hope your sins don’t meet you at your grave -
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
I have so many now.
There’s one where we were giants, playing with our size by falling over
houses and trees, laughing.
There’s another where I was racing the old ones in a game, and we stopped
it’s hard to feel power from my ancestors when i don’t know
who they are,
where they come from,
what their stories are
we share blood
blood shares memory
a heart a heart
a diamond a diamond
a club a club
call it invasion not settlement
call it genocide not colonization
call it theft not establishment
don't call January 26 Australia Day
first you get the grease from canola buffalo
then you find mystery meat
you must package this in
The woman I love
braids her hair. She’s Eve
and Eve means breathe, to give life,
my wife, from Eva by way
of the Hebrew havah. At dusk
I unlock her hair
commencing to the place of beginning;
emptying;
in 1959 the South Saskatchewan river was dammed;
forever altering the boundary of Treaty no. 6;
it is friday. we have come
to the paying of the bills.
all week you have stood in my dreams
like a ghost, asking for more time
but today is payday, payday old man;
my mother’s hand opens in her early grave
1790 → treaty 2, district of Hesse (step into wolf)
province of quebec
“We do herby certify that the following goods were delivered to the
several Nations”
It takes eight matches, a burnt thumb, and a quick Google search
to light the sweetgrass braid Mom scored for me from an elder
at work. Always use matches, she said. Spirit likes matches.
Do you speak your language?
I stare — I just said: how are you?
I thought English was my language
apparently it isn’t
I thought Halkomelem was gibberish
the devil’s language
The morning coffee. I’m not sure why I drink it. Maybe it’s the ritual
of the cup, the spoon, the hot water, the milk, and the little heap of
brown grit, the way they come together to form a nail I can hang the
i wanted bitumen to be made of dead dinosaurs. why did i want these
ancient kin to be passively implicated in the fossil fuel industry? it
My mother never forgave my father
for killing himself,
especially at such an awkward time
and in a public park,
that spring
when I was waiting to be born.
She locked his name
For thirty-one years, my mother tried not to miss her. Every week,
a little water or the trickle of a few ice cubes
dropped
in black earth. Years back, in the muck of Toronto, April,
When the doctor suggested surgery
and a brace for all my youngest years,
my parents scrambled to take me
to massage therapy, deep tissue work,
osteopathy, and soon my crooked spine
When the horse picked Mama up by the hair
that time, was she scared?
There is a photograph of her with this horse
in the brown family album. She stands
beside him, thin in the chilly wind
my mother found herself one late summer
afternoon lying in grass under the wild
yellow plum tree jewelled with sunlight
she was forgotten there in spring picking
rhubarb for pie & the children home from
