SEE ALL TAGS & MOODS
On TV it looked like a high-speed photo of a milk drop
the dying leader of the Pana Wave laboratory cult smack in the
centre.
Acres of white cloth streamered his followers, who
An eagle egg fell into a farmer’s chicken shed
and when it hatched the farmer gave it chicken feed
even though he was the king of birds. The farmer
clipped the eaglet’s princely beak and raised him
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
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
my friends, my sweet barbarians,
there is that hunger which is not for food —
but an eye at the navel turns the appetite
a blunt thunderstorm delivered her
to the doorstep of her kohkum
I wrote to my mother, but she didn't write back.
It's not true that you can begin anywhere.
I was born in a church.
Glaze eyes. Then glaze soul: the dull, dull deadly
dull faceless work of those killed
whose names we don't know
by those whose names we don't know. Drone:
we can't mourn or condemn
i’m gonna walk right out of hell
i ain’t trying to hurt no one
well there might be someone special,
but by now they’re dead and gone
there’s a line of black smoke rising
you can hear the woman screaming
My mothers says she has something to tell me,
turns to me from the stove where potatoes
boil and bump in the pot
I stand still to hear, a bundle of forks
in my hand for the table
Now I set out across a minefield,
space having taken all I owned, I’m starting over
from a point where every pebble may explode
beneath my shoe and the flowers blaze up
behind my body as I gasp for air,
Heaven
is just a garden, really.
A plot of land where you might reach down
When the burning started in August, because it kept
its own schedule, it could be early without seeming eager.
On Point Reyes there was fire locking antlers with fire
and the fires at Big Sur had so broad a wingspan
We're drinking coffee in January's
bed. It's raining. The harbour
hammers high at Lake Ontario.
What an inconvenience. The end
times, I mean. Can I unwelcome
the undoing? There's burning beyond
baked, square or round globes formed from the rims of used pickle jarsi don't have milk, use wateri don't have eggs, that's okay, only some people use them anywaysi only have a bit of sugar, that's okay, throw it in
This doesn't have to go in order;
that's the first thing.
I looked inside
an egg,
poked and blown
pristine, made clean
by the passing of its own slime. Inside
Won’t let your bad self.
Let go of your old debt.
Tiring of your old self.
Won’t let your made bed.
Let your bad blood let.
Your grown debt get.
Good Friday, the day they delivered
that sad bouquet, was the day our cat
ran out on the road and failed to look
both ways. I’d stashed the candy eggs
under the sink, in their pink raffia nests,
I am held within these claims: that I have kissed unlucky
things, buried pets, eaten sugar-free ice cream, endured a first
blood test, made friends without benefits, and lost them
The sky was never my court date.
If I died once. If I left the body.
Habeas corpus.
This is not my grave.
The value in a dead woman
My imaginary brother speaks of our migration and history,how time pulses like the green waterin the South Saskatchewan that sputters by our home,success measured in how still he’d lie after wandering
My father’s green Pontiac
It was clearly understood,
there was no ownership of land,
so clearly does the land, in fact, own me.
My water from the river and my nitrogen,
a buffalo protein.
stop at the edge of everything—bend down and stick your hands in the dirt.grab a fist full of soil and pull it close: inhale.
Twenty-four years agoI tried to kill myselfbut with my usual incompetencedid not manage to.
When my husband
lay dying a mountain
a lake three
cities ten years
and more
lay between us:
There were our
sons my wounds
and theirs,
It is told and retold
of how Kohkum killed a bear with a river rock
an arm like Ronnie Lancaster (that old Saskatchewan
Roughrider)
she throws with precision
queen of great britain and ireland, by her commissioners the
honourable david laird, of winnipeg, manitoba, indian com
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
You sleep on the floor in my room
in the modelling apartment
I share with eight other girls
You open the fridge
to see what we’re eating
Butter Spray, Diet Coke, Jell-O
Do you think we’re clichés
i know she wants me
by her side in sleep. i do not really ask her to stay,
only imply she is invited. i speak
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 -
this is the growing of things birthing of skin
and bone stem and leaf this is planet
earth beneath snowlight and desert sand
the task given to me when all
the ice had melted was to
welcome the sky people to
the river and to show them
how to fish and how to
build a fire to warm
themselves.
I moved on and came across
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
what a glory feeling it is to sit in the sun by the oceanside
as tulugait and naujait sing circling above
and scrape skins with centuries of arnait guiding my ulu
first you get the grease from canola buffalo
then you find mystery meat
you must package this in
Boyakka! Boyakka! Boyakka!
Shots rang out on my street today
Three Black yoots lay dead
shot inna dem head
commencing to the place of beginning;
emptying;
in 1959 the South Saskatchewan river was dammed;
forever altering the boundary of Treaty no. 6;
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”
I
some towers are made of cladding
some made of ivory
some burn in the night
some built by slaves
wind rushes through coarse hair
Do you believe in the ghosts of aunties and uncles that drive old sin-
gle-bench pickup trucks spotted with bullet-hole rust, sweetgrass and
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
…
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
on the day the chief of kâ-awâsis announces they have confirmed 751
bodies in unmarked graves outside the residential “school” in their
community, i google things like:
