Poems

Blackberrying

Nobody in the lane, and nothing, nothing but blackberries,

Blackberries on either side, though on the right mainly,

A blackberry alley, going down in hooks, and a sea

Somewhere at the end of it, heaving. Blackberries

I Am

l am

gap tooth black girl

back corner of class

scribbling left-handed

poetry on blank paper

save the school's

curriculum for later

I am

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the Pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

Riprap

Lay down these words

Before your mind like rocks.

             placed solid…

urban NDNs in the DTES

had a dozen foster parents

                                   tell me to run from my mother’s truth

Two Guns in the Sky for Daniel Harris

When Daniel Harris stepped out of his car

the policeman was waiting. Gun raised.

I use the past tense though this is irrelevant

in Daniel's language, which is sign.

Regardless

If I am judged

If I am punished

If I am dismissed

If I am misunderstood

If I am celebrated

If I am envied

If I am competed with

If I am slandered against

If I am seen

A Breakfast for Barbarians

my friends, my sweet barbarians,

there is that hunger which is not for food —

but an eye at the navel turns the appetite

The Windrush

Dem did sey she pregnance

Cum a sea full a mi

Weighing har down eena har shoe dem

Dresses, coco, mangoes an baggy an arl

Dem did sey de ship nearly sink

Mi mumma nebah sleep a wink

The Good-Morrow

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I

Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?

But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?

I’ll Teach You Cree

with the tip of my spring tongue, ayîki 

your mouth will be the web

catching apihkêsis words,

Insomnia

Thin are the night-skirts left behind

By daybreak hours that onward creep,

And thin, alas! the shred of sleep

31

We’re all aware that human hair is dead

Yet we spend thousands taking care of it.

It’s like an endless funeral.

The moment your hair hits air, it’s toast.

It only lives inside the follicle.

Wishing Well

My fist holds as many coins

as I can carry. All are stamped with the Queen's effigy;

Elizabeth, D.G. Regina, the resident of pockets,

a woman I've never met though I always know

Mean Drunk Poem

Backward & down into inbetween as Vicki says. Or as Robin teaches

the gap, from which all things emerge. A left

handed…

Trillium

the animal in me

is constant.

thirst starts,

hunger answers.

sleep is uncertain,

restless limbs.

in the night,

I hear footsteps.

The Snow Man

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, 

Internet Safety

My dad taught me to never give out my real name, age,

address, or photos. This seemed obvious to me. My fake

birthday entry was always my crush's birthday plus a

The Cold Green Element

At the end of the garden walk

the wind and its satellite wait for me;

their meaning I will not know

Come Up From the Fields Father

Come up from the fields father, here’s a letter from our Pete,

And come to the front door mother, here’s a letter from thy dear son.

Lo, ’tis autumn

Porphyria’s Lover

The rain set early in to-night,

The sullen wind was soon awake,

It tore the elm-tops down for spite,

Cowboy Story

The books sit on the shelf, a row of coma patients

in a ward, a series of selves no longer able to learn

and trapped at the point of injury: the last page.

Paying Attention

He is not doing well. She is not

Civility

Civility–died on June 24, 2009, at the

age of 68. Murdered by a stroke whose

paintings were recently featured in a

Love is a Moontime Teaching

love is a moontime teaching

is your kookum’s crooked smile when you pick up the phone

is another word for body

body is another word for campfire smoke

Richard Cory

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

We people on the pavement looked at him:

He was a gentleman from sole to crown,

The Days of the Unicorns

 I remember when the unicorns

roved in herds through the meadow

behind the cabin, and how they would

One Perfect Rose

A single flow’r he sent me, since we met.

All tenderly his messenger he chose;

Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet—

Wolf Lake

It was down that road he brought me, still

in the trunk of his car. I won’t say it felt right,

but it did feel expected. The way you…

To Helen

Helen, thy beauty is to me

Like those Nicéan barks of yore,

That gently, o’er a perfumed sea,

En Route

The train has stopped for no apparent reason

In the wilds;

A frozen lake is level and fretted over

Declaration of Intent

let the colonial borders be seen for the pretensions that they are

i hereby honour what the flow of water teaches us

the beauty of enough, the path of peace to be savoured

Dover Beach

The sea is calm tonight.

The tide is full, the moon lies fair

Upon the straits; on the French coast the light

world shapers

creation stories are lullabies for grown-ups

they remind us of all the possible ways & means

that worlds…

1992

This is our welfare half

a duplex with mint green

siding shrugged between

A Glass Tube Ecstasy

a glass tube

for my leg       says Hugo Ball

my hat a cylinder

FLOOD

The hallway is an empty

riverbed, smooth and barren.

At three o’clock classroom

doors open like dams.

            Gullies of teens stream

out, to become one

Bliss Point or What Can Best Be Achieved by Cheese

A.k.a.

        the other gold.

                 Now that's the stuff,

Dream Jobs

Random Link Clicker.

Royal Bath Taker.

Receiver of Foot Rubs and Praise.

big ghosts

big ghosts contra

band my diction war

korea's north sees red as

america flags china's chopped limb

british crowns hong kong

cut for duplicity more capitalist than capitalist