Eclipse

In every which way, I am living

for potential. I’ve mined cadmium

enough to roulette with Death

and Mars, bloodshot brute,

is swollen in my honour.

My function is action —

to pummel through concrete

and machete hedges,

to shear the irresolute

with only wit and lichen-rich

perfume. Allow yourself

to make you is cross-stitched

at the bough of every ingress.

Fool is to worry. Fool is to wait

for someone to tell me what I know

already. I clap for a mind

that can change and will.

I harness nature’s fortitude

and call bats down to crush

the self-doubt that parades

as my true self in platform

sandals, teetering and ignorant

of the hidden messages of fate.

That I will flourish

even without permission.

Grade levels
7-9 / Sec. 1-3
10-12 / Sec. 4 & 5 / CEGEP 1
Tags
Bodies
Toasts, Boasts & Roasts
Moods
Confident
Courageous
Common Poetic Terms and Forms
Alliteration
Assonance
Imagery
Metaphor
Contest Criteria
25 Lines or Fewer

In this confident poem the speaker calls upon nature and myth to fortress their sense of self

Bibliographical info

Jessie Jones, "Eclipse" from the fool. Copyright © 2020 by Jessie Jones. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

Source: The Fool (ice house poetry, an imprint of Goose Lane Editions, 2020).

Shazia Hafiz Ramji

Poem of Failed Amends (Amor fati)

I’ve put the oats in a jar,

with yogourt and seeds,

left it in the fridge

overnight. The fruit on top

will thaw, dripping

sweetness

into the rest.

I want to remember

I’ve done this

James Millhaven

Closure

On the night we dug up your father’s body

(for reasons I can no longer remember)

we took turns with the shovel

as we passed a bottle of Whyte & Mackay

Tonja Gunvaldsen Klaassen

Mama

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

Adebe D. A.

Ex Libris

I come from the land of

Where You From?

My people dispossessed of their stories

and who have died again and again

in a minstrelsy of afterlives, wakes,

the dead who walk, waiting and

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