Trust Fund Witches

Emma Healey

Tape hiss, Value Village, vibraphones. On fixed-gears scrubbed with salt and lemon, like the secret at the centre of a Magic Eye the witches, genderless as light, breathe green and lavender, appear and disappear, chanting your passwords in a round. Voices like dimes dropped in a bowl, blush ultraviolet, glittering auras. Skin so soft they move through walls they press against your window, sing the spell they wrote about the city there: nothing belongs to you nothing belongs to you nothing belongs

Emma Healey

Toronto-based poet, critic, and essayist Emma Healey is the author of two books of poetry, Begin with the End in Mind and Stereoblind. John K Sampson…

Grade levels

7-9 / Sec. 1-3

10-12 / Sec. 4 & 5 / CEGEP 1

Tags

All that Glitters

Bright Lights, Big City

Mythology & Fantasy

Outside the Box

Moods

Common Poetic Terms and Forms

Sensory Language

Contest Criteria

25 Lines or Fewer

Bibliographical info

Emma Healey, “Trust Fund Witches” from Stereoblind. Copyright © 2018 by Emma Healey. Reprinted by permission of House of Anansi Press.

Source: Stereoblind (House of Anansi Press, 2018)

John Donne

The Flea

Mark but this flea, and mark in this,

How little that which thou deniest me is;

Me it sucked first, and now sucks thee,

Don Kerr

Editing the Prairie

Well, it’s too long for one thing

and very repetitive.

Remove half the fields.

Then there are far too many fences

interrupting the narrative flow.

Get some cattlemen to cut down those fences.

Aimé Césaire

New Year

Out of their torments men carved a flower

which they perched on the high plateaus of their faces

El Jones

Black Sheroes

My Black heroes don’t drop names like Fendi Gucchi Prada

My Black sheroes rock afros like Angela Davis and Assata

But my sheroes are more than a trend and they’re bigger than a hairstyle