Search Categories - Any -25 Lines or FewerCanadaPre 21st Century21st Century Grade levels - Any -Grades 7-9 / Sec. 1-3Grades 10-12 / Sec. 4 & 5 / CEGEP 1 Sort by RandomNewestMost popularA -> ZZ -> A Apply Lee Maracle Language 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 Billy-Ray Belcourt 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 Ted Berrigan Hall of Mirrors To Kristin Lems We miss something now as we think about it David McGimpsey 71. Song for a Silent Treatment. I told her, in plain language, how I felt. And by that I mean I mumbled a poorly paraphrased and already cryptic passage Matthew Weigel On the Boundaries of Treaty No. 6 commencing to the place of beginning; emptying; in 1959 the South Saskatchewan river was dammed; forever altering the boundary of Treaty no. 6; Christian Bök From Chapter I Writing is inhibiting. Sighing, I sit, scribbling in ink this pidgin script. I sing with nihilistic witticism, disciplining signs with trifling gimmicks — impish John Elizabeth Stintzi America (I’m Putting My Queer Shoulder to the Wheel) The night America took off her mask we slept together poorly. I'd woken up early that Tuesday, dragged myself to a gymnasium in Jersey City to cast my vote into the void. Fiona Tinwei Lam Weed Killer Our mother gave us a sack of weed killer the size of a toddler, and told us to spread it on the front lawn. My sister and I lugged it there. A light cloud of white powder Rowan Ricardo Phillips Little Song Both guitars run trebly. One noodles Over a groove. The other slushes chords. Then they switch. It’s quite an earnest affair. Adam Sol Opus 75, Sestina in B-flat for the Glockenspiel In the empty classroom, at sunrise, a girl sits on the floor, staring at a glockenspiel. She’s shredding the cuticles on her left hand Leanne Dunic From One and Half of You Price depends on how the cheongsam was made, the fabric used. Gasp. Lift breasts with one hand. Stuff your body inside. If you wear this print of peonies Susan Howe From Titian Air Vent A work of art is a world of signs, at least to the poet’s nursery bookshelf sheltered behind the artist’s ear. I recall each little motto howling its ins and outs to those of us who might as well be on the moon Hollie McNish Embarrased i thought it was ok - i could understand the reasons they said there might be young children or a nervous man seeing this small piece of flesh that they weren’t quite expecting Dionne Brand From Verso 4 I was nine and I stood at the top of the street for no reason except to make the descent of the gentle incline toward my house where I lived with everyone and everything in the world, my sisters and my cousins were with me, we had our bookbags… Noelle Kocot Paying Attention He is not doing well. She is not “Doing well.” They are not doing well. And so the new day blooms with its Frills held tight across the window. If I could know that which resembles Jen Sookfong Lee Community Garden There, the bolting black kale, taller than it has any right to be and not the twitter troll who asked if you were on your period. In the corner, a pile of dead zucchini leaves, spotted with rot Don Paterson Francesca Woodman i At the heart there is a hollow sun by which we are constructed and undone Bob Hicok Love poem 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 Fariha Róisín the many descriptions of being brown White people tell you to apologize for yourself through gestures, through small talk, through the ways in which they ask, “Where are you from?” and Gwen Benaway Trillium the animal in me is constant. thirst starts, hunger answers. sleep is uncertain, restless limbs. in the night, I hear footsteps. Chantal Gibson Veronica? What's it like at the centre of the AGO? Hmm. Imagine being coloured, drawn, and placed in a wooden frame, another hung woman, positioned Ron Padgett Prose Poem (“The morning coffee.”) 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 Wang Xiaoni I Feel the Sun Down a long, long corridor I keep walking… —A window straight ahead so bright it hurts the eyes, Adonis Ali Ahmad Said Esber The Wound I. Leaves, asleep under wind: a ship for the wound. The wound glories in these ruinous times. Trees growing in our own eyelashes a lake for the wound. The wound shows up in bridges Selina Boan From all you can is the best you can i once shoved my foot through glass getting to know my own anger its patches of stupid bloody love stress is just a socially acceptable word for fear Afua Cooper At the Centre Today doves flew from my head and my hair grew the longing is gone from my body Doyali Islam susiya in the south hebron hills the slanted hills recall old songs, and the women collect them like rain. the men have two-syllable names—'azzam, yūsuf, khaled, nasser—each Jason Purcell Men in the Gut Scrape the inside of sleep the belly wall tasting like yoghurt cooked broccoli its emptiness leaving something on the tongue. Escaping the body that wants to quit from the inside. Sandra Ridley From Silvija If you can’t speak / write in a fissured / alter-language Of nerve-matter / dura mater / orbit of the central axis By a crevice / scattered / venous lacunae / lamina code Rita Wong fluorine arsenic in calculators, mercury in felt hats, mad as a poisoned hatter pyrophoric undercurrent in mundane Hoa Nguyen My Idea of the Circus Is My Idea of the Circus Otherwise Known As: My Mother Was a Celebrated Stunt Motorcyclist, Vietnam, 1958 to 1962 Very loud a mad frenzy The wooden barrel she rode would have roared (I first wrote “road”) C. D. Wright Re: Happiness, in pursuit thereof It is 2005, just before landfall. Here I am, a labyrinth, and I am a mess. I am located at the corner of Waterway Kevin Spenst Top After learning “me” and “I” but well before my father learns a restraining order's between him and our home, we share some good times. Remember the back of his bicycle. James Langer St John’s Burns Down for the Umpteenth Time Let’s say the fix was in. Let’s say history, Being human and thus short on ideas, Made change from an old bag of tricks. Say this Roy Miki Kome’s Story for auntie nagasaki it's the same story told again & again the modulations & the machinations the maudlin & the dream Raoul Fernandes An Online Friend Dies Somewhere Outside the Internet Freezes, goes blue screen, shuts down. Dead pixel, dark. Ghost echoes, lossy in the source code. Time zones away, people who have actually shaken hands with my online friend Tamar Rubin Perennial 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, Megan Fernandes Conversion sam says you can’t name your book good boys without a dog but sam doesn’t know that i am the dog i am the ultimate mutt and i am telling him this story Ada Limón We Are Surprised Now, we take the moon into the middle of our brains so we look like roadside stray cats with bright flashlight-white eyes in our faces, but no real ideas of when or where to run. Evelyn Lau Dear Updike No, nothing much has changed. A year later, the world is still one you’d recognize — no winged cars to clog the air, Language English