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 Jaclyn Desforges #BLESSED 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 Megan Fennya Jones Visit from Mother 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 Sophie Crocker after a one-night stand with Myself i ask Myself to stay the night 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 Justene Dion-Glowa Claim Laid 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 - W. E. B. Du Bois The Song of the Smoke I am the Smoke King I am black! I am swinging in the sky, I am wringing worlds awry; I am the thought of the throbbing mills, I am the soul of the soul-toil kills, Don Domanski Homeworld this is the growing of things birthing of skin and bone stem and leaf this is planet earth beneath snowlight and desert sand Wallace Stevens 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, Joseph Dandurand Harmony with all of you 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 Tyler Pennock I have so many now. 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 Francine Cunningham On Identity 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 Ellen van Neerven Call a Spade a Spade a heart a heart a diamond a diamond a club a club call it invasion not settlement call it genocide not colonization call it theft not establishment don't call January 26 Australia Day Jazz Money let us suppose We climb up the rusting ladder, Mexican beer forced into waistbands, and lie on the cooling roof count our personal galaxies far high LEDs, billboards, dreams. Ashley Qilavaq-Savard Skins 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 Marvin Frances mcPemmican TM1 first you get the grease from canola buffalo then you find mystery meat you must package this in Afua Cooper Shots Rang Out on My Street Today Boyakka! Boyakka! Boyakka! Boyakka! Boyakka! Boyakka! Boyakka! Boyakka! Boyakka! Shots rang out on my street today Three Black yoots lay dead shot inna dem head 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 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; Lucille Clifton forgiving my father it is friday. we have come to the paying of the bills. all week you have stood in my dreams like a ghost, asking for more time but today is payday, payday old man; my mother’s hand opens in her early grave Marvin Frances more treaty lines 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” Cicely Belle Blain London 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 Kaveh Akbar How Prayer Works Tucked away in our tiny bedroom so near each other the edge of my prayer rug covered the edge of his, my brother and I prayed. We were 18 and 11 maybe, or 19 and 12. He was back from college where he built his own Conor Kerr What Do You Believe In? 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 Molly CROSS-BLANCHARD First Time Smudge 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. Donika Kelly From the Catalogue of Cruelty Once, I slapped my sister with the back of my hand. We were so small, but I wanted to know how it felt: my hand raised high across the opposite shoulder, slicing down like a trapeze. 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 Jane Byers March on Washington, 1993 What struck me first was the sheer numbers, queers everywhere. Battalions of sailors and infantry, proud in their uniforms. Eventually, I made uneasy peace with this equal right. 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 Siku Allooloo Arnauqatikka … Emily Riddle Dinosaur Economics 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 Emily Riddle Holy Beings 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: Stanley Kunitz The Portrait My mother never forgave my father for killing himself, especially at such an awkward time and in a public park, that spring when I was waiting to be born. She locked his name 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, Ada Limón The Raincoat When the doctor suggested surgery and a brace for all my youngest years, my parents scrambled to take me to massage therapy, deep tissue work, osteopathy, and soon my crooked spine 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 Di Brandt my mother found herself my mother found herself one late summer afternoon lying in grass under the wild yellow plum tree jewelled with sunlight she was forgotten there in spring picking rhubarb for pie & the children home from Meghan Kemp-Gee A Newly Discovered Species of Lizard with Distinctive Triangular Scales I am Charles Darwin. I eat owlflesh at Cambridge University. I have discovered something, an entirely new species with tropical fever in its reptile fingers. I am busy with taxonomying its most peculiar and three-sided Susan Musgrave You Didn’t Fit You wouldn’t fit in your coffin but to me it was no surprise. All your life you had never fit in anywhere; you saw no reason to begin fitting in now. When I was little I remember Kim Addonizio Aquarium The fish are drifting calmly in their tank between the green reeds, lit by a white glow that passes for the sun. Blindly, the blank glass that holds them in displays their slow Tina Cane Imaginary Dad Was so imaginary he ceased to exist Amy Uyematsu A Practical Mom can go to Bible study every Sunday and swear she’s still not convinced, but she likes to be around people who are. We have the same conversation every few years — I’ll ask her if she stops Language English