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 Chen Chen Self-Portrait as So Much Potential Dreaming of one day being as fearless as a mango. As friendly as a tomato. Merciless to chin & shirtfront. Realizing I hate the word “sip.” But that’s all I do. Lorna Crozier Not the Music Not the music. It is this other thing I keep from all of them that matters, inviolable. I scratch in my journals, a mouse rummaging through cupboards, Ruth Daniell Poem for My Body No one else rescued me. Not my father or my brother or, years later, the gentle man who became my husband. Not my mother or my best friend or any of the women who listened to me tell my story Michael Longley The Boxers We were combatants from the start. Our dad Bought us boxing gloves when we were ten — Champions like Euryalus, say, or Epeius Jessica Johns How Not to Spill Dad has creases on his hands so thick they could split with a poke. He gestures for me to try so I do. His skin bends on a hinge and out spills every good and bad thing: cattails from our 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 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. Elizabeth Philips Jacknife/2 Each day, I am apprenticed to the boy I want to be. He rifles the ball and I catch it or I fumble. His red head ducks and weaves, Daniel Borzutzky Lake Michigan, Scene 3 The bodies are on the beach And the bodies keep breaking And the fight is over But the bodies aren't dead And the mayor keeps saying I will bring back the bodies Tara Borin Nuisance Only the thickness of log and triple-paned glass between my children and the open maw of a bear. I slip warm chocolate chip cookies from the pan to the cooling rack - Lucia Misch The Problem With Being a Box Too Small for Its Contents Love, you ask too many questions. Let’s agree: we are whole —John Thompson, “Ghazal II” I take apart the watch 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 that’s what the nuns said 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 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” Chantal Gibson How She Read Oh, how she read this. Girl Gregory Scofield I’ll Teach You Cree with the tip of my spring tongue, ayîki frog your mouth will be the web catching apihkêsis words, spider Aisha Sasha John The limpness of a bird's legs in flight. The place, the question, the question. The place, the interest, the question. There is the place. There is what you do in the place. There is your belief. 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 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 Phoebe Wang Application Form Please read all the instructions carefully before proceeding. Use only permanent blue or black ink. If you have special needs that require accommodation, please explain. Sarah de Leeuw Skeena Crossing What is this this crossing? In the photo just in front of the train with the crane at the edge of the drop off from track into river Ivanna Baranova confirmation bias at least in our waking life most commemoration doubles as force since even the most benign zodiacal conceptions are tinged eurocentric when brown women die Cecily Nicholson from “Road Shoulders” power lines held by birds of prey the hostile expanse above ditches teeming floral invasive wayside fleurs late summer the shoulder sang holds breeze by Natalie Diaz from Exhibits from the American Water Museum 99. From an original rock painting in Topock, Arizona, now digitized on a wall-mounted monitor: Before this city, the Creator pressed his staff into the earth, and the earth opened— P. K. Page Planet Earth It has to be loved the way a laundress loves her linens, the way she moves her hands caressing the fine muslins knowing their warp and woof, like a lover coaxing, or a mother praising. Adam Dickinson Hail Hello from inside the albatross with a windproof lighter 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 Robin Coste-Lewis Mother Church #3 KIN KLETSO/YELLOW HOUSE CHACO CANYON, SAN JUAN COUNTY, NEW MEXICO ANASAZI RUINS, AD 1125-1130 For Henri, at 2 Suzannah Showler Too Negative I was a kid other kids’ parents gossiped about. They told their children what I was: too negative. I get it. Fair to fear contagion of bad attitudes, Etel Adnan absence. displacement. absence. displacement. waiting. then comes rejection. anger follows. shame makes the beds the shadows jostle between the walls of the scarcely visited cities. Ken Babstock Fire Watch Hello, listen, I’m on a field phone, do not speak until I say “over.” Repeat, don’t talk until I say “over.” Over. Do you understand, or… Madhur Anand You Are Not Going to Come Trillium But I do come to Trillium. To the Cardiac Short Stay Unit where you’ve been sent for the second stent, where free sanitizer prevents the spread of panic. Denise Riley Under the Answering Sky I can manage being alone, can pace out convivial hope across my managing ground. Someone might call, later. What do the dead make of us that we’d flay ourselves trying Tomasz Rózycki 11. Headwinds When I began to write, I didn’t know each of my words would bit by bit remove things from the world and in return leave blank Lynn Crosbie Modestine We have each tried to read to him, with no success, except for James, who read him all of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes Hari Alluri area boys brash talk on sidewalk brethren to irreverence short teeth long stories ~ aspirations high rolling tape decks tweeters six by nine speakers deep Claudia Rankine from Citizen The rain this morning pours from the gutters and everywhere else it is lost in the trees. You need your glasses to single out what you know is there because 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, Aja Monet the ghosts of women once girls somewhere a little girl is reading aloud in the middle of a dirt road. she smiles at the sound of her own voice escaping the spine of a book. she feeds on her hunger 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, Language English