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 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… Bronwen Wallace Common Magic Your best friend falls in love and her brain turns to water. You can watch her lips move, Sonnet L'Abbé Poor Speaker I understand you. I get what you’re trying to say. What you’re trying to say is you want me to get it. I get it. You want me to understand. You want me to know 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 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: when will the sun run out of fuel? Siku Allooloo Arnauqatikka i. Maybe it’s your old way kind of vision… That looking past and through Liz Howard 1992 This is our welfare half a duplex with mint green siding shrugged between Karen Solie Tractor More than a storey high and twice that long, it looks igneous, the Buhler Versatile 2360, possessed of the ecology of some hellacious Billy-Ray Belcourt If Our Bodies Could Rust, We Would Be Falling Apart the law mandates that a hate crime only be classified as such if there is ample evidence to show that one’s actions were motivated by prejudice toward an individual’s nationality, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, etc. Randy Lundy The Cactus You sit in the forgotten bone-dry hills surrounded by sand and sagebrush above Buffalo Pound Lake. A day and a night, and then three more days and nights. Souvankham Thammavongsa Gayatri I have a picture of us when we are seven but we aren’t in it. At the time it was taken we thought we were. We posed with our wide David Groulx On Seeing a Photograph of My Mother at St. Joseph Residential School for Girls A black and white picture The sun is shining through a window behind you Your hair black short Your small brown hands folded neatly on a tiny wooden desk Charles G. D. Roberts The Potato Harvest A high bare field, brown from the plough, and borne Aslant from sunset; amber wastes of sky Washing the ridge; a clamour of crows… Hoa Nguyen Blousy Guitar Blousy guitar I don’t want to count the beats Hey Hey My pen I have bed hair in the best way Daughter of sunlight and air and I’m glad you were born on this day or put another way: that you were Shane Book World Town Entirely windless, today’s sea; of these waters’ many names the best seemed “field-of-pearl-leaves,” for it smelled like the air in the house he built entirely of doors: pink school door, Michael Prior A Hundred and Fifty Pounds In some, the luggage lies open like a mouth mid-sentence. In others, closed zippers grimace: What would you have brought? Slippers, a stuffed platypus, a gold watch Sadiqa de Meijer Women Do This Every Day At the park I look for Levita, because our work is the same— swaying wide-legged over foraging toddlers, we avert bruises, discourage the consumption Milton Acorn I've Tasted My Blood If this brain’s over-tempered consider that the fire was want and the hammers were fists. Canisia Lubrin Sons of Orion for Alton Sterling, Andrew Loku, Philando Castile, et al. I wanna live, son. But which son are you? There where the rivers are made of moonshine and the lights still wait, 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, Kevin Irie Current The sludge-slow flow of the visible current opens a path we can’t continue, tugs at what no hand can pull along. It’s how even water loses memory, travels a direction it cannot find, Stephanie Bolster Portrait of Alice with Elvis Queen and King, they rule side by side in golden thrones above the clouds. Her giggle and wide eyes remind him Sarah Tolmie 31 We’re all aware that human hair is dead Yet we spend thousands taking care of it. It’s like an endless funeral. The moment your hair hits air, it’s toast. It only lives inside the follicle. Margaret Atwood Death of a Young Son by Drowning He, who navigated with success the dangerous river of his own birth once more set forth Marie Annharte Baker Saskatchewan Indians Were Dancing 60s pulled us from starvation into government jobs antiquated Indians in Saskatchewan danced for rain Manitoba Indian doings were hidden for a jealous Jordan Abel From Injun a) he played injun in gods country where boys proved themselves clean dumb beasts who could cut fire out of the whitest sand he played english across the trail Robert W. Service The Cremation of Sam McGee There are strange things done in the midnight sun By the men who moil for gold; The Arctic trails have their secret tales Pierre Nepveu Last Visit Now I set out across a minefield, space having taken all I owned, I’m starting over from a point where every pebble may explode beneath my shoe and the flowers blaze up behind my body as I gasp for air, Duncan Campbell Scott En Route The train has stopped for no apparent reason In the wilds; A frozen lake is level and fretted over Neil Surkan On High There was busy air there, air seething through the leaves so, from farther up, the tree-line shone like a single scintillating polyhedron. Still, though ravens and wrens flaked off the top, Joanne Arnott world shapers creation stories are lullabies for grown-ups they remind us of all the possible ways & means that worlds… Al Purdy Say the Names — say the names say the names and listen to yourself an echo in the mountains Tulameen Tulameen say them like your soul was listening and overhearing and you dreamed you dreamed Hana Shafi Bad Brown Girl i can barely speak in my mother tongues stutter my accent is bad i hate jalebi but i like aloo samosa i'm a bad brown girl i didn't join the SAA or the ISA 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 Dionne Brand From thirsty This city is beauty unbreakable and amorous as eyelids, in the streets, pressed with fierce departures, 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… Adam Dickinson Hail Hello from inside the albatross with a windproof lighter Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang Winter House My father threw his language overboard, a bag of kittens, waterlogged mewling: small hard bodies. My mother hung on to hers — Wove the words like lace, an open web Alden Nowlan The Bull Moose Down from the purple mist of trees on the mountain, lurching through forests of white spruce and cedar, stumbling through tamarack swamps… Kevin Connolly Plenty The sky, lit up like a question or an applause meter, is beautiful like everything else today: the leaves Language English