SEE ALL TAGS & MOODS
On TV it looked like a high-speed photo of a milk drop
the dying leader of the Pana Wave laboratory cult smack in the
centre.
Acres of white cloth streamered his followers, who
An eagle egg fell into a farmer’s chicken shed
and when it hatched the farmer gave it chicken feed
even though he was the king of birds. The farmer
clipped the eaglet’s princely beak and raised him
scurried around a classroom papered with poems.
Even the ceiling, pink and orange quilts of phrase...
they introduced one another, perched on a tiny stage
to read their work, blessed their teacher who
Oliver Sacks is going to die,
He tells us blithely in the New York Times.
He’s 81. His liver’s shot.
He’s blind in one eye
Though when both worked fine
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,
my friends, my sweet barbarians,
there is that hunger which is not for food —
but an eye at the navel turns the appetite
My imaginary brother speaks of our migration and history,how time pulses like the green waterin the South Saskatchewan that sputters by our home,success measured in how still he’d lie after wandering
It was clearly understood,
there was no ownership of land,
so clearly does the land, in fact, own me.
My water from the river and my nitrogen,
a buffalo protein.
stop at the edge of everything—bend down and stick your hands in the dirt.grab a fist full of soil and pull it close: inhale.
Twenty-four years agoI tried to kill myselfbut with my usual incompetencedid not manage to.
It is told and retold
of how Kohkum killed a bear with a river rock
an arm like Ronnie Lancaster (that old Saskatchewan Roughrider)
she throws with precision
at Muskwa’s third eye
Boyakka! Boyakka! Boyakka!
Shots rang out on my street today
Three Black yoots lay dead
shot inna dem head
commencing to the place of beginning;
emptying;
in 1959 the South Saskatchewan river was dammed;
forever altering the boundary of Treaty no. 6;
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
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
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,
it was very sad the day we heard that dad would die but it was
also fun because all my friends came over and we went driving
in the blue Toyota that kelly’s sister terry drove
and i was the center of attention
The shaman at Broadway and Main
with a plastic shaker and some sage
says you’re my power animal. Says
we both have big brains, like to chatter.
upon contact / head first / baptismal
the rind of me / peels into ribbons
of foam / and pearls / i re-brown at the water’s
touch / its two-way mudmirror / hands me
its own name / earthliquid / bottomless
(Falteringly)
Our national bird – for years – was – as A M Klein said –
the rocking chair
I don’t know what our national bird is now – but my totem bird is
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
it's okay if you only learned about your culture from Google
it's okay if you only read your language at the public library
Hands pressed to glass
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
A half-hour.
Thirty minutes.
One thousand eight hundred seconds.
They sat.
had a dozen foster parents
tell me to run from my mother’s truth
When I think of Trayvon Martin, I think of Emmett Till,
when I think of Emmett Till, I think of young, black men in the South,
I saw a perfect tree today
From my cabin bed on a Via Rail train
Through the North of Ontario
It was tall and thin and scraggly and prim
Then I saw another just as perfect
The puck skates in on parted-snow ice.
It's the season’s last game, an encore
to stomach winter’s sliver, to shrug off
the townsfolk stares.
The moonlit night is advanced in years
I triage the landscape. The prairies
are numb today and so am I.
I am too thin. Built
like I won't explode on hot
afternoons, a mirror
to the sky. My body is a hurt
where tall grasses grow, where
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
My father's speech was slurred most of my childhood — but it's a rite
of passage for many Maritime Canadians
'cause I heard from a friend of a friend that linguists say our accent
Give me a few more hours to pass
With the mellow flower ofthe elm-bough falling,
And then no more than the lonely grass
And the birds calling.
Give me a few more days to keep
Unknown to you, I walk the cheerless shore.
The cutting blast, the hurl of biting brine
May freeze, and still, and bind the waves at war,
Ere you will ever know, O! Heart of mine,
people arrived from portugal. people arrived from africa. people arrived from
india. people arrived from england. people arrived from china. people
Oh, how she read this. Girl
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,
for auntie nagasaki
it's the same story
told again & again
the modulations
& the machinations
the maudlin
Stepping off the plane in Whitehorse
the last thing I expect to feel
is home
not quite alone
but close enough
here in this great black north.
As we drive away from the airport
Here's how you make pemmican
1. wiyâs
2. pânisâwân
3. kâhkêwak
4. yîwahikanak
5. pimîhkân
Slim, slight. Sinew and bird bones.
Cords of her hands like spruce roots.
Came from Ship Cove to Crow Gulch
with little more than the child inside her,
landed in a small shack flanked by
He wakes up naked and drunk as a bear
on sun-fermented garbage.
Hungover and queasy and riled up by
bees.
Nothing going well today, he moans,
life being short and the craft, ah, long.
brash talk on sidewalk
brethren to irreverence
short teeth long stories
~
aspirations high
rolling tape decks tweeters six
by nine speakers deep
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…
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
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
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
I come from the land of
Where You From?
My people dispossessed of their stories
and who have died again and again
in a minstrelsy of afterlives, wakes,
the dead who walk, waiting and
