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You don’t know where they came from only that they’re here now, and the email from the arborist says kill kill kill…
Your mother has been here for many years,
or at least it feels that way.
She does the necessary things without acknowledgement,
as if it is part of her training.
Says, a prayer is still a prayer even
if it only finds your lips while you
a reseized in pain, or need, or
quiet desperation, says,
make a mosque of this body,
Tonight, May is a sweet pink
grapefruit, sliced in half.
Squeezed from clouds, sticky
rain tangos down my bare legs
and pools in my heels
like bunched socks.
I begin to break my mother’s heart the day I leave Zimbabwe on an unseasonably cold August day, brown leaves raining down from the Msasa trees.
The Manananggal crouches in my womb, counting my little eggs as if they were hers for breakfast.
She doesn’t like me and I don’t like her, but we are cursed to inhabit each other.
You imagine fingers forgetting
themselves, dexterity disappearing,
a sense numbing itself out of shame,
the hailstorm
the steaming bath tub
dad walked me home
and we got caught
big hail fist balls big dark
on the evening of Lunar New Year’s eve,
a petal of dishes sit in the center.
guazi fish dipped in diced onions and soy sauce,
barbeque roast pork, bok choy in garlic,
and my mother’s signature dish—
Every April, Canada celebrates National Poetry Month. The League of Canadian Poets, a national non-profit organization, leads the charge and hosts an array of contests, events, and writing projects for poets and poetry lovers alike. For 30 days, we revel in the power of verses, enjambment, blank spaces, and rhythm. Most importantly, we cherish the ability to craft stories about the world and ourselves in an artistic form that has morphed over centuries and continues to reach new dawns.
we are melting twice as fast
here in the north, the north
above us, three times over
the rest.
under flared cone of porch lamp and the aluminum bowl, water
and the white knuckles of cauliflower. they and tomatoes
sit duel-bodied as greedy prayers over the rushed heart.
Perss prses psse press it down with a tongue depressor look inside is it healthy is it
tall has it been drinking milk from goats the doctor is in and he looks you in the eye
It is a bone-chilling Sunday morning and I am leaning against a granite counter, waiting for my soy milk flat white. The side of my hip digs into the cold stone as I survey the coffee shop. The barista draws a four-petal leaf on top of my warm drink.
Between Castle Frank and Broadview cross the scenic overpass
Famous for being many a last sight now strung like a harp to mask deter
Weathered withered worn frail elder steadies themself to sit
he asks me for a story.
I can tell him anything, new or old
with Easter candy, we lie naked
feet-up, feet-down
and I tell him about the first grade
I go to centre myself with like-book-minded,
and find the shop empty, with a “be back in 10” sticky sign.
the coffee cup’s on the table, and I can nearly see its steam,
past the delicious small press CanLits rainbow spines.
Wait to board bus back door with pass where the walk was clear. Driver doesn’t open
back door. I cross ice to get to front door, slip fall hard smack dab under the bus.
unwomen swarm or croon as voices. sane or insane.
immunizers or missionaries. maniac cousins in our civic armoires.
nurses immurers uncoverers moirae —
what if it’s not a body it’s a net what if blood is blue what if it’s asking for something
to catch on what if the blue is not like the blue that lingers in corners of my dreams
what if that scares me what if my body is a dream that does not scare me
I am trying to coax my eyes
into blinking your penmanship.
I want to be devastated if we are
swallowed by the sun.
Today, I bury the last thing that my lover gave me—
vanish from parents’ house, ex amor, with only
a spade and a full jar of what was left, walk a
dead end road in the cold of midwinter,
find the slit in the woods, slip inside,
For more than two decades, April has been designated in Canada as National Poetry Month. At Canthius, poetry is not a 30-day affair, but rather a way of life. It is a way of understanding our world and our place in it. It is a vehicle through which we drive through memories, instances, moments and futures. With musical language, sharp imagery, and vulnerability, we use poetry to open not only ourselves a little further, but our readers as well.