CanLit — Poetry & Prose (FEED)

Doyali Islam: "She Testifies"

I began “she testifies” after Tina Fontaine’s body was pulled from the Red River in 2014. In the poem, water itself speaks back on behalf of womxn/girls about the multiple violences done to them, and on behalf of Emmett Till, whose black body was at the centre of a 1955 racially-motivated murder in Mississippi. Water refuses to collude with these killers or to participate in their heinous settler-colonial/patriarchal attempts at silencing: “like glass, I drove her fragments to shore.”

PoetryCira NickelFebruary 28, 2018poetry, TinaFontaine, DoyaliIslam, CanLit, EmmettTill, BlackHistoryMonthComment

Nadja Lubiw-Hazard: "Between Breaths"

Inhale. I take a deep breath in through my nostrils. The air travels through the cartilaginous rings of my trachea, divides at the bifurcation of the bronchi, rushes down smaller and smaller pathways. It expands my lungs, widening my ribcage, stretching my diaphragm, raising my collarbones. Seconds pass before I release the breath, letting it stream out slowly, whispering away to nothing. Exhale.

ProseCira NickelSeptember 1, 2016Nadja Lubiw-Hazard, fiction, CanLit, Canadian writerComment