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.
Read More
How do shrimp
perpetuate in their
current space, I ask
your tectonic back
in the morning,
How do they hold
the oppressive blue,
the silky maws over their
thrumming ridges,
sickle-shaped strength
27
years later
we found a droplet
of hope in soil-lined rocks soft
ankle palms a mug of some avocado
plant tall & tentative so bodied
& ready to learn
how
As a kid, I watched Sridevi
flash her eyes, hands poised
like the hood of a snake
sashaying across the black and white tv.
Not the cedar waxwings eating fermented berries
from the front lawn’s mountain ash,
but the thump of their drunken bodies
against my window pane.
[Islam, /’isla:m/; Arabic: “submission, reconciliation, surrender.”]
I tap my knees on the ground twice , &
close my eyes ( even though they’ve told me
not to ) , & the thick fall of my hair has come
we find mason jars filled with bacon grease
under grandmom’s kitchen sink
ingredients hidden, we’re sure,
for her witch’s brew
Lauren texts me I’m so sad. I’m sorry
She was our friend. I search for the photo—
Lauren and Sasha embraced when
Lauren finished her art class painting
of an old woman. Is it you? Sasha once asked her
Would it be simpler to think of your petals as consistently white or
a thing as benign as rain (which wears rock down, remember), couldn’t
turn them transparent?
Dear future husband, sometimes I imagine you watch me
while I do some menial task, like season a cast iron pan, vacuum
the blinds. I haven’t met you yet but I really think you’d like
the wistful face I make when I de-ice the refrigerator. I think you might
admire my wherewithal, the way I don’t need you at all.
In the National Gallery were buffalo standing with their coats
thrown over their shoulders like ladies at a tea.
In another room camels. Came upon them unexpected
between paintings and ideas tied with string.
I arrive as a frisson of vomit rising
to rust her throat. Pith growing
in the marshy confines of her belly,
tethered to her navel
and our game of tin can telephone.
All we knew at first was that the moon was brighter
that summer, dimmed the other lights in the sky.
When it started to seem unusually huge
some dismissed this as mass hallucination,
pointed to the etymology of the word lunacy.
A binary will not solve the oil,
Cannot stop the Qallupilluit’s cold hand.
Can you crack the hoary ice?
From salty lumps and fissures,
Rise like an old answer,
Blowing?
The young woman faces the difficulty of reading
a video translation
We are faced
with tech -
nological chaos
In the jarring feedback there is an uncanny home
Before the blood, we dug tubers from the garden, but my palms tore on shapes harder. “These bones are my mother’s. If we throw them over our shoulders we’ll re-seed the soil.”
Read More
he pulls his teeth through the pages
clean of the blood spilt by the words
sorrow hanging in the corners of his
mouth
There’s a term for vanishing. Occupational hazard.
Or womanhood.
Or wrong place, wrong time. Or there’s no place for
the state in the bedrooms of the nation.
sweet unbecoming
and becoming, ravelling and
unravelling, hand woven womb
shifts, water breaks, gushes
like blood