Outraged

It was in a boardroom

It was in a boardroom

that I witnessed the latest killing

 

A room filled with knowledgeable

white people

 

trying to understand

 

what we offer

shaking their heads

not grasping

          the method, our language

          asking - Would that be recognized by others?

...

Tyler Pennock
1977

people arrived

people arrived from portugal. people arrived from africa. people arrived from

india. people arrived from england. people arrived from china. people

predated arrival. people fled predation. people were arrayed. people populated.

whips patterned rays into people. people arose. people rayed outward to

toronto, london, boo york. people raided people. people...

Kaie Kellough
1975 -

Lake Michigan, Scene 3

The bodies are on the beach

And the bodies keep breaking

And the fight is over

But the bodies aren't dead

And the mayor keeps saying      I will bring back the bodies

I will bring back the bodies that were broken

The broken bodies speak slowly

They walk slowly onto a beach that hangs over a fire

Into a fire that hangs...

Daniel Borzutzky
b. 1974

Two Guns in the Sky for Daniel Harris

When Daniel Harris stepped out of his car

the policeman was waiting. Gun raised.

 

I use the past tense though this is irrelevant

in Daniel's language, which is sign.

 

Sign has no future or past; it is a present language.

You are never more present than when a gun

 

is pointed at you. What language says this...

Raymond Antrobus

big ghosts

big ghosts contra

band my diction war

korea's north sees red as

america flags china's chopped limb

 

british crowns hong kong

cut for duplicity more capitalist than capitalist

trades commie goods

slant contagion

 

door slam hello hunger

remember japan's occupation

desperate flee inland...

Larissa Lai

niya

When the stranger bumps his shoulder into me, hard, without an ounce of concern, I can feel the fire bubbling inside of me. The heat from the concrete rising up, through my feet, reverberating like electricity about to erupt magma through every orifice of my body. Lava that will oxidize every atom and molecule of his body on contact. The city as embodied trauma. The trauma of settlement. I...

Lindsay Nixon

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

 

Some of the girls in the picture are smiling You are not Your eyes staring into the camera Seem a million miles away

 

That stare I will see seldom and one day...

David Groulx

Full Metal Oji-Cree

this is the transsensorium

there are indo-robo-women fighting cowboys on the frontier

& winning finally

the premodern is a foundation for the postmodern

wintermute, tessier-ashpool, armitage

theyve revived us via neuromancy

but i am the necromancer

when i tell my mother i need kin

she sends me ten

weve all...

Joshua Whitehead
b. 1989

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.

 

oh, i got one!

 

some more than others know that all objects can be put to violent

use. if our...

Billy-Ray Belcourt

Regardless

If I am judged

If I am punished

If I am dismissed

If I am misunderstood

If I am celebrated

If I am envied

If I am competed with

If I am slandered against

If I am seen

If I am soft

If I am stupid

If I get it

If I surpass

If I intimidate

If I confound

If I...

Aisha Sasha John
b. 1980

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,

 move by the music of the dealer’s bootleg CDs.

Have you left the street-side, the Rigel stage

    for another watery home?

What still...

Canisia Lubrin
b. 1984

Application Form

Please read all the instructions carefully before proceeding.

Use only permanent blue or black ink.

If you have special needs that require accommodation,

please explain.

The information you provide should not be limited

by the space allowed.

If you require more space, append another sheet of paper.

In the blanks below please...

Phoebe Wang
1981

Hail

Hello from inside

the albatross

with a windproof lighter

and Japanese police tape.

Hello from staghorn

coral beds

waving at the beaked whale’s

mistake,

all six square metres

of fertilizer bags.

...

Adam Dickinson
b. 1974

Illegalese: Floodgate Dub

(for the Chinese maroons, British Columbia, 1999–2001)

 

if you arrive in the belly of a rusting imagination, there are grounds to

outlaw you. but Canada is a remix B-side chorus in the globalization

loop: a sampled track of “back home”-desiring, “old days”-admiring,

democracy-dreaming, racism-reaping homesickness that even

...

Wayde Compton
b. 1972

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

you were a river

and you were a river

Tulameen     Tulameen

— not the flat borrowed imitations

of foreign names...

Al Purdy
1918-2000

The Rights of Woman

Yes, injured Woman! rise, assert thy right!

Woman! too long degraded, scorned, oppressed;

O born to rule in partial Law’s despite,                      

Resume thy native empire o’er the breast!

 

Go forth arrayed in panoply divine;

That angel pureness which admits no stain;

Go, bid proud Man his boasted rule resign,

And...

Anna Laetitia Barbauld
1743–1825

i am graffiti

i am writing to tell you

that yes, indeed,

we have noticed

you have a new big pink eraser

we are well aware

you are trying to use it.

erasing indians is a good idea

of course

the bleeding-heart liberals

and communists

can stop feeling bad

for the stealing

and raping

and...

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
b. 1971

Modestine

We have each tried to read to him, with no success, except for James, who read him all of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes

 

I was there, in the first of the long-term care centres, when he finished the story,

 

And we all shared the narrator’s sadness about giving up his donkey,

 

Not having...

Lynn Crosbie

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 me

all I had was a 50s rock’n’roll step to copy from

not shy you danced for strangers from deep defiance

full regalia hid...

Marie Annharte Baker
b. 1942

the knowing

the re-invention of oneself

through the tongues of whispering mountains

the re-arrangement of the universe

because a spider wrapped her legs around a star

the knowing

the remembering of stone’s story

while walking down a dried riverbed

being serenaded by crickets singing the blues

because everyone except them has...

Connie Fife
1961-2017

Dulce et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots...

Wilfred Owen
1893-1918

What horror to awake at night

What horror to awake at night

and in the dimness see the light.

               Time is white

               mosquitoes bite

I’ve spent my life on nothing.

 

...

Lorine Niedecker
1903-1970

Wolf Lake

It was down that road he brought me, still

in the trunk of his car. I won’t say it felt right,

but it did feel expected. The way you know

your blood can spring like a hydrant.

That September, the horseflies were...

Elizabeth Bachinsky
b. 1976

Mean Drunk Poem

Backward & down into inbetween as Vicki says. Or as Robin teaches

the gap, from which all things emerge. A left

handed compliment. Bats, houses of parliament, giants, stones.

What woman, witness to such Thought, does not feel

...

Sharon Thesen
b. 1946

Tractor

More than a storey high and twice that long,

it looks igneous, the Buhler Versatile 2360,

possessed of the ecology of some hellacious

minor island on which options

are now standard. Cresting the sections

...

Karen Solie
b. 1966

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,

came the bull moose

to be stopped...

Alden Nowlan
1933-1983

Newfoundland Sealing Disaster

Sent to the ice after white coats,

rough outfit slung on coiled rope belts,

they stooped to the slaughter: gaffed pups,

slit them free of their spotless pelts.

 

The storm...

Michael Crummey
b. 1965

The Powwow at the End of the World

I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall   

after an Indian woman puts her shoulder to the Grand Coulee Dam   

and topples it. I am told by many of you that I must forgive   

and so I shall after the floodwaters burst each...

Sherman Alexie
b. 1966

January, 1795

Pavement slipp’ry, people sneezing,

Lords in ermine, beggars freezing;

Titled gluttons dainties carving,

Genius in a garret starving.

Lofty mansions, warm and spacious;

Courtiers cringing and voracious;

Misers scarce the wretched heeding;

Gallant soldiers fighting, bleeding.

Wives who...

Mary Robinson
1757-1800

O Captain! My Captain!

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,

The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;

But O heart! heart! heart!

O the bleeding drops of red,

...

Walt Whitman
1819-1892

Thoughtless Cruelty

There, Robert, you have kill’d that fly — ,

And should you thousand ages try

The life you’ve taken to supply,

You could not do it.

You surely must have been devoid

Of thought and sense, to have destroy’d

A thing which no way you annoy’d —

You’ll one day rue it.

Twas...

Charles Lamb
1775-1834

We Wear the Mask

We wear the mask that grins and lies,

It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes, —

This debt we pay to human guile;

With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,

And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,

In counting all our tears and sighs?

Nay, let them only see us, while

...

Paul Laurence Dunbar
1872-1906

The Chimney Sweeper: When my mother died I was very young

When my mother died I was very young,

And my father sold me while yet my tongue

Could scarcely cry “‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep!”

So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.

There’s little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head

That curled like a lamb’s back, was shaved, so I said,

“Hush, Tom! never mind it, for when your...

William Blake
1757-1827