Search Categories - Any -25 Lines or FewerCanadaPre 21st Century21st Century Grade levels - Any -Grades 7-9 / Sec. 1-3Grades 10-12 / Sec. 4 & 5 / CEGEP 1 Sort by RandomNewestMost popularA -> ZZ -> A Apply Eve Joseph You knock on the door Dionne Brand From Verso 4 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… Sarah Tolmie 39 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 Raymond Antrobus Happy Birthday Moon Dad reads aloud. I follow his finger across the page. Sometimes his finger moves past words, tracing white space. He makes the Moon say something new every night to his deaf son who slurs his speech. Suzannah Showler Too Negative 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, David Groulx 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 Hana Shafi Bad Brown Girl 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 Dina Del Bucchia Wow! You've Changed You’ve changed. You used to be so and now you’re all like, you’ve transformed I don’t know how to describe it’s like you don’t like canasta anymore you text IN ALL CAPS Kazim Ali Ramadan You wanted to be so hungry, you would break into branches, and have to choose between the starving month’s nineteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-third evenings. Adebe D. A. Ex Libris 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 Chen Chen When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities To be a good ex/current friend for R. To be one last inspired way to get back at R. To be relationship advice for L. To be advice for my mother. To be a more comfortable Kaveh Akbar River of Milk bear with me it wasn’t long ago I was brainless lazily pulling fireflies into my teeth chewing them into pure light so much of me then was nothing Ward Maxwell grass grass is unusual it was invented by the Romans unlike most people grass stays where it grows if grass had gone to the moon it would be there today because grass looks luxurious Weyman Chan But I’m No One for M. Maylor Dear Anne Carson: My friend read me the poem where your mom said that the dead walk backwards. You thought this myth arose from poor translation. Dylan Thomas Fern Hill Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green, The night above the dingle starry, Time let me hail and climb Richard Harrison With the Dying of the Light I recited to him, Now as I was young and easy, and in the cough-afflicted wheeze that was left of my father’s voice, Dorothy Parker One Perfect Rose A single flow’r he sent me, since we met. All tenderly his messenger he chose; Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet— Emma Healey Trust Fund Witches e.e. cummings somewhere i have never travelled somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond any experience,your eyes have their silence: in your most frail gesture are things which… Tongo Eisen-Martin For My Best Friend We are losing the intensive care unit waiting room war We were doing so well So well we got sleepy So sleepy the institution returned Wallace Stevens Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird Among twenty snowy mountains, The only moving thing Was the eye of the blackbird. Dylan Thomas Should Lanterns Shine Should lanterns shine, the holy face, Caught in an octagon of unaccustomed light, Would wither up, an any boy of love Donato Mancini you aren't going to like what i have to say before i start i want to say you shouldn’t blame yourself there’s no point in beating around the bush there’s something we need to talk about this is the most difficult thing i’ve ever had to tell anyone Layli Long Soldier From Whereas Whereas my eyes land on the shoreline of “the arrival of Europeans in North America opened a new chapter in the history of Native Peoples.” Because in others, I hate the act e.e. cummings anyone lived in a pretty how town anyone lived in a pretty how town (with up so floating many bells down) spring summer autumn winter Sylvia Plath Blackberrying Nobody in the lane, and nothing, nothing but blackberries, Blackberries on either side, though on the right mainly, A blackberry alley, going down in hooks, and a sea Somewhere at the end of it, heaving. Blackberries Paul Laurence Dunbar Invitation to Love Come when the nights are bright with stars Or when the moon is mellow; Come when the sun his golden bars Drops on the hay-field yellow. Come in the twilight soft and gray, Elizabeth Barrett Browning Sonnets from the Portuguese 24 Let the world’s sharpness, like a clasping knife, Shut in upon itself and do no harm In this close hand of Love, now soft and warm, And let us hear no sound of human strife Alfred, Lord Tennyson Ulysses It little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole Unequal laws unto a savage race, Jane Mead From World of Made and Unmade In my dream my mother comes with me. We are in the meadows we call The Flats, walking the dogs. Walk straight past the water trough, she says, do not engage the moss. Phoebe Wang 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. Denise Riley Under the Answering Sky I can manage being alone, can pace out convivial hope across my managing ground. Someone might call, later. What do the dead make of us that we’d flay ourselves trying Abdellatif Laâbi Two Hours on the Train During two hours on the train I rerun the film of my life Two minutes per year on average Half an hour for childhood Another half-hour for prison Love, books, wandering take up the rest Alice Oswald A Short Story of Falling It is the story of the falling rain to turn into a leaf and fall again it is the secret of a summer shower to steal the light and hide it in a flower and every flower a tiny tributary Pierre Nepveu Last Visit Now I set out across a minefield, space having taken all I owned, I’m starting over from a point where every pebble may explode beneath my shoe and the flowers blaze up behind my body as I gasp for air, Russell Thornton Letters I threw away your letters. Years ago, just like that. The tight black swirls, circles and strokes filling fine sheets — I would not see them again. The last items I had left. Sonnet L'Abbé Poor Speaker I understand you. I get what you’re trying to say. What you’re trying to say is you want me to get it. I get it. You want me to understand. You want me to know Rita Joe I Lost My Talk I lost my talk The talk you took away. When I was a little girl At Shubenacadie school. You snatched it away: I speak like you I think like you I create like you Wayne Keon howlin at the moon take the moon nd take a star when you don’t know who you are paint the picture in your hand nd roll on home take my fear nd take the hunger take my body Wayde Compton 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 Language English