Recently Added Poems

Sorting through Documents at Dawn

three crosses appear

on the tv screen

following a

sweep of my hair

that felt like your hand

maybe i dreamt it

but i so badly

want it to be you

(in whatever form)

near

not in the light through

which you’ve disappeared

 ...

Livejournal.com/lonelyradio

We could read your words from anywhere

but you felt like the only soul sitting

in your swivel chair listening to your parents

dream-breathing down the hall while you typed

to boys from Kelowna and Trinidad about

your boredom and body. You blogged

about the three-legged moose you saw

on the highway to Terrace...

Between Strangers

Stranger, who can measure the distance between us?

Distance is the rumor of a never-before-seen sea.

Distance the width of a layer of dust.

Maybe we need only strike a match

for my world to flicker in your sky,

Visible finally, and eye-to-eye.

Breachable, finally, the border between us.

What if we touched? What then?

...

Eclipse

In every which way, I am living

for potential. I’ve mined cadmium

enough to roulette with Death

and Mars, bloodshot brute,

is swollen in my honour.

My function is action —

to pummel through concrete

and machete hedges,

to shear the irresolute

with only wit and lichen-rich

perfume. Allow yourself...

My Grandmother Washes Her Feet in the Sink of the Bathroom at Sears

My grandmother puts her feet in the sink

                  of the bathroom at Sears

to wash them in the ritual washing for prayer,

wudu,

because she has to pray in the store or miss

the mandatory prayer time for Muslims

She does it with great poise, balancing

herself with one plump matronly arm

against the...

Mariah according to my yt mama

when I try to talk to my mom about what it was like

to grow up surrounded by yt people in the prairies

in the 80s though it seemed like the 50s

she tells me in a so-there tone

that Mariah is a mixee and that people love her

I tell my mom that Mariah has talked publicly

about feeling some type of way about

being what...

Embarrased

i thought it was ok - i could understand the reasons

they said there might be young children or a nervous man seeing

this small piece of flesh that they weren’t quite expecting

so i whispered and tiptoed with nervous discretion

but after six months of her life spent sitting on lids

as she...

Editing the Prairie

Well, it’s too long for one thing

and very repetitive.

Remove half the fields.

Then there are far too many fences

interrupting the narrative flow.

Get some cattlemen to cut down those fences.

There’s not enough incident either,

the story is very flat.

Can’t you write in a mountain

or at least a decent-sized hill...

Spacetime

We Twitter, Tinder, Tumblr through eternity. Loquacious

text messages flit from fingertips, waves of data spill

through our skulls. Every cm² of oxygen overflowing

with bank PINS, girls in yoga pants, the frequencies

of whale cries. Digital clouds brim with selfies and rain

videos on how to cook coconut shrimp. Sepia-filtered

...

Passing into Storm

Know him for a white man.

He walks sideways into wind

allowing the left of him

to forget what the right

knows as cold. His ears

turn into death what

his eyes can’t see. All day

he walks away from the sun

passing into storm. Do not

mistake him for the howl you hear

or the...

from Quit Dying to Die

   When the doctors burrowed into my body, they unearthed a slew of tumours. Growths speckled across lungs and kidneys. (Later, they would find the duo nestled into my cortex.) A Starry Night, the ultrasound technician titled my organs. He said they looked calcified as an alcoholic’s liver. Before the calcification was recognized as tumours, before those tumours were known...

In Exile I Draw the Tower Card

           Spruce, inadequate, and alien

            I stood at the side of the road

            It was the only life I had.

            – Jane Kenyon

When I injured my brain

it was barely spring.

Now it is mid-October

& getting up at eleven

is a big accomplishment.

My sister cries the sea

My sister is crying and crying

her tears grow to salt stormy showers

to rain and to rapids and rivers

they run to the sea to the sea.

My sister sobs softly she knows

she listens at shells and the shoals

she hears from fish sleeping at nightfall

she gathers from mushrooms and moulds.

Hears walking...

aubade for the BPD subreddit user who wrote can people with BPD love?

        bedtime ritual     summon a stranger     tonight you

linger on my laptop screen

                                          in the apartment hallway a door slams like a bird

                                           into glass     I will never know

                                        melts like snow

on a warm window

Let's Not Get It Together

The world has become corrupted

from our hearts

to the way our gods love us

as if they know they’re already dying

and they’re determined to drag us down with them

and just like a flagpole in winter

demanding our affection

we’ve stuck our tongues to their ancient religions

leaving us dumbstruck and blinded

Sharing

Nouf is proof God does not want me to die     a horse-girl with horse-hair who loves even the flies will not swat them    carries them outside with a glass-and-paper trap she brims with glee    high praise for bicycle lanes pie steeples the colour of sea foam seedless tangerines she collects fallen leaves celebrates    precipitation by running outside because raised in a...

After Betty Goodwin's The Memory of the Body (1993)

As Whitman sang the body electric

Goodwin sings the body forested:

dense stand of dark-trunked saplings

illumined by a blood-streaked sky,

ominous forest where

abandoned children wander

vulnerable to the spell of wolves,

stepmothers and jealous queens—

omnivorous forest, perilous to enter.

I mean the...

April 30, 2014

Weeds are flattened beneath last year’s tire tracks

others lay burden by the winter’s heavy snow.

The crocuses labor through this thick blanket.

I am sun drained from the bleakness

of the weeks before. Now a tick

I've carried in my hair runs up my neck,

festers on my chin.

I show it no mercy.

The lake-ice is...

Jacknife/2

Each day, I am apprenticed to the boy

I want to be.

He rifles the ball

and I catch it

or I fumble.

His red head ducks and weaves,

thinking, end zone.

I tag him

or I don’t.

He swaggers

no matter what.

With the deftness

 ...

Rejected Text for a Tourist Brochure

“I saw my land in the morning

and O but she was fair”

- M.G. Smith, “Jamaica” (1938)

I

Come see my land

Come see my land

before the particles of busy fires ascend;

before the rivers descend underground;

before coffee plantations

grind the mountains into...

Comfort

11 am. Time to wake up.

Muscles sore, jaw clenched, warm light

scattering dreams of violence across

the bedroom. I've chosen a self

too large for this body. Too willing to

change for others. Too beautiful

to appear in public. I’d tell you to walk

in my...

Closure

On the night we dug up your father’s body

(for reasons I can no longer remember)

we took turns with the shovel

as we passed a bottle of Whyte & Mackay

             back and forth.

You didn't say anything

until we opened his casket:

looking at his corpse you said,

“He’s smaller than I remembered”...

The Cactus

You sit in the forgotten bone-dry hills

surrounded by sand and sagebrush

above Buffalo Pound Lake.

A day and a night, and then

three more days and nights.

Do not mark the hours. Just sit

until the prickly pear raises its bloom.

A pale thing, translucent moon, sea anemone,

the first thin veil of a...

memories of my youth

as children

we learned to stand on one leg

clasping bundles of hope between our teeth

not because we wanted

to resemble flocks of black flamingos

one foot in the smelly pile was better than two

the sky beckoned

its blue hues a promise

we carried in those little bundles

clamped...

C Wing 1

Your mother is missing,

the nurse hovers at the door .

Your mother is missing, a bit louder this time.

As if this was natural, a daily game of let's find the Italian,

the one who doesn't speak English anymore.

In the C wing,

there are 24 rooms, a narrow hallway,

a kitchen, a solarium and a locked entrance....

The Problem With Being a Box Too Small for Its Contents

Love, you ask too many questions.

Let’s agree: we are whole

                                                                 —John Thompson, “Ghazal II”

I take apart the watch

you left here

a thousand times each day.

It does not help me

understand time.

I press our mirrors together...

Dear Diaspora Child

it's okay if you only learned about your culture from Google

it's okay if you only read your language at the public library

it's okay if you need books to know your ancestral recipes

it's okay if you've never even set foot on the soil of your people

it's okay if your...

Planet Earth

It has to be spread out, the skin of this planet,

has to be ironed, the sea in its whiteness;

and the hands keep on moving,

smoothing the holy surfaces. 

              ‘In Praise of Ironing’, Pablo Neruda

It has to be loved the way a laundress loves her linens,

the way she moves her hands...