Exile

A Hundred and Fifty Pounds

Each adult will be allowed 150 pounds

 

and each child will be allowed 75 pounds of baggage.

 

—B.C. Security Commission, 1942

 

             after Kayla Isomura’s The Suitcase Project

 

In some, the luggage lies open

like a mouth mid-sentence.

In others, closed...

Michael Prior

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...

Mohja Kahf

Winter House

My father threw his language overboard,

a bag of kittens, waterlogged mewling:

small hard bodies.

 

My mother hung on to hers —

Wove the words like lace, an open web

over the window, light caught on the edges.

 

 

My daughter is starting to pick at language,

names at dawn – dog, star, mumma –...

Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang
1978

Ideas of Home

              i

 

Winter has landed; my boot bucks on a stone

surrounded by snow; I swear, I murmur

Oracabessa. “The rock” is what I call home,

all islanders do, and I’m in blessed Ann Arbour,

mainland, where I found safe harbour under

green sea of trees now becalmed, frosted.

Ideas of Oracabessa propel me forward

...

Lorna Goodison

Question:

What do they think about you,

the people who pass you on the street?

What would you like them to see?

 

They see the druggie, the whore, the junkie.

I’d like them to see me as their daughter,

a sister, a lover, their mother.

 

They see garbage, blood, feces.

They see us in...

Susan Musgrave

Nuisance

Only the thickness of log

and triple-paned glass

between my children and

the open maw

of a bear.

 

I slip warm chocolate chip

cookies from the pan

to the cooling rack -

their father loads the gun.

 

He fires a warning shot

from the porch

while the kids lick

the mixing...

Tara Borin
1983

Bilingual/Bilingüe

My father liked them separate, one there,

one here (allá y aquí), as if aware

 

that words might cut in two his daughter’s heart

(el corazón) and lock the alien part

 

to what he was—his memory, his name

(su nombre)—with a key he could not claim.

 

“English outside this door, Spanish inside,”

he said, “...

Rhina P. Espaillat

Duras (Poverty)

“The link with poverty is there is there in the man's hat, too, for money has got to be brought in, got to be brought in somehow,” M.D., The Lover.

 

Poverty is in the language, it is in her gaze back. It seeps and oozes into every poverty-stricken word.

Each word is used sparingly as if each word were currency.

 

It is everywhere. It...

Cynthia Cruz

The Windrush

Departing from Kingston, Jamaica, the British ship Empire Windrush

brought one of the first large groups of postwar Caribbean immigrants to

London in 1948

 

Dem did sey she pregnance

Cum a sea full a mi

Weighing har down eena har shoe dem

Dresses, coco, mangoes an baggy an arl

 

Dem...

Valerie Mason-John

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...

Cicely Belle Blain
1993

Women Do This Every Day

 
Sadiqa de Meijer


Buen Esqueleto

Life is short & I tell this to mis hijas.

Life is short & I show them how to talk

to police without opening the door, how

to leave the social security number blank

on the exam, I tell this to mis hijas.

This world tells them I hate you every day

& I don't keep this from mis hijas

because of the bus driver who kicks...

Natalie Scenters-Zapico
1988 -

Mantra of No Return

my mother occupies the passenger seat. my brother and i

                     stick in the back.

   the radio babbles and sings between us. she is estranged, returning

           and we are revenants to a place                 inside a narration contrived

to read like non-fiction, a continuous telling since                                 one

mouth...

Kaie Kellough
1975 -

I've Dreamt of You So Often

I've dreamt of you so often that you become unreal.

Is there still time to reach this living body and to kiss on its mouth the birth of

the voice so dear to me?

I've dreamt of you so often that my arms used to embracing your shadow and

only crossing on my own chest might no longer meet your body's...

Robert Desnos
1900-1945

Kome's Story

for auntie nagasaki

it's the same story

told again & again

 

the modulations

& the machinations

 

the maudlin

& the dream

 

schemes & data

a million documents

 

& a single story

kome's

 

she said she...

Roy Miki
b. 1942

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

I’ve known rivers:

I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the

flow of human blood in human veins.

 

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

 

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the...

Langston Hughes
1902-1967

In Jerusalem

In Jerusalem, and I mean within the ancient walls,

I walk from one epoch to another without a memory

to guide me. The prophets over there are sharing

the history of the holy ... ascending to heaven

and returning less discouraged and melancholy, because love

and peace are holy and are coming to town.

I was walking down a slope and thinking...

Mahmoud Darwish
1941-2008

Someday I'll Love Ocean Vuong

Ocean, don’t be afraid.

The end of the road is so far ahead

it is already behind us.

Don’t worry. Your father is only your father

until one of you forgets. Like how the spine

won’t remember its wings

no matter how many times our knees

kiss the pavement. Ocean,

are you listening? The most beautiful part

of your...

Ocean Vuong
b. 1988

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 and our four o'clock hunger with us and our grandmother and everything we loved in the world were waiting in the yellow washed house, there was a...

Dionne Brand
b. 1953

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

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

i just didn't know

whether i was desi or irani

i said turmeric

before i said haldi

i go to white-people karaoke bars

i...

Hana Shafi

from “Road Shoulders”

power lines held by birds

of prey the hostile expanse above

 

ditches teeming floral invasive

wayside fleurs

 

late summer the shoulder sang

 

holds breeze by

the course of the drive

 

ravelling winds furl sparse treetops

 

semi-trailers startle traffic to attention

...

Cecily Nicholson
b. 1974

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

furrowed, like ivy crawling up

 

All those museums and mausoleums,

lifting languages from rivers.

But I cannot leave them...

Adebe D. A.

Trillium

the animal in me

is constant.

 

thirst starts,

hunger answers.

 

sleep is uncertain,

restless limbs.

 

in the night,

I hear footsteps.

 

warnings appear,

all signs say death.

 

still I crave

cigarettes, coffee.

 

exhaustion brings...

Gwen Benaway
1987

Should Lanterns Shine

Should lanterns shine, the holy face,

Caught in an octagon of unaccustomed light,

Would wither up, and any boy of love

Look twice before he fell from grace.

The features in their private dark

Are formed of flesh, but let the false day come

And from her lips the added pigments fall,

The mummy cloths expose an ancient breast.

...

Dylan Thomas
1914–1953

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

Big as the ball of my thumb, and dumb as eyes

Ebon in the hedges, fat

With blue-red juices. These they squander on my...

Sylvia Plath
1932–1963

Black Sheroes

My Black heroes don’t drop names like Fendi Gucchi Prada

My Black sheroes rock afros like Angela Davis and Assata

But my sheroes are more than a trend and they’re bigger than a hairstyle

For their people they risk death, imprisonment, and exile

They’ll give you an education in gender, race, and class

So for real knowledge you need to honour...

El Jones

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

A History of Houses Built Out of Spite

none of us know Amy personally, but she’s here & she’s singing / rising above our sodden heads bowed in something like prayer / maybe // most of us are trying to move enough to pretend she doesn’t remind us of our mothers & Sunday morning spring cleans / the sharp bleached smell of it, the shrill peak of their voices demanding something far less beautiful // we’re trying not / to...

Chimwemwe Undi
1994

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

the hand of my companion

gradually melts into mine

and her head on my shoulder

is as light as a dove

When we...

Abdellatif Laâbi
b. 1942

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.

The dates. The phrases.

The things you said. Forfeited.

Snowflake patterns.

Leaf diagrams.

Crushed. Melted. Dissolved....

Russell Thornton
b. 1959

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

Deto(nation)

There’s a joke that ends with — huh?

It’s the bomb saying here is your father.

 

Now here is your father inside

your lungs. Look how lighter

 

the earth is — afterward.

To even write father

 

is to carve a portion of the day

out of a bomb-bright page.

 

There’s enough...

Ocean Vuong
b. 1988

Opus 75, Sestina in B-flat for the Glockenspiel

In the empty classroom, at sunrise, a girl

sits on the floor, staring at a glockenspiel.

She’s shredding the cuticles on her left hand

instead of starting to practise.

She doesn’t want to play —

not yet, if ever. The irritating sound

 

of her teeth clicking is the only sound

in the band room. The cranky girl

has...

Adam Sol
1969

Francesca Woodman

                              i

At the heart there is a hollow sun

by which we are constructed and undone

 

                              ii          

Behind the mirror. Favourite place to hide.

I didn't breathe. They looked so long I died.

 

...

Don Paterson
b. 1963

The Novel As Manuscript

An ars poetica

 

 

I remember the death, in Russia,

of postage stamps

like immense museum masterpieces

patchwork

wrapped in linen, tea stained,

with hemp for strapping...

 

these colored stamps designed for foreign places

were even printed during famine—

so when they vanished...

Norman Dubie
b. 1945

Walking Both Sides of an Invisible Border

It is never easy

Walking with an invisible border

Separating my left and right foot

I feel like an illegitimate child

Forsaken by my parents

At least I can claim innocence

Since I did not ask to come

Into this world

 

...

Alootook Ipellie
1951–2007

Sun Bear

yesterday at the Oakland zoo

I was walking alone for a moment

past the enclosure holding the sun bear

also known as beruang madu

it looked at me without interest

it has powerful jaws and truly loves honey

it sleeps in a high hammock

its claws look made out of wood

and if it dreams at all it is of Malaysia

...

Matthew Zapruder
b. 1967

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

Money

Coin Exhibit, British Museum.

 

Their misshapenness strikes the table in tiny splashes,

like still-cooling splatters of silver. Stater and shekel,

mina and obol. Persia’s bullion had a lion and bull.

 

Athens an owl, Messana a hare, a jar for Terone, Melos

a pomegranate. Call it museum money, written...

Carmine Starnino
b. 1970