after one summer when she went to camp, got stung by a bee
and nearly died.
It is a bone-chilling Sunday morning and I am leaning against a granite counter, waiting for my soy milk flat white. The side of my hip digs into the cold stone as I survey the coffee shop. The barista draws a four-petal leaf on top of my warm drink.
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Between Castle Frank and Broadview cross the scenic overpass
Famous for being many a last sight now strung like a harp to mask deter
Weathered withered worn frail elder steadies themself to sit
he asks me for a story.
I can tell him anything, new or old
with Easter candy, we lie naked
feet-up, feet-down
and I tell him about the first grade
We are the ones who died first.
The girls you saw coming from a mile away,
I go to centre myself with like-book-minded,
and find the shop empty, with a “be back in 10” sticky sign.
the coffee cup’s on the table, and I can nearly see its steam,
past the delicious small press CanLits rainbow spines.
Wait to board bus back door with pass where the walk was clear. Driver doesn’t open
back door. I cross ice to get to front door, slip fall hard smack dab under the bus.
unwomen swarm or croon as voices. sane or insane.
immunizers or missionaries. maniac cousins in our civic armoires.
nurses immurers uncoverers moirae —
what if it’s not a body it’s a net what if blood is blue what if it’s asking for something
to catch on what if the blue is not like the blue that lingers in corners of my dreams
what if that scares me what if my body is a dream that does not scare me
I am trying to coax my eyes
into blinking your penmanship.
I want to be devastated if we are
swallowed by the sun.
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.
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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
If I told my daughter this story, I would say don't ask why, or what if it had happened another way. I would say the way the story goes, there was a woman and there was a particular box and this particular box had a guy inside it; actually the box was a white cube van running down the middle of a busy sidewalk, full of women on a sunny afternoon.
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