Category: poetry

“hotel,” new poetry by jesslyn delia smith

why-it-show-case-03

if i sift with my fingers
through fabrics, not
look away, be
domestic

lift and carry the 
weight of old skin
before it can rise 
from the floorboards

arrive in one piece
and then
stay

grow a garden to nowhere at all

beneath a white flame
with my mother,
her mother,

dig for
reflections
we’ve buried
for years in the sand

what’s left is a body,
skin tethered to bones,

grown but from
nothing
at all:

the

small of
my back
just a space
for your hand
to announce
when it wants to be heard

these words by jesslyn delia smith were inspired by the art of Pasha Bumazhniy

“A Standstill,” new poetry by Khatira Mahdavi

why-it-show-case-02

I called you

and gave you my word

that between right now and forever

there is a house of mirrors,

and then there is you.

You, a standstill—

the starting point, the finish line

and all of the in-betweens.

 

You called back

and whispered across the line

that from here until anywhere,

I’m your favourite ride along.

these words by Khatira Mahdavi were inspired by the art of Pasha Bumazhniy

New poetry by Ivana Velickovic, “Fabric”

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We no longer wait in line for apricot pits.
As the arched windows of our building
fall fast, become tombstones,
we are not there.
I let her cling to thick fabric,
dragging her feet,
leaving deep grooves in the soil
that connect small footprints and
form a map of disproportioned scale.
With a head raised to level,
pulled up only by maternal duty and disparity,
I tell her we are impenetrable.
This empty lightness
tenderly strokes her glowing eyelids to rest.
In time, she may return to the rubble,
pick bones for a living
in open fields scattered with footballs and
broken nets.

 this poem, “Fabric,” by Ivana Velickovic, was inspired by the art of Christine Kim

New poem, “Bystander,” by Jeff Blackman

stillness
Tell her not to ask what I can do.
Tell her I wish someone else would help.
Tell her I’m not joining the defense.
Tell her something she already knew.

Tell her I read but I did not share her story.
Tell her I checked in & checked away from there.
Tell her she’s not in my thoughts or prayers.
Tell her, from here, I don’t see her territory.

Tell her, here, the fall has been so long.
Tell her, here, we had the Friday off.
Tell her, today, we took a thousand photographs.
We’re working through them. Tell her it’s a slog.

 

this poem by Jeff Blackman was inspired by the art of Dominique Normand

New poem, “Resistance,” by Francine Cunningham

twowomen.jpg

can you feel the breaking?
i don’t know if it’s my heart, or something older
the cracks in my spirit are easier to see
they show themselves on my face
in the way my smile falters,
in the darkness etched under my eyes

i wake up from dreams
running in an endless loop
the skin of the earth cracking
molton fire spewing
childrens’ skeleton husks
dehydrated from the inside
hearts thudding, dust raising in chest cavities
the water of the earth running like the foretold fire
lakes and rivers burning their stories to the sky
telling about how they were ravaged
how their banks were used as dumping grounds
can you not imagine a day when the sky is painted red with the haze of endless fires?
when the black clouds of progress have spewed too much,
taken up too much space in the sky
where the ground shakes down our buildings, reduces everything to the same size
the soil only producing poison

my grandfather had a gift
could see death in his dreams
would sit at bedsides,
help souls pass over
and i have to wonder,
are the truth and future finding their way to me back to me?

the light which normally lights my soul is dimmed
the world feels somehow different, can’t you feel it?
that something out of sight has changed and we are now living in the last days
i have read the prophesies,
of the war of water, of the next culling
i have seen the brutality of our war against the earth
the way in which we seem to hate it
grind it up, rip it apart, spew our waste all over it
but i know there is life, buried like seeds, threaded throughout this prophesy
those seeds are the people and the light they carry inside of them

but my heart breaks whenever I see one of our seeds taken away
when they are pushed to hanging themselves in closets
when they are viciously beaten killed tortured, just for existing
when the very act of saying no is an affront

and have also felt the swelling of hope that comes from an act of resistance
when a woman stands up for the water
when a brother helps another up, carries him on shoulders until he can walk again
a greeting spoken in a revived language
the drums giving life to the earth
the dropping of tobacco and the cleansing smoke of pray

these are the pinpricks of light that cast my dreams into doubt
these acts are the resistance
these are seeds of hope

this poem by Francine Cunningham was inspired by Dominique Normand‘s “Two Women” 

 

“The monument,” new poetry by Jessica Goldson

the-monument-final-piece

Foreign
construction;
Mirrors
cling to past images,
Smooth
edges recite falsehoods
Fraught
with mixed emotions.
Dissociated
desire;

Fractured by efforts to complement the landscape.

 

this poem by Jessica Goldson was inspired by Juan Travieso’s “The Monument”

Poetry inspired by Film: “Pieces”

New Blue Eyes
This Sudden and Correct Amount of Mirrors for The Modern Age
Agoraphobia: Nature Is A Solid
Slum Knock
Shame Follows Intellect: Home Edition
The Foulest Ball
The Curtain No Longer Drawn, The Yard Dreaming Itself Into Rooms
…Now Throw Your Rope
Jealousy: It’s What’s In The Mix
convins me ths flor is betr sharp
Approaching Grief (When You’ve So Long Been Stone)
Clear Tape Need
“Through Ares’ Ire, The Whole Of Mars Made Snow Globe”
Pearls Remember Glass
Squirrels Run On Power
So You Think You Can Dance While Burgling?
Saskatchewan Kaleidoscope
PATTERFALL
Chaos Tracing Hot Heart Shapes Into Stuck, and Disparate Trees
A Single Sailing Arrow
Was A Secret
Commit To Pieces
Peter’s Gate
Portrait of an Artist as an Old Photo of My Dad Leaning Against His Siren Red Chevelle
“Move Me And My Dead Starling To The Sill For One Last Look At Those Avocado Trees”
Everything’s Coming Up Dustpan
A Handy Guide For Zero
Not For Solitary
A Garrison Tinkle
“What’s A Former Square?”

word, “Pieces,” by Justin Million, inspired by the colour, “Yet to be titled,” by Koka Nikoladze

Blueberry Leaves

blueberry-leaves-mi-ju

Those people who latch on
for stability.
What good is it to you
to bear the weight
of their despair?
Forced down
by the pressure of shared frustrations,
strapped to the same sinking ship.
Sure, blueberries can float in water…but can we?

word by Jessica Goldson

colour by Mi Ju

 

Magdalen Laundry

home (1)

The now empty halls
a Dublin asylum
on Lower Leeson Street
you did what they said
carry the “fallen”,
Keelia, birthing a daughter
treated as defiled.
1941, aged 16,
there was no time to say goodbye

behind monastic walls
a bedroom, a cell
iron-barred windows
in each dream walking along:
“Ma, where am I going?”
but always wake up crying
bear pages of thick ledgers:
“You disgraced us!”
Unpaid workhouse

shapeless, long brown dresses.
The sound of hand-scrubbed linens
if you listen you can hear
the abbess and the nuns

on cold winter mornings
face shrouded in black veils
girls marching to six o’clock Mass

beyond, the ordinary, everyday world.
Pruning of an old mulberry tree.
Shrews, and lizards,

the nameless.
I was known as number 26.

 

these words by Ilona Martonfi were inspired by the colour of Alison Gildersleeve

on park access in Calgary: “Green-Space”

 

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1.5 million pounds of soil raised

to the 4th floor of Calgary’s CORE

shopping complex supports an inner-

city oasis. The Devonian Gardens

are open publically during mall hours.

Oil executives employed nearby

visit the green-space on lunchbreaks,

eluding the paupers of Stephen Ave.

in +15s returning to work.

 

As children we attended summer camp

at Lindsay Park Sports Centre,

belayed each other up its rock walls

shouted chicken on the high dive.

Kids today learn to play water polo

in a pool named by Talisman Energy.

Since 2002 the City of Calgary has

sold naming rights to the company,

20 years for 10 million dollars.

 

Fish Creek Provincial Park is the largest

urban park in Canada, abutting the

Tsuu T’ina reserve in the southwest.

Roughly 12% of the city is stewarded

by Parks Calgary, the highest ratio of

green-space per capita in Canada.

Rumors of a horse found dead

in Sikome Lake are merely rumors,

but a person did drown in its weeds.

 

Within the cemented waterways of

Century Gardens a man offers me

beans from an unlabeled can. He was

bitten on the leg by an unleashed dog

and chased into the park by police.

Concealed behind a bench and a

juniper bush, each donated by the

Devonian Group, we leave him sitting

in darkness atop the Brutalist landscape.

 

Later that year a decentralized dance-

party develops in Century Gardens,

culminating down the road under the

spotlights of Millennium Skate Park.

Despite the armed chaperones, shouts

emanate from a parking lot around

the corner at Mewatta Armoury. I try

to tell a girl she doesn’t have to go with

the guy gripping her by the shoulders.

 

Public gardens in Calgary are closed

from 11 pm until 5 in the morning.

When cops caught us hallucinating

after midnight in South Glenmore Park

(you in my driver’s seat, our drugs

on the passenger floor), they left

us with grins and a warning.

We were two blocks from where

I taught you how to drive a stick-shift.

 

After ditching my red Ford Ranger in

the grafittied enclosure for road debris,

we climb the dam on Elbow River. A

glassy reservoir reflects streetlamps

to the West as the artificial cliffs arc

down in the East. The capacity of these

sloping concrete channels have been

exceeded but twice, causing damage

to the riverfront properties.

 

All the black squirrels in Prince’s Island Park

will follow you along a path at dawn.

It must be a cold summer’s day

before cyclists and yoga seminars

arrive to claim the green-space.

Watch deer and geese retreat downriver

from a window of the Route 3 bus,

I’ll greet you soon in Votier’s Flats

with a cold 6-pack of beer.

 

these words by Kyle Flemmer were inspired by the art of Allison Gildersleeve