Tag: poetry

New poetry from Oumy Dembele, “MEIOSIS”

evelyn bencicova_druhe3

“Home is not where you live but where they understand you.”

-Christian Morgenstern

So
apparently
in Europe I’m too African
in Africa I’m too European
and in Canada I’m too French
I’m done.

How many years
have I lost
in a camouflage?
Trying to eclipse one side of myself
just to be told
that the other one is wrong?

I’m so stupid.
Self-love? Ruined.
Self-esteem? I’d like to see that.
You. Words. Irony. Jokes. Silences. Looks. Because.I.don’t.belong

It’s like seeking affection and never finding open arms, reaching out to your mum’s hand and
never grabbing it, wandering around the world, homeless, rejected by your own kind
Every-fucking-where.

With multiplying comes the division. It’s nature. Maybe that’s how things are supposed to be.
Maybe my home doesn’t exist.
Maybe my will is unrealistic.
Maybe my hope is a camouflage too.
To hide the ugly truth.

these words by Oumy Dembele were paired with the colour of Evelyn Bencicova

“Caged” – Francine Cunningham

Chelsea Rushton_Vesper xiii 300 dpi

we’ve never seen the sunset,
just the reflection of it
on the mountains
our windows face

we could drive to the other side of the island,
i guess
we’ve talked about it
packing a picnic
blanket
all of it
but we’ve never done it

tonight, we sit on the patio
bathed in the noise of buzzing mosquitoes
loud and piercing when too close to the ear
the smell of citronella not helping,
it never does

the light fades on the mountain side
pink
gold
light and then dark green

when twilight envelopes us
we rise on stiff legs
hobble to the bedroom
silently undress
i don’t know anymore in which emotion we look at each others bodies
indifference, boredom,
maybe even hatred
sliding under stiff sheets offers
reprieve
and in the darkness our dreams take hold,

what wondrous things they are

 

these words by Francine Cunningham were inspired by the work of Chelsea Rushton

“Summer 2017” – Alex Leslie

Chelsea Rushton_it is supposed to be raining 300 dpi

The fire puts a hand into the earth puts down roots spreads underground interpsychic hillsides blooming all at once. As a child I watched planes open their stomachs make room scoop water from mountain lakes and limp across the sky rescue plans fleeing to the smoke several islands always I wondered, my mind reddening, where they were going

Here they are circling the death of seasons like buzzards around a house holding out for peace. Shadow images of horses running yellow running orange into the camera an RCMP officer with Caution tape looped around a donkey’s neck, uniform and fur burned together they float into the sky together perched in the belly of crisis the donkey swims through the murky heat tree sap boils in veins I watch the sky for planes water on its way

The shore is the only place without an evacuation order unless the ocean rebels. We are trapped between two extremes now, blue above black below. Overcast or clouds refugee smoke cover can’t tell the difference between migration and evacuation. My yard on the coast is full of birds screaming for sugar and wet. The sky is thick with endings none of them prescriptions for rain. Those planes when I was child always knew where they were going, they aimed for one hot spot on the horizon, rash in a green mountainside, when fire was fire not

Rhythm, the newscaster recites, the fire could leap, with no elaboration on this process and how it occurs. The way a fear travels from one mind to another. The way, when you look at me, I have instant recall of our history of eye contact. The fire lives most of its life in the air. Red hand plunged into the earth. Above, imaginary pastel world, drifting castle of rivers and trees, ignite like a stick of dynamite on a raft in the current. Just push off into the slipstream rage and watch it ride.

Here is the fire jumping and here is the mountain wobbling in the oven. Here is the blood-brown band between earth and now. The sky blistering in the background. The fire could leap at any time, the news anchor repeats. Where? Oxygen is unlimited travel. Breath dancing out there in the waves, soaring among the tidal pools of the ashen coast, skipping rocks through the windows of bedrooms

 

these words by Alex Leslie were inspired by the work of Chelsea Rushton

 

“pink” – Jenna Jarvis

evelyn bencicova_taste of leaving3

break plans like a scorpio
unto the skin
sagging cling
film by Hasselblad
caught the ersatz moon
landing
like this unboxing
a recession upside:
nothing for plastic
surgeries i envisioned teenaged
stranger yowls shaped brows
awaken faces unlike siamese
cats’ ecstatic sealed ones
cooled with breaths
vacillating
as though eyelids or testicles
in gemini ascendant

these words by Jenna Jarvis were inspired by the work of Evelyn Bencicova

“Taste of Leaving” – Jess Glavina

majkapincik

The off-whites of your apartment
The buzz of your kitchen lamp
The halo it casts around your red hair as we wait for your friend

The fewer days you have to leave, the slower it feels

The essentials:
The two people you must say goodbye to.
The books to return. The one to get back.
The borrowed transit card. The money you owe.

I leave like I came
Moving alone through the city
A zigzag
Promises spoken lightly
turning to finishing nails in my pocket

these words by Jess Glavina were inspired by the work of Evelyn Bencicova

“White Light” – Charlotte Joyce Kidd

_MG_5326p5

To have your body be struck by a force that comes from completely within itself

To know that you cannot save yourself from it

That in every silent second lurks a light that will hit you between the eyes from behind your forehead

That cold will come in waves and shivers will grate the underside of your skin

That something will gurgle up through your trachea until you are sobbing not because you are sad but because the sobs have always existed inside you and want to see day

To try, desperately, to stave it off, to force it down with anything that you can grab and pull into yourself, through mouth and eyes and nose

So that it explodes in the seconds between: the moment when your feet touch the ground, before you have reached for the curtains

Light brighter and sharper than the sun you were trying to let in

Assaulting your eyes without your permission

Shaking your body like a silent church organ

This thing that is you now

That feels like it will not leave

It will

I promise

 

these words by Charlotte Joyce Kidd were inspired by the work of Evelyn Bencicova

“Tiny Stones” – Leah Horlick

kaefig_cage

Whether or not it was you
who set off the firecracker in my backyard, all that matters
is that I thought
it was you,

writing to the landlords I’m just sending this to you now
so that in the morning
I don’t think that this was a dream.

I await the presence of someone who understands
the genetic impact of a siren. I pull a siren
around me and glow silent, I pull a web of nerve endings

over my own face and touch everything like it is covered in dust—
dust is a shawl, dust is a veil of static. I reach a hand through
thick white noise towards a feeling.

Everything you say sends me further into myself
whether you like it or not, whether you mean it.

I fell off the horse into a bush of thorns and it was a choice between
the thorns and the hooves—can you guess which I chose?

I overwhelm my house with peonies.
When I go home I shut the door and my

eyes and my phone in a drawer
and I sleep. In the morning I look at the Internet to remember

what I look like. I drink so much water
I boil everything—

basil and rose petals,
yarrow and chamomile,

eyeliner and sitting in the dark theatre.

I slowly weigh myself
down with tiny stones.

I hide another set
of eyes beneath my dress.

I slowly accept that this new scar will come out
every time I sit
in the sun.

Sometimes I call it having a flashback.

Other times I just
like to have everything
in one place to get a good hard look
at my life.

 

these words by Leah Horlick were inspired by the work of Olaf Hajek

click here for the live audio of our Cagibi reading!

Audio of the first leg of Word and Colour’s Summer Reading Series at Cagibi on June 24th, MC’d by Dena Coffman!


Readers, in order of appearance:

Nailah King, a member of the Room editorial collective. She is also a writer, avid reader, and blogger. A UBC alumnae, she is currently working on completing a thus far untitled manuscript in prose fiction. Read King’s recent word and colour prose, “Diaspora Blues,” inspired by the art of Shanna Strauss

Taisha Cayard, a Social Services student at Dawson College who has recently found interest in writing poetry. She loves to sing and to socialize. Read Cayard’s recent wandc collaboration, “But What Can I Learn From You,” in dialogue with the poetry of Audre Lorde

Lily Chang, who writes, edits, and pays rent and hydro in Montreal. She is a recent graduate of Concordia University’s MA program in Creative Writing. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Headlight Anthology, Word and Colour, Voices Visible, and Frog Hollow Press’s City Series. Read Chang’s poetry, “White is Not My Colour,” inspired by the art of Tran Nguyen
wordandcolour
Oumy Dembele, a Professional Theater student from France. A scriptwriting graduate, her writing is mostly focused on fiction and scenes. She recently challenged herself to write prose in English. Her work, “Meiosis,” is forthcoming at Word and Colour.
wordandcolour
Tristen Sutherland, who studies English Literature and Political Science at McGill. When she’s not writing, she’s performing improv comedy or debating whether it’s safe to eat raw cookie dough. Read her recent Word and Colour piece, “Mango,” inspired by the art of Angela Pilgrim.

 

See more photos of the reading via @wordandcolour

 

“Foxglove” – Keah Hansen

precious_collection

Foxglove
Rough hands
The open ended
Tending
For life
In this chalked over
Bite
Of soil
Worms and cat
Piss
Be damned
Ignored
Amidst
Packets of seeds
Dry
Expectant
In the barren
Echo chambers
Stained with
Small blight
Residue of last years
Failed perennials
Soils that seem
To collect rocks
Like rainwater
Save the draining.

Foxglove
I tend
To pull
This dirt up
In sparkles
And turn the stones
To mica
Splashed between
The sun and
Shadows
Looking damp
As if to quench
Though offering
Hope in
The cast-off shapes
Of stalks I
Pulled out
Piece by piece
Last year with my
Arms all crossed
To stop the flint
Caged inside
My ribs
From being sodden
By the storms
Some plant life
Seems to
Carry.

This year
Foxglove,
Is no different
My chin
A spade
I’m making
Place for you
By shaking my head yes
Or no
Learning how
To till the soils best
Most oxygenated
And minerals peopled
In healthy
Numbers
I’m counting
The hours
Until the bells
Ring
In your blooms
I think
They’d sound
Like milk drops
The dew
I taste
In new growth
Your petals
Cupped in joy
Like feet flexed
Dancing
With root systems
Made proverbs
Answering
My questions
In anachronisms.

The wind returned
Fibrous,
Vegetal
And familiar.

 

these words by Keah Hansen were inspired by the work of Olaf Hajek

“Star gazer” – Alex Leslie

Kevin Calixte-Garudâsana-Kay-1024x683

The views expressed in the texts do not necessarily represent the views of the artist.

 

In night, your strained vocal chords form a glowing band around the moon. You do not know what you are asking for this time. Shapes assemble at the perimeter and call themselves fingertips, cheeks, inkblot torsos. They have been here before. People you love are recycling names the way the world recycles seasons. Bees with frequency, voices turn on spokes, slow in the days, adrenal dive through the green substrata, decade roulette, but what is the true indicator of new life. The future sits across from you in the greasy spoon diner, saws into pancakes with ketchup on top, wields a steak knife, lectures you about making better choices, the long hall of unintended consequences. And if you can. If you looked harder it would come to you; if you could just focus for once, this wouldn’t be so hard. Clavicle and tracery of eyes would make themselves present, no diagnostic mist, this time. Shutters tumble around your fingers, rising in the darkness. You understand something about tone, about how to lie down in a throat and fall asleep like you own the place. You have always excelled at Rorschach tests, can read suggestion in the shift of shoulders, some air seeping from a mouth at a specific tilt, a thread you can grab and twist. A mimic fish spreading over eyes, cheeks, collarbones. Every face, a display plate on a simple white stand. Star gazer. When you were small, a big kid taught you to cut a slit down the luminous belly of a green blade of grass, break it open with your breath, and make music, and it was the first weapon you ever made. You aimed it at the sky, blasted an escape hatch. But now there is a shift, a settling. It’s dark. Portrait game. Voices turn on spokes, more slowly now. The faces carousel around the small hot triangle of your hands. Milky light seeps through the seams in commuter traffic. When you narrow your eyes, your fatigue blurs into the tactile future. Haloes, overexposures cast into the deep pools of other minds. Butterflies pressed behind eyelids. Drape all the mirrors. Learn how to pray.

 

these words by Alex Leslie were inspired by the work of Kevin Calixte