Tag: poetry

“For Those Who Don’t Fit Into Boxes,” by Shagufe Hossain

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Growing up
I never lived
in houses with lawns or little gardens or backyards,
with weeping willows or wooden benches.

 I lived,
sometimes,
in a city
where pedestrian walkways,
‘footpaths’ they were called,
were resting places for those who couldn’t afford rooftops
over their heads.

 I lived in apartment buildings,
boxes stacked one on top of the other
to save space
in overpopulated cities—
in lands
dominated,
sliced up
with sharp blades of politics, religion and language
and distributed
like a decadent dessert (not enough)
amongst gluttons, never satisfied.

 But these spaces for living?
They constructed and constricted
and made it difficult to breathe
in boxes,
with each wall
closing in,
a divide,
made of those very same blades.

 Now these boxes stand
stacked one on top of the other
with one wall, standing tall,
the wall of class
(check box: rich/poor)
one wall, standing tall,
the wall of gender
(check box: male/female)
one wall, standing tall,
the wall of body
(check box: abled/disabled)
one wall, standing tall,
the wall of beauty
(check box: fair-skinned/dark-skinned)
one wall, standing tall,
the wall of knowledge
(check box: valid/invalid)
Mighty walls, standing tall, solid
with edges like blades.

 I lived,
sometimes,
crossing over to the other side.
But these walls with their sharp edges
would cut into my flesh
so I grew up
wounded,
bleeding.

 And these boxes?
They worked
for those who lived in black-and-white worlds.
Lazy minds, refusing to see colours or greys,
fitting themselves into moulds
as others saw fit,
gift-wrapping themselves in societal expectations
and presenting themselves
(happily?)
to a world
that was ready
for no more.

 But not you and I.
You and I
stood either somewhere in the middle, bleeding,
or outside,
in a corner
of a verandah
looking at the skies, limitless,
using boxes with pinholes,
projecting realities,
our own,
to capture the essence of life.
Breathing.

 

these words by Shagufe Hossain were inspired by the work of Marcin Wolski

New Poetry: “Espionage,” by Pete Gibbon

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CW: sexual assault


Like anyone else, I spent time & energy imagining how 007 I could be.
Like anyone else, taught on reflex to look both ways before crossing
my street

but that’s where our shared experience ends. No daily business ends
of martini goggles for me. No living through exits—lucky for them if it

never happens; also guilty. Also, odds are good
it will happen again, so

memorize that hotkey. No inept guard. No

Paintball Mode. Nights, stacked with antagonists. Every human. Every are. Seems
badass
except with no agency at all. Not like how wrestling’s fake, either. More like

when it’s dark, we’re walking home together & I flip off a car of strangers being rude
she’s not impressed. That’s a grimace. That’s a grimace because

she’s an operative with no security. Raised a spy but treated as an eavesdropper.
More like her opposite of FIGHT isn’t FLIGHT. It’s raped.


these words by Pete Gibbon were inspired by
the art of Pasha Bumazhniy

“hotel,” new poetry by jesslyn delia smith

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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

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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

“Make Me,” new poem by Justin Million

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so we took up inspired
fights like the -isms,

the air, the water,
the rolling glaciers,

the fears we feel
in homes, our least conversated

doors staying owned,
most only accepting MEN, to say (like anyone intelligent asked or cared)

they still exist
to pretend they wouldn’t jerk a man off in a secret vacuum.

The glow of a few decades’ mistakes
still spreads red,

despite us being in charge forever and no one else, no handed down way, no alien us,
most mostly

alike, tho some stopped reading this poem
because of my science on men wanting to try cock at least once,

my science being don’t make an individual
a video of that same individual being you. They are not you.

This is where we’re at.

No gigantic man handing us down to us. I can’t stress that
or anything else enough. I am shaking for a world of reasons.

We have a 2000 problem, 0000’s of MEN
are videos displaying how dim men continue

to study spectrum
with the light out.

That last bit was a metaphor
for porn, men’s rights, and the new Nazis

(you lost fucks see me on George Street, stab fast,
or you’ll lose the personal war too this time);

this open bomb of a world.

Amazing we exist in this at all. Amazing we exist.
Amazing.

The young man at the protest about to climb the lamp
can’t be Gene Kelly,

trained to keep his hands off the high light,
take home as much grace as he can scrape off the bottom.

There is a baby who is important to the future lying
by the political blast zone Schrodingering,

and because everyday’s a news day, the knife
or branch in your hand;

keep the future you don’t know down is the red lesson. Stab a gay baby.
You have to have a gun,

your right to not much isn’t God
given, or taken. It’s plain. Your belief is a ladder to another finity.

In charge of nothing
but fixing

the world we went into
debt to see, and have

since brunched back
to our mothers and fathers,

lived inside basements, inheritances,
until we had the wall space to hang

what failed us; photos of hairdos all
ecstatic to be sepia, cross-legged on the wall, denying they’re putting us down;

every memory back then
straight.

Oh mother,
come back to bread.

Yes, we are furious,
because we were ushered in, without shushing, when the world was still

blind, and quarrelling over how much YES is left when it’s a ruin, and the whole
time just around the corner

You, absolutely
not your father,

maybe President;
worth a shot-

these words by Justin Million were inspired by the photography of Alison Scarpulla

 

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, “Okay for Now,” by Rachael Simpson

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We’ve reached the point in the evening where
our responsible selves have fallen
asleep beside us on the floor. Now
we can talk about what troubles us.

Our voices touch like whiskers
and scratch the door.
A heaviness pulls at our sleeves.
I thought you were asleep, we say.
How much did you hear?

We put ourselves properly to bed.
Pour another glass. Something
knocks into us—

bad dream
I had another
don’t know
what to do.

We do not raise our arms.
We do not shoot questions.

Over time, the moon lines up with the window.
Glasses pile on the table
like small sunken ships.

It was right there
says someone
about a deer in the yard.
We point as though we saw it, too.

this poem by Rachael Simpson was inspired by Dominique Normand‘s painting, “Walking Out”

New poem, “Resistance,” by Francine Cunningham

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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” 

 

New poem, “Sabbat,” by Leah Horlick

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In years past it’s been scraps
of paper, candles, a drainful of hair —

anything to light on fire in effigy
of the calendar, walking figure eights

through Strathcona trailing rosemary
and smoke. This year I am keeping

it simple, throwing salt out of my own
eyes, casting mascara circles, going

to synagogue — I need all the help
I can get. Years past I’ve been all true love

and boundaries and I release this codependence
and this year we are just basic, elemental — protect the land,
protect the water, the people protecting the land

and the water, forgive me for the sin of succumbing
to despair. All the witches are indoors soothing

their pets from the firecrackers, toilet paper ghosts
stranded out in the wet trees. Today you wanted to show me
 
the last blaze of that tiny arbutus in the traffic circle on your way
to work and you turned me into a red trail of feathered leaves. The best

thirty-five dollars I spent all year was on a psychic who told me
to learn to say not yet. I need all the help I can get. I sweep out

the devils. I zip up our house like a tent. A bright ember,
a blue gem in the slick black fur

of this city. The tiny, solid fire of you
at the centre of my life.

this poem by Leah Horlick was inspired by Dominique Normand‘s art