When I was a little girl, littered with scrapes on my knees and bruises on my arms from falling off the monkey bars, my parents would take me back.
Once a year I set foot on Venezuelan soil where people had my colour skin and the streets were littered with the pungent perfume of plastic bag pointillism.
A landfill has never been so beautiful.
I used to imagine I lived in one. Read more →
You arrived with leather skin and six bags,
grey eyes hitting targets and a bounty
fit for a rebel.
Deadwood floods with gold rush wagons, slicked and sun-bleached.
A one sparrow panic stalks me like coyotes in the grass. Read more →
It is told and retold
of how Kohkum killed a bear with a river rock
an arm like Ronnie Lancaster (that old Saskatchewan Roughrider)
she throws with precision
at Muskwa’s third eye
it is like a baby’s soft spot Read more →
Of the films you never made during les années des plomb
my favourite is Territoire de L’instant (Land of the Moment).
After your funeral, I use the video camera you used to document my dance recitals
to film a horizon cracked in two. Read more →
When I was five, you and I duelled
with Tang dynasty verses, a match
to see whose breath held
more poetry. You won with
mind-reader wits, predicting
each poem I had recalled, reciting
each before my turn. I gave up Read more →
You are light
when the sun is punched out
and darkness reigns.
You are the antidote
to what came before:
black blood, black heart,
hands tied, kneeling before
a ditch of human bones. Read more →