country mice

by amber dawn


crickets, monarchs, paints and sparrows
frenchman river, sweet grass sky holds still
out here everything stops
for the wind

— “everything holds still for the wind,” Leah Horlick
 

We find each other
in the cosmopolitan squint, polished
concrete, smoked chrome rooms.
She’s hard to peg at first
lace dress chic, prosecco cocktail
starry in her hand. She’s been
chin-upped by the west. Tested
by an incomprehensible horizon
and passed, but for her pose and bend.
For the wind

that sweeps the wide-open
motherland has left her
with a slant stance, sideways
as corn bowed to a storm.
I too am made
from orchard and axe, crop
and scythe, harvest born
humble earth miles and years
behind me. It’s all rock
out here. Everything stops

making sense in the seam
of mountains and million
dollar condos, high-rise residential
more density, more gravel, more glass, more.
Where I come from elevators
are for nursing homes or sawmills.
She sees the soiled knees of my jeans
knows I kneel to a once-was prayer
late waterways, bygone wells
forgotten river. Sweet grass sky holds still

during these vigils, holds space
for choked swamp, cedar stump
tributaries split from the ocean
Vancouver’s bloodstone—step forward.
My home is a backwards stamp, like hers.
parched-lawn green, forever level.
Now we find each other turned by urban obstacles.
The far-removed markers we share and seek
chokecherries, ink caps, chorus frogs, golden yarrow
crickets, monarchs, paints and sparrows

 


“Country Mice” was previously published in Where the Words End and My Body Begins (Arsenal Pulp Press, Spring 2015)

exhibit: in the woods, outside duncan, british columbia

by renée sarojini saklikar


That a bomb is made. That is known.
That the bomb is set off, that is known, in the woods, outside Duncan, cousin-town
                        to the village Paldi.




*



Of all the locations in Empire, real and imagined, past and present,
                        It is here: June 1985, 
there are no straight lines— 




if there is a man, he is making detonation—
                        Time loads up incident.
                        In recounting there is implication. 
                        Describe all particulars.


                        Piney scented,
                                    the woods.                    Where is
the past 
                                    also present


we never speak of it

 


“Exhibit: in the woods, outside Duncan, British Columbia” was previously published in children of air india, un/authorized exhibits and interjections, (Nightwood Editions, 2013)

low tide

by diane tucker


low tide, and everything hidden
is now uncovered: the black weed, certainly
but also the upright fields of barnacles fighting
for space with the black mussels, these
gathered like a thousand shiny goat hooves
tied up and down the oily piles

the air is not their native habitat
in the breeze they clamp tight shut
nothing moist and pulsing
must be open to the sunlight

and we admire their defense, breathe
in sweetly their walls’ salt smell

when the tide lowers around our own
wet hearts there is no shield to slam
no doors we can clap closed around it
like the lid covers the glittering slick eyeball

no dreaming in briny bone-cells
for our washed up, low tide hearts

while the sun shines, they must lie
still in it, let their tissue-thin skin crack
and curl open, gasping in the open air

tides change
turn and return
barnacles and mussels, even the black
weed crunched in the sand, know
the tide will miss them and come back

our hearts, baking in their cracked-up
hides, lose all knowing, can breathe only
shallowly for reasons they cannot remember
trying not to lose what’s left of slippery life


“Low Tide” was first published in Bonsai Love, by Diane Tucker (Harbour Publishing, 2014, www.harbourpublishing.com) and is shared here with permission.

blue melodica

by diane tucker


The wet-felt overcast air packed
into the August afternoon is scattered,
cooled by your melodica and your voice
in old French song.

The humidity gathers itself
into raindrops and rushes to you.
It throws you all its tiny silver coins.

All the damp sweaty scurriers,
tourists and shoppers, be damned.
You are going to sing.

Thank you for your blue-boxed breath,
your thin paisley dress dripping
bohemian beside designers’ doors.

At the rushing hour of the afternoon
you pull harried ears to the curb,
bring into focus the waiting bench
and the fresh tree. Your song’s
momentum speeds us into stillness.

vancouver dry-dock

by diane tucker


The gulls’ shadows, temporary crows,
rush up the dock’s rust-stained sides,
meeting their white-as-angel selves at its lip,
all under the gaze of two yellow
tyrannosaur cranes on their bee-striped feet.

Some of the black bird-shapes are real crows
and the rest are seagulls’ shadows, wider,
their wings narrower and knife-shaped, gulls
trying to paint themselves up the vast grey
building’s side. But the image never sticks
and they fly by again: living, rising brushes.

The crows are smaller and smug in the distance,
racing up and meeting their shadow-selves
in the sky. But they can’t streak it either, great
horizontal slab a block long, metal tunnel
disgorging ships, wall of wind gathered and pressed
flat and swung up perpendicular to the water.

Into this both crows and gulls slam their shadows,
scrape them up its sides, sweep them back down
again, day after day of invisible avian ink making
time itself the paint against the wall, a streaked
and graven web of swift calligraphy.

egg poems: an english languacultural history of china

by changming yuan


1/ Ancient China

They used to drink tea
Wear silk
Eat from china
Think in terms of zen
And practice Confucianism

Only—is it true?

.

2/ Semi-Colonial China

Wearing cheongsam
These poor coolies arrived here
On sampans
Always ready to kowtow
To a tycoon
Who lived in Shangri-La
Eating dim sum
Drinking oolong
Playing mahjong
Gambling in a casino every day
Though reluctant to give cumshaw

.

3/ Mandarin China

Led by dao
A yin
Running dog
Wearing qipao
Is fighting against a yang
Paper tiger
With wushu
After getting brainwashed
Through maotai
Like a taikongnaut
At a fengshui spot
Dominated by qi

 


A word (or person) with a Chinese origin living in the West is often called an “egg,” which is white-skinned but yellow-hearted.