Parched He looks around uncertainly, focuses on what has changed. His glasses are gone, hearing aid too; no socks, loose slippers, he’s wearing someone else’s shirt. The tv’s a long way off and muted. So many faces he can’t place. There are screams and sobs; bodies sleep or rock in wipe clean wing chairs. In
THE MANSION [ EXCERPT ] ______________________ June 2006: It felt good to be in the old neighbourhood– Travelling to a vegan potluck at a house On Sutter Street on foot gave me A chance to see my first home in the city again. In between a Solid brick Black Protestant church & Expensive luxury condominiums
The old house, built in 1895, was the best of weathered antiques having hugged North Rogers Street from days of horses to days of horse-powered engines, and now to electric cars. As the story goes, Grandad purchased the old house shortly after returning from WWI by merely signing his name on a blank piece of
“Never trust a man, Hina. They’re all scum.” I was nine years old when my mother first said this to me. She had failed yet again to secure a divorce from my father in Pakistan—her second attempt at doing so. The first time she tried, I was five and remember the day we came back
Alone I stand in a dark graveyard Bodies lay still but there are no souls I walk alone without my heart Can’t fill these empty wormholes How can anyone say she didn’t matter She was everything to me Selling their soul is what they’d rather Married into a portal to hell on earth I’m born
shorts and sandals on a hot October day 30.1 degrees Celsius this is a riff on changing times on changing ways on changing days salmon are jumping and people are oohing the weir too high, they spawn and die the water runs swift like the beat of a riff cormorants soar while cascades roar susurrant,
In Memory of My Memory Okay, so this happened on Tuesday. Or Wednesday. Wait… Was it Monday? What day is it? It was Sunday. Yes, it was Sunday because Sunday means I get to drive up north and say hi to the maple trees. I like trees. They are nice neighbours. They are always standing
Dear Friends, What to be made of situations like these, With precedence most refused to see? When righteous anger now takes place. Where were you when wolves (viewed as sheep) were crying for wolves? Why is it we get acknowledgement now – when their bodies are no longer even cold? How to reconcile from this
Atmospheric Pressure Let forgiveness come in like breath I did not mean to draw. Let it flow, propelled by the pressure of the entire atmosphere being greater than that of my own lungs. Let forgiveness draw into me by force, thrust and crammed in like a deep, satisfying breath like a yawn mid-sentence that you
https://youtu.be/DAP59RPZoMg *Shorter version: https://youtu.be/iZ1Q9J4EBIw *Written in honour of the many children who never returned home from residential schools in Canada. “it was the land” by pj johnson Poet Laureate of the Yukon. it was the land no one knew the evil men could do behind closed doors no one spoke of it no one said
