1/10/2021 POETRY: GILLIAN JEROMEFAREWELL, MY SEA — poem for the Salish Sea The morning the quake hit the city I swore I’d ride full gallop into that sea never look back. I listened to Jay-Z, shoved tiny nectarines into my satchel, and fled West past the Prime Minister who stood at the corner of 4th and Trutch disguised as a Dutch milkmaid with rosy cheeks. Kits beach was furious. But I found my pony di Esperia standing in my dory and so put myself upon her and we rowed – At Howe Sound a gang of dinghies shepherded by muscular oilers slicked up around us. In their faces the coast was a Shrinky Dink. Dogs and cats galore were chucked and dunked into the floatsam. The masked activists who had lain their bodies down beneath bulldozers at Burnaby Mountain flung themselves straight as arrows off the Sea-to-Sky cliffs. Pony and I, in those first days, small in our boat, shared our raisins and stale Triscuits with pirates from Fort McMurray who stabbed each other up for their last rails. All of the city’s private property was now public, but useless, floating as it was, in shit. None of it, not the iPhones or Jaguars, the Hunter boots or toy giraffes imported from France, now bobbing maniacally in the water, mattered. We shared stories and whatever raisins were left. Alanis Obomsawin, sitting around our campfire beside Pauline Johnson, asked what colour the sky was. St. Kateri Tekakwitha, Ike and Tina, Joan of Arc, Marco Polo, Snuffaluffagus— they all came galumphing back. Buffy St. Marie. Neil Young. Louis Riel. We all sat around roasting raisins – all of us intermittently marooned on an unidentifiable Arctic island at Great Bear Lake. The sky? We hadn’t looked at it. Babies cried. Laura Secord handed out milkshakes. Georgia O’Keefe stood as still as a petroglyph, entranced by the horizon. We’d come too seldom to the ocean. We were too busy with the 21st century. But eternal return isn’t infinite. Not everyone comes back, nothing lasts. My pony refused to do the dirty work and her brackish eyes were glassy. On her way to the slaughterhouse, years ago, standing in a dark box car, despondent, she felt the sudden hospitality of a man’s arms around her neck. Turns out those arms were Nietzsche’s, crash-test dummy, beloved by thousands of boy students of philosophy the world over, lover of blood and birds and horses. When, after more Arctic transit, we moved from ice cap to ice cap and watched off the coast of Greenland the final outburst of the tide flower up and die, we stopped so that Pony could peer into the oily face of the sea. *This poem was published at New Poetry (ed. George Murray) in 2018. Previously published at New Poetry (ed. George Murray) in 2018. Gillian Jerome is the author of a book of poems, Red Nest, which was nominated for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and won the ReLit Award. She co-edited an oral history project, Hope in Shadows: Stories and Photographs from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, which won the 2008 City of Vancouver Book Award. Her poems have recently appeared in GEIST, Hunger Mountain and New Poetry. She teaches literatures and writing at the University of British Columbia where she has taught full-time since 2004. She serves a teacher-mentor in the Poetry in Voice program and teaches sexual health to teenagers. Born in Ottawa and raised in Orléans, Ontario, she lives in Vancouver with her daughters, Rory and Micah Sophia, and their silver-eyed unicorn Geneviève Hugo.
1/10/2021 POETRY: JUDITH PENNERWHAT ABOUT THE WEATHER? 1. July 2, 2012, Vancouver, just after 7 pm. In 32 out of 49 United States temperatures are higher than ever recorded, a hundred and five, a hundred and seven, a hundred and nine or more.... In some TV places the air is un- conditioned, no longer homes there, where fires have demolished neighbour- hoods in Colorado Springs. Everything here is lush, soaked, just a little out of season. I can sleep — if I’ve walked, worked at my desk, felt loved by someone, but these days even love won’t assuage anxiety. It’s not just a globe that’s warming, it’s something else – a rise in obfuscation, a lilt of lies? Oil oozing over the map will be no surprise and even the rain won’t stop it now, (such small hands and all that talk is over) — citizens gloved and scared. 2. The summer of 2015, Vancouver, the rain did stop, at least for too long, April to October there was never enough. The shock of turning off the tap, just brush with a cup, do not wash your car, your bike, the shoes you wear, stand with the hose and let a little dribble quench the roses, that old hellebore still blooming, let moss die on stones, my steps stay dirty, neighbourhood vigilantes take their high road turns. The day of my party, a turning point in life, in weather, rain flooded the patio, the pool, the fancied guests. But we were only midway and our thirst was bigger than the rain—a modest spatter, enough for a rainbow, not enough to turn the clock back to that glory life, the one we thought we had forever. After starting out as a poet, short story writer, journalist (The Fiddlehead, Best Canadian Stories, The Observer Magazine (UK), CBC, NFB), and co-author of several non-fiction books, Judith Penner spent a long time preoccupied with family, travel, teaching yoga and related workshops throughout India and North America, and her work as an editor. In recent years her poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in catalogues (readymades, Smith Foundation), anthologies (Sustenance, Anvil Press), The Poetry Foundation, and in literary magazines, including Geist, Prism International, The Capilano Review online, and SubTerrain. Nomados published A Bed of Half Full: a landscape in 2018. She lives in Vancouver.
1/10/2021 POETRY: MARNEY ISAACBUCK She hopes no one sees her superstition built on years of evidence. Two fingers to her lips, a kiss blown in quiet embarrassment, Inherited from buck, long gone buck, bye bye buck. The rivers break and the banks crumble, at sunset, at emergency. Marney Isaac is a Professor and Canada Research Chair at the University of Toronto. Her research program investigates plant-soil interactions and ecological principles that govern the structure and function of diversified agroecosystems. Dr. Isaac serves on the editorial board of applied ecology and agronomy journals and has published widely in the field of environmental science. She has also contributed to numerous non-scientific writing projects, including the uTOpia series GreenTOpia: Towards a Sustainable Toronto (Coach House Books).
www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~misaac/ @MarneyIsaac |
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