IF TINY CRYSTALS FORM CLOSE TO THE EARTH’S SURFACE THEY FORM DIAMOND DUST My antler heart grows hooves. I follow the lead from the pack. Find shelter in a drunken forest-- what species isn’t at risk. Insulating properties of snow keep me warm-- trapped air between each flake. With body heat and earth-transfer heat my home becomes a snowbank. It’s not the hare’s scream that haunts, it’s the antecedent silence. THE TREES we fill ourselves up with slow-banked health push off the not needed with the growth behind it we tick silent rings inside our own xylem clocks each wound is sealed with home-spun adhesive we synthesize sunshine to a flameless fire we shed to survive to burn spring green INTERSECTIONS All parts have a line with never end. Ongoing fury—burns a shatter zone. Cries by a gate can’t slip out, they hover. Hold blue in your hands. Go on, cup sky. This isn’t illusion. The sound of absence is your boat coming in. The work is in the meadow. It’s hard to put past in a safe place. Some eyes see, if not birds. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS “If Tiny Crystals Form Close to The Earth’s Surface They Form Diamond Dust” first published in the UK literary journal Stag Hill Literary Journal “The Trees” first published in the LCP anthology: Heartwood: a League of Canadian Poets Anthology “Intersections” published in the online UK journal/website Burning House Press Catherine Graham reading at Extinction Rebellion Toronto's TIFF Party Climate Crisis Reading, September 7, 2019. Catherine Graham is an award-winning Toronto-based writer. Her sixth poetry collection, The Celery Forest, was named a CBC Best Book of the Year, appears on the CBC Books Ultimate Canadian Poetry List and was a finalist for the Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry. Her Red Hair Rises with the Wings of Insect was a finalist for the Raymond Souster Poetry Award and the CAA Poetry Award. Her debut novel Quarry won an Independent Publisher Book Awards gold medal for fiction, “The Very Best!” Book Awards for Best Fiction and was a finalist for the Sarton Women’s Book Award for Contemporary Fiction and the Fred Kerner Book Award. She teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto where she won an Excellence in Teaching Award and is a previous winner of the Toronto International Festival of Authors’ Poetry NOW competition. Æther: an out-of-body lyric will appear in 2020 with Wolsak and Wynn. Visit her at www.catherinegraham.com Follow her on Instagram and Twitter @catgrahampoet
OCTOPO AND TEUTHIET Two octopoteuthis deletron squid collided in the Pacific depths at sunset in July. Each one mirrored the other, with a shimmering, voluptuous, sperm-plastered mantle, and engorged arms bursting with come-hither barbs. The squid fell deeply in love. But soon they found themselves unable to feed. Both deletrons were inevitably drawn to hunting the other, now possessing the only flesh each craved in all the ocean. They pledged a vow of starvation, lest they risk consuming each other. With every passing wave, their bodies grew less sumptuous; their love more incandescent. And one November morning, both flesh and love were gone. OCTOPOLIS a cracked silver mirror reflects no octopus; its sand-blessed face now blasted and dark. wriggling copepods blind to the harvest, swarm on the bars of a vintage metal birdcage. given your eyeglasses, an octopus would shun the primitive lenses; covet their frames. gilded candelabra! ardent octopodes recreate your branchial arcs with flesh. see here, li’l miss mermaid! this octopus has one dinglehopper your museum can’t claim. her move: palpitating to the white king. a tentacular caress. checkmate. in an octopus’ untrained suckers, swords are more direct and less efficient than beaks if an hourglass lurked half-submerged in white sand, could an octopus measure a minute? splintered seashells in a nacreous mosaic frame an abalone portrait of you. BREEDING GROUNDS: EMPTY CALORIES so much depends upon the Greenland shark grinding its toxic jaws into a gaunt polar bear Rasiqra Revulva reading "Octopo and Teuthiet," "Octopolis," and "Breeding Grounds: Empy Calories," Extinction Rebellion Toronto's TIFF Party Climate Crisis Reading, September 7, 2019. Rasiqra Revulva is a queer femme writer, multi-media artist, editor, musician, performer, SciComm advocate, and one half of the glitch-art and experimental electronic duo The Databats. If You Forget the Whipped Cream, You're No Good As A Woman (Gap Riot Press, 2018) is her second chapbook. She is currently adapting her first chapbook Cephalopography (words(on)pages press, 2016) into her debut collection, to be published by Wolsak & Wynn in spring 2020. Learn more at: @rasiqra_revulva and @thedatabats.
ENDLESS INTER-STATES 1 They go down to the expressways, baskets In hand, they go down with rakes, shovels And watering cans, they go down to pick Beans and trim tomato plants, they go down In wide-brimmed hats and boots, passing By the glass-pickers, the Geiger counters, those Guarding the toxic wastes. They go down Remembering the glide of automobiles, the Swelter of children in back seats, pinching, twitching, Sand in their bathing suits, two-fours of Molson’s In the trunk of the car. They go down, past The sifters, the tunnellers, those who transport Soil from deep in the earth, and are content To have the day before them, are content to imagine Futures they will inhabit, beautiful futures Filled with unimagined species, new varieties of Plant life, sustainable abundance, An idea of sufficient that is global. Or, Because cars now move on rails underground, The elevated roads are covered in earth, Vines drape around belts of green, snake Through cities, overgrown and teeming With grackles and rats’ nests, a wall Of our own devising, and the night Watchmen with their machine guns Keeping humans, the intoxicated, Out. I am sorry for this vision, offer You coffee, hot while there is still Coffee this far north, while there is still news To wake up to, and seasons Vaguely reminiscent of seasons. 2 Web-toed she walks into the land, fins Carving out river bottoms, each hesitation A lakebed, each mid-afternoon nap, a plateau, Quaint, at least that is my dream of her, Big shouldered, out there daydreaming The world into existence, pleasuring herself With lines and pauses. How else? What is a lake But a pause? People circling it with structures, dipping In their poles? Once she thought she could pass by Harmless. Scraping wet shale, her knees down in it, she Tries to remember earth, that ground cover. She tries To reattach things, but why? What if the world Is all action? What if thought isn’t glue, but tearing? She sits at the lake edge where the water never meets Earth, never touches, not really, is always pulling Itself on to the next. 3 Now she sits by her memory of meadow, forlorn, shoeless. She could scoop PCBs from the Hudson, she is Always picking up after someone. But what? What Is the primary trope of this romp? Where her uterus Was the smell of buckshot and tar, an old man chasing Her with a shotgun across his range. Cow pies and Hornets’ nests, gangly boys shooting cats with BB guns, Boys summering from Calgary, trees hollowed out, Hiding all manner of contraband goods. When she peers In the knotted oak, classic movies run on The hour, Scout on the dark bark, Mildred Pierce with a squirrel tale wrap. Nature is over, She concludes. Nature is what is caught, cellular, Celluloid. She sticks a thumb in another tree, a Brownstone, a small girl—her heart a thing locked. It’s been so long since she felt hopeful. (Perhaps nature Is childhood.) The morning after Chernobyl Out there with tiny umbrellas. All those internal Combustions. This is a country that has accepted death As an industry, it is not news. She has been warned. Her ratings sag. She scans her least apocalyptic Self and sees mariners floating, Ben Franklin penning daily axioms, glasses lifting From the river bank, planked skirts on Front, China-like through the industrious, thinking, traffic Clogged city, its brick heavy with desire for good. Memory of meadow, Dickinson an ice pick scratching Wings in her brain: if you see her standing, if you move Too quickly, if you locate the centre, if you have other Opportunities, by all means if you have other opportunities. 4 Abondoned mine shafts on either side, those Tight curves between Kaslo and New Denver, Hairpin at glacial creek, splash of red Bellies muscling, streaming up, we see them From the open window. Or once did. Even here? Salmon stocks diminish, mammals dying off. No, he said, not in your lifetime. Vertical; Traces where the charge went off, Ruggedness is your only defence, he Said, be difficult to cultivate, navigate. Offer No hint of paradise, no whiff of Golf course. Uninhabitability your only Recourse. Lashed, that moment, prolonged Leaving, her father on the roadside Dreaming his world fitting in some place, Without being reigned in, her father’s fathers Throwing rocks down on Hannibal, Straddling the last large elm in the valley, Knowing where and how to lay the charge, or Sucking shrapnel from an open wound, The lambs all around, bleating. 5 Which liftetime? Beyond what brawn? Who Knew where the road would take us? Neat, neat, the rows of apple trees There in the valley, red summers, the heat Of Quebecois pickers, VWs in a circle, Firepit and strum. Men from Thetford Mines dreaming peaches, dreaming Clean soil. Hour upon hour the self Becomes less aware of the self. Beautiful, beautiful, the centre line, the road, This power station and control tower, these Weigh scales, these curves, that mountain Goat, those cut lines, these rail lines, that Canyon, the Fraser, the Thompson, The old highways hyphenating Sagebrush, dead-ending on chain Link, old cars collecting like bugs On the roadside, overturned, curled, astute, Memory of the Overlanders, Optimism, headlong into Hell’s Gate. Churn of now, The sound barriers, the steering Wheel, the gas pedal, the gearshift, The dice dangling, fuzzy, Teal, dual ashtrays, AM radio Tuned to CBC, no draft, six cylinders, The gas tank, the gearshift, easing Into the sweet spot behind The semi, flying through Roger’s Pass; the snowplow, the Park Pass, sun on mud flap, the rest stop Rock slides, glint of snow, the runaway Lanes, the grades steep as skyscrapers, The road cutting through cities, Slicing towns, dividing parks, The road over lakes, under rivers, The road right through a redwood, Driving on top of cities, all eyes On the DVD screen, All minds on the cellphone, The safari not around, but inside Us: that which fuels. 6 No matter, the slither of pavement is endless, Today the rain, a gold standard, all the Earmarks of, never mind, all is well, all Is well, and who doesn’t want to hear that? She gets on her scooter and roars, she gets On her skateboard and feels the air under Foot, she shakes out her hair, thinking of California, Thinking of allergies, thinking of the wreck Of place: who ever promised more? The iris With its feigned restraint, the daring tuba, The horn of shoe, utilitarian, delicate. Such Useful domesticity, such hopeful electronics. Once she disappeared by turning sideways. Now she finds it difficult to reappear. She lifts The sediment of time to her palm, feels it sift Between her fingers: bone, bits of event. Aren’t We all a bit fluish this century? Nothing bearing any Mark of otherwise. No prescript, nothing a bit of hope Won’t cure. Such a churn of optimism: That which consecrates will not kill. Maybe New York? She fits herself on an easterly course: been done, Been done, but what better than the well-trodden Path? Beautiful, beautiful, the seams Of the rich, their folded linens, Their soft bags of money. If it ain’t broke Don’t fix, if it ain’t resistant, don’t Wince, if it fits like a boot, then boot it. And so she does. Sina Queyras, “Endless Inter-States” from Expressway. Copyright © 2009 by Sina Queyras. Reprinted by permission of Coach House Books.
Source: Expressway (Coach House Press, 2009) AND YET
It was 1989 when our music television station went green to join a cause that had become the topic du jour: the environment, Greenpeace, and rock n roll. Earth day videos of toxic waste dumps, co2 emissions, and hair spray that held crowns up had to be put down. "Look at what we're doing, Jane," they said as images of sad polar bears, dying seal pups (appropriated), streamed by as we anxiously scribbled protest signs, planted trees at school, and felt for the first time that we could make something happen beyond cynicism and Ferris Bueller. U2, World Party, Peter Gabriel, Sting,The Boss, Sinead "O'Fucking Yes" O'Connor, Chrissie Hynde, in concert. Watch it live and donate now to the Earth! "We gotta do something now, John," we said, and somehow the corps made us believe we were not pretending to care because it was a real cool party and we were just dancing politics. That was it. A day every year we try to recreate the moment, and all this time we had been clogging up our oceans with their plastic, still our air with their acid fumes, still, spilling their, our, whatever, oil, still in lakes and directly on endangered birds as if we didn't learn anything and somehow a lot of us forgot how to use our legs. It's 2019 complacent and complicit we are and the new kids, scream blame and hope, all at once, so empowered through inherited black smoke Now we're finally listening? "There is no invitation to this show, people," we should all be there. Jacqueline Valencia is a Toronto-based writer, editor, and critic. She is the author of Lilith (Desert Pets Press, 2018) and There Is No Escape Out Of Time (Insomniac Press, 2016). Current projects include: Writer's residency at Poetry InPrint (poetry and printmaking), Fuck This Place (novel-in-progress) and planning the second Poetry Talks: Racism and Sexism in the craft (pending 2020). Jacqueline is a full-time maid, and the mother to two wonderful teenagers. jacquelinevalencia.wordpress.com FUTURE IMPERFECT Mostly I look quickly at the latest reports, through the cracks between my fingers, out the corner of my eye, look away quickly, calculate years to collapse. A—grass dies; B—human beings die; C—human beings are grass. It’s years right? Rolling fields of us, all relative, the wind bending the blades back before the dawn, all in the same direction, rippling, wave and particle, dying in drought, coming back green in the spring, the colours—we forget—the colours of the grasses, their flowers, led purple pewter scarlet—like a fever, so small yet so very many—the detail is lost in the collective sheen. Intercalary meristem. Spiralate movement. We’re all relative. Relatives. That was then. This is now. The plough is in the sky. The earth is tilled by no one. A—all civilizations collapse; B—you call this a civilization? What will have been the case in the future I read will depend upon possible pasts that will also have been the case at least one of them that is. Do you have any possible pasts I could trade for some uncertain futures at the going rate? / I found them by the dumpster out back beside a thrown away planet a bit flat or even concave like a crushed and stained mattress / I want change I want not this pathway but that presently unknown one we know too much and too little I am convinced or can infer? The possible is simply what either is or will be true. If it will be that p will never be the case, then p—right now—will never be the case. I am skeptical. Wander through truisms like trees making potential sounds if they are potentially cut then they are housing. Birds bugs and the precariat. I have no time for this. Then there will be no time for this at some point in the future. Stephen Collis is the author of a dozen books of poetry and prose, including The Commons (Talon Books 2008), Once in Blockadia (Talon Books 2016) and Almost Islands: Phyllis Webb and the Pursuit of the Unwritten (Talon Books 2018). Current research on the climate emergency and human and other displacements is involved in two in-process projects: Future Imperfect (poetry) and A Sestina for Max Sebald (prose). He lives near Vancouver, on unceded Coast Salish Territory, and teaches poetry and poetics at Simon Fraser University.
WHETHER THE HEAVENS BREAK WHETHER THE HEAVENS BREAK WHETHER THE BROKEN CLOUDS ACCUMULATE ENOUGH AUDIENCE TO DEBUT AT TIFF WHETHER CURIOUS CUMULI INCUBATE OUR ATTENTION WHETHER THE WEATHER BURSTS FORTH LIKE HEAVEN'S GATES LOCKING DOWN ALL THE LATCHES WHETHER WATER AND ETHER COMBINED MAKE A BEAUTIFUL SUNSET WHETHER DUSK IS UPON US SOONER RATHER THAN LATER WHETHER YOU PREFER HURRICANES OVER HEAT WAVES MONSOONS OVER ICE MELTS WHETHER YOU HARVEST FRUIT FROM THE FOREST FLOOR OR WITHERED ON WIZENED VINES WHETHER YOU PINE FOR YOUR MUSKOKA CHILDHOOD WHETHER PILEATED WOODPECKERS DELIGHT YOU EITHER THE CONTINUOUS PRESENT OR THE LOOMING FUTURE EITHER SOME OF THEM OR ALL OF US WHETHER EMPATHY WHETHER MORALITY WHETHER TRUTH WAVERS BEFORE SIX-DOLLAR LATTES AND MAUVE MACARONS WHETHER IT WAS A TOTAL BLOCKBUSTER WHETHER YOU'VE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE IT WHETHER THE SKY GETS DARKER THAN "BREAKING BAD" WHETHER REALITY IS A MALEVOLENT COLOSSUS COMING ON LIKE AN ADORABLE BABY LION WHETHER SUPERWINDSTORMS MAKE THE RATINGS RISE WHETHER THE DEADLINE PREMIERE IS A NO-HOLDS-BARRED DOCUMENTARY ON SUBLIME SUB-SAHARAN DROUGHT DO WE HAVE OUR TICKET IN ADVANCE DO WE HAVE OUR SEAT RESERVED DO WE HAVE A COVETED SPOT BESIDE THE RED CARPET WHETHER WE LIKE COMEDIES OR THRENODIES WHETHER THE FILMMAKER WAS FUNDED BY A FRACKING CONGLOMERATE OR A BRAZILIAN MINING CONSORTIUM WHETHER THE CLIMAX IS A MASS SHOOTING EVENT THAT SOUNDED LIKE A RUNAWAY TRAIN THAT BARRELLED INTO CANADIAN TIRE LIKE A BLOOD AVALANCHE AT NIAGARA WE'VE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE IT EVER BEFORE STEP RIGHT THIS WAY STEP INTO THE HARSH GLARE OF THE BIGGEST SHOW ON EARTH WHETHER WHATEVER WE DREAM IS JUST LIKE A MOVIE WHETHER IT IS ALL JUST LIKE CUTTING-EDGE CINEMA WHETHER WE'RE ON 24/7 CANDID CAMERA ALONG WITH FACIAL RECOGNITION HOW ABOUT GLACIAL RECOGNITION OR WILL THAT SPOIL THE PLOTLINE FOR US WHETHER IT IS ALL SO ORIGINAL WHETHER IT IS CRAZY GENIUS AT HAND WHEN THE HEAVENS HEAVE AND THREATEN YES THE SKY MIGHT BREAK OPEN YES THE SKY IS MADE OF GOSSAMER ETHER YES THE ETHER IS MADE OF TRANSHUMAN MEMORY YES THE MEMORY DRINKS IN RAIN YES THE AUDIENCE IS AN OCEAN WE WANT THE C.G.A. WEATHER TO LOOK MORE WILD THAN WILDERNESS ALONE WE WANT THE ENDING TO SHOCK US WE WANT TO BE AWAKE SO WAKE UP CAN WE WAKE UP LET'S WAKE UP Margaret Christakos reading "Whether the Heavens Break," Extinction Rebellion Toronto's TIFF Party Climate Crisis Reading, September 7, 2019. Margaret Christakos creates poetry, teaches, and thinks about forms of direct and indirect social address as part of her thirty-year artistic practice. She hails from Sudbury, Ontario, and lives in Toronto. Recent books include Multitudes and Her Paraphernalia: On Motherlines, Sex/Blood/Loss & Selfies. In Spring 2020 her new book charger is forthcoming.
WE WILL TELL THEM OF OUR DOMINION First, we will tell them of our dominion We will tell them of the web peeling back in the heavens, the sun's maw radiating We will tell them we can see the air We will tell them green turned brown and grey We will tell them green covered the earth We will tell them of plastic islands We will tell them of sands too hot to inhabit, We will tell them of where people cannot hold their breath forever We will tell them of undulating obituaries We will tell them of backroom deals, of slow-moving cogs We will tell them of childhood depression We will tell them of corporate footprints, handprints, fingers in pies, stained red We will tell them of mass delusion We will tell them of moral misbehavior We will tell them of fears for marble over feather and fur We will tell them about the non-identity problem We will tell them of the powerful two-faced We will tell them why the scientists cried We will tell them why the philosophers cried We will tell them why the parents cried We will tell them of carbon dioxide shouts, of splintered protests We will tell them of tear gas, of turned heads We will tell them of laws broken We will tell them of backs broken We will tell them of turning, turning Later, we will tell them the oil barons are dead We will tell them guardians fought back We will tell them a panacea was birthed from the Amazon ash We will tell them blood is not translucent, but still pumping We will tell them the ocean is still loud We will tell them we relocated the sacred We will tell them we refined our brains We will tell them the sun is everything We will tell them we were sorry We will tell them we know why the sky is blue. Terese Mason Pierre reading "We Will Tell Them of Our Dominion," Extinction Rebellion Toronto's TIFF Party Climate Crisis Reading, September 7, 2019. Terese Mason Pierre is a writer, editor, and organizer. Her work has appeared in The Hart House Review, The Temz Review, and others. She is the poetry editor of Augur Magazine and volunteers with Shab-e She'r poetry reading series. She lives and works in Toronto.
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AboutAn anthology of creative works devoted to the climate crisis and climate justice.
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December 2019
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