9/29/2020 POETRY: JANE SHIWALKING INTO THE OCEAN I frequently think about walking into the ocean. My sense of obligation to the earth simply the flimsy contract of a collapsed toy ship factory. I wonder how long fish would live if no longer fugitive to keel, kellick, and angry boom chain. Giving Botox to the water, the workers of our county must have looked forward to the coolness of soil when they drowned. The last of their incense breaths fleeing from Pender Street, home between ashy pages of quiet night and negligent morning. That portion of motherland was christened Oriental Hawaii. Which part did you name me after? I watch as you twist together umbilical buoy with steaming red sausage. Squeeze blood from wet towel. I get it all mixed up—the water from sausage oil, sun spots from badges of living. Tell me the difference between my bones and the bones of whale shark. Only, this nuclear explosion paints in tiny brushstrokes like iron filings. My ghost grips my neck until I can breathe again. My fear is that the ocean knows too much, would reject me too. The pomelo at the corner of our fridge untouched for months. Face torn up like sausage skin. Roof of my mouth softening, mistaken for glue. The ocean is a fable, seaweed stuck between front teeth. If we laid out our hides side by side, which of us would have more scales? And after all of it: I ride nekton back to before I walked. To find my baby-body fed. To find the coolness of soil in the ship yard’s false summer heat. Safe? A warmth I have betrayed has betrayed me. Who can say if this daydream is more about walking than about water. More about the empty swing than about the drop. More about daring to steal a pillow from a sleeping giant. Unwound spool and a jar of kitchen grease, honeying frozen flies. Somehow the tea is still cold; it’s like you have forgotten who I am. What would you do if I could become a worm wedged between subduction zone boundary between us, waking up to everything, gone? The ocean is not a feeling, not a child, not a mother, not a worker, not a word. But she is still learning from contours of glass—just like we are. jia you [1] putin marches chinese soldiers across shanghai streets. fear the Uighur terrorists, jiuma warns me, and no sooner, street stands steaming with nan and kebab fold into the hollow sprawls of massage parlours, german furniture stores, french bakeries, italian pubs, American sex toy shops, local shoe shops doubling as sunday school, real massage parlours, a lego construction of western carpets and han ornaments. disappeared. students tell each other before gaokao[2]: “jiayou.” mothers tell their children before gaokao: “jiayou.” thick wallets tell their diasporic offspring before AP economics: “jiayou.” translation: build pipelines transporting oil between Skovorodino and Daqing translation: build pipelines transporting greed and colonialism across Turtle Island rupture water with oil. drink oil-flavoured bbt with the thick straw of a gun barrel. brush your teeth with bitumen paste, rinse rinse repeat. extract it from skin browner than ours. take it, drink it. until the sun never dares set on our civilized, meddling kingdom. yellow powder amalgamated with sheens of white-- xiaojie the fairest in the land. a quick nod, scorching back scratcher: got you covered. advancing grades, following orders, guaihaizi marching westward until we lose ourselves between the failure of 89% and the success of swearing allegiance to the queen (making the last payment on the mortgage). filial, determined, loyal to the very end. there would be no chinese faces protesting pipelines that day. I wonder if we’d need to drink poison from these waters we steal from to see the filth on our hands. but you cannot bribe a river to love you, forgive you, no. not today. because the Yangtze remembers the poppies that poisoned, the villages evacuated, the children sold, the maozedongs and elizabeths laundered exchanged transported. just so little xingxing could go to school. just so little favourite grandchild could have a better life. just so we never have to talk about 49, 66-76, 89 tucked between the eights in our addresses and phone numbers, the ones and zeros of our pockets. just so. you tell me, “jia you.” but how can you when you do not know the name of this river. when you do not know where your bones will be buried. when you have crushed your veins between big data and the sea. just so we never have to talk about what we pretend not to know. a bottle of cooking oil, crushed by a tank. [1] jia you means “add oil,” another way to say “good luck” [2] gaokao is the National Higher Education Entrance Examination, a prerequisite exam to get into higher education in the People’s Republic of China Acknowledgement "jia you" previously published in Tributaries: ACAM undergraduate student journal Audio Credits Music for "jia you": "No More Trap" by Audiobinger (CC attribution non-commercial from free music archive). Music for "Walking into the Ocean": "through the water and rain" by soft and furious (public domain from free music archive). Jane Shi is a queer Chinese settler living on the unceded, traditional, and ancestral territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. Her writing has appeared in Briarpatch Magazine, Canthius, The Malahat Review, PRISM, and Room, among others. She wants to live in a world where love is not a limited resource, land is not mined, hearts are not filched, and bodies are not violated. Find her online @pipagaopoetry.
9/27/2020 POETRY: ELI TAREQ EL BECHELANY-LYNCHHOME = GARBAGE for Khalo looking out the window from my teta’s balcony at the news on my laptop some days they look the same and some days they don’t my aunt says this is weird there have never been any military tanks in zalka before three days in a row imagine the difference between this looks weird and military men directing traffic on a daily basis rifles slung across their shoulders waving the cars to keep going stop, turn left cars in two lanes somehow fitting themselves four wide stop, keep going, turn left this country is corrupt says my uncle this country smells like garbage contracts with the garbage company left unrenewed military men pinching their noses while directing traffic if we can’t manage garbage can we do anything right? we stop, keep going, turn left people sling bags of rotten garbage over mountain sides over roadsides drop garbage onto houses into the ocean anywhere but garbage disposal where to dispose when there is nowhere four months and my uncle is hospitalized lungs filled with pollution hundreds of people in the country polluted beirut protesters push industrial garbage bins into the middle of the road try pretending that doesn’t exist aimed at government officials refusing press people start to move them most people drive around them an obstacle course in preserving ignorance let us press our ignorance deeper throw bags over the shoulders of refugees this country is too small as though that’s the only problem religion into garbage brown sludge building when it’s too hot to stay inside my family heads to the beach stops at a checkpoint on the way up the mountains the military man with a rifle across his shoulders barely looks wipes sweat off his brow bored, nods, motions us forward the privilege of christianity there are hundreds of military checkpoints in this tiny country hundreds of bored military men stop, keep going, shmel there are thousands of palestinians in refugee camps in this country stop, undocumented, prohibited movement hindered by checkpoints in and out stop, undocumented, prohibited I don’t live in zalka anymore but every year I visit the garbage keeps growing downtown beirut skyscrapers hiding the garbage close the back windows or we’ll smell garbage speeding on the only highway in lebanon past garbage piles in flames taller than the gas station beside it my uncle’s lungs filled with garbage this country is corrupt, says my uncle and I ask him why he’s still here it’s home, he says, his nose plugged my family came back 18 years ago this is home, they say lungs filled with garbage Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch is a queer Arab poet living in Tio’tia:ke, unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory (Montreal). Their work has appeared in The Best Canadian Poetry 2018 anthology, GUTS, the Shade Journal, Arc Poetry Magazine, Room Magazine, and elsewhere. They were longlisted for the CBC poetry prize in 2019. knot body, a collection of creative non-fiction and poetry will be published September 2020 by Metatron Press, and The Good Arabs, a poetry collection, will be published in Fall 2021 with Metonymy Press. You can find them on Instagram and Twitter @theonlyelitareq.
9/20/2020 POETRY: TOM CULLANTI-APOCALYPSE no nuclear winter no ice age no superbug no second coming no robot revolution a pear tree buckthorn plastic bags a river turtles "Anti-Apocalypse" previously published in Bad Animals (Insominac Press, 2018) Tom Cull teaches creative writing at Western University and was the Poet Laureate for the City of London from 2016-2018. Tom’s first collection of poems, Bad Animals, was published in 2018 by Insomniac Press. His work has appeared in such journals as the Rusty Toque, Long Con, and the New Quarterly; his poem “After Rivers” was included in the anthology Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice (MSU Press, 2019). Tom is the director of Antler River Rally, a grass roots environmental group he co-founded in 2012 with his partner Miriam Love. ARR works to protect and restore Deshkan Ziibi (Thames River).
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