WALKING 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.

​

Acknowledgement
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"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.

HOME = 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. 

ANTI-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).