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). 

AVIAN ODES—CANADA GOOSE
 
The chill, glassy mist just then
Dissolving into hints of sultriness
Echoed with jubilant honks,
Avian position-signalling on high,
Pulling my gaze up to your magnificent
Flying V’s northward bound
Flinging joyful vernal greetings.
 
Come the ordained crisp autumn day
The calls echoed again off frosted fields
As your arrow formations streamed south,
Bidding farewell until spring warmth
Once more crept in.
 
Winter past was deep, consistent;
Now it staggers all around,
Reeling under humanity’s blows,
Glistening white morphs
To sulky brown mud,
Defiantly open water
Supplants sparkling ice.
Eminently flexible,
A few goose homebodies
Spawned many more of you that
Seize what’s on offer, spurn the effort
And trade glorious flight for ungainly
Waddling about and strolls through traffic,
Expropriating luscious, manicured turf,
Cheerfully crapping all over your squattage;
Soaring nobility mutated to a
Grey-brown-black wingéd pest
Herded off the cathedral greensward
By a bellowing leaf blower;
Target practice for a skulking
Archer in a London park;
Clubbing victim of a sportsman
Whose putt was ruined by an
Inopportune anserine klaxon.
 
Undaunted, you multiply and toddle on,
Once a belovéd seasonal herald,
Now flocks of Cassandras trumpeting
Warnings, flaunting consequences,
Announcing a battle joined.

Jennifer Wenn is a trans-identified writer and speaker from London, Ontario.   Her first poetry chapbook, A Song of Milestones, has been published by Harmonia Press (an imprint of Beliveau Books).  She has also written From Adversity to Accomplishment, a family and social history; and published poetry in Beliveau Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Open Minds Quarterly, Tuck Magazine, Synaeresis, Big Pond Rumours, the League of Canadian Poets Fresh Voices, Wordsfestzine, and the anthology Things That Matter.  She is also the proud parent of two adult children with a day job as a systems analyst. Jennifer Wenn's website.

STAND BY THE LAST STREAM

Mother, I can hear you cry
with every pipeline being
laid to unrest deep in your folds,
deep in your layers.
I can hear you cry
and those who believe
know why-

Stand by the last stream
it’s only a matter of time
and stories will be told
of a time when water was
clean and free.
It will be a fairy tale in
good books sold at
exotic establishments.
It will be what dreams
are made of
and what man will
die for.

Stand by the last stream
watch it struggle
pitifully,
trying to complete the circle
with nothing left to prov.

Stand by the last rive,r
gather around it
to pray hard this doesn’t end
the intentions of Mother Earth.
Remember the slow trickles,
the last sounds anyone ever hears
of a time when water was clear
and a time when it was free,
a time when water fell from the sky
clear droplet, clear droplets
that could be tasted
as it fell.

Stand by the last stream
that feedds the life of our animals
who trusted Mother earth
to always provide.
Imagine the new bear or the new child
not knowing where the last stream is.
What will become of them?

Stand by the last strea,
the last unmurky source
of life, peace and renewal,
gurgling, choking for breath
and         space
not a fish in sight
because they are all in farms and zoos.

Stand by the last stream
as our children's’ children
gather round and wonder why,
saying they could have done a better job,
and they’d be right.

Stand by the last stream,
with your friends and loved ones
and reminisce about a time
when you could reach in with both hand,
almost in prayer and cup the water
and drink straight from Mother Earth-
the breast of mankind.

Stand by the last stream
wondering what happened,
turning into a 3rd world country
as the trees that once stood tall,
fall by the wayside waiting to be
turned into more paper for more
signatures and stamps of approval
to go ahead and destroy the last stream.

Stand by the last stream
with your child looking on
at the last crystal clear wate
trickling to an end
and try to find the words
to explain.
Try and explain what no one
will understand and hindsight is
20-20

Stand by the last stream
as money floats by
instead of fish,
and gold can’t be eaten,
and silver can’t be eaten,
and diamonds can’t be worn,
and animals can’t be saved,
and the trees rot on the ground
while children swarm singing
in empty playgrounds
by the last stream,
and you can’t give a newborn oil,
and not even the dandelions will grow,
and the birds won’t call,
and the pictures you see in your head
will only be a story...
and the only thing left will be regret...

Will you stand
stand by the last stream...


Previously published in Seven Sacred Truths, Talonbooks in 2018.

 Cree poet Wanda John-Kehewin studied criminology, sociology, Aboriginal studies, and creative writing while attending the Writer’s Studio writing program at Simon Fraser University. She uses writing as a therapeutic medium through which to understand and to respond to the near decimation of First Nations culture, language, and tradition. She has two poetry books published by Talonbooks, two children’s readers and is currently working on a graphic novel. She finds time to write between the lines.

SOUTHERN GASTRIC-BROODING FROG
Rheobatrachus silus
 
collected by David S. Liem
Australia
1972
 
adult male
38.4 mm snout to vent
 
slate-coloured
smooth, slimy skin
prominent eyes, black
with gold spots
round blunt snout
jaws close snap
 
inhabit boulder-strewn
streams, spend days
submerged
 
summer rains initiate breeding
 
females swallow
fertilized eggs, tadpoles
develop in the stomach, are birthed
through the mother’s mouth
fully-formed froglets spew forth
 
1978 summer rains late
1979 rains very late
1980 & 1981 rains late again
 
last seen in the wild December 1979
last captive frog died November 1983
Extinct


 

THE CALL OF THIS SPECIES
 
 
The grunting of a pig     a hen cackling     the bleat of a sheep
the low bellow of an ox     a cricket singing near the water
a dog’s bark     a duck quacking     young crows cawing
a delicate insect-like tinkle     a broken banjo string
a finger running over the small teeth of a comb
a squeaky door being slowly opened     a carpenter’s hammer
the tapping of paddles on the side of a canoe     a cough
a watch being wound     a nasal snarl
a low-pitched snore     two marbles being struck together
sleigh bells     the clangor of a blacksmith's shop
 
P-r-r-r-     pip-pip-pip-pip     poo-poo-poo-poo-poo-poo
purrrreeeek     cr, cr, cr     cre-e-e-e-e-e-p, cre-e-e-e-e-e-p
pst-pst-pst     queenk, queenk     eeek!     kraw, kraw, kraw    
jwah, jwah     ah, ah, ah, ah     krack, krack, krack     
ca-ha-ha-ac, ca-ha-ha-ac, ca-ha-ha-ac     pé-pé, pé-pé    
kle-kle-kle-klee     cran, cran, cran, c-r-r-en, c-r-r-en 
creck-creck-creck     cut-cut-cut-cut     ric-up, ric-up, ric-up
ru-u-u-ummm ru-u-u-ummm     grrruut-grrruut-grrruut-grrruut
grau, grau     gick, gick, gick, gick     tschw, tschw, tschw    
wurrk, wur-r-r-k     trint-trint     tr-r-r-onk tr-r-r-onk, tr-r-r-onk!
 
The call of this species has not been recorded



 
THREATS
 
fragmentation of forest    
clearance of cloud forest
movement of the cloud layer up the mountainside
timber harvesting    
landslides    
ice in the montane grasslands
late rains   
severe dry seasons
drought-related increases in evaporation
successive fires extending deeper into the rainforest
slash-and-burn agriculture    
cattle grazing    
illicit crops
irrigation practices    
illegal mining    
guerrilla activities
construction of a dam upstream
construction of a cable car
pesticides used in maize farming upstream    
airborne pollution
conversion of habitat into a golf course    
Las Vegas
invasion of mist flower   
introduction of the Bullfrog    
non-native trout    
safari ants    
feral pigs    
lack of genetic diversity    
heavy parasite loads    
exportation for the pet trade
stress due to handling for data collection    
over-collecting
chytridiomycosis
chytridiomycosis
chytridiomycosis
 

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.
 
 






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

​

"jia you" previously published in  Tributaries: ACAM undergraduate student journal 
 

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.

BLAZE ISLAND: AN EXCERPT

 
Miranda woke in darkness. She was riding a fierce wind. The changes were not going to stop. Someone was moving about below her, and the small sounds would have been reassuring, except that it was only a little after five a.m. Whoever was below had lit a fire. Heat ticked in the metal chimney on the far side of the room, the ticks speeding up. Miranda whispered to Ella, the dog, not to stir.  

Through the half-open door of her father’s bedroom, she took in the tussle of his empty bedclothes, reading glasses tossed atop his dresser. Always there had been secrets in this house, and she had surrendered to her father’s desire for them, the things they’d kept hidden about their past, other things he’d attempted to hide from her and she’d allowed herself to ignore, but a new impatience surged as if she were struggling to climb over the fence that encircled her.

Downstairs, in his coveralls, eating a slice of toast at the counter, her father turned sharply at the sound of her footsteps. “Miranda, what are you doing up?”

“Couldn’t sleep.” She kept her voice as low as his. He’d made only the one mug, not a pot, and everything in his posture made her presence an intrusion. He wasn’t welcoming her, she was merely slowing his escape.

“Why don’t you go back to bed. There’s no need for you to be up so early.”

But she was wide awake. “Where are you off to?”

His face relaxed into a smile. “To see if by some miracle I can access the internet at the cabin.”

​“Can I come with you?”

It was an impulsive thought, and he said no before adding, “There’s no need for that.”

“Why not if I want to. Are you meeting someone?”

He shook his head. “Best to have one of us stay with our guest.” Our guest, she thought, and then, more possessively, my guest. Something else gnawed: Would her father lie to her? Had he before, would he again? Did her own safety make the lies justifiable?

“Dad — the plane that landed at the airstrip the day before yesterday, who was on it and what are they doing here?”
Her father gulped down the dregs of his tea and set his mug in the sink.

“Miranda, I need you to sit tight for a bit. Can you do that for me?”

He was ruffling her hair, asking her to do something for him once again. She shook herself free, some essential part of her refusing to be deterred, a new resolve forming in her throat.

“Why won’t you answer me? I’m supposed to do what you want but you’re always hiding things from me — saying we should never leave then inviting people here and going off with them. What are you actually doing? Whatever you’re up to, it isn’t just weather monitoring, is it?”

“Miranda.” He stepped into the middle of the room. “If I’ve kept secrets, it’s only been for your own good. Things are in such a precarious state. I’m trying, from this out-of-the-way corner of the world, to do everything I can—”

“What if I don’t want to be protected like that?”

He didn’t have an answer, other than to show her that she’d jarred him. When he hugged her, the strength of his embrace stopped her mouth even as she struggled to say more. The next moment, with a rustle of jacket and shudder of boot, her father was gone.
 
Always when she’d allowed herself to think about the future it had been shaped by the contours of the past: how else did you envision what was to come other than by reconfiguring what you knew? There were days when, swayed by Caleb’s suggestions, Miranda had imagined living with him on the far side of the cove even as another part of her retracted from the dream. She had assumed that somehow Caleb and Sylvia would be in her life forever. What she loved would always continue, how could it not? More often she’d seen herself living in the little white house in Green Cove with her father and Ella, taking care of her father, because he needed her to do this. She’d ruffle Ella’s fur, meet her brown-eyed stare. There’d be more animals, because she wanted more, she would tend the land, build a bigger greenhouse, listen and note each time the wind shifted, there would be order and safety in such a life, in its deep choreographies and self-sufficiencies, in being responsive to sea and sky and the wild and ragged weather growing wilder all around them. There had been ruptures and alterations, but nothing had shaken her fundamental belief in the continuity of this life, given to her after the biggest rupture of all, the catastrophes that had sent the two of them fleeing to the island: everything here was proof that, despite grief, a new life could be made. Even the rupture of losing Caleb, painful as it was, had somehow been bearable. She’d gone on. They all had. Now, though, the world looked so different she wasn’t sure she could step back into the body she’d inhabited only a day ago.

Catherine Bush is the author of five novels, including Blaze Island (2020), the Canada Reads long-listed Accusation (2013), the Trillium Award short-listed Claire’s Head (2004), and The Rules of Engagement (2000), a New York Times Notable Book and a L.A. Times Best Book of the Year. She was recently a Fiction Meets Science Fellow at the HWK in Germany and has spoken internationally about addressing the climate crisis in fiction. She is an Associate Professor at the University of Guelph and Coordinator of the Guelph Creative Writing MFA, located in Toronto, Canada, and can be found online at www.catherinebush.com.

IT WON'T END WITH A BANG,

it won’t end with DEFCON 1,
but with muddied water guzzled down desperate throats
and mothers crying at shallow graves.
with winds whispering away whimpering cities,
and brothers packing mothers and sisters to safety.
it won’t end with the masses.
there will be no riots in the streets,
instead they will run blue
and be made seas gushing into coast.
it won’t end with a hero.
no, the hero will die of pneumonia,
or starve when the livestock have died from dysentery
and mildew has taken the plants.
we won’t be chased.
if we had been, we may have run.
instead, death will crawl at a sickly pace
and close the space between us.
it will end how it all started…
with water rushing shores,
earth cracking open,
and fire razing forests,
to make room for new inhabitants.
but not with a bang.