POETRY: ANNICK MACASKILL

BOTTLED

Light slow as honey
in its antique shell, rubber stopper
lazy at the end, snarled curl
 
of the lip ring silver
round glass—yes glass, but thick,
the kind that keeps you guessing,
 
stretching feeble for the other side.
The way a frenzied starling
builds her nest in May,
 
one flimsy clutch of twigs
at a time. The light unclaimed
through my delay, seeping in
 
as if from nowhere, stilted,
clotted as in the white-shelled
tank I saw
 
one inverted summer day
in Melbourne, where a squid lay
slumped in a corner
 
like a pile of unwashed laundry,
her eye a steady accusation
before the rounded window
 
that glimpsed our own grey-glimmer world.


 
TRY TO HATCH FISH AND STONES*

know what to do
with your chalky misfortunes.
Revive dreams
like mammoths, an old
relationship. Await the birth
of a patience, eternal,
yet to be mastered
in any hemisphere. Know what to do
with disappointment. If lucky,
lucky. In the long quest
for an everyday, don’t forget
to revise your expectations.
Protect the charge
that is your wanting. If queer,
well. Know
what to do
with heartache. Hitch your wagon
to a laboratory. Keep that hope
within your belly,
under the perfect tuxedo flap
of skin, snug
beneath your lungs. 
 


*“Berlin gay penguins adopt abandoned egg.” BBC News from Elsewhere, 12 August, 2019. Reporting by Martin Morgan.

Annick MacAskill is a queer and feminist poet and translator based in Kjipuktuk (Halifax) on the traditional and unceded territory of the Mi'kmaq. Her debut collection, No Meeting Without Body (Gaspereau Press, 2018), was nominated for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and shortlisted for the J.M. Abraham Poetry Award. Her second collection, a book of love poetry, will be published by Gaspereau Press in the spring of 2020.