11/20/2021 POETRY: DAVE MONTURETHE LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Good intentions aside, Nations’ names mispronounced plough depth patronization Indigenous and foreign students invited into their halls of subtle intellectual and academic racism
These are the rules of engagement: Marking rubrics for the administrative convenience of tenured procurers feeding student wood fibre into their Colonizing breakdown mill Minds sawn, baked and kiln dried to be sorted into standardized dimensions graded, degreed and certified suited up in priestly robes to satisfy today’s commodities market.
(To the memory of the Kamloops 215 little ones) THE MUSH HOLE RUBRIC Having been administered a psychological caning and made to feel among “The Other,” in our own homeland. Citations not quite in order Not fitting into the paint by number linear boxes Regurgitating the same old same old This is how you will surely lose marks boy… Such are the metrics of compliance and obedience "Mush Hole Rubric" previously published in Mad Canada Dave Monture, Bear Clan Mohawk, is a retired part-time student who grew up on the Six Nations Reserve. He is a fourth year student in Honours Creative Writing, his second degree at Western. He has participated in readings with Writers-in-residence Margaret Christakos and Alicia Elliot. He has opened for a guest reading of Poetry London. He has contributed to recordings of the Indigenous Writers’ Circle for Radio Western. In 2019 he was a recipient of the Dr. Valio Markkanen Undergraduate Student Award of Excellence and a Head and Heart Fellowship. Most recently, he has contributed to Mad in Canada, Science, Psychiatry and Social Justice. He is a member of the Indigenous Writers’ Circle, an independent Indigenous creative voice, at Western. He is working on a novel, poetry and flash fiction. He recently returned to painting. 11/19/2021 POETRY: YVONNE ADALIANA CITY STREET I swim thru the tunnel of stately maples on old Barclay Street where smart cars fart beneath protective leaves. A luminous green sky that forms a canopy over the grey green river of a shape shifting street. Even here their instinct is to protect. To give and give and give. Born in England Yvonne has spent the majority of her life being an actor coast to coast in Canada. She now lives in Vancouver B.C . A passionate activist since her days on the front lines of protest against logging in the Carmanah Valley on Vancouver Island in the eighties, one of the first of such successes , she believes that climate change is the most urgent issue on the planet and mourns the loss of every tree .
9/17/2021 POETRY: MONI BRARsi'ulq, pāni she takes me deep into her people’s land this stranger turned neighbour turned friend points out antelope brush and grey sage unwavering in summer heat spear grass clings to our skin as we wade through Lamb’s Quarter pulsing the want of seeds through Tufted Vetch and Shepherd’s Purse capped with rounded clusters while red-tailed hawks scratch the clouds above into the valley marked by bloodlines where dreams were swallowed whole we skirt ponds that give life to horned grebes, wigeons, and buffleheads spot a lone merganser and a common loon too early for blue heron to break the glazed surface we revel in the silent miracle of Water si'ulq, her mother would say pāṇī, my mother would say up the notched hills to watch wild horses roam free careless and cared for from a distance I learn palomino, bay, pinto, appaloosa they twitch not for us, but for the Sun xai'ałax, her mother would pray sūraj, my mother would cry and for the Moon sokemm, her mother would ebb chand, my mother would flow she takes me deep onto forest floors I’ve not known a cathedral of soft light we count the birds naks, usil, kałis, her mother would sing ik, dō, theen, my mother would recite walk beneath the watchful gaze of red-winged blackbirds and evening grosbeak there are no willows weeping nearby just the sound of a black-capped chickadee making its way home. Originally published in Prairie Fire Literary Magazine, vol. 42, no. 1, April 2021. UNDER THE BANYAN Nani-ji told us stories, long stories and made up stories, and maybe true stories of everything she knew of everything she’s gathered and named squatting under the banyan tree great-grandfather planted by the pond where the water buffalo bathed. She was shrivelled as an overripe mango, but once smooth as a clay pot. Her hands were caked with stories, her body brimming with stories upon stories seeded from the women and women-shaped absences before her. She told stories of a mouse who was mocked for hoarding rice in a hole, a wise mouse who knew the floods were coming, the rupture and decay looming. I wonder if she was that mouse. Nani-ji: maternal grandmother in the Punjabi family Originally published in Marias at Sampaguita Magazine, May 2021. Born in rural India, Moni Brar now divides her time between the unsurrendered territories of the Treaty 7 Region and the Syilx Okanagan Nation. Her writing explores the immigrant experience, diasporic guilt, and the legacy of trauma resulting from colonization. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and she is the winner of the 2021 SAAG Art’s Writing Prize, runner-up in PRISM international’s 2021 Grouse Grind Prize, shortlisted for Arc’s 2021 Poem of the Year, and a finalist in the 2021 Alberta Magazine Awards. Her writing can be found in The Literary Review of Canada, Prairie Fire, Passages North, and Hobart, among others.
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