Poetry: Nisa Malli

PRAYER FOR HOMESICKNESS
 
We brought tetrapacks 
of scents so our children 
 
would know the smell 
of summer rain 
 
on earth, video to show them 
what life looked like before 
 
and after the heat boiled
the rivers and soil was never
 
truly damp. In gravity 
just loose enough to trip us, 
 
our children lost their parents’ 
hooked-necked gait, their fixed 
 
hip-flexors, their fixation 
on shielding themselves 
 
from the sun. They grew
leggy and light-kneed in this light
 
world, grew out of their 
hand-me-down flight-suits. In their new 
 
home, where there is no 
way back, we wanted them 
 
to know what it means to come
from and to a place.
 

 
WE SPREAD OUR MILITARY MISSION
 
in a thin serum of science, sent
our soldiers into the desert
 
with dictionaries, our exobiologists
armoured in exoskeletons. In movies,
 
first contact is almost always
a surprise: the alien
 
among us, unveiled by inhuman
behaviour; the ship shimmering
 
into rush hour. Ours had the formality 
of a late-collapse climate 
 
summit: everyone avowing commitment
to shared cause and collective 
 
consternation, the real debate 
ducked into side rooms and under-
 
mined by ceremony. All the safety
protocol of first dates or hiking
 
in bear country: begin
in daylight, in public, pull rank
 
on the audience of predators pulling 
their tongues out in hunger.

Nisa Malli is a writer and researcher, born in Winnipeg and currently living in Toronto. She holds a BFA in Writing from the University of Victoria and has completed residencies at the Banff Centre and Artscape Gibraltar Point. Her first chapbook, Remitting, was published by Baseline Press in 2019. ​