POETRY: SHAZIA HAFIZ RAMJI

BEACHED POEM

We have been here before
where Duracell bodies

of two beached whales melt
into the wefted tongues

of the sea. Into the rocks
glommed and knobbed with night

struck out by the daily occasion;
the sun announcing its spines.

Some fish hurl themselves into the open
    jaw of air. Breathless

and meshed into what steals them
    from their gills.

The water holds both
light and grit in the body that is

the vestigial shore, the smooth current.


Originally published in Forget Magazine.

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Shazia Hafiz Ramji is the author of Port of Being (Invisible Publishing), a finalist for the 2019 City of Vancouver Book Award, 2019 BC Book Prizes (Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize), and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. It was named by CBC as a best Canadian poetry book of 2018 and received the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. Shazia's writing is forthcoming in Best Canadian Poetry 2019 and has recently appeared in Poetry Northwest, Music & Literature,  Best Canadian Poetry 2018  and THIS  magazine.  She is a columnist for Open Book and is currently at work on a novel.