Session Five Anthology

MENTOR: Camonghne Felix

Walk with me—

an invitation for Haruko to move his castle into my inner landscape of Björks Black Lake

I welcome you to my

soul site construction – one wound one world into another half, moon

pale yellow down another rabbit hole into blisters of joy – bluecold eruptions

spinning above that old place unforgotten, alongside with the sound tap of

dew moss drops down my Achillis‘ heel shift, out of the blue but steady

boots crack meadow beats and tender roots starting

to foster lighthouses of sorrow

sewing down wrinkled wings into pulsing streams

inflamed by the fear of leaving

the house you have kept yourself in, away from moving ahead

always on the road, but never

home rolling lights crackle with our pace

too fast too strong too much

~

Shirin Eghtessadi  

When brother commits suicide by

shotgun no one will hear him fall to peace. Hope splattered against kitchen tiles. They will gather at the tombstone. Closed casket. Pastor says let not your heart

be troubled by skeleton rotting into rest. Mother says don't look. They are singing hymns but her lips keep schtum. She preserves fear in ankle bones  so  

shake  her core turn her out. She hears the graveyard beckoning. Bone collecting. Crucifix resting on breasts is powerless. cannot ward off what lives

in you. Mama, the keepsakes you hang on bedside tables lock/ jaws/ lock/ drawers /lock doors but even darkness is opened by slits; towers on stilts.

There is too much unsaid. Here his spirit occupies floor tiles. A sudden breeze. A flinch. Her stance leans into combat, belly unnerved. She returns. Herbs resting on the counter.

She returns - slicing rhythm into surrender. Hand finishing a lecture with the knife.

~

Jemilea Wisdom-Baako

~

Em Dial

Waking Up

I am pulling at the chords
to make the anger sing.

The drumbeats of war
demand attention

so I scrub the moss from my limbs
aching and awakening a demon
growing in my belly.

There are throats without mercy
raw with silenced screams.

But some beasts must be born.

Rupturing from my lips
the raging creature stands

This holding
this burning
we go hand in hand.

~

Amanda Wood Amanda Wood is a writer based in Toronto, Ontario. She is a graduate of The Speakeasy Project’s month-long poetry program. The often haunting, mythical themes in Amanda’s writing tie into her

fascination with the intersecting identities of women; with a focus on mental health, healing, and our connection with the earth. Amanda is a winner of the City of Toronto’s public art project, My City My Six and is looking forward to future community-based collaborative projects. 

Ode to Avril Lavigne, Ending in Time Travel So My Eight-Year-Old Self Can Put on Eyeliner for the First Time

after Hanif Abdurraqib

No husbands. No growling men to be a pinkened
otherbetter-half of.  Snap, just like that.
It’s 2002. I’m eight, hair entirely Shirley Temple
in a middle-parted glass. Glasses. Androchild,
too born-yesterday Puritan for a border of smudged dark
or even Sharpie nails. By all accounts
a good girl. Wouldn’t even sing damn
when it’s With You and the chorus is swirling
out of the car window like a spell. But oh,

I stitched my lips to that bad. That off-brand
Kohl’s-product-placement bad. Watered-down-whiskey
-in-a-Dixie-cup bad. An earnest kind of rebellion,
too closeup on its own ache to know who The Man is.
I’m eight. The Man is my third grade teacher
and the lengthening shadow of the scale.

I get older, meaner, think I’m cool because now I like
a whine with more bass in it, but it was always you, Canadian
cruelest-month version of a hymnal. It’s still you. Find me
in the church of my bedroom each Sunday with the good word
liquoring my breath. I fell in love and in trouble,
crawled across the underbelly of that bridge, muddied
my mouth so much I cuss now, and I’m still With You. Damn.

Every poem I write is just metaphor scrolled out
over that warbling call. Every time I let myself remember,
there’s a girl in the mirror unspooling her fists.
She skates chewed-up nails over the pages to yield
a dripping chorus of ink. Like every good refrain, I know
what happens before it does. She rings
those un-bagged eyes; like any good betrothal,
I am done and undone. I do.
Love, you know I do.

~

Alison Kronstadt