Issue 45: Spring 2019

Two Poems

In the southwest corner, near the plastic / red and white lamps left on the Ukrainian graves

Mount Pleasant

In the southwest corner, near the plastic

red and white lamps left on the Ukrainian graves,

their translucent hearts beneath the dance of Cyrillic

on moss-covered tombstones,

I sit. On a stone bench, attending to the resonance

of your warble—through static, my headphones,

your words and into me—I miss

putting my hand on your leg

 

while I’m driving—my thighs growing cold

despite the thaw. I scratch out the draft

with you still on the phone. I like that

your stories

don’t have to mean anything to be beautiful.

I like that hours later I will remind you

of where we were three months ago, and the rivers

that have run through us since—

the beds they’ve made in our bellies, deep enough

to suggest permanence, though eventually

we hang up, or close the window, our calls

unfinished.


Tirage au sort

The whisper of the barbecue. I double-take

when you carry out the compost, cornsilk

spilling from under the steel lid, an anecdote

about your father’s hatchback Tercel

slipping from your soft upper lip. You test

the heat of the element with your palm,

the care of three short inches. Pebbles

under your sneakers, and brick, the dog

following in and out of the kitchen,

in that point after rain where it still sounds

like raining. The green hiss of the leaves,

louder than the song in your throat,

the same one since morning, so low before the scream

of the barbecue. Did I say whisper?

It’s shouting.

 

About the author

Annick MacAskill (she/her) is the author of three poetry collections, the most recent of which, Shadow Blight (Gaspereau Press, 2022), won the Governor General's Literary Award for English-Language Poetry. Her poems have appeared in journals across Canada and abroad, and in the Best Canadian Poetry anthology series. She lives in Kjipuktuk (Halifax, Nova Scotia), on the traditional and unceded territory of the Mi'kmaq.