WINNER: hybridity as a phantom body

What is the word for a body that haunts itself?

“hybridity as a phantom body” holds in exquisite suspension both language and land, body and cosmos. The poem’s inquiries set us off into an associative chain of liquid and embodied imagery: “the moon comes running by the lake, faceless,” “a mouth swimming inside a stomach,” and “our bones are old stars … before the oceans were lanced from the sky.” I admire the balance this fluid poem strikes between the tangible and the philosophical. It has true staying power.

—Liz Howard



These are the ‘floating’ words for body parts. Written or said like this, they have no context. They belong to no one, they are merely the idea of a hand or a face, existing only in the abstract.
—Chelsea Vowel


What is the word for a body that haunts itself?
I pluck floating words from a cree dictionary and apply them as ornaments:
(micihciy)
I plant a kiss upon my own hand thrashing in the jaws of a loon,
wanting to disappear like this.

Something relieves itself when I am half swallowed by water, without a reflection.
The bird too is legless when it swims, bones as soft as the current.
Until the moon comes running by the lake, faceless.

Even lovelier, is the soft trap of a predator’s jaw balancing on a liminal face
(mihkwâkan)
language is never gentle to displaced things.
       The plague of a dry mouth whispers in spaces
where history cannot touch, its constellation slipping through ribs
      in a dance sharp & thin like salmon bone.
It’s a wonder how something so small can stand so beautifully
        inside of a larger mouth, where there never was one before.

What is the cree word for a body that despises its loneliness?
In another world, the darkest part of creation is absence.
Before the first day our limbs were emission, dispelled light & phantom wing.
Before our first bodies we never dreamed of permanence,
our only breath giving way to flight.

Once, a star was simply a myth skipping through the darkness.
When someone calls you their home, believe them. No one wants to be lonely,
or worse, forgotten. Our bones are old stars, remember
we were children together, before the oceans were lanced
from the sky, and the spirit world began drifting.

What is the word for a body without a claim?
I belong to a dream stuck in the cosmos, multiplying. The word for absence is
a mouth swimming inside a stomach, lingering in a kinder hell. In this world, I sink
as much as I float. The word (body) remains gentle on my tongue but nowhere else.
Look,
       There in the corner, the whisper of a chest pushing stardust out of its ribs.
a pair of eyes twitching in a light orb.
Listen, the body was once a limbless thing,
carbon & nitrogen dancing
precious metals blooming unborn arms, haunting the dark corners of space.
Listen, your bones play telephone with stars while you sleep

About the author

Jordan Redekop-Jones is a mixed Indigenous/ Anglo-Indian writer from Vancouver BC. She is the recent winner of an Indigenous Voices Award in the unpublished poetry category. Her work has appeared and is forthcoming in Prism International, Arc Poetry, Canthius, The IHRAM Quarterly Literary Magazine, SAD Mag, and elsewhere. She holds a BA in English Literature and is a recent graduate of Simon Fraser University’s The Writer’s Studio. You can read her work and follow her writing journey on her Instagram page: j.r.jones__