ROOTS

Earthenware Glaze

Lee Eustace

I saw you and stopped.
Time was elastic and irrepressible,
trees were truncated and
words were forthcoming.

Gushing in ebbs that strained
against the everlasting swash
of newfound promise. A reason
to look beyond the pale:

past rows of uncharted trees
and unwieldly grass. The type
in which your step may suddenly
disappear and be engulfed by what lies beneath.

Detached roots and earthenware glaze:
shining to the brim and beyond.
Beyond that savage eye of promise
with which I saw you

and I stopped still for fear of disturbance.

1

Transformations

Borrego Escritor

The year of friendly pick-me-ups,
vodka bottles, and unuttered flaws.
F tells me how small my wings are
I ask him, how come you notice things I do not have?
In the washroom, the mirror smiles back.
F replies that if I extend them, they won’t crack,
I chug my drink and shout,
easy to say when you know what lies in the dark.

I grow tired of the Caterpillar metaphors,
when will the present suffice?
F says there is nothing wrong in doubt
but that I better be careful with that knife.
I cannot stop thinking of the dimming lights
wonder how much pushback I can handle for the night.

Mom thinks my sadness is empty,
she’s not wrong, but she’s not right.
Cause emptiness means full of air,
air means a substance, colorless life.
My lungs become a pressurized chamber,
an ocean bottom where some swim and others drown.

F believes transitions cannot be done,
but I show how my body molds.
The slow shift without goodbyes
as the substance learns to make space,
I fill each breath with hope and a bit of air.
One, two, three, and I draw a breath.

Mom no longer sees my body as a vessel,
the spark in me dimming the night
No longer holding for dear life.
Envision me, F, suddenly twenty-five
and just like the ocean, I thrive!

2

Ink marks

Caroline Banerjee

I should probably not have dropped the biro pen in the puddle
Because now his hands are stained
And the house smells like burnt pizza
And I think you were crying
Because they took the tv away.
And you say I should have done the homework
But the words were scrambled
And I do not like the way they say my name.

I should probably not have tipped the board game,
Because now he gets letters
But they were all still
And I wanted to run
And I think you were crying
Because the school dress colours ran in the wash
And they say I need to find a new one.
But you say it is too late.
The ink has already seeped in.

5

Weed

Naomi Park

a comprehensive list of ways to die
ranked in order of preference
spray me with weed killer
snip with those garden shears
better yet
pull me up by my roots so i have
no chance to grow back again

i’m not your typical
weed
don’t want to spread
i know my roots
tether the ground to me
as much as
me to the ground

i’m sorry i’m this way
sorry
i choke the life from your other plants
sorry
i drink nutrients from the soil
sorry
i don’t bloom and
you can’t eat me and
gardening is a zero sum game

sorry you love me anyway

6

Chewing Nostalgia

Cliff Turner

He found himself
in a chemically induced reflection
upon the rhythm of his chewing.
The cranial, claustrophobic echo of each crunch,
Hearing turned inward.
A nostalgic sound for him.
Covering his ears at his childhood dinner table.
Listening to his chewing rather than their shouts.
Forty years later the shouting is done,
But to his delight,
The chewing sounds the same.

7

Letters From Your Other Granddaughter

Erica de Belen

i.
I was born on the
summer day you saw
your youth. The day
the birds whistled like a
guitar-creak against
the sheet. The day
I saw you tuck secrets
behind your eyes.
I was not born with
your eyes, however,
the ones that eyed autumn
leaves on branches as
(jewels hanging/from a child’s wrist),
and perceived the night
that once came
(like a thief/to steal a few morsels of light).
I did not know any
better until I saw
how you spilled
yourself on
the page.

ii.
Yesterday, Lolo, while
our bunso was skipping
stones by the ragged
edge of the river —
It is a place you
have not visited
yet, but someday
you will —
I found a piece
of you. I found a
shattered piece
of porcelain. I found
I am continuously being
glued together, that
I have always been
made of fragments, that
I am only a poet made
of other poets. That I was not
born a poet, Lolo. I was
born to be your apo.

iii.
I am in constant
pursuit of the root
of all things. Where
do poets come from?
From Grief? From Love?
I am in your home
country, you are
in the Promised Land.
Lolo, when I get there,
Will you show
me things alive?

8

Sitting Ducks

Anna McLellan

I am trying

Hope comes in ripples
Across a pond where lives converge
Fragments washing up
We are a shore

I am hurting

Tumours come up in three conversations
Why is this haunting incessant
Why does everything come
When you don’t want to let it

I am here

A ghost in my own home
Fly on the wall
A voice outside of a call
How do you let go

I am trying

How do you move on?
So many things moving and gone
We’re sitting ducks just waiting
On this pond
For something beyond

When I was a child
Frogs invaded our school every year
because
It used to be a pond
It used to be their home
And they would bring them here
Every year

I am struck

By the realisation that we are
Continually returning
And breaking away
Just miniature ponds
With our perpetual waves.

9

The root of the word “home”

Chanlee Luu

is hām from Old English,
meaning a gathering of souls,
a village, and yes, you might mistake
that for ham, as in the slices of deli meat,
or a dead pig, and I do not know any live
pigs, but my mother used to clean
out their sties in Vietnam
and bathe my uncles,
the twin runts of my grandmother,
who is a pig in the zodiac,
which is to say she had a lot
of children, which is to say
she did not have time for all
of them, which is to say
that a village cannot raise a child
if the house is not a home,
where the collective souls
are loved
and grounded
in safety.

11

QUARRY

Jack McDonagh

In the dead white they live, bent
Between flint & vein.

Like spiders they come
Heads cocked

Confused to light,
Their eyes black, blinking

Outward toward mounds
Of pregnant earth where

Carrion falls

And dark birds play,

Dancing

Madly down to where
Hungers residue breaks.

The sky grows clouds in endless
Tapestries that yearn
For terrestrial embrace.

Forming, changing,
Bulging they begin
To peel away in brooding

Strands, then it

Drops,

Kissing cold dirt with
Droplets that form
Into pools,

Waiting,

Becoming heavy,
Seeping inward, slow
And suspicious,

Finding territories like pilgrim
Or worm to harbour
Itself in root or seed,

To be called from
Dark migrations,
Up through new formations,

To return.
To be whole.
To be loved.

12

Legacy

Dionna Carter

What will yours be?

Not if, but what...

What my babies see
will be the leaves
of the family tree
extending
from me

May they remember the tears mingled with praise
As I called His name
Wrecked, no shame
Knowing the labor isn’t in vain

But purposeful

As joy-filled blessings flow
Through the hollow
of surrendered hands

Let their ears recall my requests for your plans
My will diminishing that Yours may stand

As they grow to live out the answers to my prayers
Taking a stand when the world dares
to leer and jeer
all that is pure

Let their faith endure

As they bear fruit
let it fall far from the tree
broadly scattering the seeds

of a righteous legacy

13

Blue Shed Secrets

Lyndsie Conklin

We used to easily crawl
between the fence. Crawl
to climb atop the world
to see the lines
authority jailed us to. Sitting
on all dad’s secrets,

the deepest of secrets,
disguised behind mowers,
shovels, hammers, and hoes.
The floor of the lean-to
is cool dirt, and dirt
only sleeps on the wooden original

eagerly watched by selves. Only men
would understand dad’s secrets
that reeked on his shirt stains,
made of dirt and gasoline.
We sat upon those secrets
stuffed into dad’s blue shed.

14

Lost DNAs

Rebecca Smith

You leave your skin in piles over
the lines of a map over
the cracks in the sands and sea and
the left-hand side of an alleyway
where dandelions might decide to grow

You’ve stopped counting the hairs
left on the spiked parts of doorknobs and
half-erased drawings in half-touched notes
from those who wear oranges
with you

You planted a button last Tuesday
in the dark parts of a bus and it shall
begin to sprout in Spring when the pigeons water it
and maybe someone will ask

can you sketch the roots you have left over the city?
how many meadows are grown in your name?

15

Almost

Beth Weg

Intimate stranger
Preserved in phantom space
Alive as cruel mist
I resurrect you as flesh
Eyes like his
Hair like mine
We never met
We never will
Our fierce love is enough.

16

These Roots

Anya

I have grown my roots
Deep into this land
Growing, blossoming, making myself a home

“Where are you from” they ask
I falter

How I long to tell them that I come from you
Your beautiful, distant land
But how can I say I am “from” you
When my feet have never touched your shore?

These roots are firmly planted
But my leaves shake in the wind
With every mention of your name

17

the queen of hearts

Qiqing Goh

i.
father told me
to keep my cards close
and guard my secrets closer.

lofty ideals and childhood dreams
do not reside here:
only a one-way street
to the moral high ground
drawn by his hands, calloused
from all the years of callous neglect.
(i keep my cards close in mine)

then you come bearing gifts
in rapid succession, warm
mugs of tea and stolen roses,
skittering around uncharted territory.

ambition, the other half of passion
sits on your palm like a new, shiny jewel
(i keep my cards close in mine)

ii.
mother told me
with her dying breath,
while still starving for love,
for a freedom kept
for the sky’s winged proprietors
to always guard the heart.

she gripped my hand
and stored her words within;
a container of resolutions
for life’s little conundrums.
(i keep my cards close in mine)

then you come, heart on your sleeve
as your sweater falls apart threadbare
one wintry morning

so i stay. i hope fervently
upon a wishing well,
under a shelter
of human hope and frailty,
where you gave me the lion’s share
of your magnificent lion-heart

and in my sleep, i dream of things
never before seen —
(like a house of cards, i fall)

18

Birds and Curtains Both

Samuel Glyn

Red curtains make the room bulge with crimson light;
they enrich late night silhouettes into something titillating
and hide the world outside in shrouds of supple velvet.

My curtains are decorated with birds of paradise,
vague and ambiguous species; consistent in their fantasy,
consistent in that they are a vision of what birds should be.

They curve, and strut, and lean, and blush.
The artist infused them with hidden desires, certainly,
for men and women who were out of reach and beautiful.

I am obsessed with closed curtains, with their delicacy,
their infirmity, the way a twitch could reveal dark truths;
likewise, birds of paradise, with their feathers and brittle legs.

When I am behind those curtains, however, I feel smothered,
by feathers, yes, by fragility too, but more than anything
by the echoes of my little heart, like the morning chorus.

19

Cartography

Amy Hollan

The atlas of my body
is a strange geography,
both familiar and foreign
in its changing landscape:
a varied topography
of dips and foothills
and swells,
of scars dotting
my map of skin,
of cried rivers carving
my face with age,
of veins extending
as blue highways,
marking where I’ve been.

What I’ve learned
in tending to
your dying body
is that I am not so
uniquely made.

In the journey of life,
we all travel
a common road.

20

Longing Belonging

Anayis N. Der Hakopian

They have torn down my tree-
The one that was rooted deep
With leaves that shed the proudest colours
And flowerbeds beneath that danced each spring

They have cut up its branches
And burned them all to ashes
Turned the soil upside down
And laid new bricks for a house

They have erased what was once home
A place I hadn’t even really known
Somewhere I thought I’d visit
But there is nothing here to see

With time I have searched
A place that came anywhere close
To the roots of my warm blood
That now run so bloody cold

For me and my tired wings
Hoping waiting, longing belonging
For anything else that equalled thee
That has been laid to sleep

So I stay in the only home I know
That has been there from my birth
Where held memories of us belonged
Wrapped up in echoes of its warmth

It is filled with other misplaced neighbours
That are long from their mother trees
Speaking tongues we never know
From roots long lost to the storm

Like migratory birds
We have found ourselves here
Nesting in branches of a newish tree
Long from the home I have never seen.

21

When You’re Gone

Ashley Walkowiak

You are not here
The quiet is a blanket
Draped over me by smiling ghosts

When you’re gone
I see how thoughtfully I am regarded
A volume that is hard to carry
I feel undeserving

The bedroom fireplace
Bought to keep me company
It’s steady roar to replace the sound of your heart
It may be warm
But it can’t refill my wine glass

In the morning
My bones ache with the work of yesterday
And before I open my eyes
I replay a million yesterdays
They glow and dance around me
I am blessed to be fulfilled

I’ve always known it can’t last
And I grip those moments so tightly
I came into the world this way
Sucking each moment dry for all its worth
I suck my coffee dry for all its worth
The pot didn’t fill itself this morning
Another task undone in your absence

I walk outside in the morning dew
And the cold doesn’t bite at me
Because I’m filling the bird feeders that you love
So that you can feel your favorite sense of joy
Watching from the kitchen window when you return

I stand in your place
At the window
Observing the winter birds with their breakfast
It is then that I see her

She will fill a thousand bird feeders when you’re gone
She will sip her morning coffee
Watch the day birds and evening birds
She will speak to the ghost of you
She will smile at your hand on her back

Her hair is long and gray
Singed by the ashes of a life well lived
Perhaps the only promise of her life she kept
She will never cut her hair again
She will suck on the memory of your voice
A thousand words for radiant

She carries on
Under the weight of a heavy love
She smiles contentedly in the glass
A look that conveys this moment
A thousand memories from now
I will stand in her place

I hear the memories giggle behind me
I turn to my back to her
To watch us play on the carousel of my mind
But they scurry from me
Back across the universe
To be held by you

I wish I could kiss the smiling ghosts
Before they go

22

It’s frustrating living in my head like this

Alyssa Walker

Trying to let go of someone
is like gingerly dipping toes
beneath the water's surface
to check if it still scalds

I'm a hoarder
Collector of experiences, of people
A woven web
so taut at times, it strangles
severs reality's hold

Take a bite from the apple, it bleeds
amber bead of obedience on a
tumultuous descent
readily consumed by roots
so long starved of affection
they’ll swallow what they’re given

If confronted these days
I'd be more excited about the cats than you
(but when was that ever not the case?)
Nostalgia lies, sheds a rosy glow
over long-rotten corpses of Before
There's beauty in an oil slick
but not enough to undermine the sorrow
wilful destruction

thick throatfuls of toxicity glossing innards
in a self-destructive spiral of penance
Fester inside this poison cocoon
before wrenching free
metamorphosised into Being

Shred the threads that linger
scatter the ashes with utter disdain
These roots run deep
but the spade sinks deeper
a cataclysmic tearing
unslick uncoupling of particles
Soil clings, and I know
it won't be shaken

Life always finds a way
or at least an imitation of it
Choking spluttering leeching clawing
each subatomic nutrient
towards greedy gaping maws
all that’s left
gravel and decay

No-one ever tells you
recovery doesn’t make you better
the same You
but Different
origami crane
ironed flat then reassembled
this time stronger

Only you spot the cracks
the wobbles in intention
each fold precise
and purposeful in selection
But a weed, is always a weed
no matter how hard you tried to paint it a seed.

23

Left Behind

Simone Brown

Grief tastes like blood while I bite my tongue to stay silent,
Because I know it’s not my place to mourn your losses.
I achieved everything you were left struggling for,
And no matter what I shared it was never yours to take.
It wasn’t my job, but I could have done more.
Maybe if I had stayed a little longer
Or fought to take you with me,
I wouldn’t be visiting empty bedrooms on holidays.
I saw the bruises left by ex-boyfriends
And judged the bottles in our closet,
But I never stopped to wonder what you thought of me.
I was your everything like you were mine,
And one day I was gone chasing better things
While you braced yourself for worse days.
I left you to rot in a ruined city,
Thinking you were not enough to keep me here
And I would never come back to save you.

24

There is a tree growing inside me

Abraham Alexander

1

I was born with a seed in my brain
The seed makes me feel bad
But it’s grown and it’s grown
The roots run deep and intertwine with my veins
They used to hurt
I have become accustomed to the discomfort

My hair is made of leaves that have sprouted through my head
I hate the tree but I feel lost without it
Sometimes I pick the leaves
But more grow in their place
Sometimes the leaves shrivel up and fall
Giving me a false sense of security that the tree is dead and gone forever
But the leaves grow back
And the roots extend deeper
Until there is more plant than there is me

2
I’ve decided to remove the tree
I pick the leaves
I snip off the branches
I send an ax through the trunk
And yet the roots remain
And a new tree grows in its place
The tree is me and I am the tree
I cannot get rid of the tree
I will learn to live despite it

3
The tree is becoming too heavy
My back aches from carrying its weight
My limbs have become stiff from the tree’s hardening wood
I am exhausted
I cannot move
The roots absorb the nutrients from my body
My skin is turning a sickly green
Despite this the tree’s leaves begin to wither
My body is becoming a garden and I am its prisoner

4
I ask the tree if it is happy while I am in pain
It tells me it misses the sun
I tell it I miss my mom
And we bond over our shared longing
I tell it I wish that I had never been born
It tells me it wishes it had never been planted
The tree is stuck in me
And I am no longer afraid of it

5
I tell the tree that I am lonely
The tree tells me we have each other
I tell the tree that it’s presence brings me pain
And it apologizes for the inconvenience
We are slowly killing each other
I ask the tree if we can ever both be happy
The tree thinks of the open sky and the nightly songs of cicadas
And tells me that it thinks we can

6
I have decided to remove the tree
I take each tender root with the softest of touches
And painfully peel them from my bones
The tree has made a home in me
And I have made a friend of it
Removing it is painful and difficult
It takes weeks and weeks and months and months and years and years
And at last I have removed the last root
And I plant the tree outside my window
Without its sap in my lungs
I am able to breathe for the first time in my life

7
Sometimes I can still feel the ghost of its roots under my skin
And become afraid that the tree is back
That I missed a root or a splinter or a leaf
But I look outside and see it’s blooming flowers
And in my heart I know we are both free

25

Wild Time

Peggy Bain

February sulked by, snow-bruised
but March came out fighting in a yellow dress

We pulled up the days in fierce clumps,
dusting off whole hours, leaving them
to float in jam jars on the windowsill

hoping that with air and sunlight
the time might grow a little longer

26

Chest Voice

Erin Russell

Feel the earth, she instructs,
As we shift in our stern seats.
Press your feet into the ground,
Let your sound resonate through the wood,
And the concrete, and the soft soil.
Press your palms against your knees, push them down
As if you, too, are the earth.
Stretch your vocal chords
Diminished, weak, and tired.
Let them sprout in the dirt as
Loudly as they can,
A fleshly, gruesome flower of discordant noise.
She crashes her hands down on the single file
Keys of ice and charcoal.
With start, we hold our arms out
To the earth and its warm embrace.
Tuck away your chords, your
Drum beat hearts and marimba teeth,
Let the earth quake inside of you,
And sing, again.

27

Roots

Cristina Otero

Arcane, deep-veined, beneath
That mask of impatient present.
Roads proliferate. They give
The reason to the city, its dream of youth.
Recycled blood conducts
The paths of modern fear.

You try to stain them white with nothingness;
You upend or paint them newly green;
You use their name as curse or summons,
Or black them from a fiery leech.

The roots remain, free from pity,
This honor of a thousand years.

28