Poem of the Week

i fall into the opening between subject and object

and call it a condition of possibility.

when i speak only the ceiling listens.

sometimes it moans.

if i have a name

let it be the sound his lips make.

there is no word in my language for this.

sometimes my kookum begins to cry

and a world falls out.

grieve is the name i give to myself.

i carve it into the bed frame.

i am make-believe.

this is an archive.

it hurts to be a story.

i am the boundary between reality and fiction.

it is a ghost town.

you dreamt me out of existence.

you are at once a map to nowhere and everywhere.

yesterday was an optical illusion.

i kiss a stranger and give him a middle name.

i call this love.

it lasts for exactly twenty minutes.

i chase after that feeling.

which is to say:

i want to almost not exist.

almost is the closest i can get to the sky.

heaven is a wormhole.

i first found it in another man's armpit.

last night i gave birth to a woman and named her becoming.

she is four cree girls between the ages of 10 and 14 from northern saskatchewan.

we are a home movie

i threw out by accident.

all that is left is the signified.

people die that way.