family services

in the tangled wire fences
and broken bottle shrapnel
of the residential schools, the 60's scoops
where siblings were spun centrifugally
and then flung from Wales
to Australia

authentic Aboriginal children are now
rentable for a governmental fee
foster parents can bill monthly
for their white milk of lovingkindness

little brown babies
surrounded by benevolent
occupiers spooning canned mush
speaking only English please

thousands of Indigenous parents
turning down
the blankets on empty beds
every night:

schooled

if killing the buffalo off were not enough
the children were next. taken away by force,
sometimes at gunpoint, forbidden to speak
the language of their home, hair shaved,
moccasins burned, sister separated
from brother, the children
were taught well the shame
of being brown. closeted,
strapped, starved, beaten

and worse.

ignored by day, unwelcomed
attention by night. half-naked
brown wooden Jesus on the cross
bearing the sins of all. their new
saviour having descended to the dead
for only three days

it was hard for the children
to reconcile that with the ten
or more months of the year
spent burning in perdition

all to take the Indian
out of the child, the child
out of the Indian:

of these two cultures
one was surely

savage

interrogation

today I want to go to the body
of water and interview each drop
because I read a paper once
explaining how water
has a memory. what is
your last recollection
of this person
I will ask, placing a photograph
in a corked bottle
casting it on thirsty waves
who will lick at my feet
conversationally, unapologetically
the sun reflecting
on everything I've said

Tuesday

the sun blithely rises: you know this
because you stayed up all night
grieving with your friends

and in the blueness of sky
my platitudes stretch thinner
than cirrus clouds

I know her thoughts and memories
will always race through time and space
because that's science. I know her

decomposing body will feed new life
because that's biology. maybe
what you don't know

is how to go on when the person
I would talk to if this happened,
is the person this happened to

and all I can think of is Neruda's
poem:

Death arrives
among all that sound like a shoe with no foot in it,
like a suit with no man in it,
comes and knocks, using a ring with no stone in it, with no
finger in it,
comes and shouts with no mouth, with no tongue, with no
throat.

her shoes floating empty to shore, her empty bathing suit,
her upturned kayak on a moonless night:
a never-ending swim to a shore she won't reach

we are all drowned
by what she swallowed
we have all capsized in the middle-depths of this cold and sudden lake

Monday

but I just saw her on Friday
we were supposed to hang out tonight

it has rained steady all day
a quiet constant of life
a slow greening

are you sure? I'm going over

he slides his cell back
in his pocket and wanders over
shoulders slumped uncertain

it was ---, he says
----- drowned at the lake

and my response is the same dazing logic:
but we just saw her. She was alive
two days ago. And. She shaved your head.
Remember?

So he heads out the door, because
he has to go over to her place.
She can't not be there.
They have plans.

skyblind

constant and shining
i never knew you
from the sun

and then i lost
the moon while
counting the stars

may long

what is it about digging deep
into the soil and clay we came from

planting annuals that will bloom hard
a summer and leave their tired root corpse

behind. today it was the red sallies
my grandfather made me promise I'd keep

along the driveway, my grandmother's
favourite, he said. they were never

hers, they were his snorted my aunt
once. they can laugh about it

in heaven, I guess. we are still planted
loosely here, slow-blooming our short

seasons before we are planted, dug deep
into the soil and clay we came from

SUPER FRESH ASIAN MARKET

the aisles are full
of super fresh asians
pulling their produce
in super fly carts
ten kinds of pocky
four kinds of fish sauce
biscuits I've never seen
chicken that's not
and domo origato
is Japanese not Chinese
it's the wrong kind of
Asian for the Super Fresh Market

rain's sister

life stopped like a clock.
there was a silence even in the noise,
the vinyl-covered despair of waiting rooms
and empty-toothpaste-tube interviews

everything was earthquake
every box was coffin
quicksand handshakes touched her:
nothing pulled her out

the sky fell, the earth sank
a tidal wave drowned itself
a fire was consumed by fire
stars starred stars

all the lights went out
all the words left
air was without breath
and somewhere a tree fell: everybody heard it

potluck

what would comfort and feed a family who has travelled
six hours from their reserve to attend
their daughter's murder trial? could there be a recipe
for anything that wouldn't taste like dust?
I settled on soup, smudged with sage, soaked
beans, chopped vegetables, set the pot
boiling and simmering

the boiled hambone for the soup
was discarded uneasily

and I packed a box with a rose on top.
we honoured her daughter
with a dancing scholarship
from a fund begun to honour
a little girl who had taken her own life
but not before she'd asked her mother
"where are all the brown girls, why
am I the only brown girl dancing?"

I want a world where brown girls dance.

instead, Daleen's father tells us that the women
had to leave the trial today, as graphic detail
of the violent murder unfolded from a witness.
the judge has promised he will give warning
to the family from now on, and he didn't press charges
when Daleen's auntie stood and threw her shoe at the defendant.

I want a world where shoes are for dancing.
where soup isn't salted with tears.
I want a world where brown girls dance
and cook soup
just because.

The Infinity of My New Blue Horizon Without You

bird chipping away like a car alarm.
summer sun diluted by winter wind.
an abandoned nest at knee-height
empty as your promise. the shed
is falling-down drunk in broad
daylight. narrow daylight,too
and the fence you built sags
and wobbles along the beds
you cheated me of by not
measuring twice cutting
once. wandering eyes
never gauge so well
the distance. the
law of diminish
ing returns,it
insists I end
without say
ing how I
really
truly
feel
-
.

Hock Shop

in the reverent hush of capitalism's cemetery
dust and locked cabinets await you

sweetly sing the bells whether you come in
or out, the Judas jingle of coins traded for fear of

going hungry in a time of need, of missing
an opportunity to trade up or pay

rent. I brought my children to visit you
looking not for a deal, more a voyeur's view

of where dreams come to die. jingle dresses
silence themselves in cabinets, horse saddles

sweat themselves free of blanket, stilled by a mare
gone to dog food. this hand-beaded purse

didn't have enough money to stay with its'
owner. she blotted lipstick on one corner

to mark it from all the others. electronics
and gadgets, flat screens and amps. the first

birthday I was with their father, twenty
dollars and a family allowance cheque bought him

a guitar he still plays badly. outlasting us
in fidelity, it stays in tune better than he does, but I

think it misses the hard-luck cowboy
that left it for another. the cash register rattles

open and signals another transaction: this is where
cynics buy second wedding rings.

German tourists get basement-bargained
regalia for knock-off pow-wows.

à maman

petit-point
beadwork
music
and words;
lines
and flowers
and shapes
and curves.

tiny stitches
tiny flowers
tiny artworks
in the frame
careful threadwork
careful tension
careful framing
j'ai fait la même

Paskwa Mostos

mostos ostes pokes her fuzzed
head through dry grass. the prairie
purples with crocuses searching
for their makers - it was said
each bloom represented the birthplace
of a baby bison.

paskwa mostos for a thousand
and a thousand years you kept
the Plains peoples strong and tall
and the government duly noted
the correlation. holocaust
of an ecosysemt, piles of bones

being shovelled into trains, sent eastward
lest your skeletons enrich the dirt, regenerate
your bodies atop the crocus. the plains people
herded and corralled in their prisons
of grass. sometimes I lie
on the ground near an old rubbing rock
and feel the earth singing your
travels, see the dust rising

in the east as you come home
trampling down barbed wire,
grid roads, caragana windbreaks,
grey-slanted outbuildings already tipping
into the dirt, piles of farm bones

ready to be shovelled into trains,
sent eastward to the people
who crushed you into the dust
you once raised in herds more
numbered than the stars, mirrored
in the fastest-flowing of rivers. paskwa mostos

they say you will return. I see
this promise in each star of paskwa ostes,
bison bellybutton, each spring crocus. sunset
and sunrise you are just
over the horizon. my eldest daughter dreamt
you ran over our roof, after standing
on one another's shoulders. sometimes
our walls shake.

In courtroom # 8: what won't burn

a bone
this is bone
also bone
also a bone
part of the skull
a bone
bone
bone
a bracelet
in 125 we see this oval shaped item is a carabiner
it had an inscription on it
this is a metal ring
surrounded by remnants
from possibly the contents of a purse
the end of a zipper
powdered makeup tins, my wife has something similar
a bone, bone
piece of a metal chain which is probably jewellery
buttons
some fabric
fabric

her spirit
tears on upturned faces
her spirit, her spirit, her spirit

A Slow Spring

winter throttled hard at her neck, trees still brownly bare in mid-May
but today I sat outside, sun warm at my back like a longaway lover
frugally I ordered the bottled water, but instead paid three
dollars more than the most expensive coffee
I told myself it was surely a magic potion
a homeopathic tincture
an alchemic brew
on reading the label the shapely blue-tinted bottle
was infused with inspiration in four elemental ingredients
which is surely why I'm writing this poem

Homestead

The roof sloped, and that was why I felt safe:
it was like a tent made of house. Aunt Belle's
cooking wafting up the narrow staircase, adult
laughter as I read old novels from the 40's, snug
beneath a ragged quilt and sheets worn soft. When
the lights went out, my door swung open with a banshee
moan, and the collie who was a twin for Lassie
slunk across tile, flopped on my feet.
The dog I couldn't get, was my dog while we stayed.
Feet warm, I read until dawn edged the half-moon
window. Trixie the collie slipped out at six
to avoid a scolding, my first late-night liaison
unknown to adults, age seven. This went on forever,
the summer of eternal novels and a harvest never
quite finished, one day as the next except for
the time my brother tarred the neighbour's chickens.
Why we got to stay I don't remember, but ever after
it was my farm when I was accused of being a townie.
The only land still held in our collective families.
Part of me still lives there in that bedroom, untouched
by anything but the true story of Annie Oakley and her gun.
Part of me knows the farmhouse lies empty, boarded windows.
The same part knows Trixie was shot that summer, after growling
at a young cousin who reached for her bowl.
I never forgave the shooter, or the food bowl, or the cousin.
I never forgave the dog who warmed my feet and broke my heart.

Lady G

tree before sky
darklaced and wide
galloping green beneath
to make you weep, had you
tears left. heart hammering
with the horses hooves. they
thought they'd lead you, tame
and trotting across the campus
green, but you kicked your naked
heels and clung with bare thighs,
breasts bounding, elbows down. you
said yes to this job because like a fish
leaping to the light on the end of a line
flashed the times you'd rode your uncle's horse
- the few enough times in your life you'd ever had
something hard/soft between your legs that responded
to your own command. The students yell Go Godiva Go and
your heart pounds, pounds, pounds, pounds with the hooves
of this nag-turned-Pegasus. Tomorrow you are back to turning
enough tricks to pay the debts addictions have incurred, the addictions
debts have incurred. Above you trees and a sky bluer than his eyes, your
wide-eyed child you haven't seen since sixteen; bluer than blood-in-veins;
bluer than the blues you sing when you shower alone; bluer than the five dollar bills
you earn the easy way. Easy now, easy and your mount slows and you head between the buildings
and into the lot, they got their money's worth of naked women on horseback, five hundred dollar tradition
and a freedom for you that slides in your veins without a syringe, a remembering, a letting, instead of forgetting.

Courtroom Number 8

Uniformed guard whisks us through the security system
and I wander a maze of halls as dense as a legal brief
the chamber is quiet and church like
except for the armed guards, the lack of windows.

Even the benches are wooden and carved like pews. A collection
plate is never passed, and we rise for the judge but remained
seated for the accused, judging his bland demeanour, his shaved
head, the roundness of him so very alive and present.

The judge holds forth on why there will be no media ban, not even
for the child whose mother has been killed. The public
deserves to know justice is served, he says. The mother
of the deceased, grandmother
of the child in question leaves the courtroom, her wail
heard from two rooms away. The men continue their ritualized
dance. A series of bows and flourishes, a sword fight over a witness
until his reputation is a tattered poster
on a pole outside a disreputable bar. He shrugs his way
out. Court is adjourned after the lineup is sorted
until the weekend. "We'll be playing all week, folks."

Friday is medical records of the deceased; in case
her medications or her history prove
she deserved or caused what was coming to her. I want
to bring up the history of this country, to talk about
the attitudes of the accused, the system that upholds
these travesties, the patriarchal bullshit posturing.

Instead I walk home and make chicken noodle soup for supper.
And I spoon some on the ground for her hungry spirit, unfeasted,
unrested, lit on fire and left in a small town dump. Those men
with their eyes and mouths open wide and gulping. Justice was never

a blindfolded woman.

Famished

Sprinting from task to task my sugar shakes tell me
nothing was ingested today but coffee, but a friend
has dropped off a loaf of braided bread, herbed
goat cheese. I eat standing, my humble/decadent Pesach. Today
I worked on a play about Residential School Survivors
and the many more lost. I finished a tiny pair
of beaded vamps for the children who died of
starvation and (mal)nutrition experiments. My grandmother
had one sister and two brothers who lived, and
more than that
who never saw adolescence, I don't know exactly
how many. There's a lot
I don't know.

She spoke about her school experience once,
when I complained about my homework. I had to read
that book in French, and if we misspoke the words
we were punished. That was all. Even then
I knew there was more to the story. Her eyes
spoke a closed world to me I can still almost see. Her
baby sister told me many years later, your grandmother
once whispered to me at school, if she didn't have kids
by the time she was 18, she would die. Starving
for love and family, a hunger for permanence. My hands
stop shaking now, and I taste the bread she never could
(a celiac who spent most of her life deadly sick until
it was diagnosed, then baked for her dozens of grandchildren
while eating
plain meat and rice.)

Earlier today at Yom Ho Shoah the horn sounded for six million dead
1.5 million children.
I mumbled the parts of the Kaddish I am beginning to learn
one year at a time, and hummed the Israeli music in snatches
of breath filled with pebbles. Robbie Waisman
implicated us with his stories as a survivor
tying the Holocaust to Canada's Indian Residential Schools, please pleas
to the blind-headed and the lame-hearted
to make it stop, make it one day truly be
never again. Skeletal pictures on the screen of people still somehow alive.
In the basement of the synagogue, stories of resistance.

In and after 1885 more women and children died of disease or starvation
than casualties from both sides. With no homes or guns
we ate gophers or our own dogs.

Robbie's spirit had come to me while beading; memories
of his little nephew Nathan and Nathan's mother Golda -

"I fell in love with her when I was eight, but gave her up
when my oldest brother Chaim married her. She had a curl in the middle of her forehead
like an upside down question mark."

- who refused
to leave her three-year-old and went to the gas chamber with him
in her arms.

"The famine ships from Ireland were floating coffins," my cousin said to me.
Like other family members, he tried to find our relatives back in Ireland,
but they were all long dead
with no descendants but those who survived the death ships. Here.

Not an unusual story, Robbie said to me two years ago, wiping away tears
that his own mother had gone to the same chamber in Treblinka. Robbie was her baby.
At 11 he watched his closest brother climb into the truck to be shot, and ran after it.
I wanted to tell him his mother was surely that life-force that stopped him
from being loaded in, that he was the comfort to her in death
and life, that her will to live was still present in his body, but instead
I said then and today, when we hug again, "Your family is proud of you. They see you."

"My name is Nya, I came to the Yom Ha Shoah today because
I am from Kenya and they are killing my people there. I have lost
most of my family."

I showed him the vamps saying they are also for Nathan and Golda.
One is thinner than the other to represent starvation. They are both

too tiny.

Then I go home to find the braided bread,
ram's horn echoing
in the gas chamber of my heart
and I eat and I eat while I peel potatoes for supper. Because

I'm famished.