Vallum Poem of the Week: Ashley Hynd, “One Shot Over the Line”

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16:2, Ashley Hynd, One Shot Over the Line, POTW

One Shot Over the Line

— after Kevin Carter

Necklacing: the act of hanging a tire soaked
in petrol around a person’s neck then
lighting it on fire

It gets heavy after a while and they always fall over
crumpled into a pile of human remains in the sand
the smell stays in your clothes
you wash and wash
and wash them
clean

then you never wear them

In twenty years time they will make shrines to me
accumulate all my worldly approximations and
claim I saw more than there was to see
in twenty minutes he’ll stop screaming
and I can start to wash my clothes
clean

 

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Founder and facilitator of Poets & Pancakes, a monthly brunch for writers, Ashley Hynd believes in building and fostering community. She sits on the editorial board for Canthius Literary Journal & Textile KW and is a Poetry Mentor with Textile KW’s Mentorship Program. She was consecutively longlisted for The CBC Poetry Prize (2018 & 2019), shortlisted for Arc Poem of the Year (2018), and won the Pacific Spirit Poetry Prize (2017). Her work has appeared in many publications across turtle island and her debut chapbook Entropy was released with GapRiot Press in 2020. Ashley lives on the Haldimand Tract and respects all her relations’ relationships with the land.

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This poem was originally published in Vallum issue 16:2 Connections.

Vallum magazine is also available in digital format. Featuring additional content such as: AUDIO and VIDEO recordings of selected poets, further poems, interviews, essays, and MORE! Visit our website for details.

Vallum Poem of the Week: Matt Rader, “Zero + One”

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18:1, POTW

Zero + One

 

No thing, a zero in the amber of time, then one.
At the edge of the mind a soft rime: then one.

The brook was running clear. Now it’s gone.
I’m here, cried the killdeer, I’m here. Now it’s gone.

Jewels of rain like We’ll grow rich with water,
Like every number were prime. Then one.

We built a small house in the womb of the woods.
Twice you gave birth there. Now it’s gone.

A storm sky etched by lightning, dissolved by light.
Twelve bodies trenched with lye, then one.

My name flashed in your mind, the familiar
Pale specter in the mirror. Now it’s gone.

On the horizon, tank columns, shattered sun.
The force of force is two—a rhyme—then one.

I kept one swan, black, in the cameo I wore
Around my neck like fear. Now it’s gone.

Nine grapes eight windows seven plains six fires
Five priests four dogs three crimes two heathens one…

In the dark eye of the night the moon brimmed,
An incandescent tear. Now it’s gone.

In the meadow of despair grows nothing plus nothing
Plus nothing in knots of brooklime. Then one.

In the morning, the fever broke like a horse.
All your life: a ringing in the ears. Now it’s gone

From the diamond fire walked the eight legs
Of the bodhi spider, numerator, sublime earthen one.

You held your third finger to the statue’s third-eye.
In your mouth a ruby appeared. Now it’s gone.

We made love in the corner of the laundromat.
Many deaths. Many lives. Many times. Then one.

Quietly, the maple tree undressed itself at our feet.
We had something, Matt, my dear. Now it’s gone.

 

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Matt Rader is the author of several books of poetry including Ghosthawk (Fall 2021). His poems, fiction, and nonfiction have appeared widely nationally and internationally. His work often addresses chronic illness and ecology. He lives on unceded Syilx territory in Kelowna, BC, where he teaches Creative Writing at UBC Okanagan.

 

 

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This poem was originally published in Vallum issue 18:1 Invisibility.

Vallum magazine is also available in digital format. Featuring additional content such as: AUDIO and VIDEO recordings of selected poets, further poems, interviews, essays, and MORE! Visit our website for details.

Vallum Poem of the Week: Janine Certo, “Conspiracy Theory”

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18:1, Conspiracy Theory, Janine Certo, POTW

Conspiracy Theory

a circle of reason / a proof that cannot
be proved or disproved / a mad mixture /

a template for order / cast, shaped, readymade
and launched / requires immediate

response (response must have no minor
errors) / a distrust, a witch hunt,

an elaborate dance / behind the scenes /
eyewitness testimony / no discussion

of the shortcomings / a lying
song; a hunch gone wrong / the plunge

of an economy; the rise of a demagogue /
lurking, scheming, webbing / it spreads

like famine / birthed from drought /
it’s birther and denier / the death of science /

a plot / a hoax / a code / a cover-up /
it spawns movements / knee-jerk / whatever

works / the uncited / the alt-right /
a need served / epistemic,

existential, self-defeating / off the cliff,
a riff, an election rigged / the rewritten,

the staged, the misplaced / towers that never fell /
a genocide erased / the Evil Incarnate /

the Machiavellian-slick / the mouse’s click /
a spiral into alienation and anomie /

a sense-making in a world otherwise
confusing / otherwise good people.

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Janine Certo is the author of ELIXIR, winner of both the New American Poetry Prize and the Lauria/Frasca Poetry Prize (New American Press and Bordighera Press, forthcoming 2021) and IN THE CORNER OF THE LIVING, runner-up for the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award (2017). A winner of Nimrod International Journal’s Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, her poems appear or are forthcoming in The Cincinnati Review, The Greensboro Review, New Ohio Review, Poetry Northwest, Shenandoah, and others. She is an associate professor at Michigan State University.

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This poem was originally published in Vallum issue 18:1 Invisibility.

Vallum magazine is also available in digital format. Featuring additional content such as: AUDIO and VIDEO recordings of selected poets, further poems, interviews, essays, and MORE! Visit our website for details.

Vallum Poem of the Week: “Whitewash” by George Elliott Clarke

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18:1, George Elliott Clarke, poem, POTW, Whitewash

Whitewash

 

White is waves bright as crinkled sunlight—or sunrise, done up in foam
White is Grevens Paerecider, Ironworks Pear Eau-de-Vie, Lunenburg County
Winery Montbeliard Pear Wine, and Belle-de-Brillet Poire-et-Cognac
White is the missing link* between Michael Jackson and Elizabeth Taylor
White is a spic-and-span E.R. with a scatalogical surgeon wielding a shit-smeared scalpel
White is a Snow White blow job necessitating a White House snow job
White is white diamonds white gold white chocolate white weapons white Negroes*
White is white-knuckled Rasputin as brass-knuckled Vladmir Putin, barbed nipples bared
White is Pericles, Cymbeline, King Lear, The Tempest, and The Winter’s Tale
White is instinctual, improvised, spontaneous, nonchalant, accidental sex
White is Vesper, Domino, Tiffany, Kissy, Solitaire, May Day, Jinx, plus Pussy Galore
White is seagulls dissertatin, preachin, meechin, squealin, sayin diddly squat
White is shooting blanks or drawing blanks

Vallum Poem of the Week: “Incorporate World of the Corporate Leader” by Jean-Mark Sens

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15:2, Incorporate World of the Corporate Leader, Jean-Mark Sens, POTW

Incorporate World of the Corporate Leader

 

After reading Redesigning Leadership by John Maeda

 

Twit for tat
subject lines @ in pseudo aphorisms—
the leader seeks to climb on his own shoulders
the kinship of his own acronyms into his last name.
Where is the ship of his leadership? Who is stirring at the wheel?
The “beta text” he calls in, a naked dressed
rehearsal of the virtual in blips and bits.
He organizes patterns through his web caught eyes,
at breakfast a gathering of bright heads
latte swirled into café au lait—why not coffee and cream?
Simplicity a raison d’être? The complex hide and seek of his secret.
“The Man” goes by the door behind the safe.
The co-founder found confounded,
the blogs, the umbilical fibre optic cords, the virtual
brighter than the world it mimics in pixelled two dimensions,
faster voices remixed, compressed,
algorithmized, the phlogiston of our age.

 

 

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Born in France, Jean-Mark Sens has lived in the American South for over twenty-five years. Until recently, he studied for Priesthood at Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans. His work has been published in the U.S. and Canada, and he has a collection, Appetite, with Red Hen Press.

This poem came to life after reading a book on leadership a friend, Blake, lent me. I rarely read such books but it turned out I could not take the book over seriously and wanted to respond to it, not from a business point of view but poetically and humanely beyond the recipe it gives for power and success.

 

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This poem was originally published in Vallum issue 15:2 The Chase.

Vallum magazine is also available in digital format. Featuring additional content such as: AUDIO and VIDEO recordings of selected poets, further poems, interviews, essays, and MORE! Visit our website for details.

Vallum Poem of the Week: “Lustrous Fugitive” by Jami Macarty

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18:1, Jami Macarty, Poem of the Week, POTW

Lustrous Fugitive

O my Goddess come …….. and see

…………. how I will the long now

how memory’s return device guest-hosts my one
…………………………… featherweight life on a median island

Goddess …….. will you will the time of will I to end
…………………………… my infinite future empty of children

end my disgrace of form
…………………………… expectant of mask and muzzle

Three of your puffs and a deep sand produces bones

…………. then you flee Earth into me
…………………………… Lustrous Fugitive

I am suddenly one of grotesque mingling
…………………………… by a spell of turning into someone else

My face Slavic ruin and torn
…………………………… between longing and safety and

those limbs of his …… deviling …… mind’s body’s bygones

…………. Semblance I am

…………………. I one and no one

at the edge of the fortress of trees
………………………………………… berries black and rasp

something of womanhood
…………………………… extracted to a wilderness

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Jami Macarty gratefully recognizes Native Nations of the West—especially the Coast Salish and O’odham—as the traditional and rightful owners of lands where she has the great privilege to live and work—as a teacher at Simon Fraser University, as editor of the online poetry magazine The Maynard, and as a writer of essays, reviews, and poetry. She is the author of The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona, and three chapbooks, including Mind of Spring (Vallum, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. Her work has been honored by financial support from Arizona Commission on the Arts, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, British Columbia Arts Council, and The Community of Writers, and by editors at literary publications such as Beloit Poetry Journal, The Capilano Review, The Fiddlehead, Interim, The Rumpus, Vallum, and Volt. 

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This poem was originally published in Vallum issue 18:1 Invisibility.

Vallum magazine is also available in digital format. Featuring additional content such as: AUDIO and VIDEO recordings of selected poets, further poems, interviews, essays, and MORE! Visit our website for details.

Vallum Poem of the Week: “wasted” by Julia Teeluck

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18:1, Julia Teeluck, Poem of the Week, POWT

wasted

 

memory slips through crooked fingers,
reaching for seventeen and its promises

we were skinny things
cocaine eyes and cracked lips
sharing cherry gloss between classes

“Thinner is the winner”
we sipped Diet Coke at lunch

a sky-blue cafeteria melting grease and thick laughter
plates of poutine and pizza
a game: how long to eat a pepperoni?
nibble the edge
taste salt on your tongue
salivating
ignore the wolf gnawing in your belly

“Thinner is the winner”
we chewed cinnamon gum at night

a bedroom plastered with DiCaprio posters
praying the pangs away
a hundred leg lifts
gets you there
gets you closer to God

 

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Julia Teeluck is a Canadian writer of mixed Guyanese heritage. Her poetry has recently appeared in Feels zine’s Anxiety issue and her story “42” about a girl’s longing to fit in at school and escape
responsibilities at home, received first prize in Canvas magazine’s short story contest (Ryerson University,
2014). 

She explores themes of  identity, belonging, jealousy, and aims to bridge the mystical and real worlds in her
creative works. She also seeks to understand the shadow self and delves into darker matters such as eating
disorders, suicide, depression and addiction in her poetry and prose. 

Julia is a former reader at PRISM international and a recent graduate of UBC’s Creative Writing MFA Program. 

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This poem was originally published in Vallum issue 18:1 Invisibility.

Vallum magazine is also available in digital format. Featuring additional content such as: AUDIO and VIDEO recordings of selected poets, further poems, interviews, essays, and MORE! Visit our website for details.

Vallum Poem of the Week: “Ah” by Émilie Kneifel

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16:2, ah, Poem of the Week, POTW

ah

 

red lips
red buttons
eyelash well-trimmed.

google myself
once a blue afternoon.

the cannon call
foot to ball
a black flock instead.

woodpecker.
nail.
an eyelash shell.
blue.

14 is the night version.
you and me, bent.

what do
they call it,
parsimony?

the harmony,
parsing?

the harm in me,
parsing?

the harm in me,

the harm in me?

 

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em/ilie kneifel is a sick slick, poet/critic, editor at The Puritan/Theta Wave, creator of CATCH/PLAYD8s, heartworms/blueberries, and also a list. find ’em at emiliekneifel.com, @emiliekneifel, and in Tiohtiá:ke, hopping and hoping.

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This poem was originally published in Vallum issue 16:2 Fear.

Vallum magazine is also available in digital format. Featuring additional content such as: AUDIO and VIDEO recordings of selected poets, further poems, interviews, essays, and MORE! Visit our website for details.

Vallum Poem of the Week: “Petite Sphinxes Ermite” by Roxanna Bennett

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18:1, Petite Sphinxes Ermite, Poem of the Week, POTW, Roxanna Bennett

Petite Sphinxes Ermite

 

…. At the Tate, (Modern not Britain), Leonor
Fini’s Petite sphinx ermite answers all
…. my unborn riddles: broken eggshells,

bird’s skull, “a pretty pink” human lung
…. swings “at the entrance of its dilapidated
lair” as though through years she viewed

…. me, remotely, lying here stillborn, slugging
masticated slurry through a silicone straw.
…. One of “her extraordinary hybrids” painted,

a skeleton study of stock neglect.
…. Tender creature, Shelley’s infant, who learned
the only monsters are people. “I find

…. all these feminists grotesque,” Fini said,
donning a Guerrilla Girl mask, “all artists
…. have an ambiguous side.” Dark, &

the waters, Sappho, smooth our raw edges.
…. Love erodes as much as time. My love is
the ocean, soaks my mummy bandages,

…. unwraps the old dusty lamina, exposes
thick scabs to sun & salt. Trapped on an
…. island of my own conditioning, clinging

to concepts of sickness, seawater cleanses,
…. its gentle erosion slowly coaxes
my coccyx to the threshold & holds,

…. hold, sit, still, stay. “ —a solitary figure
with a child’s head, female breasts—” I’ve spurned
…. bras since Christmas, burn the infernal

cages, these dugs too shrunken to matter,
…. “—& the paws of a lion—” The posh breast cancer
clinic is pretty pink decorated, our tax dollars

…. for tits limitless, Sick Kid’s isn’t rich like this,
gilded portraits, irises in thin vases, current issues
…. of Fashion & Flare. Cancer not the worst

but saying so is. Cancer envy. Jealous
…. of the waiting room, sympathy, jealous
of the holy status of survivor,

…. not of the lonely roller coaster
but of the protocols & answers, of being
…. called a warrior, not a malingerer,

my body is a paradigm shift
…. but they keep devising fictive Iron Maidens,
insist on dissection not integration.

…. I’m a reflection, not a stone
cast at a tin-can tower, a ruin made in
…. irony’s defence. Jealous of wanting

to be tit-free, put down the burden
…. of gender. Masculine/feminine,
either/or, black & white, left & right,

…. neither/nor. Is the cat in the box,
Schrödinger, what can it matter, rocks
…. & a bent net caught, rotting, toxic

run-off— How to be seen without being
…. dissected. I don’t care what you call me,
I am. Wave & particle, paradox surfing

…. the liminal. Leonor Fini’s tumours
hatch, catch air, “carry within them
…. a world of sensations & intuitions”

outside the frame. Matter-of-factual
…. dayworkers drain vital humours, call
abnormal the natural human pull

…. of blood to sea. See, me, not with your eyes,
those gelatinous liars, or your mind
…. (cacophonous like mine), but as I.

I am, & you, too, are, though apart, I
…. breathe what you breathe, I part-you, I
feel what you feel, you part-me, I

…. hum your grief song, carry your hurt heart
tenderly. I breathe you, in your dilapidated
…. lairs, you matter, millions of little hermit

…. sphinxes, we are a part, together.

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The disabled poem-making entity known as Roxanna Bennett gratefully resides on aboriginal land. As a settler, they thank the many generations of Indigenous people who have taken care of this land from beginningless time. They are the author of the award-winning poetry collection Unmeaningable, (Gordon Hill Press, 2019), unseen garden (chapbook, knife | fork | book, 2018), and The Uncertainty Principle (Tightrope Books, 2014).

 

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This poem was originally published in Vallum issue 18:1 Invisibility.

Vallum magazine is also available in digital format. Featuring additional content such as: AUDIO and VIDEO recordings of selected poets, further poems, interviews, essays, and MORE! Visit our website for details.

 

 

Vallum Poem of the Week: “This is an Emergency: I Only Remember the Girl” by Poonam Dhir

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18:1, Poem of the Week, Poonam Dhir, POTW, This is an Emergency: I Only Remember the Girl

This is an Emergency: I Only Remember the Girl

 

as close to me as skin
laughs uncomfortably
what does that mean
just stuff about what happened on that street

she was there sleeping

we had a house full of rugs
we had everything
what a stupid decision

patience is in the living room, an explanation
through the hole of a blouse
like a window raising expectations

why can’t you ask her to leave

running out of basements
turning on the lights
time moves through

—to give blessings
when there are more bodies than rooms

“The idea of a good father was created, like, 30 years ago”*

when you slip under
the cover reveals unwashed hands

*Line of dialogue spoken in the film: Marriage Story

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Poonam Dhir (she/they) is a poet and storyteller currently based in Tiohtiá:ke/ Montreal on the traditional territory of the Kanien’kehá:ka. Poonam’s work explores themes of identity, trauma, memory and the relationship between belief and belonging.

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This poem was originally published in the digital edition of Vallum issue 18:1 Invisibility.

Vallum magazine is also available in digital format. Featuring additional content such as: AUDIO and VIDEO recordings of selected poets, further poems, interviews, essays, and MORE! Visit our website for details.