Vallum Poem of the Week: Ellen Chang-Richardson, “Please Tell Me This Will Not Last Forever”

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18:1, Ellen Chang-Richardson, Please Tell Me This Will Not Last Forever, POTW

PLEASE TELL ME THIS WILL NOT LAST FOREVER

 

chapel street shifts pitch deep winter;

its edges, sharper its scents brighter, brittle

like peppermint ……………. or bone

.
where fever …. bush frozen

berry holly reaches its thorns to bristle

my fingers with its bitter tang

…………………………………. where deep—

.
beneath …. permafrost and

rust and dirty snow slush lies … me

…….. covered, cold in remnants of

an old white school song

.
…………………………………. our home

and native land ……………. haunting

my memory of spring.

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Ellen Chang-Richardson (she/her) is an award-winning poet of Taiwanese and Cambodian Chinese (or Chinese Cambodian) descent. As the daughter of a survivor of the Cambodian genocide, she’s still trying to figure that second part out. The author of three poetry chapbooks, including snap, pop, performance (Gap Riot Press), her writing has appeared in Room, third coast magazine, and Watch Your Head, among others. She currently lives and works on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg. Find her online at https://ehjchang.com.
(Author photo by Manahil Bandukwala)

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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: Lauren Turner, “The Second Person Has Departed”

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18:1, POTW

THE SECOND PERSON HAS DEPARTED

 

 

A gold sequin dress isn’t any use in a fire. I scribble down every cypher
I gathered about you. There is no kindness in letting you know

when the world unclasps, emptying its prayer palms of us, our preordained
survival. Did you expect me to carry a gun? asks the body

of the lake. Like something broken loose, you’re there, stalking shore
in your thrifted aviator jacket. Triassic schools of sturgeon thrash

the silt, under the shade of absent reeds. Migratory fowls land in arrows
of feather, viscera. The rust that blood turns. Water becomes a blip

at the center. Water is an end. Kitten, you call, what colours survive
behind our cloudscape now? To no one in particular, to the me inside this

blue-ceilinged kitchen. I wish I could recollect you with gentler hands
than nostalgia. How it behaves as the aggressor, coercing renewal

from depleted sediment. It’s golden, I tell the you who left, and aflame
with newborn constellations. What you’d read there isn’t my guess. 

 

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Lauren Turner is a disabled poet and essayist. Her chapbook, We’re Not Going to Do Better Next Time, was published by knife | fork | book in March 2018, and her full-length debut, The Only Card in a Deck of Knives, came out with Wolsak & Wynn in August 2020. Her work has appeared in Grain, Arc Magazine, PRISM International, Poetry is Dead, Cosmonauts Avenue, The Maynard, The Puritan, BAD NUDES, canthius, and elsewhere. She won the 2018 Short Grain Contest, was a finalist for carte blanche’s 2017 3Macs Prize, and made the longlist for Room Magazine’s 2019 creative non-fiction contest. She lives in Tiohtiá:ke/Montréal on the unceded land of the Kanien’kehá:ka Nation.

 

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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: Naomi Kanakia, “The Girl”

Tags

18:1, POTW

THE GIRL

 

The girl from high school—not my high school—had long straight hair
and a foxy face and her body, a cylinder, with slightly wider hips,
was perfect for the sheath dresses she wore.
Vee was a Circassian, famous beauties in their day, well-prized as slaves,
her mother a refugee from Turkey, never marry a Muslim, she said.

But that is not her, in the corner of the cafe, perched on the couch,
with the man who—no point describing him—he is white and a man—
they are so useless, men—this is a belief amongst a hundred thousand
misogynerds—men are useless, superficial, external, mere repositories
of ambitious semen, driven to produce and build wealth and

enact feats of strength, and if not that to rape—but the woman who isn’t Vee—
because her name was Vee—the girl in high school—not my school—my
friend’s girl—not my best friend—the girl who worshipped me—brought
signs to my It’s Academic games—told everyone I was the smartest
person she knew—-the girl I imagined as my slave, purchased from—

But it’s not that girl in the corner of the cafe. My girl, Vee—the one I never owned—
she is a foreign correspondent based in Belgrade—but this girl
I do not know—this girl is nothing—just some white man’s possession—
Oh but now I remember, Vee texted the other day and said she’d loved my book:
“I always knew you’d grow up and do something amazing.”

 

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Naomi Kanakia is the author of two young adult novels, out from HarperTeen and Little, Brown. Her poetry has appeared in American Journal of Poetry, Antigonish, and Soundings East. Her stories have appeared in Asimov’s, Clarkesworld, Gulf Coast, F&SF, The Indiana Review, Lightspeed, and others. She holds an MFA from the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars and lives in San Francisco with her wife and one year old daughter.

 

 

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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: Matt Rader, “Zero + One”

Tags

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”

Tags

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 Featured Poem: “Mr Schlesinger” by Christopher Levenson

Tags

18:1, poem

Mr Schlesinger

 

A Jewish refugee, he probably came
just before the war to our North London suburb,
and stayed in our house for a while till the authorities
took him away to an internment camp,
maybe the Isle of Man,
as an ‘enemy alien’ alongside captured Nazis,
We never heard of him
again. All that remained were his books
stowed away in a cupboard in my brother’s bedroom
‘for the duration’;
a two volume Muret Sanders dictionary, three heavy tomes
of Bismarck’s Gedanken und Erinnerungen,
a Struwelpeter and other evidence of scholarship.
But now, with both my parents dead, untraceable,
no one left to ask. If he had stayed at home in Germany
there would have been meticulous documents, closure.

 

 

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Christopher Levenson taught English and Creative Writing at Carleton University, Ottawa, for almost thirty years, co-founded and was first editor of Arc magazine, before moving to Vancouver in 2007. He has  published twelve books of poetry, most recently,  A tattered coat upon a stick (Quattro,2017) and reviews poetry regularly for the on-line Ormsby Review. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

Vallum regrets that we made a copy-editing error and Christopher Levenson’s biography does not appear in the print issue of 18:1. Our sincerest apologies for unwittingly remaining too true to our issue’s theme of “Invisibility,” it was not our intension to make Levenson’s name invisible as well. We are proud to have Levenson’s poem included in our issue, and apologize once again for the error.

 

 

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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.

 

“Border Crossings” by Mary Trafford, 2nd Place Winner for Vallum’s Annual Poetry Award 2020

Tags

18:1, Vallum Award for Poetry

Border Crossings

 

Crossing the border used to be fun, sort of,
hide & seek, little white lies, us trying not to
laugh, Mum swatting us from the front seat,
crossing from rural Maine back to
rural New Brunswick, the Presque Isle River
barely a creek alongside the one-hut
customs office: it was all small-potatoes.

Mum once hid an entire dress
in her purse, the border guard asking,
Do you always carry a dress in your purse?
and she gave him that look we all knew,
that steady, firm gaze, said, Yes.
He backed up a step, as if chastened,
then waved us through.

Dad always declared his quota of liquor,
except for that one hidden in the trunk,
desperate to hustle those bottles across,
save the precious cents he so coveted
every day, all life long, insistent he
do all the talking, joshing the border guard
as if they were old friends, then waved
on through: satisfied, even smug.

Those were lighter days, no nine-eleven
to cloud our judgment, make almost anyone
suspect, not being white the crossover crime.
We did not yet know, being white, how
smuggling a dress, being black,
could cost so much,
how hiding liquor, being black,
could mean jail or worse.

We know now, as TV news flashes
its pornography of exclusion,
its ranking of humanity, placing
brown children in chain-link cages, their
mamá and papá God knows where,
residue of FOX News, bad politics,
of simply being brown in an alt-white world.

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Mary Trafford is a retired speech writer and medical illustrator, and longtime riding instructor. Her poetry has appeared in several publications, including Contemporary Verse 2, Arc – Canada’s National Poetry Magazine, Canadian Woman Studies, Corinthian Horse Sport magazine, Feminist Flavours, Gone Dogs – Tales of Dogs We’ve Loved, (muse)Letters, “Verdant,” a 2020 anthology from Truth Serum Press in Australia, and several charity-fundraising chapbook projects. A recipient of Arc Magazine’s inaugural Diana Brebner Prize, Mary lives with her partner in Chelsea, Quebec.

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This poem was published in Vallum issue 18:1, Invisibility. Available to purchase through our website. 

The Vallum Award for Poetry 2021 is now open for submissions! Check out the entry requirements on our website and submit your work to be one of our next winners! 

 

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.

“As Unnoticed As Possible” by Michael Trussler, Honourable Mention Winner of Vallum’s Annual Poetry Award 2020

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18:1, 2020, Annual Award, As Unnoticed As Possible, honourable mention, Michael Trussler

As Unnoticed As Possible

— for Lucy, our original mother

 

There’s almost always
two of them: mother

and (or mother with)
her child up against             

a tilting shoulder, a breast
about to tire     and four
separate
                        hands
                  each gathering
                    its own task
                    each finger
                an annunciation
                      of trust. Care. And this particular pair, an almost

young Australopithecus looking faraway down
into the distance yet beneath and between us, her

offspring, a toddler mesmerized by something
looming behind what’s already here,
this ancestral pair—the colour
of sun-tape over shadow—is
factory-made from plastic, is
                                     conjured
from the gasoline haze
from the gasoline haze
the toy city, an unforeseen cosmopolis done in
by polymers, some in the neonatal
intensive care unit, and others inside
our luminous and ever-improving tooth paste. River run, an infinite

regress of bodies ↔ these Instagram islands:
a floating montage from me    across to you     from
that jet trail passing instantly    to itinerant sea star to

whatever gods hummingbirds once knew, the telepathic and invisible
ones, she’s anxious       for me to learn      panic being
something     we both know.

 

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Michael Trussler has published poetry, short stories, and creative non-fiction. His short story collection, Encounters, won the Book of the Year Award from the Saskatchewan Book Awards in 2006. His collection of poetry, Accidental Animals, was short-listed for the same award in 2007. JackPine Press published A Homemade Life, an experimental chapbook blending photographs and text in 2009. The Alfred Gustav Press published the chapbook, Melancholy Girls with Sitar, in 2020. He teaches English at the University of Regina.

 

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This poem was published in the digital edition of Vallum issue 18:1, Invisibility. Available to purchase through our website. 

The Vallum Award for Poetry 2021 is now open for submissions! Check out the entry requirements on our website and submit your work to be one of our next winners!