Vallum Poem of the Week: “The Ruins” by Greg Santos

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17:2, greg santos, Poem of the Week, The Ruins

Vallum Poem of the Week: “aubade, an airport & the seas” by Marc Perez

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17:2, Aubuade an Airport & The Seas, Marc Perez, poem, Poem of the Week

aubade, an airport & the seas

I reach for you
as though for the mugicha 

we drank 
at a seashore 
teahouse in Kamakura

while you sit
on a metal bench 

losing your voice
in separate 

spaces with a brown hand
a border agent tugs 

the pen holder with a tarsier 
perched on a palm tree 
from your suitcase

didn’t you know
you’re not allowed

unaware
I bought it for you in Bohol 
on a low tide sandbar 

where we tasted salty sea 
urchins from spiny shells 

cracked in half 

by a sunned boy
who seemed to emerge 
straight from the sea

reminding you of a folktale 
about a young fisherman & a sea turtle 

as fractures mature us 

I wish for waves 
to come 

come

crashing at the airport
to submerge & claim us another 

border 

agent who could have been 
your sister tells us you need to leave 

that you have no right
to be here go back 

to the land of daybreak

across the seas
where we were born

without me

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Marc Perez is the author of the poetry chapbook Borderlands (Anstruther Press, 2020). His fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in Vallum, CV2, PRISM international, TAYO, and Ricepaper.

 

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This poem was originally published in Vallum issue 17:2. To view other content published in this issue, look here.

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: “Caesura” by Kelly Norah Drukker

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17:2, Caesura, Kelly Norah Drukker, Poem of the Week

Vallum Poem of the Week: “A Dozen Morning Translations” by Rob Winger

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17:2, A Dozen Morning Translations, Poem of the Week, Rob Winger

Vallum Magazine · “A Dozen Morning Translations” by Rob Winger

A Dozen Morning Translations

When I talk, again, about Voyager 1
out there beyond the heliosphere,
what I really mean is that
none of us recalls the birth canal.

And when I show you this photo
of my favourite painting, made in Paris
with palette knives in 1954, I’m giving you
my boyhood’s village springs.

Every novelist’s demilitarized zone
wants a good coconut beach.

The robins eating winter sumac mean
the oceans are deeper than we think.

So when I tell you the ladder’s too short
to clean out the eavestroughs,
what I’m really saying is that
the ladder’s too damned short
to clean out the stupid eavestroughs.

What I’m really saying is that bankers
still scavenge everybody’s breadcrumbs.

The baseball at the height of its arc
in the outfield by the ears
of corn is every lost October leaf pile.

The bookmarks strewn across
our desktops mean we’ve forgotten
our grandmothers’ birthdays;

and our once-read grad-school
textbooks will never be
the last ship out of Saigon.

Let’s re-focus our blue-box cylinders;
there are still, right here, green points
in our gardens, pushing up
against three inches of April ice.

The chorus in your favourite song
is next year’s coiled calendar.

So, when I tell you, again,
about Voyager 1 shutting down
its systems, measuring
interstellar gamma rays,
what I really mean is that
none of our kids
can ever be shielded
from even a single solar flare.

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)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

Rob Winger‘s most recent book, It Doesn’t Matter What We Meant, is forthcoming in the spring of 2021. He’s also the author of three previous collections, including Muybridge’s Horse, a Globe and Mail Best Book, CBC Literary Award winner, and finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Awards, Trillium Book Award for Poetry, and Ottawa Book Award. He lives in the hills northeast of Toronto, where he teaches at Trent University.

This poem can be found in It Doesn’t Matter What We Meant, which can be purchased here.

Image: Kristal Davis

This poem was originally published in Vallum issue 17:2. To view other content published in this issue, Vallum’s website.

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: “A Day of Nothing in the Multiverse” by Julie Cameron Gray

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17:2, A Day of Nothing in the Multiverse, Julie Cameron Gray, Poem of the Week

A Day of Nothing in the Multiverse

What comes next doesn’t really matter.
A stripe of light, watered down,
the television a parliament of owls
to wind me up, set the tension

on an internal spring. Considering this:
definitions are softening. What is the world
if not an arctic of sound, a bowl of seeds,
a room of cuckoo clocks?

As though the rain on the concrete
is not rain, and there is no concrete.
It is inside or outside, it is a sky blueing
or a platelet whitening.

How the air bends and light slows down
to size up each particle it encounters
as a potential dance partner,
to samba for a moment that is forever

or only a fractal second, or never at all.

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Julie Cameron Gray is originally from Sudbury, Ontario. She has previously published two full length collections of poetry – Tangle (Tightrope Books 2013) and Lady Crawford (Palimpsest Press, 2016) which was shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Award. Her work has also appeared or is forthcoming in various literary journals such as The Fiddlehead, Vallum, Prairie Fire, Carousel, Grain, and anthologized in The Best Canadian Poetry in English. She currently lives in Toronto.   

This poem was originally published in Vallum issue 17:2. To view other content published in this issue, Vallum’s website.

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 Love Like a Rock” by Jennifer Hasegawa

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17:1, Jennifer Hasegawa, Poem of the Week, This Love Like a Rock

This Love Like a Rock

My dad hauled home
a beautiful rock. It was three-feet tall
and pocked like a wild sponge.

When it rained, water pooled
in the top pocks and cascaded down
to fill the lower pocks.

He told my mom,
“Pele made em jus fo you, honey!”
She said, “Fairy tales.”

The rock started making
its own water. I monitored it as it
slowly circled our house.

He ate some bad opihi (auwe!)
and was writhing in bed for days
as red moss crept across the rock.

Back at work, a boulder toppled
from the trench of a bulldozer
and caught his leg.

Earthbound meteor left a gash
in his shin. Blood pooled in the top pocks
and cascaded down to fill the lower pocks.

He hobbled out the front door,
gently tucked the rock into the bed of his truck
and we headed for Volcano town.

He returned it
to the grove of ōhi‘a lehua
where he found it.

My father stared at his battered leg
and I worried that the rock would be
there waiting when we got home.

We listened to the urgent trill of the ‘i‘iwi,
dipping its beak into the nectaries of the forest,
our pores wide open
_________________and taking in
)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))our own sweet medicine.

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Jennifer Hasegawa is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet who has sold funeral insurance door-to-door and had her suitcase stolen from a plastic surgery clinic in Asunción, Paraguay. She was born and raised in Hilo, Hawaiʻi and lives in San Francisco. The manuscript for her first book of poetry, La Chica’s Field Guide to Banzai Living (Omnidawn 2020), won the Joseph Henry Jackson Literary Award. She is creating videopoems visualizing the book using footage taken while sheltering-in-place during the COVID-19 pandemic. Her work has also appeared in The Adroit Journal, Bamboo Ridge, Bennington Review, and Tule Review and is forthcoming in jubilat.

To view other content published in this issue, 17:1, please visit Vallum’s website.

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: “Cold War Wash Day” by Dawn Macdonald

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Cold War Wash Day, Dawn Macdonald, Poem of the Week

 Cold War Wash Day

When we integrated under the curve and the fuel
ignited, when push came to
rubber glove, and in all the kitchens
food fell from plates,
_________we leapt into our holes and made
tracks, one small,
one just right.
________One side makes you human.
________One side wakes you.
________One side makes you see stars.

When we pulled out all our handkerchiefs, chain
rule, integration by parts, Bessel
functions and approximation by
infinite series near a point, the gap
_________dilated and everywhere we walked
in new-bought shoes,
_________here one centimeter, zero point five, there
a squeak, a prize
blister, a glow. The lint detached itself
from our jackets and we paraded before our own
discarded fluff. We shed,
_________and were proud.

Never have the oven and the dryer
stood so square, nor their dials
counted further down.

________

________

Dawn Macdonald lives in Whitehorse, Yukon, where she was raised off the grid. She holds a degree in applied mathematics from the University of Western Ontario. Her poetry has appeared in The Antigonish Review, Literary Review of Canada, Rattle (Poets Respond), and elsewhere.

To view other content published in this issue, 17:2 “SPACE”, please visit Vallum’s website.

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: “Removes Sleep from the Eyelids” by Adam Sol

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Adam Sol, Poem of the Week, poetry, Removes Sleep from the Eyelids

Removes Sleep from the Eyelids

המעביר שנה מעני ותנומה מעפעפי …

A good soaking overnight
and now the clouds
hover spent, going nowhere.
Already the yellowjackets
are up looking for someone
to mess with. Blue jays
mock my prayer which
would be fine if only
they’d help clear last night’s
plates and tissues. But no
they had no part in the mess
and they won’t help
with the aftermath.
My Y is busy recomposing
herself from shining fragments
and my boys are off
to learn something about the world.
Something just fell out of a tree.
Don’t say I was fooled
into thinking I could matter.
Say rather… Say instead,
say nevertheless. Say even still.

Adam Sol’s most recent book is How a Poem Moves: A Field Guide for Readers of Poetry (ECW Press, 2019). He is also the author of four books of poetry, with one on the way from ECW Press in 2021. He is Coordinator for the Creative Expression & Society Program at the University of Toronto’s Victoria College.

To view other content published in this issue, 17:1, please visit Vallum’s website.

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: “Unhappiness” by Aisha Hamid

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17:2, Aisha Hamid, Poem of the Week, poetry, Space, Unhappiness

Unhappiness

I am Mama’s eyes
grey-black, glassy, distant eyes that belong
somewhere else
in someone else’s face
walking places I can never learn the names of, places
I will never visit, freedoms that could have been
mine in another lifetime
She is scattered; always
anywhere but here
Her life is an injustice. How can I correct it
Where do I begin. Which corner do I grab when
I too am anywhere but here
I too run off to places
I attend a million funerals everyday
I crunch broken glass between my teeth and wonder
why the bleeding doesn’t stop

Is this what unhappiness looks like—
a woman who is always scattered
scattered like chaff from sifted wheat
like dust particles hovering
like a million drops of perfume

Aisha Hamid is a feminist writer and poet based in Lahore, Pakistan. She graduated from the University of Warwick with a MA in Gender and International Development and is a Commonwealth Scholar. Her academic and creative writing both revolve around Pakistani women’s agency and the multiple meanings it comes to hold for them. As a woman living and writing in a deeply patriarchal space, she regards her writing as activism. She was among six writers shortlisted for the Zeenat Haroon Rashid Writing Prize for Women, 2019. She was also among eight writers selected for the residential LUMS Young Writers Workshop, 2019. She has been published by Buchleser Books and Rare Swan Press. Her poetry is forthcoming in The Aleph Review (2021). 

This video was animated/illustrated by Bushra Saleem.

As a visual artist with a degree in architecture, Bushra Saleem aims to deconstruct patriarchal methods of research and imagining, to answer questions attached to geographies of fear and fearlessness, and how love and empathy can be brought together through the means of magical realism. It is through sharing the untethered dreams, hopes and visions that she tries to bridge the now to the feminist future.

To view other content published in this issue, 17:2, please visit Vallum’s website.

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: “Sweetly” by Emily Chou

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17:2, Emily Chou, Poem of the Week, Space, Sweetly

 

 

 

 

Emily Chou (she/her) is a poet and cartoonist living on unceded Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh territory. Featured in Lemon Hound’s list of upcoming Vancouver poets and In/Word magazine’s 30 under 30 issue, her work has appeared in Room, Ricepaper, Chinatown Today, and various other collections and anthologies. She currently serves as the Poetry Editor for PRISM international. She has lived in the UK, Japan, and Italy, but somehow manages to always find her way back. Find her at @_rhymeswithwow on Instagram and Twitter.

To view other content published in this issue, 17:2 “Space”, please visit Vallum’s website.

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.