Tuesday poem #601 : Dawn Macdonald : On Reading, in 2023, a Confusing Entry for “Old Crow, Y.T.” in The Junior Encyclopedia of Canada (1990)

 

 

… the settlement un-
settled. got up and jumped
twice, twice in a life
time, in 1911 for the smallpox
but before that 18-
70 the people (more
of them then) moved
for the slamming down of nation-
skin, being then informed
of the border an unseeable
god in a plane, known arcane
membrane, daemon keeping molecules
of air on this side American,
on this side property
of John A.

                   so, they got up
and moved
around, shook a leg
as you do.

some say the place (the third
place) is named for a man who is named
for a Walking Crow, but isn’t that
a joke? the bird that walks
from place to place, poink poink
poink, three toes in the snow
the whole long way. some say
it’s Crow May I Walk and some
say a joke is an honor. some
can see what crows are like.
some read the Canadian Encyclopedia
and some the Vuntut Gwitchin website
and have trouble knowing which
of these authoritative sources is the authority
to trust this side of the border,
being very sure what borders are,
and orthographies, and acceptable
sources for citation.
                                The Junior
Encyclopedia comes in five
volumes (I found it
on the street; I carried it
home in my arms, walking;
I walked with it
from place to place), the Encyclopedia
is illustrated
and strives
for a friendly tone

the street where I found it
is residential and out
of our price range

we can only walk
in the line of the sidewalk
and even then we’ll worry
about cracks

 

 

 

 

Dawn Macdonald lives in Whitehorse, Yukon, where she was raised off the grid. Her poetry appears in literary journals like Grain and Nat. Brut, and also in speculative publications like Asimov’s Science Fiction and Wizards in Space. She is the author of Northerny (2024, University of Alberta Press).

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan