… 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
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