Tuesday, July 26, 2016

Tuesday poem #173 : Rita Wong : parables of the polluted



ancestor light
brings futures closer from
            hedging            bets
                        rigged
  to cultivating             commons
                        rigorous
from salish coast to treaty 8 territories
   yoked together by british colonial hydro lines
& indigenous responsibilities before during & after
the fracked forest’s sobs, site
c for crappy, criminal, crisis
 presage our own stupid demise
clearcutting the province’s future
 with your tax booty
galaxies within                    life the force
manifest trash & terrain, tenderness & terror
refuse to look away from the violence
as the massive pines & eagles’ nest shrivel
through the liberal looking glass
                                       a capitalist “externality”
colonial prism turned ideological prison
manufactures its own obsolescence, mass extinction
its relentless logic disavowing its own delusional state
opens a path to mass exodus
helps us to see
our lives as walking (prayer)
                               camping (prayer)
                                                last ditch prayer
for with the flick of a light switch
                we see
the Peace River’s fate
is ours









Rita Wong has written one graphic collaboration with Cindy Mochizuki entitled perpetual (Nightwood Editions, 2015) and four books of poetry: monkeypuzzle (Press Gang, 1998), forage (Nightwood Editions, 2007), sybil unrest (Line Books, 2008, with Larissa Lai) and undercurrent (Nightwood Editions, 2015). She lives and works on the unceded Coast Salish territories also known as Vancouver.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

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