In the
dark gallery we look at the glass.
Grasses,
snakes. Bulrushes and flushes of colour.
My
sister and I—we’re charcoal-supple, still calm;
it’s a
full moon tonight, and later we’ll go dancing.
Grasses
and snakes. Bulrushes, flushes of colour,
while
Dad’s on a stretcher waiting for a brain scan.
It’s a
full moon tonight, and later we’ll go dancing.
We
look at the glass. One thousand flowers.
And
Dad’s on a stretcher waiting for a brain scan.
Somewhere
else, a different city. Everything feels right.
We
look at the glass. One thousand flowers
reflected
in a black pool, drowsy.
Somewhere
else, a different city. Nothing feels right.
In the
hospital it’s never dark. Fluorescent moons
reflect
in the black windows, manless.
And we
don’t know yet what’s happened.
In the
hospital it’s never dark. Fluorescent moons
in the
windows, flashes of white like fractured bone.
We
don’t know yet what’s happened.
Innocent
minutes drift between the glass cattails.
The
windows, flashes of white like fractured bone.
My
sister and I—we’re charcoal-supple, so calm.
Innocent
minutes drift between the stalks of cattails.
We sit
in the dark garden. Look at the beautiful glass.
Ellie Sawatzky
(@elliesawatzky) grew up in Kenora, Ontario. A past winner of CV2’s
Foster Poetry Prize, runner up for the Thomas Morton Memorial Prize, and a
finalist for the 2019 Bronwen Wallace Award, her work has been published widely
in literary magazines across North America. None of This Belongs to Me
is her debut full-length poetry collection, published by Nightwood Editions in
October 2021. She is currently an editor for FriesenPress, a member of the
Growing Room Collective, and curator of the Instagram account IMPROMPTU
(@impromptuprompts), a hub for prompts and literary inspiration. She lives in
Vancouver with her partner and a cat named Camus.
the
Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan
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