Search Categories - Any -25 Lines or FewerCanadaPre 21st Century21st Century Grade levels - Any -Grades 7-9 / Sec. 1-3Grades 10-12 / Sec. 4 & 5 / CEGEP 1 Sort by RandomNewestMost popularA -> ZZ -> A Apply Wallace Stevens The Snow Man One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; And have been cold a long time To behold the junipers shagged with ice, Tyler Pennock I have so many now. I have so many now. There’s one where we were giants, playing with our size by falling over houses and trees, laughing. There’s another where I was racing the old ones in a game, and we stopped Ashley Qilavaq-Savard Skins what a glory feeling it is to sit in the sun by the oceanside as tulugait and naujait sing circling above and scrape skins with centuries of arnait guiding my ulu Afua Cooper Shots Rang Out on My Street Today Boyakka! Boyakka! Boyakka! Boyakka! Boyakka! Boyakka! Boyakka! Boyakka! Boyakka! Shots rang out on my street today Three Black yoots lay dead shot inna dem head Bob Hicok Love poem The woman I love braids her hair. She’s Eve and Eve means breathe, to give life, my wife, from Eva by way of the Hebrew havah. At dusk I unlock her hair Matthew Weigel On the Boundaries of Treaty No. 6 commencing to the place of beginning; emptying; in 1959 the South Saskatchewan river was dammed; forever altering the boundary of Treaty no. 6; such that it technically no longer exists; Lucille Clifton forgiving my father it is friday. we have come to the paying of the bills. all week you have stood in my dreams like a ghost, asking for more time but today is payday, payday old man; my mother’s hand opens in her early grave Marvin Frances more treaty lines 1790 → treaty 2, district of Hesse (step into wolf) province of quebec “We do herby certify that the following goods were delivered to the several Nations” Cicely Belle Blain London I some towers are made of cladding some made of ivory some burn in the night some built by slaves wind rushes through coarse hair body aches between vertebrae Kaveh Akbar How Prayer Works Tucked away in our tiny bedroom so near each other the edge of my prayer rug covered the edge of his, my brother and I prayed. We were 18 and 11 maybe, or 19 and 12. He was back from college where he built his own Conor Kerr What Do You Believe In? Do you believe in the ghosts of aunties and uncles that drive old sin- gle-bench pickup trucks spotted with bullet-hole rust, sweetgrass and Molly CROSS-BLANCHARD First Time Smudge It takes eight matches, a burnt thumb, and a quick Google search to light the sweetgrass braid Mom scored for me from an elder at work. Always use matches, she said. Spirit likes matches. Donika Kelly From the Catalogue of Cruelty Once, I slapped my sister with the back of my hand. We were so small, but I wanted to know how it felt: my hand raised high across the opposite shoulder, slicing down like a trapeze. Lee Maracle Language Do you speak your language? I stare — I just said: how are you? I thought English was my language apparently it isn’t I thought Halkomelem was gibberish the devil’s language that’s what the nuns said Jane Byers March on Washington, 1993 What struck me first was the sheer numbers, queers everywhere. Battalions of sailors and infantry, proud in their uniforms. Eventually, I made uneasy peace with this equal right. Ron Padgett Prose Poem (“The morning coffee.”) The morning coffee. I’m not sure why I drink it. Maybe it’s the ritual of the cup, the spoon, the hot water, the milk, and the little heap of brown grit, the way they come together to form a nail I can hang the Siku Allooloo Arnauqatikka i. Maybe it’s your old way kind of vision… That looking past and through Emily Riddle Dinosaur Economics i wanted bitumen to be made of dead dinosaurs. why did i want these ancient kin to be passively implicated in the fossil fuel industry? it Emily Riddle Holy Beings on the day the chief of kâ-awâsis announces they have confirmed 751 bodies in unmarked graves outside the residential “school” in their community, i google things like: when will the sun run out of fuel? Stanley Kunitz The Portrait My mother never forgave my father for killing himself, especially at such an awkward time and in a public park, that spring when I was waiting to be born. She locked his name Tamar Rubin Perennial For thirty-one years, my mother tried not to miss her. Every week, a little water or the trickle of a few ice cubes dropped in black earth. Years back, in the muck of Toronto, April, Ada Limón The Raincoat When the doctor suggested surgery and a brace for all my youngest years, my parents scrambled to take me to massage therapy, deep tissue work, osteopathy, and soon my crooked spine Tonja Gunvaldsen Klaassen Mama When the horse picked Mama up by the hair that time, was she scared? There is a photograph of her with this horse in the brown family album. She stands beside him, thin in the chilly wind Di Brandt my mother found herself my mother found herself one late summer afternoon lying in grass under the wild yellow plum tree jewelled with sunlight she was forgotten there in spring picking rhubarb for pie & the children home from Meghan Kemp-Gee A Newly Discovered Species of Lizard with Distinctive Triangular Scales I am Charles Darwin. I eat owlflesh at Cambridge University. I have discovered something, an entirely new species with tropical fever in its reptile fingers. I am busy with taxonomying its most peculiar and three-sided Susan Musgrave You Didn’t Fit You wouldn’t fit in your coffin but to me it was no surprise. All your life you had never fit in anywhere; you saw no reason to begin fitting in now. When I was little I remember Kim Addonizio Aquarium The fish are drifting calmly in their tank between the green reeds, lit by a white glow that passes for the sun. Blindly, the blank glass that holds them in displays their slow Tina Cane Imaginary Dad Was so imaginary he ceased to exist he wasn’t sleeping in a treehouse or stalking the woods in fatigues cheeks smeared green with camouflage grease Amy Uyematsu A Practical Mom can go to Bible study every Sunday and swear she’s still not convinced, but she likes to be around people who are. We have the same conversation every few years — I’ll ask her if she stops Pascale Petit The Lammergeier Daughter That night, I opened your wardrobe and found a trophy of vultures, their necks pierced by hanger hooks. I saw at once that you hunted everything I loved — Adèle Barclay RAINBOW ROCK-CLIMBING CLUB I’m a gecko on a wall that simulates a cliff with rainbow grips I’ll touch any colour that’ll have me midway is high enough wary of emotional cliff-jumping I don’t mean home- Emily Riddle Please Write a Poetry Book in Syllabics1 i want to complicate the term sacred, she told me to make holy sacerdotal: priestly sākris: to make a treaty Selina Boan breakup a girl between two dialects still a screen and still a searching, learns the season of breakup another word for spring can come before or after depending on where you grew up online, back and forth Nancy Jo Cullen a good day it was very sad the day we heard that dad would die but it was also fun because all my friends came over and we went driving in the blue Toyota that kelly’s sister terry drove and i was the center of attention Chen Chen Self-Portrait as So Much Potential Dreaming of one day being as fearless as a mango. As friendly as a tomato. Merciless to chin & shirtfront. Realizing I hate the word “sip.” But that’s all I do. Laurie D. Graham Fast Commute The meteorologists are pleading with us to keep checking back through the storm, ice pellets making a carpet two, three inches thick, this pale beach we walk on, this wind that passed Adonis Ali Ahmad Said Esber The Wound I. Leaves, asleep under wind: a ship for the wound. The wound glories in these ruinous times. Trees growing in our own eyelashes a lake for the wound. The wound shows up in bridges Kevin Irie Current The sludge-slow flow of the visible current opens a path we can’t continue, tugs at what no hand can pull along. It’s how even water loses memory, travels a direction it cannot find, Fariha Róisín the many descriptions of being brown White people tell you to apologize for yourself through gestures, through small talk, through the ways in which they ask, “Where are you from?” and then again, unresolved: “No, I mean...Where are you Molly CROSS-BLANCHARD Dear Dolphin The shaman at Broadway and Main with a plastic shaker and some sage says you’re my power animal. Says we both have big brains, like to chatter. I don’t know anything about dolphins, except Language English