excerpt from

Cranes
by Emily McGiffin
2012*

from Between Dusk and Night (Brick Books)

Now, midway across the yard, six sandhill cranes
pass overhead. They’re so low I can hear their wings
skin the cold air. In unison they descend,
circling slowly, and alight on the drumlin in the far field.

Behind me over the trees, dawn ignites
the ragged clouds. The old door creaks open.
I bucket grain into the manger and draw the milking stool up.
Two streams of milk collide in the pail and the day

begins. In this season of endings, from this garden
of derelict tire rims, seized-up mower blades, there is so much
I would like to say. Leaning into this gentle, giving cow
she seems to me the natural condition of the world.

Springbomb
by Tom Wayman
2008

from High Speed Through Shoaling Water (Harbour Publishing)

Alder, birch, mountain ash detonate
on the hills or alongside the roads.
Each explosion generates green clouds
that feather away at the edges.
These blasts trigger hazel and larch,
merge with the continuous eruption
of the ridges’ fir, hemlock, pine
until the valley resounds
with an incessant green concussive roar.

Bolt
by Laisha Rosnau
2011

from Unfurled: Collected Poetry from Northern BC Women (Caitlin Press)

I hadn’t been on a horse for twenty-one years. Instead, I’d bucked
boys off me on the bench seats of pickups, dropped out of high school,
shucked off jobs like bad outfits, backpacked bug sprays, journals,
thin clothes and thick sweaters from country to country, came back
with cheap silver and film canisters of sand. Eventually,
I eased into the ride, memorized postal codes, married a man
because I wanted to smell the back of his neck forever.

And then, I’m on a horse on some northern back road, moose stamped
on the crest of the hill like a figment of Canadiana, and the horse bolts.
I hold on even as I miss the girl who would have let go—crack of helmet,
broken clavicle worth that moment of air, body ready to forget its weight,
ready to remember it again, the road coming up heavy to meet me.

Woman at the piano
by Pamela Porter
2016

from Defending Darkness (Ronsdale Press)

So much goes unpraised: thorns, rust, the burned house
vacant but for a piano out of tune. She sits down,
spreads her fingers and begins to play,
the music made giant by the floors and walls
until she lifts her hands and folds them in her lap
the way the spirit does when it has given up,
and asks only for quiet, and for the windows,
dusk without a moon. In the orchard, two deer
stand at attention, their skin quivering
in small, quick ripples, the only music they’d known
until this moment having been a choir of bees
carving cathedrals into the fallen pears.

excerpt from

Islands… The Heart
by Sue Wheeler
2002

from Slow-Moving Target (Brick Books)

We lug two-by-tens, a claw-foot bathtub,
sacks of lime off the ferry. Islands,
they say, are critical stop-offs for trade

and migration, but I say
whatever comes to an island stays.
That the dark-feathered griefs

and crates of desire calling at any heart
will dock and take up residence.
The heart hauls its reasons like a low-budget

traveller, everything crammed in one backpack,
impossible to set down a single souvenir
without walking away from it all.

How surprised we were in Greece at the packs 
leaning against the monument gates,
their owners trudging the pale hills.

If only I could live like that: know
that all the love and sorrow I ever needed 
is there. Here.

An Era of Easy Meat at Jericho
by George McWhirter
2008

from The Incorrection (Oolichan Books)

Where I ramble
By Jericho in the March
Mist and murk to take stock,
I glimpse and eagle perched
On a hemlock,
Above a bramble
Patch and rabbit that cannot dissemble
Its giddy nibbles in the grass, a pet bunny
Its bum left to bob like a yoo-hoo to a tummy
In a tree. Fast food, it will tremble
And jerk, then clog the eagle’s throat,
Without redress, like a fur
Coat
On a hamburger.

Summer
by Rob Taylor
2011

from The Other Side of Ourselves (Cormorant Books)

All day the phone rings. Yes.
Thank you. Not today. Please.
The kettle quivers. Tonight’s chicken
puddles in its melt. Upstairs,
goldfish o the water’s surface.
A forecaster’s voice twirls
on the radio: Sun, sun, sun!
Outside, children buzz and loop
like model airplanes. Newspapers
crackle on the porch. A squirrel
scrambles up a bird feeder.
If someone doesn’t pick
those zucchinis soon, they’ll burst.

Fever
by Jennica Harper
2014

from Wood (Anvil Press)

When he’s gone she clicks the link, submits
her criteria through drop-down menus:
2 or more bedrooms under 500 K.
She waits for red dots to appear, a pox
she hopes to catch. No unique questions here:
do we want a lawn to mow? We would need a lawnmower.
Do we want a Korean girl in the lower, practicing her
violin? No matter: no hits. At best it’s three quarters of a mil
for a teardown. Or an East-side special, kid sister with a lisp.
Still, there’s hope in the glow ... she rejigs, refines
her search, such fun at first, she knows she should stop when
the rub turns raw. The grass always greener in Dunbar.
But maybe. Maybe today there’s a high enough ceiling.
Once more, knock wood for the happy ending.

Bicycle Rack 2
by W.H. New
2002

from Stone/Rain (Oolichan Books)

At 7 a.m. on a Wednesday morning, forty-
four people go by in less
than a minute, cycling to work and school,
their faces as impassive as Yang
figurines moulded in clay: scholar,
fortune-teller, cobbler, baker,
in Nikes and blue uniform.
One young lover pedals
dreamily, his eyes inward. Perched
side-saddle behind him, his girlfriend,
legs crossed, polishes her nails.

Don’t Give a Magnet to an Elephant
by Tiffany Stone
2007

from Baaad Animals (Tradewind Books)

Don’t give a magnet to an elephant.
He won’t handle it with care.
He’ll hold it high up in the sky
and pull planes out of the air.
He’ll get it stuck to delivery trucks
and bicycles and trains.
He’ll cause trouble at construction sites
by sticking to the cranes.
He’ll magnetize the city—
every car, bus, van and truck.
Then he’ll sneak home to the jungle
and leave everybody stuck.

’86
by Elizabeth Bachinsky
2009

from God of Missed Connections (Nightwood Editions)

I was ten years old the year Chernobyl burned,
The very same year that Expo ‘86
came to Vancouver and the city changed forever.
For I will always think of China, the China pavilion
to be exact, each time these years later I pass
The China Gate at Dr. Sun Yat-Sen’s Classical
Chinese Gardens. We were moving then, all of us,
from one place to another. Now, I’m haunted
by the SkyTrain doors’ perfect open fifth, then that smooth
electronic contralto programmed to reassure one rides
the Expo Line to Waterfront Station. That line stretches out
behind us: contrails left over from ’86. Eighty-six,
the year Chernobyl burned hot as the centre
of the earth, the sun, and men hurried in.

Shifting Through Small Talk
by Kevin Spenst
2015

from Jabbering with Bing Bong (Anvil Press)

I never understood sitting in silence next
to a stranger. Even as a kid on the bus
I wanted to strike up conversation as
easily as a match lights a cigarette.
Inhaled imaginary quips. Exhaled
and choked, tongue-tied on the way
to Guildford Mall or Surrey Place.
I had to wait through twenty years in
a classroom enforcing the friendly rules
of conversation to finally find myself
comfortable inside chit-chat on my
bike to work. To turn to someone at a red
light and talk about her bell, or his panniers
or our sky, our bike paths, our gear in the rain.

excerpt from

Nord-Ost
by Dominique Bernier-Cormier
2020

from Correspondent (Goose Lane Editions)

A red M hangs like fangs above the mouth of the metro. We
step onto the escalator, imagine it’s the throat of a Soviet sea
monster. So deep we can’t see the bottom. I let myself get
swallowed, look at the white marble ceiling, the dark veins.
Crystal chandeliers shine like teeth. My mother whispers
magnifique, hiver nucléaire. Murals of red-cheeked boys raising
their fists into storms. I get split up, caught in a current of
arms and shawls, foreign tongues. My mother grabs my hand.
T’es dans les nuages? Tiens ma main. On the platform, a wind
that comes from nowhere, everywhere. The doors opening
with the soft sound of curtains. Towards the heart of the city,
a man’s voice announces the stops. Away from it, a woman’s.
We sing along to the only Russian song we know:
осторожно, двери закрываются: Caution, the doors are closing.