Elegies of Rotting Stars
Tiffany Morris

Edited by Sean M. Thompson

Nictitating Books

Elegies of Rotting Stars by Tiffany Morris

Published by Nictitating Books

Copyright © 2022 Tiffany Morris
Nictitating Books

This is a work of fiction. All characters and events in this book are fictional. Any resemblance to any persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

All rights reserved

Edited by Sean M. Thompson

Cover by Luke Spooner

Interior Formatting by Sean M. Thompson

“Elegies of Rotting Stars by Tiffany Morris is a gorgeous and visceral collection that takes readers down into the depths of a dark, poetic cathedral. Within, stars bleed and ‘flowers drip like meat.’ The spiritual meets the unholy, and clouds dance like ghosts in an angry sky. Lush word choices surround every verse, and Morris does an expert job at evoking emotion, whether she’s navigating the striking cultural influences of the Mi’kmaq language or describing the earth’s sorrow. Readers will delight in the rich descriptions and haunting melodies so carefully crafted within this outstanding collection.”
—Sara Tantlinger, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Devil’s Dreamland

"If you own one poetry collection by a contemporary Indigenous writer, it'd better be this one. Elegies of Rotting Stars strikes like a scream; it is a cry in the darkness of a world hurtling toward environmental disaster, a sound felt through the hearts of every citizen of the Indigenous diaspora. Horrific, beautiful, unforgettable, it is as much a love letter to the Mi'kmaq language as it is an exploration of terror when our ties to our languages and Nations are severed. This book occupies the space between devastation and hope, proving that even in the face of genocide and separation from our homelands, we can always find ways to come home."
—Mae Murray, author and editor of The Book of Queer Saints

"The power of Tiffany Morris's words wakes you up with righteous anger, heart-rending shockwaves of recognition, and restorative wisdom in the face of doom. She handles horrors both cosmic and specific deftly, like a magician. Elegies of Rotting Stars is a beautiful, masterful book."
—Joe Koch, author of The Wingspan of Severed Hands and Convulsive

“What Tiff Morris does with language, with form, with imagery, is nothing short of awe-inspiring. Somewhere between poetry and prophecy, between ruin and rebirth, Morris is undoubtedly our most clear-eyed witness of the anthropocene and all that comes after.”

—Paula D. Ashe, author of We Are Here to Hurt Each Other

Content Warning

The following collection contains:
—Suicide
—Loss of pregnancy
—Graphic violence

There Are No Simple Hymns

Mushroom hum: writhing

infinity. Severing time from

fractal blooms unfolding.

Crystalline, the light

eats into our eyes and buzzes

sacred geometries

into our skin.

Storm-hearted,

the woman marks prophecies

etched in glass:

her breath rises,

then falls.

She boils the

amniotic milk: presses

crushed violets

to her mouth.

There are no

simple hymns.

Night screams onyx,

vertigo makes us holy—

falling to ground

like falling to aether:        

born earthen

dying auric

spitting angelic

rosegold revenant

spiraling nothing.

There is something printed

in our skin. Whorl,

bark, thumbprint—

vestigial regret.

The prophetess opens her eyes

and says:

when the roses

blossom a color

never seen

a universe is born in

platinum rot starjelly.

The old world

fades into a sacred      

glowing hum: supernovae.

I Am My Own Haunted House

I want to find the things

that are made of smoke

and let them find me running

transported to the shadows

of the mausoleum, deeper

into catacomb.

Fumbling through hallways

of vivisected light

droning eidolon whispers

guide me to the centre

where a single skull sits

bathed in white snow.

Show me myself running

show me myself heaving

each shoulder against

each stillborn possibility

Desire is a dirty mirror

weeping silver lines

I want to shatter its glass

into shrapnel.

We Are Born Devouring

A voice just above a whisper rustles

the jikoq dried rotten trees horizon.

Alisqopg, I have...in my mouth

an oath for each tooth,
and a promise for flesh
torn open in consecration.

Pugweligu'nia'tieg we bleed profusely
in the stygian solace of resurrection,
in a dusk that does not burn

but breathes.

Nipit, my tooth, ntun, my mouth

sinks where there is only ravening.

There is a bell / breaking

a shriek / quelling

in the snow where
we are born devouring.

There are ways to shatter time: to destroy

that which created you.

Gi's gi'l angamt na'gu'set segewa't

ta'n tujiw gesig?

Have you ever watched the sun rise

during the winter?
The pink goldleaf snow bleaching white,
a heart drained of blood—wait—

he wears the daybreak so well—

dawn to bone and soul shedding gone,

pugtewigtug etliaptlamit

he suffocates in its fire.

Re-Wilding Under Those Conditions

Stick this time—as in, half-formed century—with a pin
                           into the butterfly thorax, into embolism:
            there is not a word in every language for
                        extinction event
         but sometimes there are                a few words for burning
                      neiamgla'tijig,               they appear burning
nu'gwa'l'g,                   I set it
                              on fire
                  gaqoqtegl,                        they are
                                      burned through
a cathedral into skeleton
              irritation into sensation
                         ozone into nothing
                           and it’s not just forests—nipugtl—that burn, that fall
and it’s not just the prisoners whose hands
                                 hold this water
                                               hold this        this water they hold
                                                                             for no money, for nothing—

Mu' nugu' pugweltnug               nipugt esgwiaq ula gm'tginug.
There isn't much forest left          here in our territory
                       but there are             ashes, remnants,
                                         golf courses      smoking in cinders
                                   more beautiful                         than barbed wire
                                                  on any clear-skied day, by far—
                                                            what is more beautiful than
                                                               every           golf course burning
                                                                 and re-wilding with the
                                                                     things that grow
                                                                       under those conditions
                                                                           (wildflowers probably?
                                                                              mushrooms and moss and all of it—                
blooming               like seizing)
                      after the fire was gone             after hands
                                           held water           and mansions
                                                    became lanterns    
                            a snake        
                                           was found           jaws open and
                                  hissing              having bitten
                                                the fire
                                                             as it burned

Flag Burning Against Storming Sky

there are people

who love to create ghosts

nail sky into frontier

to birth a horizon

stringing a sallow sun

noosetight

from barn rafters

dragged from wormfilled

dirt to dust.

hungry mouths spit and

hammer metal stitches

into lesioned landscape

into the bleeding

arboreal atrium—

the axe remembers only

what the bark remembers

as tree falls against tree

falls against

an amputated present—

bark-stripped

to fill a space,

suddenly emptied-

silent gunsmoke

apparition, the peeled

and raw bodies of trees

bleeding into

forgetting dirt.

voices pale into corpses:

a white fence of graves

showing up as language

a nation destroys as it builds

singing a gore-soaked

anthem: each of its

grotesque hymnals are

fated to be forgotten

unsung unsinging unbirthed

and never uncovered

suffocating nullified

in the living earth.

Sirens

Love is a noxious smoke from

a mouthful of hair, burning.

For a long time

the girls were drowned in water

but now they are revived in smog,

ribs-cracked, breathing

and hungry.

Beyond the golden guillotine

they drop a scorpion in each eye

of the hundred lovesick lovers

laid out on the cobblestone,

vivisected by the present tense,

The lovers’ livers, chewed in the

chemical alleys, are

regurgitated by the vultures

that preen in the eaves

of heaven.

No sonnet can save them—

an intestine, a brainstem,

an eye corded in pink flesh

signals the lovers begging

for relief,

but these undrowned girls,

they sing—

they sing.

In This Necromancy of Cosmos

Formaldehyde reverie

spelled in withered shadow:

the sky blackened sulphuric

canticle of the ventricle in

fungal fugue.

This lullaby of parasitic hunger

a fibonacci floral intestine

an ionized synapse

bright in the dark.

Hell’s many labours

keep our hands clean.

We dive through

the scanlines looking

for a shattered

piece of god

kept captive

in frequency gaps—

resisting the buzzards

of rumination

hissing light devours us.

Ossuary Aria

In Etqoljewiku’s, the

frog croaking moon

susurration vapor

descends into this

tongueswollen festering.

Downstream the lentuk

deer disappear into shadow:

antlers grow and shed

antlers break bloodied

antlers carry victory

until it rots from limb

Here at the

riverbank ossuary

plasma and milk

drip from puku’kowjk

fir tree blisters

the sky is scorched

in napalm pitch

strike one

strike two

strike match slips

from between fingers:

gas can at my feet

a whispered forsaken

hallelujah—

—Morse code frequency

moose hide soliloquy

one for the road

just before this ends

Crossroads

The perfect mntu, devil

is described

as human, not human,

a thought in the body,

a giant human owl,

megwe’g, blood-red,

an abandoned house,

the subject of applause—

when he arrives

(gwilu megwe’gig,

Look for the red ones.)

(Waju’et tepgunset nige’,

It is now a full moon.)

he does not melt

like shape and form,

metal eyes and horns,

a tree branch—

petasenmat, he comes walking

with a light or torch,

when they see him

walking on the road

many people are

afraid to show their thoughts

and be revealed.

If, Then

If

Every avowal is an alibi

of deferred betrayal

Every border is a burden

of heavy artillery

Every carapace is a cage

of hardened hope

Every denouement is a devastation

of once-promised grace

Every equinox is an elegy

of rotting stars

Every flag is a framework

of surfeit collapse

Every gestation is a gesture

of appended horror

Then

Every grotesque germination

of fragmented fragility

Every elongated exhalation

of decimated delirium

Every crying culmination

of bartered brutality

is anathema of arrival

is abortive of apogee

is alpha and omega:

beginning and end.

Cigarette Reliquary

Fast food necropolis

injecting black tar asphalt

the sun glares its yellow breath

on the exhaust-stained LED pallor

of blue lights huffing gasoline vapor

dethroning angels from rooftops

whispering radiance into grey matter

initiatory stochastic monasticism—

a song stuck in the head—

skull-fragment errata algorithm

the language of machines grinding

codes into cigarette reliquary.

the nuclear psalm breaking my

pelvis with the afterbirth of

this tertiary regret veiling me like

the gossamer of an insect wing

amidst the drowned cars keening

in the oil slick sweetsick

collapsing freeway

witnessing the vanishing rituals

of a sprawling suburban house:

a death’s head moth,

white on white daffodils,

homes with abandoned

prayer in every brick.

Downstream, a fish is bleeding

from the eye:

the coin lost in the river

found inside its bludgeoned

intestine sugared with rot

blade-gasped into contortions

fervid with the crystalline gospel

of contamination:

revivals of microplastic sacrament

the holy leaded diesel revenant

stalking the city and staking

voices into the mud.

Sorrow is

hijacking the burning-out light

that’s corroding in the sky and the sky

itself is the blue of a suicide

sluicing through the budded

refuse of spring.

Here, Have Some Ghost Stories

Have you ever seen a ghost? What about when you can’t remember a word that you know you know, or the times when you try to forget something and you can’t seem to forget it? In that space there are ghosts.

Have you ever killed anything? Look, everyone has killed something; everyone has stepped on a bug, or killed bacteria, or bought something from a faraway, unpronounceable or unnamed place. In that machinery there are ghosts.

Have you ever thought about the end of time? Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

The term for the fireworks you see behind your closed eyes is phosphenes. The term for the precise darkness of closed eyes is eigengrau. Another term for apparition is eidolon.

A forerunner is an omen of death: an odd occurrence or the image of a person appearing before they die. There are nights when the souls of those who are fated to die in the next year form a procession. The future dead walking: not alive or dead, or entirely alive and soon to be dead—somewhere in the periphery of time and ending.

We do not know that the soul exists.

In this space there are ghosts.

This Is Where There Is Nothing

I. Remembrance

Somewhere [else] something

is          burning,

horizons  /  gulp  /  shrapnel

jagged like      chipped teeth.

Let the moment

rot  grey  /  at the edges.

Surrender     your memories  /  to

coastline     erosion.

At some point, the future     will

abandon itself. Try not     to dwell.

It isn’t [safe] here.     Or     there.

Back away     [slowly].

There is     the sound     of one wave

clapping.      Salt into nothing—

[the] No Wind breathes

here.

Somewhere in the sky

time is evaporating

in[to]     hissing     stars.

Meteor. Tremor.

Tsunami      waves     make

Lonely sand     shadows.

The women,     crying.

Voices [echo] into nothing.

No one left.     Leaving—

Grief is     a faded tiger

lost from the [empty]

city zoo. It     stalks     us

through sun-drenched     streets,

buzzing [with] ghosts.

II. Wintering

Oilpaper, the sky—

[in spectacle]—born through

comma head of cyclones,

pavement [slick] with

salt     melt—

[we’re forgetting something.]

Stop here:

There—a meadow—narcissus papyraceus

whispering a[n] [Ozark] soliloquy

waist-deep

in  /  witness.

[There:] a field,

gone     silent.

Breath [carries] skyward:

do not     linger.

There is a plague here

of snow / on blood / on

snow—

III. Afterward

Night tells us nothing—

an [abandoned] city : blank maps

and concrete scrubbed     in neon.

Tall grass swaying  /  on empty lawns:

an alarm sounds somewhere

[to no one].

Streetlights on sky     rubbed raw.

Houses: callus on bone  /  wooden stairs

collapse     [and] creak.

This is where      there is nothing.

Exit  :  a humid exhale  :  rain-black trees

stretch[ing] the moment     threadbare.

time is gnarled     on a branch—

memory clings [to] vacant buildings

as voices    follow    behind us.

Pact

Tell me about the work of poisons

with a wide radiating smile: tell me

what burning things melt floral

and how they Rorschach an organ

into blot, how they scatter brain

particles into thought, how they

make everything glow, how they

hide, immeasurable, as they do the

work of destroying. Show me the

truth in a toxin, seed, a burn blister,

your open palm: what gets crushed

in the fate line, head line, life line.

Take my waiting hand in your hand,

show me how oblivion writhes.

Synonyms for Collapse

1. Orchidaceous—of or pertaining to orchids, Orchidaceae.

2. Bucolic countrysides, prairie periphery. Spies drink poisoned tea.

3. Fewer grizzlies. More moose. Hoofprints on wheat and canola, trampled into softness.

4. A woman hums deep within in a field, wondering at the shade of sky, waiting for the signal.

5. Glimmering snow, clouds of cold. The truth is cobalt blue and shining.

6. Craving comes unbidden. It is a fist, clenching and unclenching.

7. Down there in the basement: opium and shadow and rifled-through hope.

8. Unfasten the seam, tear the curtain from the window.

9. Fossils become loosened from time, crack against the shore.

10. Beds grow heavy, even with the emptiness. Springs groan. Sheets rustle without wind.

In Strange Gardens

Life blooms in strange gardens:

fig trees from stomach seeds,

a green-needled branch on a lung.

There is salve and salvation:

purple-throated toxins that

save you from the summoning void.

In the backyard there are bones

wrapped in vines, growing an eye

or a mushroom. There are fingers

dirtied with soil, scraping tar

from the sky and tearing sinew

from tissue. Listen:

there are teeth that growl praise

for rotting things and all the new

that they might bring

come spring, come hell

come collapse, come dusk,

stretching tubers, stretching petals

that wrap us in their future

regardless of whether or not

we’re breathing.

The Clouds Hissed From Heaven

This was her kingdom: human hair and seaweed, driftwood mixed with bones. Everything bleached white, buried in sand.

Dry and crumbling into nothing. There is no escape from a world splintering into dust.

There were only dead plants,

blanched and brittle. Too far from anywhere for signals.

All she had left was hunger, memory. Voices and voices and voices.

They’d followed her, still followed her.

Disembodied cries in the dark.

Help. Please. Help.

Wet fingers grasped for the lifeboat, tried to climb aboard; desperate and clumsy, like trying to unhook a bra,

stop a bleeding wound.

Skin on plastic. Skin on rubber.

We’re dying.

She didn’t say anything. The voices would have drowned her own. Instead, she pried the fingers from the side of the raft. The ship had lurched, spat her sideways, drink umbrellas and fake pearls carried into waves, into whirlpools. Evacuation.

They were lucky, those surviving few: quiet and

growing steadily quieter on the raft. No one

speaking, just the sound of kicking feet and prying fingers,

absent apologies. Maybe the screaming was worse.

Full fathom five went the bodies into the black.

Then the thrashing stopped. People bumped against them: dead man’s float. She had awakened, seaweed in her mouth, sand-covered, stranded in the kingdom of ash.

Palm trees beckoned to her with sighing fingers. Leaves grasped at her, edged like swords. Hunger climbed in spasms.

Shards of coral glared up from the sand. She suffocated within

the voiceless quiet infinity, even when the sun was burning high it

felt like night. The black waves licked her skin.

The clouds hissed at her from heaven.

Her thirsty mouth spat prayers into dust, itching eyes stared at the sky. Open: closed. Falling to sand, climbing into feverish sleep. A life half-remembered, threadbare and wishing on hypnagogic daylight.

The black sky screamed her awake when the lights

fell. Ice-hot streaks fell beside her like hailstones,

gathering around her body, one by one. Eyes open: head lifting

gently. Red then pink then purple then white lights blinking

droning, so bright and shimmering impossible, humming

an angelic machine chorus.

Her face split into a smile as the light lifted her into

a gaping metal mouth. All the angels singing,

all the silver shrieking, the light carrying her like a bride

over a threshold. She was ready for this new kingdom.

Cool and asleep in the deep and singing dark, she waited to dissolve into all those stars

and stars

and stars.

Pisgwetesgmeg

Oyster-grey mermaid songs cut

through koi orange

through swampblack sludge

through ice-hued ocean

breathing unknown syllables

on westerly winds

asking what skin is shed

for uncertain legs

on solid ground

natqa'lit, she removes me

from the water

natqa'lit, he removes me

from the water

what dissolves

on a tongue

when coral

bleaches eggshell

and plastic

swallows pearl

breaching sunbright longing

diving moondark truth

what is silence

before a storm and

what becomes true

after clouds clear

tajiga'mu'tieg, we swim along the shore 

then stand ultraviolet

with a thousand scales

with a thousand words 

walking forward

pisgwetesgmeg, we track the water inside

Possession

I destroyed my fear of death

by obliterating the future, the

asynchronous sequencing of its fractal

gray, temtestoq, fragmented hours.

Yet pejipug, winter still arrives,

a blunt object resounding

on a soft surface.

Somewhere there is a quartz,

pegn'g, dark (without light),

that extinguishes time—

pegn'g ta'n elien, it is dark where

you are going,

and yet—

I want to leave my body:

not the stamped out desire of death,

naqasuetesgm, I stamp out the fire,

scattering soul like cigarette embers

or wedding rice, drowning the earth like

confetti, sticking in the guts

of birds and choking the ocean—

I want to be rubbed smoothly

unrecognizable, like the many-kissed

faces of marble saints.

I could only worship the mysteries

of flesh, sape'wigl, those are blessed

and let words breathe through the veil,

let words unknot me and thin myself

to a single thread

to find only a matte black space

where once there was a mirror.

I put this moment away—

I put this memory away—

saying the names of every

devil I can conjure, every

rite in the brass and rust

of two tongues,

waiting for this wish,

a miracle

in reverse

This Love Letter Will Self-Destruct

Love is a tornado siren. Love is a stitch that itches while it heals. Love is a burned tongue that keeps tasting. Love is a stifled sigh.

You’re a bastard for leaving me here. In this desert, snake venom pulsing up my legs.

Just wait. The sky’s angry mouth is coming. It’ll swallow you whole.

In The Distance

A woman is laughing

to love songs on the radio,

her vintage gold Cadillac stalling where

streetlights stretch thin. Pull over

[to the shoulder. Notice how

her sigh tastes]

There is smoke somewhere [in a forgotten field].

Behold her bruiseknuckled beauty: bite your lip &

prick your hand on rose petals.

Rub your tongue over the coral ledge of

a chipped tooth.

It draws blood or

it doesn’t.

There is decay somewhere

& salt on your hand.

Grab at nothing. Grab at

her grey laughter. She’ll

burst into a thousand embers

& vanish clear into

the darkening cathedral

of stars

Hecatomb

This horizon of rusted machines

extracts what shines bright:

golden poisons, black snakes

and femurs, glistening.

Flowers drip like meat, wrap

our bleaching bones: a shrine

to what devours us.

What breathes in stillness?

On the edge of the greendark

nothing breathes in full.

The dried riverbed

teems with hard rot. God is not

in this new desert.

Shutdown

Lower your voice. Turn the television down, please. Did you unplug the lamp? Don’t turn on that light. Leave the door open, but just a crack. So the noises don’t reach into their room, obviously. Did you check on them? Have they quieted down? Don’t take that tone with me. Even dead children need beds. 

Milk Teeth

That is where

we left it, moulting

old shapes into

new absences,

milk teeth

on a forest floor,

where whiskeysick

night shoved back

light and

light

ignored our departing

shadows freezing

on the snow

where mountain paths

breathed ice and

shouted their trees

into being,

where wind shoved back

the summer of

coyotes running into

dark—

where truth

was an abandoned house

and trouble dripped

from cracked eaves

falling icicle-sharp

onto a door

                     torn off its hinges,

a gap tooth

in a closed-shut mouth.

In Death the House is Everywhere

I dream most often of houses and the dead: in my nightmares I move from room to room to room; crawl through passageways, witness empty pews as I visit the wakes of the missing dead. There is green satin everywhere: strange bedsheet shrouds, shining artificial meadows. I am comforted and not afraid. Absent grief burns the air to smoke.

These houses always smell like old wood; a sweet dust smell time stuck inside rafters. Sometimes I crawl through them and come to a dead end. Sometimes the passage closes its jaws tight around me.

Certain nights I dream I am a mother. In sleep, birth symbolizes death. Meaning has a womb: a blank space scrawled over by a shaking hand. Dreaming is its caul.

In these houses there are always attics and basements. There are never windows, so I cannot see my face.

In dreams the house is the mind. In life the house is the body. In death the house is everywhere.

Dririmancy

Polishing the rust from the

silver glinting scalpel you

rip the seam in my skin open

dripping arterial aura onto

the gasping green-bright grass.

Grasping upward for the heart
I stole a shining diamond

from my ribs and cut a carp from

the flesh of your heaving belly.
We extracted a star from entrails,

stepped forward and threw

it all into the mouth of heaven:

love is not always a gift

blood is not always sacrifice

Thalposis

Corruption is the mother

of impermanence: nothing

is pristine. Walking the path

will blind you but still

you must walk it.

A trail of snarling

silver faces

inscribes the dream

like the ruin of a

closed-down town: hear how

light whispers through

a cemetery wall and

flickers soft against

milk-eyed sorrow.

This is the place: you must

shed your skin and spit out

your sin. Feel it spill

like smoke: a finger down

the spine, something

waiting in the dirt.

Nuee Ardente

After chaos, calm is inevitable.

The skies reveal

heavily accumulating snow,

the softness and luster of

constellation mayhem

a fixed star unearthing

nuée ardente—

An incandescent cloud

of gas, ash, and lava fragments

ejected from a volcano—

possessing the light and

wearing us like

a second skin.

How Softly The Earth Swallowed Us

A skeleton is chewed by flames

in straining furnaces,

elegiac hearts beat longing

for how softly the Earth

swallowed its dead: souls

perched on bending willows,

dancing in the catkins,

wailing as they glided.

Here the dead are

always dust, released

to the void

and its distant solar winds.

Screens blink black,

spit static:

the work of death

continues.

Purple rock juts

volcanic under three

glowering moons.

Each step we walk

carves the aether,

trods on oil, bone, cuts

through the rainbow-hued

dilation of sky.

The horizon, always silent,

stares back. There is

no one coming for us.

What searing halo at my throat,

what constellation placed upon

my tongue,

will keep me here, begging for

the future, saying yes?

Born of the Elements

Earth is out

walking with a lantern

shattered in the oil glow

where the fugitive body

gives its quivering hands

to surrender, to the cold

mutiny of flesh.

The soul gathers the

ectoplasm of being in air:

the stab wounds, axe wounds, and

the nightmare of birth all

break the surface tension

of the debris field.

Water wastes Nothing,

nothing is wasted here:

not the nacreous necrosis

of shell-pink shellshock,

a world in whorl of

whirlpool. A splinter of oyster

shell under the fingernail

is sent through the chest to the conch

shell of the beating heart.

In the fire the tires char onyx

obsidian napalm thick: their smoke,

like us,

leaves words that shine in the dark.

Self/Destruct

Crashing through the veil

spasm detonation

shard fragmentation

corpses in the copse:

the pulsar incision and

crematorium errata

outside: a choir

of locusts singing

blackwater baptism

still and star-choked

humming infinite drone

the holy rhythms of rot—

frostbitten breath

numb-fingered clasping

to sharpened sky

grasping for the

cold scarred hand

of the blind divine.

My heart, spread open

and carved for a god,

its camera eye staring

into the dull gaze of my faith

under heaven’s dirty

glass floor.

Sunrise rips the ceiling open

and rib-splayed I

stare into the fishbloat

cloud-dead film that

clings to blossoms

all of us on backs

taking this sacrament—

each moment tearing speech

from begging jaws.

Exhale // Exeunt

Here’s how it ends:

with talons, trumpets

flag detritus

voices without body

bodies without voice

and this fog

and forgetting

noises in the cedars.

This is where I leave you:

there is only so much

of everything left—

skulls and veils

one match left burning

and a tunnel of trees.

End times Haiku

Thousands of embers,

this flowering eschaton:

star-dissolving sounds.

Seraphantast

Hallowed hollow halo: your words

scorched electric blue and you smiling,

teeth showing. Mouth twisted

into bliss. My prophet, my

star-ringed love, singing

in a language no one understands.

There is a glow around him, a color

no one has ever seen before.

Tears glimmer glued to cheeks.

The smell of roses from windows,

fills the spaces between him and me,

forming strange covenants.

Everything is golden and you

and your words creep like light

climbing my legs.

Take me with you.

Press your words into

my chest and thread them

through my ribs.

Surrender is a many-hued cathedral.

Take me to your horizon and

leave me there. Paradise is liminal:

time colliding on itself.

I'm almost ready—

Give me heaven, kiss my mouth

with your glow. I want the electric blue

yearning sky.

Seal me into a thousand-tiered

infinity. Shoot me

past the stratosphere.      

I am ready:

give me paradise,

let it glimmer golden

as death.

A note on the use of Mi’kmaq

When I first started my journey in reclaiming Mi’kmaq—reclaiming because my relationship to the language was severed, generationally, by Canada’s residential school system—it didn’t occur to me that I could ever write poetry in it. My knowledge, piecemeal, was relegated to curse words and expressions of love and apology; words and phrases that didn’t quite reach the level of poetry (though those are inarguably the poetry of being alive and some of the most fun, impactful places to begin learning a language). It seemed to me like fluency would be required to write in Mi’kmaq, even though we encourage small children to write creatively and tell stories in their native languages in order to understand what language can do—it seemed too complex for me, as an adult, as a poet, to engage with a new language in this way.

In the spirit of the relationality and reclaiming that underpins decolonial and Mi’kmaq thought, it is perhaps fitting that what changed for me wasn’t reaching a new level of fluency or a milestone in competency but a new-to-me understanding of what the Mi’kmaq language does. As a verb-based language, Mi’kmaq describes and engages with a world that is animate and autonomous, descriptive and vital. It occurred to me that incorporating Mi’kmaq into my poetry writing process would allow me to learn and engage with the vocabulary more deeply, to see how its different words work together and work with English, and to see what they can express in working together. The red of the devil in my poem “Crossroads,” for example, does not just describe what color the figure appears as, nor is it necessarily doing the same work as the metaphorical language around it. By using the Mi’kmaq term for the color, Red is “redding”: it is changeable, it is animate. It has a relationship beyond the adjectival with the devil who stalks the roads: by placing them together, red becomes both what he does and what the color does in the poem and in the moment depicted by the poem.

Language is tool, weapon, virus, and in the case of the politics of language, it is all the above. How words are ordered, prioritized, and translated is always important, but feels even more immediate in the shorter spaces of poetry. My choice to italicize English translations is deliberate: this act emphasizes Mi’kmaq in the sentence and places it in the same terrain as the English text used predominantly in the poem. This decenters English as default and resists the impulse to objectify or “other” the presence of Mi’kmaq. It is also important to me to translate with a sense of immediacy, so the English word or phrase immediately follows: this act of translation is not just for me, but for the reader, as well, so any non-Mi’kmaw speaker reading it can prioritize and understand Mi’kmaq with me. This is important to me as it is the original language of the land on which I live and write; it is the language that carries the lessons of the culture and the land where my ancestors lived before me. I am so full of gratitude to Mi’kmaq online dictionaries for these acts of translation and for helping me deepen my understanding. I am grateful to all the Mi’kmaq language teachers who make this possible and keep this language alive.

Horror is a multifaceted genre, and horror poetry is an expansive place, so it thrills me to bring Mi’kmaq into my own explorations and expressions of it. Horror operates and builds on urgency, revelation, and realization, and Mi’kmaq, with its vitality and immediacy, is a beautiful and fruitful place to bring it. Wela’lioq—Thank you for joining me in this journey.

Previously Appeared In

“Re-Wilding Under Those Conditions” appeared in Understorey Magazine
“Crossroads” appeared in Nightmare Magazine
“In Strange Gardens” appeared in Under Her Skin: A Women in Horror Poetry Collection as “Regeneration/Collapse”
“Pisgwetesgmeg” appeared in Together Apart
“This Love Letter Will Self-Destruct” appeared in 555 Vol. 2: This Head, These Limbs
“In The Distance” appeared in Augur Magazine
“Hecatomb” appeared in Vastarien Magazine
“Shutdown” in 555 Vol. 2: This Head, These Limbs
“Dririmancy” appeared in Under Her Skin: A Women in Horror Poetry Collection