POETRY

This is the place of removal
where I reclaim my pieces:

• my worn out ear
• my scarred womb
• my pummelled feet

(I entomb the wear & tear and give them a sea burial)

I rob my own grave for:

• the electronic fragments of my ontology
• the garage sale of my time
• the theft of my Promethean capacity
  by tyrannies that make this poem a liability.

This is a memorial for the life
of an imitator.

This is an extrication of dreams
rattling inside a clunker.

This poem is a refurbished body writing glorious aberrations on ruled-paper decorum, pissing on the…

POETRY

We are river stones
carved to the skeleton of winter

corralled by limestone bars
rolling around sediment basin

of compounded seasons
and braided stream channels

that write new landscapes
in eddies of silt, dust of universe

not built, but transmuted to self,
castaway flesh to the bone

the remains of powerful floods
is a sculpture of absence,

the steps where elemental giants trod
in rambling rock formations

worn smooth down to center
as fallen leaves streamline branch

trunk stands tossed and steadfast
like us stones in the perpetual river

Jessica Lee McMillan © 2021

I was honoured to be invited…

POETRY

For a stranger on the other end,
imagine your worst story
told from a cell block,
an immigration hold,
an empty house, a shelter
or the street

Gathering details
like picking up shattered glass
gathering tragedies
into a thin plastic bag, onto a form:
☒ your children were taken away
and your boyfriend beat them up;
☒ you have a price on your head
for converting religions or for being gay;
☒ you lost another grandchild to fentanyl
and the parents are not far behind,
the lost generations crippled
by trauma’s ripple effect
and cultural identity theft

The violences of…