TagPoetry

summer has a way of making me feel small and hard. everything that hurts does so more slowly. somehow i become my migraine […]

Go fishing. Open your can of worms. Stick a hook in the “I promise” note, dated 7th September ‘16. Cast the line. Go deep. Reel it in. Remember the first note she asked you to sign. Remember how […]

(january) snowflakes you for her and me for you (february) confetti made of tiny hearts (march) cherry blossom petals […]

Boiler maker blood popper beat scraper button pusher Badland butchers sourcing downcast trudgers — publicize powerhouses […]

I remember nineteen ninety-six, when I had chubby fingers and chubby toes,
and a heart so whole I had no idea my family was breaking.

I remember the suffocation of humidity; sharp claws around my neck, fucking me slowly.
I tasted the salt in my sweat as it dripped […]

This street
makes her cry.

“On my seventh birthday
I was holding an ice cream cone,
and I dropped it.” […]

I’ve never been in love, yet you seem so familiar
I’m scared I’ve said too much, I’ve never opened up
I know it’s weird, cause we just met, but there’s something about you
I’d like to hold your hand and kiss your cheek beneath a summer moon

Zayn Malik tells Harry, “Look, she’s the only thing

that got me through the touring years, and now

I have to be with her.” Zayn Malik calls me a tempting

animal. Zayn Malik knows he had the best voice […]

Wizened red cedar siding fades
into neighbourhood at the end of my laneway
as subtle as a home after a house-wrecking party.
I walk through decades of tiny moments with
my eye only on his basement window […]

My aunt sits by the river and feeds honey and flowers to the spirits. She makes a painting of a water goddess and tells me, Aspire to holy compassion. She gives me a sequined flag, a feather boa, and some dark red beads. When I am fifteen she says, You are very very old and, Wait for love, it is coming and you’ll recognize it […]

I’ve written about “my people” before
and then I’ve heard them call back “your people?”
Who now gave you our voices? You lived in a home
made of foreign paper with foreign walls […]

I was supposed to stand still
You were supposed to leave me alone.
I didn’t even breathe as you crawled over my feet and knees
I kept my eyes wide open […]

pick up
your roots run while there’s
still time they’re coming
hungry armed with axes […]

Please Don’t Tell My Mother I Wrote This Poem Poem by Keagan Perlette My mother’s father fathered six but fathering wasn’t his strong suit so when my mother had three she loved us double to make up for the six loves that my mother’s father lost, and for the time my mother’s sister shat under my