Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets' daily poetry dispatch. Read "16" by Annick MacAskill.

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Pine Needles

By Annick MacAskill

some said Freddie Prinze Jr. in Summer Catch

some said the glossy stars in Teen Beat      our school’s

star athletes      the boy-toy soldiers off to Afghanistan

mumbling the national anthem

 

or the firemen of 9/11      student teachers and their goatees

or the guys who lived across the street      our co-

counsellors at day camps under the cobalt skies

but I said it’s you

 

o girl who worshipped them      those almost-men

who in your parents’ car told me over fast-food fries

and shaking inside      like busy horse muscles

in an ancient cavalry

 

I listened to your songs of praise      you liked their

arms and calves      their sweaty backs      the way they sped

like spinning tops      from class to class      lurched and stretched

through practice track

 

and field      where you were just as fast      still you hated

your shoulders      though whether in satin prom dress

or low-rise sweats      I’d’ve always rather’d you

sarcastic and gleaming

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Copyright © Annick MacAskill

Previously published in Votive (Gaspereau Press, 2024).

Annick MacAskill is the author of four books of poetry, including Shadow Blight (Gaspereau Press, 2022), winner of the Governor General’s Award, and Votive (Gaspereau Press, 2024), which was recently shortlisted for the Maxine Tynes Nova Scotia Poetry Award and the J.M. Abraham Atlantic Poetry Award. MacAskill is a member of Room Magazine’s Growing Room Collective and the founder and publisher of Opaat Press. She lives in Kjipuktuk (Halifax, Nova Scotia), on the traditional and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq.

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