Poem in Your Pocket Day is an international movement that encourages people to centre poetry within their daily interactions.

On PIYP Day, select a poem, carry it with you, and share it with others at schools, bookstores, libraries, parks, workplaces, coffee shops, street corners, and on social media using the hashtag #PocketPoem.

The 2018 Poem in Your Pocket Day Postcard collection is here!

This year’s Poem In Your Pocket Collection features poetry by: Robert Colman, Karin Cope, Joan Conway, Stephanie Cui, Kim Fahner, Bernice Lever, D.A. Lockhart, Leah MacLean-Evans, Diane Manole, Kate Marshall Flaherty, Colin Morton, Jacquie Pearce, Ayaz Pirani, Pamela Porter, Greg Santos, Eleonore Schönmaier, Lesley Strutt, Melanie Thompson, Myna Wallin and Bänoo Zan.

Read their poems below and share with others.

Whale Hunt   
Robert Colman

“If this breaks you die.” – A machine shop owner,

cradling an airplane part in his hands.

We ask you to pull us further
from land, the harpoon
snug in your side, the seal bladder
ballast above you.

We ask
after we leap from our boats
and pierce your flesh
that you carry our skiffs
as far as your might allows.

Let me roll my bone dice,
clack the dominoes back in place.
There is not one leviathan we do not love
unto death. Who drew whom
into the deeps? Wasn’t everything
necessity?

I carved a compass face
on this scrimshaw box
because direction was all I could think,
wind and current
and your back as it breached.

If they say I must now put away my blade
I would still follow you, all the ropes
you once towed us with stretching unseen
from bulwark and mast, cliff side
and the gaff sail of earth pounded
solid, this doorway.

From Factory (Frog Hollow Press 2015)

Robert Colman is a Newmarket, Ont.-based writer and editor. He is the author of two full-length poetry collections, Little Empires (Quattro Books 2012) and The Delicate Line (Exile Editions 2008), as well as the chapbook Factory (Frog Hollow Press 2015).

—–

Today I Will Different
Karin Cope

You wake, you say
today will be different, today
I will do what I do what I must what I will
today I will efficient today
tasks completed today organized today
my desk in order.
Today I will different.
Do today as if some other un-waylaid by wind
or whim or want. Someone of will, not wanton
wondering. What song will you sing then when
salsa flings you circumsolar when
lightslant leaps across your foot when
urgency, like sucking sand, slips seaward and
beckons you to swim?


First version published April 2017 on the Visible Poetry blog

Karin Cope is a poet, sailor, photographer, scholar, rural activist, blogger and an Associate Professor at NSCAD University in the Division of Art History and Contemporary Culture, where she teaches courses in creative and critical writing, gender and sexuality studies, pedagogy, art and environment and other topics. Her publications include scholarly works, popular histories, short stories, policy papers, blogs and poetry; her artworks include photographs, installations, performances, videos, guerrilla theatre and mixed media and online works.

—–

Swamp Zone
Joan Conway

That summer the swamp was our world
I rowed with my sister
among bulrushes and pond lilies
waxy cups, a floating garden
flat disk of leaves
platforms for dragonflies
black veined wings
iridescent in sunlight.

That summer my uncle fried up frog legs.
‘Just like chicken’ he declared
them sitting on a plate coated in flour
at night I dream of slippery bodies surrounding the cabin
throat pouch ballooning taught
vociferous croaking call missing partners.

My mother would stretch out
on smooth curved rocks
sunning herself
rubbing lotion on her creamy white thighs
wet and slippery
my uncle massaging oil onto her back
laughing down at her
and told us kids to go play.

In the swamp zone searching for frogs
how they would lie perfectly still
if you stroked their belly
legs dangling open in some private rapture.

Where I crouched
stranded amongst the reeds
long taper of leaves surrounding me,
closer to shore
roots left high and dry
by the end of that summer.

Terrace based poet, blogger and multidisciplinary artist Joan Conway, has a deep respect for the culture and geography of the north which strongly influences her work. Her poetry has appeared in several publications including Dreamland, Northword and in the Caitlin Press anthology, Unfurled: Collected Poetry by Northern BC Women. You can find her recent work along with other poets North of 540 in collective anthologies, the most current, ‘Water Worn’ 2017.

—–

Dawn
Stephanie Cui

Out in the moonlight

The trees are glowing white.

They are fully dressed and await the wind’s call.

But the wind is a shy girl at four in the morning,

And she does not come out to play.

Dawn slowly tip-toes, blueing the sky.

I am lost on a path so familiar.

Does darkness lock up my eyelids

With a key that only belongs to dawn?

I sneak by buildings,

They seem unrealistic against the early light.

Windows lit here and there, like the fading stars.

My footsteps are shaky,

My voice –the only echo remaining in the world.

The sun rows the moon across the sky, claiming its throne.

And I step into the day drunk with awe

Winner of the 2018 Jessamy Stursberg Poetry Prize, junior category


Stephanie Cui is the 2018 winner of the League of Canadian Poets’ Jessamy Stursberg Poetry Prize for young poets. Her poem was winner in the junior category.

—–

Thirst
Kim Fahner

The house sips slowly
at the offerings of
bowls that sit, solitary,
on ancient radiators.

It devours silently,
savouring water
that lowers itself slowly,
reduces itself, erases,
until painted bowls
remain, naked,
with only skin of water
leaving a full moon
on bottom of
concave ceramic.

I fill and then re-fill,
wondering which ghosts
drink at night, what echoes
of memory might dance
through shadows, round
painted corners and through
the French doors.

The house sips, slowly,
reminds me that all things
vanish, with time, with patience.

From Some Other Sky (Black Moss Press 2017)

Kim Fahner lives and writes in Sudbury, Ontario. She was the fourth poet laureate of the City of Greater Sudbury (2016-18), and the first woman to be appointed to the role. Kim has published four volumes of poetry, including: You Must Imagine the Cold Here (Scrivener Press, 1997), braille on water (Penumbra Press, 2001), The Narcoleptic Madonna (Penumbra Press, 2012), and now Some Other Sky (Black Moss Press, 2017). Two of her plays have been workshopped at the Sudbury Theatre Centre, and one, Sparrows Over Slag, had a staged reading (in collaboration with Pat the Dog Theatre Creation) at Wordstock, Sudbury’s literary festival, in November 2017. Kim has also completed a novel, a piece of historical fiction set in Northern Ontario, titled The Donoghue Girl. She is a member of the League of Canadian Poets, the Writers’ Union of Canada, and PEN Canada. Kim blogs at kimfahner.wordpress.com at The Republic of Poetry, and has a website at www.kimfahner.com


—–

Not Just My Bunions
Bernice Lever

Not just my bunions,
they’re not that unique:
red balls in summer,
purple onions when cold,
cracking the shiny leather
of fashionable shoes,
bulging the sides of slippers,
perhaps they miss the beat
when I’m dancing
by their legacy of curved space.

Not just that my whole understanding
is deformed:
my nose is crooked, too.
It heads left as I move ahead:
of no use, the hours I spent
pushing it right with my fist,
my elbow braced on a wooden school desk,
it has a direction of its own.

My teeth, with early independence,
left on their own accord,
my eyes keep clicking the dimmer switch
refusing to focus
on my expanding, free form waistline,
my ears hear their own tune,
while my mouth sings another:
all that enters me is changed.

All of me escapes ideal:
not just my bulky bunions,
there are other things,
I have my excuses –
barriers against love.

From Yet Woman I Am (Highway BookShop Press, 1979)

Bernice Lever, a writer, editor and teacher, creates poetry on Bowen Island. Her 10th book of poems was Red Letter Day (Black Moss Press, 2014). She edited WAVES, Fine Canadian Literature, at York U., Toronto, 1972-1987. Bernice’s travels have let her read poems on 5 continents. Her grammar & composition book (now a CD or free PDF) is The Colour of Words. Although she is active in many national writing organizations in Canada, she is now delighted to be on the west coast again, writing PEACE poems for World Poetry, etc.

—–

Constellations Retreat before this Truck Stop Night
D.A. Lockhart


After sunset these prairies
hide their absence of rise
in the evenness of darkness.
Backlit Flying J road sign
declaring this strip of Wyoming
belongs to the constellation
drawn from diesel vapour
of long-haul truckers coast
bound. Private showers, ample
parking, and 24 hour steak dinners
just rewards for crossing the space
between. In this September hour
you know you make your own
gospel and the only surety
of the upcoming season
is the gristle of your 2 am sirloin
Here, under this portioned out
license plate of a settler highline
across Lakota land, that surety
carries the weight it must
before you sleep through till
dawn in a Ford Ranger cab
at great remove from the sign
that bleaches out the horizon
and expanse of stars beyond.

Originally appeared in Welter Literary Journal, 2017


D.A. Lockhart is the author of The Gravel Lot that was Montana (forthcoming Mansfield Press), This City at the Crossroads (Black Moss Press 2017), and Big Medicine comes to Erie (Black Moss Press 2016). He holds a MFA from Indiana University-Bloomington where he held a Neal Marshall fellowship in Creative Writing. He has received generous support for his work from the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts. He is a pukuwankoamimens of the Lenape nation and a member of the Moravian of the Thames First Nation. He currently resides in Waawiiyaatanong on the south shore of the Detroit River.

—–

Name me After a Fish
Leah MacLean-Evans

Goldeye or Cichlid

silver and smooth and genderless, make me as an alien, forget

the rules, name me

Corydoras of two halves, name me Coelacanth for surviving

name me Plecostromus name me Trout

name me Catfish

let them imagine my genitals as smooth tough skin, not think to touch them.

Say, let me introduce Pickerel.

Say, have you met my friend Haddock. Say, this is my daughter Herring.

And I will breathe water in and through me, swim flicking in the slip

Winner of the 2018 National Broadsheet Contest from the League of Canadian Poets

Leah MacLean-Evans lives on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishnaabeg people. She’s the 2017 fiction winner of the Blodwyn Memorial Prize. Her writing has appeared in Qwerty, untethered, Ottawater, On Spec Magazine, and elsewhere. She has an MFA in Writing from the University of Saskatchewan and is the proofreader of Grain Magazine.

—–

The Metamorphosis of Punctuation Marks
Diane Manole

They spell themselves out and I pretend I understand

comma

stuffed plump commas slither on our skin
seeking the best place to come
to a full stop

semicolon

translucent jade wings ingrained
in bodies of blackness
future flutters still faulted by default
the course of life is not the course of writing
unless

dot dot dot

commas square the circle
like Lilliputian miracle hands

semicolon

if I were to slice them open
at the right time
acid ink would ooze out
dissolving any scab in its way

semicolon

eagerness
eagerness to lose themselves
into the context
vital mostly when absent
no better than a long-lost lover
an afterthought

semicolon

they have risen indeed
from between the words
like moths shooting for the light
with no memory of the caterpillars
having
to cannibalize themselves
for the sake of
flying

period

Writer, translator, and scholar, Diana Manole was born in Romania and currently lives in Toronto, Canada. A Pushcart prize nominee, her poetry in English (co-translated with Adam J. Sorkin into same—or written originally therein) has appeared in magazines in the US, the UK, Canada, and South Africa. Her poems have also been translated into and published in French, German, Polish, Spanish, Albanian, and Belarusian, while her translations of Canadian poetry have been featured in major Romanian magazines. B&W, her latest collection of poems, was published in 2015 by Tracus Arte (Bucharest, Romania) in a bilingual English-Romanian edition. Since February 2013, Diana dreams and writes poetry in English.

—–

Sel
Kate Marshall Flaherty

I would never scold an onion

for causing tears

Naomi Shihab Nye

I learned
the salt content of tears
is the same as blood
and the sea—

that lysosomes
are healing enzymes,

and sea salt
has nourishing minerals.

We are the same three-fourths water
as the earth.

Grey Dead Sea salt is the same
as pinkish Himalayan;

both, so far from home.

Tears are the same saline
whether they fall to the ground
unnoticed,
or streak cheeks pressed close
in a refugee boat. They dissolve
the borders, or should.

Let us not wait
for another boy washed up on shore.

Salt, enzyme, saline, suffering—
let fear dissolve
into the pool that is us all.

Kate Marshall Flaherty is a poet, teacher, editor and performer. She has five books of poetry, including Reaching V (Guernica Editions) and Radiant (Inanna Press 2019). She has been published in numerous Canadian and International Journals and Anthologies, has been shortlisted for Descant’s Best Canadian Poem, the Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize, the Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Prize and the Robert Frost Poetry Award. See her video poems at https://katemarshallflaherty.ca/


—–  

Nightwalking Between Centuries
Colin Morton

Somewhere between ends and beginnings
alert to the scuff of a shoe in the shadows
a block away, I walk the night streets
of this city midway through self-demolition
− half-metamorphosed half-decayed −
passing shadows of my former self
on streets where storefronts have shifted,
signs altered, brick facades from another century
caught in a bank tower’s funhouse mirrors.

And turning a corner I sometimes glimpse
the virtual, the becoming city
as near in time as this red brick
though barely imagined here at street level
where for years I’ve crossed against the light
and soon the first transhumans will cross,
become one with their devices.

At the edges of vision they pass like shadows
eyes never meeting, as if they don’t see me
or if they do do not see me as forebear
− flat-footed, astigmatic, fatally flawed −
an X of flesh in a world of unknowns
caught in reflection between walls of glass.

From The Local Cluser (Pecan Grove Press)


Award-winning Canadian poet Colin Morton has published ten books of poetry, a novel, and many reviews and essays. His poems have been translated into French, Spanish, Urdu, and Albanian, and have been adapted by Canadian, American and Hungarian composers. He co-produced the animated poetry film “Primiti too taa.” His website is at www.colinmorton.net.

—–    

Two Haiku
Jacquie Pearce

after the rain

my daughter jumps into

each piece of sky

lingering grief…

a trace of Fukushima

in the salmon

Winner of the 2018 National Haiku Contest from the League of Canadian Poets

Jacquie Pearce grew up on Vancouver Island. She has published poetry, short non-fiction and several novels for children. Her haiku have won awards and appeared in a variety of publications, including the Haiku Canada Review, Frogpond, The Red Moon Anthology and Of Skin on Skin, an anthology of erotic haiku.

—–

Choosing a Friend
Ayaz Pirani

He’s off the list
like Pluto.

I can share apples with that one
but it’s formal as Piaget.

She’s bitter-gourd,
a pinch of turmeric.

His ear for an echo,
standing like scissors.

Her shrimp-paste face
is tempting

but he looks like drought.
The other, lake effect.

All that’s left is that
punctuation mark.

Ayaz Pirani was born in Musoma, Tanzania to parents born in Kapsabet and Tanga. He grew up in Canada and studied Humanities and Writing. His degree is from Vermont College of Fine Arts, where Ayaz was a student of the late Jack Myers. His first book, Happy You Are Here, was published in 2016. His second book, Kabir’s Jacket Has a Thousand Pockets, is forthcoming from Mawenzi House.

—–

Photograph of the Earth from Space
Pamela Porter

On the outskirts of Luanda, Angola,

Gerald Nduma has walked an hour to school

carrying his chair, which is really

an empty coffee can. Nine years old,

he holds in his other hand a mango

which will be his lunch. At school,

which is really a tree, Gerald

places his lunch beneath his chair.

This day, a missionary has come

with magazines. Gerald takes what

is given him. Soon he does not hear

the teacher’s instructions. He does not hear

the students’ chatter. He is looking

at the photograph of Earth

floating in a dark sea

which Gerald imagines

is plenteous with fish.

From Cathedral (Ronsdale Press, 2010)

Pamela Porter is the author of the Governor General’s Award winning The Crazy Man, as well as ten other books of poetry. She lives in a big thicket of firs and ferns, animals domestic and wild, and a few humans. She likens poetry as to a feather, which ends in air and begins in blood.

—–

I have a Problem
Greg Santos

All I care about is everything.
I like to lie down and look up at the stars,
even when there are none.
I am almost nothing but thoughts and water.

I find mirrors unbearably off-putting.
My children find them droll.
Do you feel that too?
My left hand feels like a cataclysmic storm.

I will never tire of looking at my wife.
Her smile is like a constant sonar beep
in the depths of my chest.
I hear rain even when it’s sunny out.

Have you ever squinted at the ocean
so the sky and the water blend until
you don’t know where one ends and the other begins?
I’m doing that right now with you.

Originally appeared in The Walrus, May 2015 and forthcoming in Blackbirds, Eyewear Publishing, 2018

Greg Santos is the author of Rabbit Punch! (DC Books, 2014) and The Emperor’s Sofa (DC Books, 2010). He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School in New York City. His writing has appeared in The Walrus, Geist, Queen’s Quarterly, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, and The Best American Poetry Blog. He regularly works with at-risk communities and teaches writing and literature at the Thomas More Institute. He is the poetry editor of carte blanche and lives in Montreal with his wife and two children. His new book, Blackbirds, is forthcoming with Eyewear Publishing based out of London, UK in Spring of 2018.

—–

Migrations
Eleonore Schönmaier

The police squint

into the glare on the water looking

for small boats. On a clear day

the lightkeeper sees all the way

to Algeria. Over his sofa

hangs a tapestry woven

by his grandmother from red

human hair. Only the birds

travel without papers.

Though often now

their tiny legs

when they perch

on the lighthouse railings

are colour banded.

From Wavelengths of Your Song (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2013)

Eleonore Schönmaier’s most recent books are Dust Blown Side of the Journey (2017) and Wavelengths of Your Song (2013) both from McGill-Queen’s University Press. Her poetry has been set to music by Canadian, Dutch, Scottish, American and Greek composers. She has won the Alfred G. Bailey Prize, the Earle Birney Prize, and has been twice shortlisted for the Bridport prize (UK). Her poetry has been published in The Best Canadian Poetry, and has also been translated into Dutch and German

—–

Flight Speed
Lesley Strutt

yellow finch sun-framed the window smeared
with the wet eye of a woodpecker
lying on the stones now neck broken

no wonder I take off for weeks on end
“What are you looking for?” you ask

I want flight speed when I don’t stop to think
I can get anywhere fast fling myself at my own reflection
find something good and hard

Lesley Strutt is a poet, playwright, essayist, novelist, and blogger living in Merrickville, Ontario. Her writing has appeared in anthologies, e-zines, as well as journals such as Montreal Serai, CV2, Prairie Fire, Ottawater, The Literary Review, Bywords, and the Canadian Woman Studies Journal. Her chapbook Small as Butterflies won the 2015 Tree Chapbook prize. Her first full-length collection of poems, Window Ledge, will be published by Inanna Publications.

—–

Marcus
Melanie Thompson

“There is lipstick smeared across my mirror. I have crushed so many tubes that I am left with a palette of shades of pink, orange, and red; a myriad of feminine torment. There are still strands of hair woven in my carpet from two fortnights ago, when I took Mother’s pruning shears to the blonde lying across my shoulders and hacked myself a straw nest. I thought the hatred would fall off in the golden clumps, but I can easily find it in each glass reflection. Last week I cracked a rib from wearing shirts three sizes too small and my brother laughed and called me crazy, said he could take the knife to my chest whenever I was ready. But I’ve already tried. They won’t come off.”

– My name is Isabelle Marcus and I am a boy

Winner of the 2018 Jessamy Stursberg Poetry Prize, senior category


Melanie Thompson is the 2018 winner of the League of Canadian Poets’ Jessamy Stursberg Poetry Prize for young poets. Her poem was winner in the senior category.

—–

Resurrections
Myna Wallin

My mother is alive again
in my dreams.
And so is my father,
though they rarely appear together.

In one variation
my mother returns to visit,
her cancer healed.
We talk for a bit & she whispers
Don’t tell your father I was here.

I ask her why she doesn’t stay,
admitting, embarrassed,
I thought you were dead.
No, there’s no such thing & laughs lightly
though she can’t explain why her visits
are so infrequent.

Immortality makes sense at night.
My father’s heart seems strong again
as he rushes around with purpose.
Sometimes he tells me not to worry.
It will be all right.

My mother though is still frail,
and we hold each other, rocking.
In the morning I’m startled that
I remember her touch—
the exact pressure of her hand on mine.

From A Thousand Profane Pieces (Tightrope Books 2006)

Myna Wallin is a Toronto poet and prose writer. Her first collection of poetry, A Thousand Profane Pieces, was published by Tightrope Books in 2006. Her second book, a novel, Confessions of a Reluctant Cougar, was also published by Tightrope Books in 2010. A short story of hers appears in the recent Exile Editions comedy anthology, That Dammed Beaver. Her next book of poetry is forthcoming with Inanna Publications, Spring 2018, entitled Anatomy of An Injury. Myna got her M.A. in English from U of T. Her poetry has been widely published in literary magazines across Canada and her poem appeared in an exhibit at the AGO entitled, “Why (Not) Paintings of Poets?”

—–

There is a voice
Bänoo Zan

that sings your song

opens your veins to
blood

There is a voice
who is not you

gives you words
you never had

invites you
to the allegory
of the cave

There is a voice
in whose tales
you are a myth

shatters your pettiness
and makes you whole

There is a voice
that claims you—

abyss and wings and all

There is a voice
that is yours

when you cross
your borders

There is a voice –

Take yourself
out of its way

Let it sing
through you

Let it make you
a song—

There is a voice

First appeared in Gaea Calling: Community, Insight, Influence

Bänoo Zan is a poet, translator, teacher, editor and poetry curator, with more than 160 published poems and poetry-related pieces as well as three books. Song of Phoenix: Life and Works of Sylvia Plath, was reprinted in Iran in 2010. Songs of Exile, her first poetry collection, was released in 2016 in Canada by Guernica Editions. It was shortlisted for Gerald Lampert Memorial Award by the League of Canadian Poets in 2017. Letters to My Father, her second poetry book, was published in 2017 by Piquant Press in Canada. She is the founder of Shab-e She’r (Poetry Night), Toronto’s most diverse poetry reading and open mic series (inception: 2012). It is a brave space that bridges the gap between communities of poets from different ethnicities, nationalities, religions (or lack thereof), ages, genders, sexual orientations, disabilities, poetic styles, voices and visions.