“grief map 2” by Kate Siklosi

April 30, 2024

Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “grief map 2” from Kate Siklosi’s collection Selvage, shortlisted for the League’s Pat Lowther Memorial Award.

Due to its formatting, this poem is only available as an image.

look closely: / these words tell us much about where we came from / that particular tangle of love and violence and care and neglect that makes us stormproof / at the end of the day / charters or laws or lore / it is just language / we are left with how to act how to proceed / notwithstanding midrib, vein / the facts are scant / i come from oil, from trades, from hands / yet i am useless with tools except the needle and pen the kildeer lures you away from the field’s edge, limping / away from the well-fed earth where you dug in your hands / asking for reprieve / you were just a child goldenrod rushes in sugaring time / lifting, stirring, sending stories / skyward to other wheres / learn to leave these words or stay in them awhile / it might make you want to stay alive long enough.

Copyright © Kate Siklosi

Published in Selvage (2023).

Kate Siklosi is a poet, scholar, publisher, teacher, and new mom. Her work includes Selvage (Invisible 2023), leavings (Timglaset 2021), and six chapbooks of poetry. Her critical and creative work has also been featured across North America, Europe, and the UK. She is the curator of the Small Press Map of Canada and co-founding editor of Gap Riot Press, a neat little feminist experimental press.

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