“That One” by Lorri Neilsen Glenn
Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. This June, Poetry Pause celebrates Indigenous and LGBTQI2S+ poets for Indigenous History Month and Pride Month! Read “That One” by Lorri Neilsen Glenn.
That One
By Lorri Neilsen Glenn
The white-haired one with smooth pale skin
making mudpies in the back alley of a small
Northern Alberta town. The one who watches
everyone and everything, says little. Who starts
school, and always keeps a book nearby.
The one near the back with the others, quiet
ones teachers ignore, who meet after school
by the Cambrian hotel, dark hair teased, sharing
smokes, fingers peeking out from the sleeves
of older guys’ hockey jackets.
Whose aunts finally told her, after all those visits
to her grandmother when nothing was said. Not
about Peguis, the Red, Norway House, the fire
that destroyed a riverboat and her family. Nor
about Budd, Erasmus, Kennedy or Couture,
all kin she will find later, buried in history books
and archives, church records and treaty paylists,
faint cursive paths back to Hudson Bay, to swamp
and grasslands, to boreal forests. Her white hair
whiter, pale skin wrinkled. But foot-sure. Home.
Copyright © Lorri Neilsen Glenn
Lorri Neilsen Glenn’s recent books include The Old Moon in Her Arms: Women I Have Known and Been (Nimbus) and Following the River:Traces of Red River Women (Wolsak and Wynn). Halifax’s first Métis Poet Laureate, she teaches in the University of King’s College MFA Program. Lorri lives and works in Mi’kma’ki.
Subscribe to Poetry Pause, or support Poetry Pause with a donation today!