“Novel Therapies” by Jaclyn Desforges
Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Novel Therapies” by Jaclyn Desforges.
Novel Therapies
By Jaclyn Desforges
When you get mastitis they tell you to lie
down. So I carve two openings
in the Earth and lean forward. I set
my chin in the mud. Insects come
with their tongues.
It’s better than nursing. Your nipples
actually taste sweet, some childless lover
said once. She made me wash
her dishes. What’s that sensation —
they’ve probably banned it in France —
like restless leg syndrome,
that fundamental incongruence
between outer action
and inner impulse,
between ice the cupcakes
and lie down dead
between outside and inside
when outside is buttercream
and inside —
well, the inside
is multiplying.
Copyright © Jaclyn Desforges
Previously published in Danger Flower (Palimpsest Press 2021)
Jaclyn Desforges is the queer and neurodivergent author of Danger Flower (Palimpsest Press/Anstruther Books), winner of the 2022 Hamilton Literary Award for Poetry and one of CBC’s selections for the best Canadian poetry of 2021. She’s also the author of Why Are You So Quiet? (Annick Press, 2020), a picture book which was shortlisted for a Chocolate Lily Award and selected for the 2023 TD Summer Reading Club. She is a Pushcart-nominated writer and the winner of several prizes, including the 2018 RBC/PEN Canada New Voices Award. Jaclyn was a finalist for the 2023 CBC Poetry Prize and the 2023 CRAFT Short Fiction Prize, and was longlisted for the 2024 Room Magazine Fiction Contest. Her writing has been featured in literary magazines across North America and her poetry will be going to space in fall of 2024 as part of the Lunar Codex project. Jaclyn recently served as the 2023/2024 Mabel Pugh Taylor Writer In Residence at McMaster University and Hamilton Public Library. She holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia’s School of Creative Writing and lives in Hamilton with her partner and daughter.
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