“Load Upon Load” by Bren Simmers
Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Load Upon Load” by Bren Simmers, from The Work (Gaspereau Press, 2024), shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award.
Load Upon Load
By Bren Simmers
There comes a point
when the losses stack
up and all you want is
a few good years and
cash in your wallet.
My dad
before he died
threatened to never
talk to my brother
again after he flew
his sick wife to
Disneyland without
health coverage.
Stage four
ineligible under any
plan. She’s dying, I said,
you of all people know cancer.
Two kids under five.
And now I hear it in
my brother’s
voice, how load bears
upon load. Only in the
quiet drunken hours
can he let go. And now
you’re gone,
a streetlight flickering
on and off that he talks
to like a Ouija board.
Yes or no.
The pain pooling
under the surface.
All it takes
is an easy task
like filling out an
insurance form
to drown.
Copyright © Bren Simmers
From The Work (Gaspereau Press, 2024), shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award.
Bren Simmers is the winner of the CBC Poetry Prize and The Malahat Review Long Poem Prize. Her latest poetry collection, The Work (Gaspereau Press), was a finalist for the 2024 Governor General’s Literary Awards and the J.M. Abraham Atlantic Poetry Award. She lives on Epekwitk/PEI.
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