Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Skinny-Dipping As Self-Baptism” by Cassandra Myers.

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Skinny-Dipping As Self-Baptism

By Cassandra Myers

i identify care as the ice-bag after the black eye

i know abuse as more of a lifestyle than a cycle

it happened once in the shower, black-out island

the hip of summer, fried-him-eggs morning after

how can you re-wire a cascade, make water

fall in reverse, change the river’s direction?

*

my best friend is the kind of queer some call frigid

i call her, the safest person i’ve ever held

prude as the cool side of a marital bed where only she sleeps

braver than the light daring water to blue, she camps on the roof

of abandoned factories for the view, I follow her shadow into

sworn off places, couraged by her touch, its electric moss

*

after we hike a dozen rainy hours to the devil’s

punch bowl, she rides Tews Falls like a firemans pole

she lets the water touch her without nail-bitten memory

i learn there is more to a season than waiting

shuck my clothes, dance naked under the city’s regrets

slake off a shriek like sleet off a viburnum branch

put the hydrogen berries in my mouth

my veins opening their fists, one eye shut

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Copyright © Cassandra Myers

Cassandra Myers (My’z) (they/she/he) is an award winning poet, performer, dancer, illustrator, and counselor from Tkaronto, Ontario. As a queer, non-binary, South-Asian-Italian, crip, mad, survivor of sexual violence, Cassandra’s work has won national literary and spoken word titles including the National Magazine GOLD Award in Poetry and Champion of the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word. Find them @cass.myers.poetry or at cassmyers.com

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