“Protein, Flesh, Art, and Gold” by Daniela Dampare
Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Protein, Flesh, Art, and Gold” by Daniela Dampare.
Protein, Flesh, Art, and Gold
By Daniela Dampare
Currently struggling to find
a creative bone in my body.
Maybe if I scrub my skin,
make it bleed, dig into my flesh,
and break open my bone, I’ll find it in my marrow.
Protein, flesh, art, and gold.
Buried, dug, and stolen
from the lakes and caves of my homeland.
My house, my home is empty.
Its walls collapsed onto my people
from the mines you made.
Your transactions bought thin sheets
draped on top of the people you stole from.
That doesn’t sound like a fair trade to me.
Now, my house, my home is empty.
No art, no gold. Protein and flesh are painted
across the mines you built for us.
What’s left is the darkened history
I use for my creative stories.
Copyright ยฉ Daniela Dampare
Daniela Dampare is an African Canadian poet and writer born and raised in Toronto, Canada. She is the fourth poet laureate of Sheridan College, graduating with an Honours BA in Creative Writing and Publishing. She was a finalist in Stage 32’s TV Comedy Screenwriting Contest, and a quarterfinalist for Final Draft’s Big Break Screenwriting Contest (2025) for her script, Coworkers. Her poetry is featured in Spoken Black Girl Issue 6: Beauty (2026), and Sheridan College’s Graduating Anthology, Inscape (2024).
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