“Begin, Again” by Yolande House

November 27, 2025

Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Begin, Again” by Yolande House.

Begin, Again

By Yolande House

by Diana Gabaldon He caresses the printing press, dusty but well maintained, the keys the same as he remembered from before immigrating to America. The same metal ovals with sloping โ€œBโ€s and tall, dignified โ€œAโ€s. Heโ€™d lent it to a friendโ€”more of a business acquaintance, really, but one he trustedโ€”who had kept it up well, using it as a second press in his booming business of only slightly incendiary pamphlets resisting the English domination. Now he would take it back with him over the seas, salt rusting its keys, and to the revolution, as he liked to call it, going on back home. Was that home now? He thought he had returned home to Scotland, but everything seemed as distant as the dust on his favorite letter โ€œB.โ€ Was it home or himself that had changed, the tides of time rendering shades of his history unrecognizable. He shined the tile with a yellowed cloth until it gleamed. Taking a piece of his old home to his new, an endowment from his younger self, a scholarship in his past selves. He would begin again, begin to find and shape himself into what heโ€™s always known he could be. He pushes the โ€œBโ€ down softly, nestles it in place in the plate of iron. Smooth black ink topped with paper. A strong swipe, and the pamphlet is done.

Copyright ยฉ Yolande House

Yolande Houseโ€™s work has appeared in literary magazines such as The Rumpus, Grain, Joyland, PRISM international, and The Fiddlehead. She is a graduate of Sage Hill, and her work has been supported by Access Copyright, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Canada Council for the Arts. She lives in treaty 13 in Toronto and is currently working on a memoir-in-essays about being hard of hearing, which recently received a CCA grant. Find her at yolandehouse.com.

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