“Cost” by Adrienne Adams
Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Cost” by Adrienne Adams.
Cost
By Adrienne Adams
Stillness comes with its cost of coat
A clock cast blast to the past
Fast act passed red fox fact
Frilled trill trillion teeny tiny holes reality
Smoked the whole pack past spring howls
Messiness in its wake
This is is a fact: the world is burning
Season dust with praise yellow must is now officially regular Albertan weather blotting the sun to a red
bingo marker in the sky my grandmother would not have been proud I used to dye my shaved head with
blue polka dots daubing on top of a koolaid made green fields
I clench my fist inside my guts all the way to Delos, Iโm not brave like Socrates Iโm crying
Even if it rains, how are we supposed to eat vegetables marinated in smokeโs bust?
I rust from the inside out breathing red if there is no air no oxygen to evade poisoning my lungs through
the magic of transformation even that will stop tooโ
Hint: hit at complexities’ hope
Two days later Calgary in May looks like a Belgian summertime plants lush greenly fed carbon monoxide
wells and I realize the plants will be fine, bacteria thrive, spores regenerate, even if we, as earths latest
experiment in a self destructive colonial stingy haste for the fast life, abscond.
Copyright ยฉ Adrienne Adams
Previously published in Fire Season III, an anthology edited by Amory Abbott and Liz Toohey-Wiese, and NลD Magazine, both in 2024.
Adrienne Adams (she/her) is a bisexual artist, poet, writer, curator, herb nerd and gardener living and breathing in Treaty 7, dedicated to creating braver inter-sectional space to honour the feminine. She founded the reading series Woolfโs Voices in 2013. www.woolfsvoices.com @woolfsvoices . Her publications include The Prairie Journal, filling Station, Herizons, Antilang, FreeFall, NewForum, NลD, Polyglot, Fire Season III anthology, (M)othering anthology (Inanna Press), YYC POP and her chapbook Red Heads by above/ground Press https://adrienneadamsartandpoetry.com @adamsel.adams
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