Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Earth Eater” by Jaclyn Desforges.

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Earth Eater

by Jaclyn Desforges

Jaw creaks open like a rusty old opening

Whales have fingers and how to swallow one

Is to open bigger than you’ve ever opened:

You are a door and

Through the door is your body

Which you thought of as a marmot

Only bigger, only wiser, only

Maybe in possession of something immortal

With five fingers on each hand

And eyes for measuring

Something capable of stretching open wide

We’re waiting for you to swallow us down

To the dark cave of your inside belly

You were made to cradle the universe

You were made to hold all our bodies

Your jaw is bigger than a fleet

Your jaw is an open gate and it doesn’t even hurt

When the anemones come in, the dolphins

When you are bigger than the sea

You get lower than the sea

The art of opening is to make room for what is longed for

Like the slate grey body of an ordinary whale

Eventually you see yourself under everything

Carrying our solar system

On the hydraulic lift of your hipbones

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“Earth Eater” was previously published in Contemporary Verse 2.

Jaclyn Desforges is the 2023/2024 Mabel Pugh Taylor Writer In Residence at McMaster University and Hamilton Public Library. She’s the queer and neurodivergent author of Danger Flower (Palimpsest Press), winner of the 2022 Hamilton Literary Award for Poetry and one of CBC’s picks for the best Canadian poetry of 2021. She’s also the author of a picture book, Why Are You So Quiet? (Annick Press, 2020).

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