“For body with burden” by Anna Veprinska
Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “For body with burden” by Anna Veprinska.
For body with burden
By Anna Veprinska
Virus commutes
from one body to another
like a secret
greeting: illness salutes
a neighbouring, gaping
mouth. I’m on a new medication
that forces my soul out
of my body
like a pine forest felled
to make room
for glass. If we are tender
with ourselves, even a grain
of rice has meaning, even the sheer
body of dust stretching its arms
like a young girl at a concert
not yet burdened by gravity.
Copyright © Anna Veprinska
Previously published in Bonememory (University of Calgary Press, 2025).
Anna Veprinska has published the poetry collections Bonememory (University of Calgary Press, 2025) and Sew with Butterflies (Steel Bananas, 2014). She has also published the monograph Empathy in Contemporary Poetry after Crisis (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) and the chapbooks Stone Blossom and Spirit-clenched. Her third poetry collection is forthcoming with Gordon Hill Press in 2026. Her poetry appears in Canadian Literature, Contemporary Verse 2, Arc Poetry Magazine, Parentheses, and The /tƐmz/ Review, among others.
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