“irreconciliation” by Laila Malik

May 6, 2024

Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “irreconciliation” from Laila Malik’s collection archipelago, shortlisted for the League’s Pat Lowther Memorial Award and Gerald Lampert Memorial Award.

Due to its formatting, this poem is only available as an image.

irreconciliation

By Laila Malik

i knew a woman who woke up every morning and asked herself which whistle will i blow today i knew a woman who shushed the chorus of devil’s advocates in her mind with freshbaked cumin cookies clucked and soothed, ironrod everclasped under tattered frontier skirts cookies a new brand of colonization; her oldcountry people preferred oldschool tea biscuits with a biscuit, you knew who held the firearms. time moved safely in a straight line, toward the inevitability of erasure. i knew a woman who woke up every morning to a whistle blowing her we called her devourspora because she ate all the spores of her origins, spat out the doubts and grew fields upon fields of unanswerable questions at first she called this family, then community, then biting a piece off her tongue and looking both ways before she crossed the street she called it nation she didn’t know or she knew, her soles had grown spikes and with every step she impaled survivors she toiled hard not to think of any word for this but her nation of unanswerable questions called it <collateral> fields upon fields in her spare time she grew native herbs on her balcony, desperate for pollinators and forever incanting i can’t be a landthief if i live in the air can i can i can i can i can i can i can i can i can i can i can i can i can i can i can i can i can i can i

Laila Malik is a desisporic writer in Adobigok. Her debut poetry collection, archipelago (Book*hug Press, 2023) was named one of the CBC’s Best Canadian Poetry Books of 2023. Her essays have been nominated for the Pushcart and Best of the Net, longlisted in various contests, and published in Canadian and international literary journals.

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