Identity Crisis at Dixie Lee: Shippagan, NB by Jenna Lyn Albert

August 30, 2022
Poet name: Jenna Lyn Albert Poem name: Identity Crisis at Dixie Lee: Shippagan, NB Poem: Twelve years of French immersion didn’t prepare me for this moment, ma belle gueule, wanting for the words to order at a Dixie Lee in Northern NB: presque vu. I batter my brain, deep-fry parietal, temporal lobes in a freshet of grease. I remove them prematurely, gone all Shubenacadie Sam and nothing’s near done; not winter, not the langue of a drive home, not the knot of hunger for Acadie, Gabriel to my Evangeline: lost and found long enough to go bad at the back of the fridge behind the Baxter’s and Becel. My fast-food French sits heavy in the belly, stains the clamshell take-away box with imprints like wet asses on patio chairs. It’s not an easy clean up, I’ve cracked into the lobster sans les flyers, fingers fishy, hands éperlan flopping useless as my tongue over basic, back-home vocabulary—comment ça flip? End of poem. Credits and bio: Copyright © Jenna Lyn Albert Previously published in Riddle Fence #27 Jenna Lyn Albert (she/they | elle/iel) is a queer poet and community organizer living on the traditional unceded territory of the Wolastoqiyik people. Their debut collection of poetry Bec & Call (Nightwood Editions 2018) won the New Brunswick Book Awards’ Fiddlehead Poetry Prize. Jenna served a two-year term as the City of Fredericton’s Poet Laureate from 2019-2020 and is currently working on their sophomore collection of poetry, mal à l’aise.