“Loose Stallions Recreate Fire Dances in the Parking Lot of the Abandoned Hudson Bay Company Store, Waawiiyaatanong South” by D.A. Lockhart

April 1, 2026

Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Loose Stallions Recreate Fire Dances in the Parking Lot of the Abandoned Hudson Bay Company Store, Waawiiyaatanong South” by D.A. Lockhart, part of the 2026 Poem in Your Pocket Day collection.

Loose Stallions Recreate Fire Dances in the Parking Lot of the Abandoned Hudson Bay Company Store, Waawiiyaatanong South

By D.A. Lockhart

Screams rip the cold night open
like animiyok before New Madrid
jarred that big muddy river backwards.

But there is no comet above.
And the earth does not shake.

Scaffolding eats at the skeleton
of the old Sears
loose bricks wires dust
in the spaces. between
and the metal death fences are mostly border straight.

Light towers
above
the ass
end of
the only
mall
Stallions
as they pull burnouts
beside the grit heavy shell
of shuttered Hudson Bay.
Stallion after stallion,
burning the world into
screams and the lights
above
yellow the blacktop
beneath their drift.

Published as part of the 2026 Poem in Your Pocket Day collection.

D.A. Lockhart is the author of multiple collections of poetry and short fiction. His work has been a finalist for the Trillium Book Award, the Indiana Author’s Award, and Raymond Souster Award. He is a graduate of the Indiana University – Bloomington MFA in Creative Writing program. He is pùkuwànkoamimëns of the Moravian of the Thames First Nation. Lockhart currently resides at Waawiiyaatanong

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