“Northwest Calgary 2024” by Salimah Valiani
Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Northwest Calgary 2024” by Salimah Valiani.
Northwest Calgary 2024
By Salimah Valiani
you know it has changed
radically
when you hear the host at Jerusalem Shawarma near
the YMCA bigger than the Saddledome conversing in
Arabic with a patron from Kano who later speaks
English with a Nigerian server on the other side
of the counter and
after the repair
when the Arab Canadian supervisor
offers white repair man baklava
and he accepts
Copyright ยฉ Salimah Valiani
Salimah Valiani is a poet, activist and researcher. Her collection, 29 leads to love (Inanna 2021), is the 2022 winner of the International Book Award for Contemporary Poetry. She has published five other poetry collections: breathing for breadth (TSAR 2005), Letter Out: Letter In (Inanna 2009) land of the sky (Inanna 2016), Cradles (Daraja 2017), and IGoli EGoli (Botsotso 2024)about the city of Johannesburg. Her audio and print chapbook, Love Pandemic, was released by Daraja Press in 2022.
Subscribe to Poetry Pause, or support Poetry Pause with a donation today!