on love (xlv) by Salimah Valiani

February 14, 2023
Poem title: on love (xlv) Poet name: Salimah Valiani Poem: over a lifetime black gold white striped beings consume tons of milkweed somewhere in USAmerica transform to monarchs fly further north sipping wildflower nectar until they reach Canada over five to seven weeks to the milkweed they gift their eggs wildflowers they deliver pollen in autumn hundreds of millions able to live thirty weeks longer a monarch supergeneration reads the sun coasts the air 4000 kilometres to nestle together in oyamel firs at Mexico’s navel awakened by summer rays they start again End of poem. Credits and bio: Copyright © Salimah Valiani An earlier version of this poem was published in Poetry Potion’s A Poem a Day (May 2021). Salimah Valiani is a poet, activist and researcher. Her 2021 poetry collection, 29 leads to love, is the 2022 Winner of The International Book Award for Contemporary Poetry. She is also the author of four other poetry collections: breathing for breadth (TSAR 2005); Letter Out: Letter In (Inanna 2009); land of the sky (Inanna 2016); Cradles (Daraja 2017). Her story-poem, “Dear South Africa,” was one of seven works selected for the 2019-2020 Praxis Magazine Online Chapbook Series. Valiani’s first audiobook, Love Pandemic, has just been released by Daraja Press (also in print).