Poem in Your Pocket Day is an international movement that encourages people to centre poetry within their daily interactions.

On PIYP Day, select a poem, carry it with you, and share it with others at schools, bookstores, libraries, parks, workplaces, coffee shops, street corners, and on social media using the hashtag #PocketPoem.

The 2020 Poem in Your Pocket Day Postcard collection is here!

This year’s Poem In Your Pocket Collection features poetry by: John Wall Barger, Laura Cok, M.E. Csamer, Steven Heighton, Louisa Howerow, Kevin Irie, Penn Kemp, Shannon Kernaghan, Annick Macaskill, Carol L. Mackay, Diana Manole, Christine McNair, Colin Morton, Nan Williamson and Bänoo Zan.

Read their poems below and share with others.

Swimming in Church Lake
John Wall Barger

That thundercloud, north, is a bathtub
overflowing silver.
the man with the beard
is my father. What current
urges me to the road,
him to the forest?
My mother hugs her knees
on the big granite rock.
I am the son with tinnitus
from rock concerts.
Quiet as a dentist drill
just over my head
shifting one ear to the other.
Below us, lake bottom,
darkness blossoms.
The feather of dusk is upon us.
Light, a dragonfly, scatters.
Waterskaters.
The man with the beard
swims out further,
We are a triangle of waves.
I am the rattlebrained
son. That sound is the
mind treading water.
I am the bearded man.
I keep the colorblind distances.
I am the woman.
The trembling celestial
ladder my body.
I am love,
keeping the triangle large.
I am thunder
my ear sings.

Arc Poetry magazine, Spring 2019

John Wall Barger’s poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Rattle, The Cincinnati Review, Poetry Ireland Review, and Best of the Best Canadian Poetry. His poem, “Smog Mother,” was co-winner of The Malahat Review’s 2017 Long Poem Prize. His fourth book, The Mean Game (Palimpsest Press, 2019), is currently in its second printing.

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Cosmic Egg Hypothesis
Laura Cok

That the universe’s egg came first,
that God is a chicken. That each star
lay coiled in place, thin membrane
keeping order. Here is a tiny rhododendron
ready to hatch. The ocean in a teacup
with its cube of salt. Whiskey barrels. Golden
retrievers. Scaled down so only God,
the chicken, can peer into the egg
with her reading lamp and microscope, looking for-
ah, here we are, kicking towards the light.

Originally from northern California, Laura Cok spent time in Grand Rapids, Michigan and Waterloo, Ontario before settling in Toronto, where she has lived for 15 years. Cok has an MA in English Literature from the University of Toronto, where she won the E.J. Pratt Poetry Medal and the University of Toronto Magazine alumni poetry contest. Her first book, Doubter’s Hymnal, was published by Mansfield Press in 2019 and was longlisted for the Gerald Lampert award, and her poem “Cosmic Egg Hypothesis” won the 2020 Broadsheet Contest.

—–

Le Mot Juste
M.E. Csamer

Membrane is a sheath, keeps us in; sometimes clarity skins it,
like when you said thin, the thin places;
you, telling your son it was in this parking lot when I knew I loved your father,
here where I fell, stopped, time ran into my back, stopped as well;
that I fell, that it was thin, I froze and touched it and life touched back,
though that’s not how you said it
or how I can say it here because it was the one word thin
that slowed the air in the room, our breathing,
like Flaubert said, le mot juste.

I want to see your child’s eyes as you tell him:
is he stopped as well, unable to be his ten years,
to think my mother is embarrassing me;
your story, the recognizing of love, your words
labeling the picture he has in his mind,
walking into a room where you and his father are standing together
and it’s, oh, love,
so he touches the thin places too,
and where you are mesmerized, remembering,
he is comforted, like when you tuck him in and your hair falls against his face,
the last thought before sleep the smell of you, his mother.

There are three of us in this room,
beautiful, artistic women,
each battered in her own way and giving it out through words
or paint or in this silence
where the membrane wraps around us
and we are inside the living heart of the world
and it should be remarkable but it is only this,
women talking in the small spaces of time we have,
free of the chores, the nurturing,
hands resting before they move to raise the world again,
hold it to our breasts and warm it.

M. E. Csamer is widely published in Canadian literary magazines. Her books include Paper Moon (1998), Light is What We Live In (2005), and A Month Without Snow (2007). She served for several years as president for The League of Canadian Poets. Her last published collection of poetry is Another Way of Falling (2012).

—–

Christmas Work Detail, Samos
Steven Heighton

Eid milad majid*

In the olive grove on the high ground, facing west
into rain, we dig graves for three men drowned
in the straits-Syrians, maybe, dispossessed
of everything by the sea, so there’s no knowing

for sure. This much you can say for any grave,
it’s landlocked. And these men will lie a decent
distances uphill, out of sight of the beach
where on Sunday their bodies washed ashore

in plausible orange life-vests (ten euros each)
packed with sawdust, bubble wrap, rags. These rains
haven’t softened the soil, yet digging up here
feels only right; the waves that buried them

terrified them first, and we guess, again,
that they-like the ones the crossing didn’t kill-
were from desert towns, this sea inconceivable
as the Arctic. And each cardboard casket,

awaiting its patient passenger, looks
almost seaworthy after the cut-rate raft
they fled in, and which, deflated, washed in
later, silent, as if shyly contrite.

It seems we’ve failed them, despite the safe graves.
In a grove this untended the ground is brined.
bitter with black fruit rotting, and on islands
nowhere is far enough from the waves.

*-Arabic for Happy birth feast, or Merry Christmas

Steven Heighton’s most recent books are The Nightingale Won’t Let You Sleep, a novel, and The Waking Comes Late, which received the 2016 Governor General’s Award for Poetry. His short fiction and poetry have received four gold National Magazine Awards and have appeared in London Review of Books, Granta, Poetry, Best American Poetry, Tin House, TLR, Agni, Best American Mystery Stories, Zoetrope, and several editions of Best Canadian Poetry.

—–

Why Scrabble
Louisa Howerow

Because Scrabble’s square board says
it is a plane figure, a stable figure

Because in the board’s 15 x 15 grid
no square can be truer than another

Because 15 is my mother’s lucky number,
and she loved numbers long before she loved letters

Because she says her tongue can’t twist itself
to those strange English sounds
and she’s deaf to them when she needs to be

Because Q and Z are worth ten points
and if AA ZA QI exist then she can invent others
Because to paly Scrabble is to slap down tiles
left-right, top down, and laugh or fool heads off

Because once she made bingo on her first turn,
and we took photos to pin on her bragging wall
right there with her row of winning scores

Because Scrabble proved to be
the canary in the coal mine.

Because when she begged off the second game,
couldn’t finish the first,
we knew

Fresh Voices, 2019

Louisa Howerow’s poems can be found in a number of Canadian anthologies, among them: An Unfinished War: war of 1812 poetry & prose (Black Moss Press), I Found It at the Movies: An Anthology of Film Poems (Guernica Editions), Imaginarium 3 & 4: The Best of Canadian Speculative Writing (ChiZine Press), Gush: Menstrual Manifestos for Our Times (Frontenac House) and Another Dysfunctional Cancer Poem Anthology (Mansfield Press).

—–

Letters Home
Kevin Irie

Your letters back home
were maps of your progress,
charting a course where children existed
to pass their exams, then marry and multiply.

You spoke of new cars like having more offspring,
as if success were the infant conceived with immigration,
a photo sent along with your words to drive your achievements
all the way home.

You failed to describe
the way your goals were routed like traffic
in other directions, those detours
common as dead-end streets:

long hours, harsh weather,
small bills turning to larger debts,
the children rebellious.

Bad news never existed in print.
Your letters were brochures sent to family
who could only visit with you by mail,
guests of your word on paper alone.

There, a pen could hold your children to curfew,
paper could keep your husband happy.

Fluent at last in New World content,
you hid dismay like a second language
you spoke only in private, at home.

Silence: the one who would alawys listen
and never talk back.

in English.

Dinner at Madonna’s, Frontenac House, 2003

Kevin Irie has published poetry in Canada, the States, Australia, and England. His poems have been broadcast on CBC Radio and have been translated into Spanish, French, and Japanese. He has been long-listed for the CBC Poetry Prize, nominated for the ReLit Award, and shortlisted for Arc’s Poem of the Year contest. His book, Viewing Tom Thomson: A Minority Report (Frontenac House) was a finalist for the Acorn-Plantos People’s Poetry Award as well as the Toronto Book Award. He lives in Toronto.

—–

Believe…
Penn Kemp


In the space of a year, she has learned to sit,
to stand, to walk, to totter forward in a run.

She has seen one full round of the seasons.
She wraps her family round her little finger.

Now just before dusk we stroll hand in hand
to witness the evening ritual of geese return.

Gliding along the river in formation, they
skim overhead, flapping slow time in synch.

She studies their procedure, dropping my hand
to edge forward, neck outstretched, arms aero-

dynamically angled. She flaps and flaps along
the bank, following their flight, ready for that

sudden lift. Again, again, till the last goose has
flown. Dragging her heels home, disconcerted,

she braces her body against the rising breeze,
bewildered that she too can’t take off to sky

but game to try again tomorrow, convinced
the birds’ secret will soon belong to her.

River Revery, 2019 | https://riverrevery.ca/animation/

Poet, performer and playwright Penn Kemp has been celebrated as a trailblazer from her first poetry publication by Coach House (1972) to her latest: River Revery, Local Heroes (Insomniac Press) and Fox Haunts (Aeolus House). See pennkemp.weebly.com and pennkemp.wordpress.com.

—–

Concealing
Shannon Kernaghan

I study her practised strokes
mirror-side, my legs dangling
from the bathroom cabinet.
She applies a solid foundation
then caulks empty space with
concealer, a false front to hide
true age, real provenance,
“Better tips,” she says with a heavily
mascara wink.

When I examine my favourite photo of her
as a teen before she came to Canada,
her olive skin shining
through the years and Kodachrome,
I long to run fingers through the snarl
of ropey curls she now relaxes
chemically, straightening and shellacking
with products that conceal her
Mediterranean past,
a name shortened from Simonides to Simon,
one I will legally change back
proud of my heritage,
unafraid to show a few curls
a few cracks.

More Life Coming Up, After the Break(down), 2017

Shannon Kernaghan is a published author and columnist. Her work appears in books, magazines and journals. For years she wrote a weekly newspaper column and continues to tell her stories at ShannonKernaghan.com.

—–

Missed Call
Annick Macaskill

The house sparrow carries sunlight in her beak.
Consider the mystery-the slight frame

burgeoning with hymns against the backdrop
of still melting snow, blue and white pooling

in the long given-out grass. Under cedars I walk
and whisper, attempt forgetting, but her notes

are pressed upon my mind. Her flush moves over me,
probes my body-I don’t expand like she does,

but I no longer split from wanting.
Her call rushes my insides, sears my chest-

tests my resilience. I try her song, but my throat fails,
feeble. And would you hear me anyway?

I imagine your arms in another version of winter,
deep in snowdrifts, limbs and torso smudged

in effort and evening-you catch everything, as I see it-
while I’m still here, rasping.

[*…but her notes envelop / my mind’s soft ear. Her flush…]

[*…but her notes still surface / in my mind. Her flush…]

[*…but her notes are stamped / upon my mind. Her flush…]

[*…but her notes / sink into my mind. Her flush…]

[*…but her notes become infixed / in my mind. Her flush…]

Canadian Notes & Queries, Summer 2018
Murmurations, Gaspereau Press, 2020

Annick MacAskill’s debut collection, No Meeting Without Body (Gaspereau Press, 2018), was selected as a finalist for the J.M. Abraham Award and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Her second collection, Murmurations, appears with Gaspereau Press this spring. She lives and writes in Halifax.

—–

The Last Time I Saw You
Carol L. Mackay

You were gassing up
and half-smiling over the pump.
I pulled my body back in the seat, returned the credit card
to my wallet, zipped up
behind the armour of the 4-Runner.
I couldn’t help leaning forward
to watch the smile uncurl to a straight line
and that’s when I noticed
I couldn’t help but noice
the knotty unpruned branches of your twisty
hands very different from the ones
I want to remember on my swing seat
higher, higher, higher.
And I wanted to take the pitted nozzle from them
squeeze the heaviness in your place, ask
Where are your people? And I wanted
to know if they kicked you to the curb
to open your own pickle jars or
drag the biting handles of groceries home yourself. And after,

I tore the Kodachrome from the album.
I flamingo-legged across the sand
in my one piece, one-tracked mind
I want, I want, I want.
You were pulled along in clamdiggers & flip-flops
fingers long-leashed, warm-wrapping my tugging hand.

Carol L. MacKay’s poems have been published in literary journals in Canada, the US and Ireland, including in The New Quarterly, Crannóg, Prairie Journal and The Fiddlehead. She writes poetry for young people as well and is a frequent contributor to children’s magazines. Carol lives on Vancouver Island.

—–  

Lovers
Diana Manole

We walk at a distance-
actors not knowing what to do with our hands.
The silence of dioecious plants.
“You’re a suspect,” he warns me.
And so I am: a woman.

“See me, please!”

Diana Manole is a Romanian-Canadian scholar, literary translator, and award-winning author of nine books of poetry and drama in her native Romania. Her poetry in English has been published in magazines and anthologies in Europe, the UK, the US, Mexico, South Africa, and Canada, and in the English-Romanian book B&W (Tracus Arte 2015). Her second bilingual collection of poems, Praying to a Landed-Immigrant God, will be published in Canada by Grey Borders Books in September 2020. Holding a doctorate from the University of Toronto, Diana teaches academic and practical courses in theatre and performance, literature, and creative writing at universities in Southern Ontario.

—–  

Making Milk
Christine McNair

alveoli and ductile = immovable imprints of trees
sub terraaneous fluvial dictates development

predecessor-a beginning to latch
tongue raw and slap a turtle latch barracuda baby


(if we suppose my milk is worth drinking)


poisoned lakes and a perfect stretch a neck arches towards
(I should stop) suppositions pleasure down ink in nap schedules

we believe in the beautiful quiet of an unlatched lobe
parasitic involvement of a soft lush hand open and close

small jaws little teeth cut milk
mastic impressions

and let down

Charm, Book*hug, 2017

Christine McNair has published two books of poetry, Conflict (Bookhug, 2012) and Charm (Bookhug, 2017). Charm won the Archibald Lampman prize in 2018. She works as a book doctor in Ottawa.

—–  

Crepuscule
Colin Morton

Pacemaker, beta blocker, titanium knee.
We’re kept in comfort at great expense.
Remember yesterday when we were free?

Now appointments fill our week.
Always looking for glasses or pens.
Pacemaker, beta blocker, titanium knee.

You say I can’t hear, well, you can’t see.
Dear, let’s not even mention Depends.
Remember yesterday when we were free?

I look after you, you take care of me.
We’ve been lovers, we’re still friends.
Pacemaker, beta blocker, titanium knee.

Remember how we’d run uphill to see
sunset? We didn’t want the day to end.
Pacemaker, beta blocker, titanium knee.
Did we even know when we were free?

Ascent, readthebestwriting.com, 2018

Colin Morton has published a dozen books, ranging from visual and sound poetry (Printed Matter) to historical narratives (The Merzbook: Kurt Schwitters Poems; The Hundred Cuts: Sitting Bull and the Major). He has also published a novel, short stories, many reviews and essays, and coproduced (with Ed Ackerman) the award-winning animated sound-poetry film Primiti Too Taa. colinmorton.net

—–

Georgian Bay Meditation
Nan Williamson

Rosy Granite, dark-veined
feldspar flecked black,
gleaming splash of milky quartz,
angular stones drawn by glaciers,
fractured and scraped,
rounded by sand and waves,
rocky abstractions milled from the Shield.

I choose your birthday token
from this gritty northern shore,
place in your veined hand
a ruddy gold-streaked story-
older than language, than love.
Dark green bands of igenous rock,
orange lichen dropped like paint.
Jack pines clutch at crevices,
jagged branches lean one way.

In the bay, shifting hues: cobalt,
steel grey, and thin, bitter spume
snap at the scudding sky;
Waves lap against the stones,
retreat, return; the rhythm lasts
all afternoon – or our whole lives.
What’s left is little time
to understand it all, beginning
with these ancient traces on the shore.

Room Magazine, March/2014

Nan Williamson is a graduate of the Humber School for Writers, Toronto, 2013. Her chapbook, leave the door open for the moon, was published by Jackson Creek Press in 2015. Her poems and illustrations have been published in many juried literary journals and anthologies in Canada, the US and the UK. Currently, Nan leads the newly-revived Poetry Circle, Canadian Authors Association, Peterborough Branch.

—–

The Moon Over Istanbul
Bänoo Zan

is my mother’s
profile

She will not remember
my departure

The moon over Istanbul
is a bonfire of stories
displaced and homegrown-

This is the waning moon
like the thin dome of
Hagia Sophia¹
emptied of prayer-
a bright cup
filled with night-

I drink from her dreams-
a whirling dervish mirror skirt
spread over the void-

stars falling
my eyes
drop by drop-

Christos and Allah
inhabit the same temple
but we are driven apart-

The moon over Istanbul
is a song of farewell
no bird can sing-

She is the same goddess
worshipped everywhere-

but now
she is here-
with me-

¹Former Greek Orthodox Christian cathedral, later an Ottoman imperial mosque, and now a museum, located in Istanbul, Turkey
Juniper Poetry Magazine, Fall 2019

Bänoo Zan is a poet, librettist, translator, teacher, editor and poetry curator, with more than 200 published poems and poetry-related pieces as well as three books. Song of Phoenix: Life and Works of Sylvia Plath, was reprinted in Iran in 2010. Songs of Exile, her first poetry collection, was released in 2016 in Canada by Guernica Editions. It was shortlisted for Gerald Lampert Memorial Award by the League of Canadian Poets in 2017. Letters to My Father, her second poetry book, was published in 2017 by Piquant Press in Canada. She is the founder of Shab-e She’r (Poetry Night), Toronto’s most diverse poetry reading and open mic series (inception: 2012). It is a brave space that bridges the gap between communities of poets from different ethnicities, nationalities, religions (or lack thereof), ages, genders, sexual orientations, disabilities, poetic styles, voices and visions.
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