sunset crew by Christina Shah

September 23, 2022
Poet name: Christina Shah Poem title: sunset crew Poem: get off the tools. put down your metric wrench and emerge from under that shit-caked belly pan. flush the grit from your eyes the world needs you, eats you after hours every day it can doctor and saint deus et machina of quonset monasteries lock-block altars and gravel pastures they call you to attend to the sputtering and dying; goldenrod iron whose four-wire arteries are stiff with foreign ions every day your ribs ache and you remain, turning the Riesenrad they would call you into your eighties if they could– a greybeard coach in a twill shopcoat whose sons have wandered away– still weighing in, still gardening stunted city kids End of poem. Credits and bio: Copyright © Christina Shah Previously published in The Fiddlehead 281 (Fall 2019). Christina Shah lives in Vancouver and works in heavy industry. Her poetry has appeared in The Fiddlehead, Vallum, Arc, Grain, PRISM international, EVENT, The Malahat Review, The Antigonish Review and elsewhere. Her poem, ‘they canned a good man today’, was shortlisted for The Fiddlehead’s 2021 Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize. Her poem, ‘interior bar, 1986’, was selected for Best Canadian Poetry 2023. She is one-fifth of the Harbour Centre 5 poetry collective, whose chapbook, ‘Brine’, was released this spring. She has some strong opinions on soft pretzels.