Untitled ("I will present a huge fire") • Montreal Review of Books

Poem of the Month

Untitled (“I will present a huge fire”)

By Natasha Kanapé Fontaine

Published on November 2, 2016

I will present a huge fire
I will burn the residential schools
the paper acts

And with a single gust of wind
brush away every pipeline
the caribou will come
running with the buffalo
the horses the deer
there will be a great trembling

The caribou
the buffalo the horses
the deer will come
with the land
drown the pipelines

We will burn
the residential schools
the paper acts

We will embody
a huge fire.

(Translated from French by Howard Scott)

More Poetry

Somewhere I Have Never Travelled

May 2015

I arrived at the Canada-US border. Flags fluttered though there was no wind. Mine was the sole vehicle at the crossing.

No One Goes To Prince Arthur Anymore

January 2019

Is it because they can’t tell the Casa Grecque from the Cabane Grecque? Because they drown in buckets of oversalted feta, or they have lost their ways through white tablecloths and folded napkins returning from the restrooms?

Unsigned City

March 2020

I detail the verbal exchanges with the affronted voyager on distant terraces, each equivalent in the space of the citation. Attempt in the morning: the magnolia garden inspecting its blue lack. Through the telescope, beautiful women make jewellery and dissolve in water.