Menu
Subscribe
Search
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

Yarrow

May 2013
Faded, bent, and obdurate its yellowing lace deceptive the delicacy of old ladies who survive their mates

Press

January 2014
Indeed you miss the point, my friend. It does stand stubbornly guarding mile after mile of soft and useless dust and wind out of the north with a low whine and the lying mouth of the news— the bitch!—the words and weather both are cutting.

Archaic Torso

December 2018
We cannot know his ordinary head except from photographs, eyes wholly terrified. And yet his torso, bent over ...