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

Postscript(s)

August 2012
The fall of ’47 I was 25 and still living in Viluta. What made me stay so long? What made me linger in that nothing place, that hamlet of ten houses?

The Jungle of Screaming Souls

February 2020
On the Jungle of Screaming Souls,
helicopters dropped napalm bombs.
The battalion of men beneath
ran in every direction, on fire. 
Scattershot blasts, and one by one
machine guns cut them down
until there were only ten.

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.