Desquamation

By Foster Gareau

It wasn’t raining
still the cloud pressed
 
down
like an old mattress— 
 
sloughed cells
time-floes:
 
cumulus
of dust

I am one
ego
 
seasick
on damp sheets
 
eyes like eggs
poached soft
 
crying
desertion

pissed
in a cardiac moment

---

​Foster Gareau is a queer French-Canadian poet, editor, teacher and researcher in Montréal. Formerly unhoused and in recovery from alcoholism, his work has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and appears in Arc Poetry, The Malahat Review, PRISM international, and elsewhere. His poetry was longlisted for Ploughshares’ 2026 Emerging Writers’ Contest, and he is one of seven poets selected for the League of Canadian Poets’ 2026–27 P.K. Page Mentorship. He went to Sir Frederick Banting Secondary School.