Where We Converge

By Melissa Schnarr

I begin
where we all begin
as water
 
Molecules
finding one another through the chaos of the universe
condensing
becoming, in the clouds –
Gravity’s gentle hands
pulling us back to Earth
 
We do not sublimate.
(even the hardest of us melts)
 
When I join the lake,
I become the lake
and
the lake becomes me
We converge and divulge            
 
In this cycle of becoming, joining and returning, the questions gain scales and fins
and slip –
away
 
Words become vapour
 
I end as we all end
as water,

---

Choking on Aspirations

So, you want to be nonsense, my father says
You want to speak in riddles,
No, I want to speak in paintings
Convey colours invisible to the naked eye with but marks on a page
Divide into a triptych of word, sound and form
Outline the audacity of open space
I want to cross words like swords
Hone the blade of my syntax and sever people from their clutched pearls
I want those pretty, polished secretions to explode off the string, and
Get caught in someone’s windpipe
Oh jeez, he says
I want to muddle metaphors like a mixologist
Question the plumage of a strong cocktail
Inebriate eyeballs with the stout of one tall truth
Slake fingertips with the succor of sweet, sweet
page-turning impropriety
 
Yes, father, I want to be a poet

---

They tried to erase us so deep

They tried to erase us so deep
It took ground-penetrating radar to illuminate the shadow of Canada the Destroyer
215 tiny bodies
To unearth a truth that had been buried alive
 
Thrashing, those memories clawing the soil
Clawing the insides of spirit and mind, heart and body
We hear you; we never stopped listening.
We did not forget you.
 
Trauma is not defined by a lack of documentation
“Hearsay”, whispers
The degradation of physical evidence
Omission …
Or records kept guarded beyond white walls
 
When truth goes missing by the thousands …
Becoming a presence of absence
Looking away becomes national policy
Comforting, cleanly etched into the conscience of the pristine
True North, Strong and Free
 
They were children.
 
They expunged (our) lives from the record
Rubbed them out so enthusiastically,
The documents hold holes
Deep as mass graves 

---

Melissa Schnarr is an Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee writer, artist and scholar from Deshkan Ziibii (London, Ontario), with family ties in Bkejwanong Territory (Walpole Island First Nation) and Six Nations of the Grand River Territory. Her work has appeared in TNQ (The New Quarterly), the Windsor Review, Luna Station Quarterly and Yellow Medicine Review, with her first collection of poetry, Secondhand Moccasins, forthcoming. Her poem “Rough Cut” received a Pushcart Prize nomination in 2020. Currently, she is an instructor and PhD candidate at Western University and serves as the chair for the Indigenous Writers’ Circle. ​