Skating toward your teens
in a fashionable fling of scarf
you’re edging into lipstick
with your pink-tinted gloss
willing to skate with me still
and eat a Beaver Tail …
Poem, in its entirety, is available in the printed version of the current issue.
Bio:
Jean van Loon is an Ottawa writer whose second book of poetry, Nuclear Family (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022), won the 2023 Ottawa Book Award and was shortlisted for the Archibald Lampman Award. Her first poetry collection, Building on River (Cormorant, 2018), was a finalist for the Ottawa Book Award. Her story “Stardust,” published in Queen’s Quarterly, was included in Journey Prize Stories 19.