Among cultured pearls,
a scarf purchased at Eaton’s,
there’s an elastic band around
photos stacked like a deck of cards.
Undo that elastic, frayed
strings of dried cuttlefish.
Fortune deals this hand.
Here are photos of girls in kimonos,
family photos in yellowed hues.
A date scrawled in brown ink,
a stunted dead vine …
Poem, in its entirety, is available in the printed version of the current issue.
Bio:
Kevin Irie is a Japanese Canadian poet from Toronto. His book Viewing Tom Thomson: A Minority Report was a finalist for the Acorn-Plantos People’s Poetry Award and the Toronto Book Award. His latest book is The Tantramar Re-Vision (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2021).