rest, rebuild
next year, next month I’ll see you— all
the ways we know to say not now, no matter
how longing stretches, how we writhe
against the calendar’s rigidity. the numbers
rising again— of deaths, I can’t not say it—
& our co-napping, our kitchen harmonies
will have to wait. Jorie Graham says
there are endless shapes of justice
but only one taste of salt, so I cried
through July, cancelled plane tickets, ate
ripe peaches with ricotta, soft-yolked
noodles in cold broth. these days, too
much of anything means rinsing my nose
over the sink, wheezing awake at 4am,
wondering where I left my inhaler. I try, I’m
trying to tend to the restless child inside—
done running from this to that, now
then next, done fearing the evening
empty of plans. sunflowers in the alley,
wind on the wind, quiet tugging at the day’s
edges & I’m glad it’s you, startling
my rhythms, insisting on rest. to rebuild
in more tender terms— bottle, cradle, mend.
a life collapsed into the present tense.
(Jody, August 2022)
life collapsed into the present tense
That’s it, really. Wheezing, peaches, humidity:
the myth of progress mildews over as we watch
the stream oxbow, cut herself down a too-sharp turn
and just like that: small river-alley of sunflowers
nodding welcome, forked off from the rush. Riotous
as September chicken of the woods in damp forest, you
answer your own rhythms. I’m proud of that,
of how we all learn from your not now,
how presence, too, has so much unfolding
to offer. Like the snapdragons I picked
just Friday, frozen now in full bloom on my mantel
as the water holds their life in its hands
a little longer. somebody convinced us
there was a steady stroke forward: ahead, ahead.
To span our whole living with the momentum
of a never-there, always just up
ahead, nearly, almost—but in this freeze
frame the love we’ve canned for next season
still fills our cupboards near to bursting:
peaches only getting sweeter in their sleep.
(Zoë, September 2022)
borrowed light
last year I imagined a glass house for us—
modernist sky-lust, private decks in every room.
visitor, traveler. at what point does a transient
state become a way of being? this week, a friend
wrote, being present is just microdosing eternity.
no walls, only windows stretching to let in dusk, beaver
wake, rental kayak stranded in the lilypads. lately
I’ve been afraid of death— that eternal
present tense. blurring of inside, outside.
history floats in a garden. down the road, a former prison
farm bleeds DDT into a lake. dahlias dip
their necks in a glass vase on the dinner
table. teak, brushed. brightness, borrowed
from the water’s polished surface. lonely
in my life and sailing on shrooms I thought
death must be the moment when our arms
touching, fall
asleep. the house in my hands
defies geometry. wide as September, one now
or forever. when, as I must, I lose
my I, let me be touched by a season of peaches,
the momentum of dahlias. let me be touched.
let me be a window, wherever you need me,
to let in every angle of sky; every second of light.
(Jody, September 2022)
death must be the moment
the fingers we’ve been reaching out across
these 1’s and 0’s find each other in the slipstream
of after and. Of we we we we we. Thank you, gone I
for the wind winding our matted hair
around her finger. Thank you, you, kaleidoscoped
into ever and cottonwood, snowing down
in seafoamed bursts, those tufts of seed—
which is to say reachings, which is to say more and,
you and, yesterday’s season now: the last
few browned leaves shake like a hand
on the branch before they let go for good. For
now. The ones who already gave in mark the tides
as the lake spoons herself into herself: tugs
the boundaries she dissolves. Even as the Busch
cans glint from the bed, easier and easier
to see as autumn drought thins
the lake down. I think you’re right, J—death
the joining: our good arms. Gooseflesh now. Rainbow
trout leap the surface, skin-split. We slips: we foams:
we holds: clot and froth: wherever we goes
let sky angle down in tufted light. Let death in.
Let touch lose me every second.
(Zoë, October 2022)
Jody Chan (they/them) is a writer, grief and death worker, and community organizer based in Toronto/Tkaronto. They are the author of sick (Black Lawrence Press), winner of the 2021 Trillium Award for Poetry, impact statement (Brick Books, 2024), and madness belongs to the people (Brick Books, forthcoming 2026). Jody is a member of the Daybreak Poets Collective, a co-host of the podcast Poet Talk, and the former 2023-2024 Artist-in-Residence at the University of Toronto’s Queer and Trans Research Lab.
Zoë Fay-Stindt is a queer, land-based poet and essayist with roots in both the French and American south, currently living on unceded Cherokee lands. Their work has been Pushcart, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets nominated, featured or forthcoming in places such as Southern Humanities, Ninth Letter, VIDA, Muzzle, Terrain, and Poet Lore, and gathered into a chapbook, Bird Body, winner of Cordella Press’ inaugural Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize. They are a student of belonging and embodied relationship to land who believes in slowness, reciprocal relationship with place and people, and queer, kincentric futures.
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