PROJECT REBUILD


PREVIOUS TENANTS

At the Intersection of Kingsway and Nanaimo

THE apparition partition cost 
$365 per month per person per  
room per headless buddha statue (we 
will not speak of her) per several inch
of cement catching the house
by its uvula where your scream 

a single thorn in the blackberry bush
hidden inside a pipe 

line these faces through the exact 
rung of grey ladder picking the best
needle to extract blood wanks
residue from cellophane 
windows where you search 

for grace
for an end 

 
grab sticks
of incense and poke 
several planks of wood
as a prayer across several
oceans who have not yet
heard your grief (in the crowd 
of mourning) is a semicolon      ;    winking
 
Petals covering your 
eyelids for the rest of this
exquisite stolen
slice of

sunrise is a dream 
on a wet, wet morning


black raindrops
drip through
a tenacious bough
in their yard. 

no one there
could deny how it grew 

Jane Shi

RENOVATE THIS POEM

 

BIO:
Jane Shi is a queer Chinese settler living on the unceded, traditional, and ancestral territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. Her poetry appears in Room, Canthius, SAD Mag, and PRISM, among others. She wants to live in a world where love is not a limited resource, land is not mined, hearts are not filched, and bodies are not violated.