It’s not a secret
that this doesn’t end well
or doesn’t end at all
until everything does
even the orioles and the salamanders
and the making of rice cakes and cobwebs
and love or that half
of us are being starved
while the other half are fed
for the slaughter, I mean distraction,
I mean—
That work has never
freed anyone, but keeps cranking
out blueprints and laws to fill
prisons with cheap labour,
by which I mean disposable,
Pass the corn chips
That a depressed queer broad falling out of her time
makes hardly any noise, but is heard more than those
outside trying to amplify the gut-clawed whimpers of the
even further down, sign languages in the dark,
Hush the guards are coming
That survival and surviving are two distinct goals
rooted in separate grammars of agency,
Duct tape, sewing thread, razor wire
That the enemy of my enemy
probably doesn’t like uppity bitches either
We could go on and on like this, but let’s leave it here
Anita Dolman is the author of Lost Enough: A collection of short stories, and co-editor of Motherhood in Precarious Times, an international anthology of poetry and non-fiction. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in numerous journals, magazines and anthologies, including Another Dysfunctional Cancer Poem Anthology, Canadian Ginger, Hamilton Arts & Letters, and Triangulation: Lost Voices. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, and is a contributing editor for Arc Poetry Magazine.
