Yvonne Blomer (she/her) is a writer, editor, and poetry teacher based in Victoria, BC. She has published six books of poetry, most recently Death of Persephone: A Murder. She is a past poet laureate of Victoria, BC, and finds writing in community a deeply important act. Yvonne has lived in Japan and the UK. She has also edited five poetry anthologies and written a travel memoir titled Sugar Ride: Cycling from Hanoi to Kuala Lumpur.
“I began writing this poem in the days approaching Earth Overshoot Day, which was on July 24. It was the day this year we used up earth’s resources for the entire year, so now we are living in overdraft. I have also been rereading Stilt Jack (1978) by John Thompson and letting his words enter the poem a little, or his cadence, so it’s in conversation with Stilt Jack and other news items going on in the days leading up to our overuse of planet Earth for 2025.“
Now you have burned your forests
you’ll go with no money, stupefied half-written books.
The bees on the Russian lavender, their fat bodies.
The dog, unable to settle.
What did you mean when you lay in the shadows
mute those three days?
Be a glacier, or the crag and crevasse
when melt liquidates. What happens
beneath your wide brimmed hat? May as well ask
a crowd on a Tokyo crosswalk in rain.
This black mar.
Waiting, I listen. Towhee, neighbours,
the bees in the lavender, wasps too.
The dog flies across the yard. My dog, my heart,
flings back. A cat to leash ratio.
Sleep? Who sleeps? At night, I breathe with the dying fly,
in the morning, sweep it from my bed. Jewel-eyed omen.
What are you writing? Are you writing?
A blister where stitches won’t heal.
Living is the long and short of it. Soft fur, the name
my son gives me; a friend I hold off,
palm pressed out.
Crow song. Bee song. Dog whistle.
“Eat, let the blade/ be surprised by joy” — John Thompson
The morning chorus of construction.
Children, birdsong.
In sleep, I eat the blade,
run the blood of being
along my thigh. Youth
is so lively. I’ve aged,
I’ve broken another limb.
eat eat the crows say.
They wait in the dying cedar
drop sharp stones in my hair.
Joy is a muddy jewel
I rarely pan for.
Sketch a line from here
to here. Read John Thompson,
hear Patrick Lane too in the male voice,
a hard burn, a rough beard. Liquor, bread and fish,
like Christ, for Christ’s sake (I take on Lane’s tone
or like to think I do). I own no guns nor
do I fish, but for the word—
I’m done with eating. This soft tongue is also a death—
swallow stones instead. Mudlark
my mind—small cosmos and the dog’s sad song,
comforts unearned. Children starve for real
and we sign petitions, bear our heavy bodies
Continue to look away.
Use, use up; fly, fly away.
A voice: low, rising, loud, sudden.
A man on the phone, a beer in hand, perhaps
with friends. I am no fish nor fowl, but I ride the day
by wind, by water. The great heat
comes. I don’t place my unhealing skin
in the Mighty Pacific’s dying tide. Algae.
Scum. Plastic. What have we done?
Whatever we wish. Like hockey boys let off, again.
“Eat salt and tell the truth.” A Polar bear
on the back of a great whale. What rises here?
What thieves. What incredible imaginative thieves.
And the great fish, sturgeon or mammalian
sinks to the depths. What would it ask of this fire
but to be spared, to be cool, left alone, spared,
not have its naked self
promise consent
so humans can carry on,
burn, and burn to spend.
How long can we taste our own
blood? Empty the river with a bullet-
holed bucket? Take my hand.
I take your sawed-off shotgun.
I don’t own a gun. Scion. Scythe. The drone
takes all. Play some music.
Glittery pop, flared jeans.
I’m five again, in love
with the idea of love. The party
goes on in another room.
I’m a dropped mitten, powder blue,
at a ski weekend. Once
when snow was deep
and each mogul, taller than me.
This wounded ankle, a burst star,
an encumbrance. His eyes travel me.
Truth is, we want to be good
at what we do: a fish
upstreams to breed, an astronaut breathes
in space. What are you good at little sparrow?
Flight and the fuck off of song. Discernment:
window from sky. Until that one time.
What a brilliant thing. Traffic
swooshes the sun down, the moon,
high beams. Shout hello into this void.
Say no. Say no clearly. Enunciate: N O
The wolf and bear voiceless
against airborne shooters.
Say cull. A woman in a hotel room.
A ratio: skin to guns.
