Canisia Lubrin

Nowhere the Pythagoras

A river sluiced the big nowhere
That even history shreds
Where the jungle aligns with the day
Whips lash the dreamscape pressed down
Harder into the molten core

The implanted celestial began
To dream that same dream
Of disembodied legs quickening
To the ivory sands of the coast

                                                                       You’re hurt, you, a cry
                                                                       To end the cry of the end
                                                                       Of the right way to crook

                                                                       The abandoned gospels left
                                                                       of these daughters, saving the
                                                                  savannah,
                                                                       Setting off arrows that fall at
                                                                  right-angles

                                                                        On the tan, woolen fields
                                                                        In one matted clump
          Empire falls

Thus sayeth the Lord, behold
I frame evil against
You and your heart

Measure this: wicked looks like glass and is blind

Canisia Lubrin has contributed to anthologies and journals including Room, The Puritan and Arc Magazine. She teaches writing at Humber College and serves on the editorial board of Humber Literary Review. Incoming co-host and co-director of Pivot Reading Series in Toronto, her debut poetry collection, Voodoo Hypothesis, is forthcoming from Wolsak & Wynn in 2017.