by Avery Bird
summer heat is sour and raw, now, like stomach acid: we breathe in the atmospheric, smoke-thick euphemisms as if this burning, tear-gassed climate simply changes, a sweetly soporific greenhouse. in the languid hush of small-town summer, acrylic splatters bloodlike in the grass, collateral blades that bend and crack in the way that organic beings shouldn’t. there is a bee in the paint tray, small limbs swimming for the sky, weighed heavy by industry. when I hold out my hand, I wonder if help is only symbolic: a self-congratulatory forgetfulness of the present we call history. see how we hold ourselves captive, thoughts stained myopic by the colonizer mind: we are the tooth that hungers for the tail, our intelligence too artificial to see that there has never been anything powerful in the pursuit of power. capitalism lies undead in its alleged grave, plastic bottles rattling against bones in the chthonic esophagus of time. the earth questions whether to take it all back, the end doesn’t recognize the beginning, anymore. but what does it matter? we’re the prison gods. so we cut our own umbilical cord, blood-drunk on eagerness to escape the planetary womb. and still, we wonder why the earth bleeds.
Avery Bird is a 20-something artist and writer living in Amiskwaciwaskahikan, on Treaty 6 territory. Her favourite parts of the city are the saskatoon and raspberry bushes you’ll find here and there and the grand piano in the downtown library. She loves found poetry, trail biking, and art in random places.
Capital City Press Anthology 