a
study of pools at night
and
the crack of hooves
moving
between two points
I imagine
you as a forest
beside
a river or a river
beside
a field
never
blind or cold
swerving away easily
I
let my skirt hang down night on my arms & legs
night on my
bare arms the wind shifts
light
across their surface and the
water
shapelessly
nearer
In the city people stir in their skin and fall asleep again.
What time is it
the river splits its banks the river bends its legs over the
rock
the word is cascade
find the pattern and break it
you’re
grinning in the dark / I
invent
a new fear
what now
the
wind punches light across the water
the
river throws its feet
against
the rock
its
white feet
Cascade
Like a hard glossy photograph / the city below us sleeps
I’ll
go no further.
do
you hear me
the
river speaks a word of
applause
What
time is it?
In
this image the sky is shining in the dark
the
horses have turned back
Kasia Van Schaik is the author of We Have Never Lived On Earth, a linked story collection forthcoming with the University of Alberta Press in 2022, and Sea Burial Laws According to Country, a poetry chapbook (Desert Pets Press, 2018). Her writing has appeared in Electric Literature, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Best Canadian Poetry Anthology, The Rumpus, and the CBC, and has been awarded the Mona Adilman Prize for poetry related to ecological concerns, the Peterson Memorial Fiction Prize, and the Quebec Federation’s Short Story Prize. In 2021, Kasia was named a CBC QWF writer-in-residence. Kasia teaches creative writing at McGill University and lives in Montreal/Tiohtià:ke. Find her on twitter: @kasiajuno or on instagram: kasia_writes