Post
Fat-bellied
plane rattles us
through angry
headwinds
as your
grandson and I head west
to spill our tears
over your ashes.
The newspaper
in my lap reads
Latest
War Thirteen Days Old
trauma
Some memories
stay long after
those who lived
them have gone
This one has as
props a rifle,
a nazi same as the
others,
breaths and
rustling, elements
of surprise, your
friends and you
having caught
him out, figurative, literal
pants down,
already wounded
tic
Some details
matter
less than we convince
ourselves: which war,
which
village, which friends. But
the thin border
of oak forest, the
nazi’s revolver snatched from the ground,
someone’s
knife, a glimmer of time
fixing itself, a
body cleaved, a blur
AJ Dolman’s (they/she) debut poetry book is Crazy / Mad (Gordon Hill Press, spring 2024). Dolman is also the author of Lost Enough: A collection of short stories (MRP, 2017), and three poetry chapbooks, and co-edited Motherhood in Precarious Times (Demeter Press, 2018). Their poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including recently Bi Women Quarterly, Canthius, Arc Poetry Magazine, QT Literary Magazine, and The Quarantine Review. They are a bi/pan+ rights advocate living on unceded, unsurrendered Anishinaabe Algonquin territory.
