folio : Forty-five Ottawa poets
My love drawing thirst,
my love a fatigue.
— Ladan Osman
Sunday morning with good neighbours
like in the old texts, breaking
bread,
sunlight pooling in a
bowl of red grapes.
A fight erupts—
toddler tears over a
cracked, yellow truck.
I think of kidnapped children, Kiev burning.
Wonderful neighbours: a
therapist unveiling fresh ink
a long, delicate flower across the pale length of ribs
bees and petals fluttering under each breath.
More tears. Tantrums turn to toppled cups.
Only love knows how to bear
the sting of strong emotion
how to bear witness to the televised ones: Gaza ruined
Tehran : Beirut : broken-ribbed
: ghosts testifying.
Just another Sunday
morning with good neighbours.
How oblivious—already laughing,
the kids move on as if it were nothing
nothing.
I remember Sarajevo
the longest siege—
I’m working at the seam where the personal becomes political. My focus is on craft as a form of integrity: tuning the music of the line through alliteration, subtle echoes, and euphonic turns, while sharpening imagery so each poem feels both intimate and socially resonant. I’m refining how sound and image braid together, letting them do the political work from within the emotional core rather than around it.
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Sanita Fejzić’s first book of poetry, Refugee Mouth, was published by Frontenac House in 2025. Her poetry and prose have appeared in Prairie Fire, Room Magazine, The Antigonish Review, ellipse, and Bywords, and shortlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize and The Malahat Review Long Poem Prize. Sanita lives with her wife and children on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg (Ottawa).
