Canadian Currents

by Laura Bourbonnais

 

eroded maple flags
link sea-sick landscapes,
fathered by sorry settlers
sculpting them into capitalist chronicles.

           lush prairies hush the Rockies’
           wail, cradling knots of gulfweed,
           effervescent lakes luring the
            blissfully illiterate cartographers.

                    leisurely, currents swell sunbaked sails,
                    summer seeping in unearthed soils,
                    slick ships sink in the ebb,
                    sanctimonious sprays mothering cornucopian sod.

                               ancestral earthquakes echo from Awkwasasne
                               to the Anishinaabe,
                               white prestige washing up in Canadian textbooks, 
                               residues of residential schools on the shore. 

                                         polished wastewaters twist 
                                         parched assault stories into sex,
                                         putrid essays on the people’s past  
                                         buried under debris of patriarchal patents.

                                                                welcome signs halt the incoming tide,
                                                                iridescent immigration rocks refusing 
                                                                the flood safety. Canadian turf
                                                                reveals its secret saints.

 


Bourbonnais+photo+credit+Ang+Waterton.jpg

Laura Bourbonnais is a twenty-one-year old French-Canadian (Montreal native!) third-year YorkU Screenwriting and Creative Writing double major. She is the Winters Free Press Editor-in-Chief, the AMPD Journal Lead Editor, a York Her Chapter Co-Head Editor, a HOLR writing intern, and an INKspire volunteer writer. She is a versatile artist with experience in competitive dance, music, film, theatre, and the visual arts. She strives to keep educating herself on systemic issues in and outside of Canada. 

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