National Poetry Month : Jaclyn Desforges,

 

LETTER HOME FROM A NOWHERE MOON

Mother, your work is not important
Mother, your planet’s aura is orange and getting orange-er

Have you even looked at an orangutan lately?

Nobody is dying everything is fine
And ordinary, I have a job here, sweeping

The chemicals taste fine and I’m not afraid
Anymore, not like I used to be

Mother, you told me there were buffets in space
And enough of everything

Toothpaste you never have to cut up
No balled up slivers of soap

Mother you told me this was freedom
If you get small enough and sharp-ended

You can squeeze into nowhere
And hope nobody will find you

This is my peak: peering from a crack in the wall
I count cracks in the sidewalk

I am loose with my coins and I drop them
Every morning when I arrive at work I open

A plastic bag full of frozen portions of protein
And I flavour them any way I want

There is no ladder to this place
You have to pay for the shuttle

Or climb a rope to outer space
(If you do so, wear gloves)

Mother, you know I am never coming back
Mother, you know I have found the place where I belong

It is only orbiting the place where you are
It is not a planet but there is ground for me to walk on

And I can be useful, here
I can spray the soy patties

Mother I know you want me home in your garden
Standing tall beside my tall, still brothers

There is a vortex in the basement
I covered it up with a rug

Don’t stand on it or you’ll fall
Into a version of earth where the earthworms won

 

 

 

Jaclyn Desforges [photo credit: Calvin Thomas] is the queer and neurodivergent author of Danger Flower, winner of the 2022 Hamilton Literary Award for Poetry, and Why Are You So Quiet?, a picture book selected for the 2023 TD Summer Reading Club. Her forthcoming works include the short story collection Weird Babies (Porcupine's Quill Press, 2026) and her first novel, Eyelash Person, both generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.