Ode to the Janitor
at the writing residency who upon seeing that I was still
working late into the night smiled so warmly and because we
were both born somewhere else and perhaps he wanted
to see a friendly face or was happy that there were so many
azns this time and maybe he’s a writer in his off hours
and was happy to imagine himself one of us someday
or smiling to the writers was part of his contract
I wanted to ask with my eyes where to get good longanisa
in town but maybe they are all in his apartment
lugged in his suitcase from somewhere else
created in a factory someplace else and I realized suddenly
days later that there were no police at the writing residency
what temporary utopia to return from hugging the mountains close
what bureaucracy hidden from the artist against whom elk
though they can be so delicious must not trespass
and even though it is too dry here and my chronic cough has
returned and even though the arms in the arts hug only death
and every minute of happiness hides a thousand years of grief
and because so much is owed to him whom I greeted as if another writer
notwithstanding the vast gulf of our respective precarities
or the fact that I have my name up beside one of the doors
as though a businessman in a Shanghainese office building
as though wiping the window were an afterthought reserved
for the outskirts of the world who like Atlas hold it hold it or like
Sisyphus must be smiling like he was smiling and whoever am I anyway
will not know his because so much depends on the ones who scrub
for the first time in millennia I could sort of breathe
Jane Shi is a poet, writer, editor, and organizer living on the occupied, stolen, and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səlil̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples. Her debut poetry collection echolalia echolalia (Brick Books, 2024) was shortlisted for the Raymond Souster Award. Her writing can also be found in Read This When Things Fall Apart (AK Press, 2025), We Are Each Other’s Liberation: Black and Asian Feminist Solidarities (Haymarket Books, 2025), Queer Little Nightmares: An Anthology of Monstrous Fiction and Poetry (Arsenal Pulp Press), the Disability Visibility Project blog, The Offing, and Seventh Wave Mag, among others. She wants to live in a world where love is not a limited resource, land is not mined, hearts are not filched, and bodies are not violated.
