National Poetry Month : Junie Désil,

 

 

Cento for a Beautiful Broken World


Friends will you bear with me today  
I took a chair outside and –
some things on this earth 

are unspeakable  the end of the road 
is far ahead I watched the sun  it is 
already behind us  before the apocalypse  

when you lie in your bed and lie to yourself  
no matter the pull toward brink you 
could make this place beautiful  

the world begins at the kitchen table  
we are feeding each other 
the gift of earth ocean,       get up

the leaves come patient plodding 
speak of underneathedness and 
the welcome of mosses a green skin 

ask me if I speak for the snail and 
I will tell you 
We protested / but not enough. 

We Lived Happily During the War
the world keeps ending and the world goes on  
Life is short, bang bang you’re dead 

I Don’t Know What Will Kill Us First 

and the world asks what can you do,  
to change this deep-broken, fractured
world  held together,  really  

it is held together by the love and 
the passion of a very few 
The Thing is Perhaps the World Ends 

Here it is burning. It is dreaming. It is waking up 
Say tomorrow doesn’t come. Some things 
disappear for a while, 

and you only leave home  when home 
won’t let you stay.  We are drawing the line 
here  don’t be afraid to love it 

even when you have no stomach for it 
lie in your bed and you lie to yourself and 
love life,  

I speak of life that springs up, little lives 
that pull back and wait for a moment a new 
slick leaf unfurling like a fist to an open palm. 

I count my hopes: the bumblebees, 
And I feel no pain   and let me stop here 
and say only, I have a mountain, a kitchen 

and thank you. Thank you, thank you 
thank you, and keep a Catalog 
of Unabashed Gratitude



This poem is a cento composed from lines by Smashing Pumpkins (“Silverfuck”) and poems by Ross Gay, Franny Choi, Ilya Kaminsky, Natalie Diaz, Maggie Smith, Warsan Shire, Joy Harjo, Camille T. Dungy, Jericho Brown, Ocean Vuong, Ada Limón, and Fatimah Asghar, and an interview by Jame Baldwin.

Junie Désil is of Haitian ancestry, born of immigrant parents on the traditional territories of the Kanien’kehá:ka on the island known as Tiohtià:ke (Montréal), and raised in Treaty 1 Territory (Winnipeg). Junie has performed at various literary events and festivals. Her work has appeared in Room Magazine, PRISM International, The Capilano Review and CV2.

A UBC alumnus, a participant in Simon Fraser University’s Writer’s Studio, and current Uvic MFA student, Junie’s debut book of poetry eat salt | gaze at the ocean (Talon Books, 2020) was short-listed for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Her second collection allostatic load (Talon Books) came out April, 2025.

Junie mentors poets at SFU's Writers' Studio and also teaches in SFU's Leadership Essentials Certificate program.

National Poetry Month : Jordan Davis,

 

from Free Throws

Get away from the gold city
and you feel naked
without your chain

“Naked, in chains”
does that excite you 

It’s ok to feel a feeling
and not know what it is 

and not act on it

* 

Then the sorrow
comes filling up the streets
and stays there 

everyone looking out the window
then closing the curtains
for good 

You get to the old city
and find a pensione
with large wooden shutters 

and a smell of cloves

*

A handmade feeling
Quiet, waiting;
a feeling you could lie in bed with
and not talk 

and not have to get up right away

*
 

I want the whole heart
to go flying
like a religious person
on a zipline.
 

*

 

 

New poems by Jordan Davis are forthcoming in Dream Boy Book Club, The Fortnightly Review, The Bayou Review, and Hanging Loose; a microchap will be published by sider0xylon later this year, and his first review in a long time will appear in American Book Review 46:4 (soon).

National Poetry Month : Cole Swensen,

 

 

Trees in Mist

 

To ghost an oak once lost—an oak beyond all thought—and the haunt, a fact. We crushed aloft what a ghost creates of fog. I walked out into the garden in the fog—and the trees walked off ahead. A tree never dies, just shifts to darker light. We crushed the light—we live behind—the ghosts of trees—whose breathing leaves filaments that also see—the ghosts inside us—that lie—though not for long.

 

 

 

 

Cole Swensen is the author of twenty books of poetry, most recently Veer (Alice James Books, 2026). A former Guggenheim Fellow and a recipient of the Iowa Poetry Prize and the San Francisco State Poetry Center Book Award, she has been a finalist for the Griffin Prize, the National Book Award, and the LA Times Book Award and was awarded the 2025 Paul Engle Award by the Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature.

National Poetry Month : Chris Johnson,

 

drought left the leaner birds

after Ellen Chang-Richardson’s “rain brings the angler fish” from Blood Belies (Wolsak & Wynn, 2024)

 

westward breezes rustle hairs
boldened with clean sweetness 

sunshine calm-drenches
an elder’s arriving 

you nibble on your last vitamin
drool like cool spitting steel 

hum to yourself, that was that was that
was that was the inside scrambling out

 

 

 

 

 

Chris Johnson (he/him) currently lives on unceded, unsurrendered territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation. He works as the managing editor of Arc Poetry Magazine and editorial assistant at Nightwood Editions. His previous chapbooks include 320 lines of poetry (counting blank lines) (Anstruther Press, 2023) and some of the raccoon poems (above/ground press, 2022).