What you need: a sheet, a pen, a
hand, I
use my right to write.
If your dreams are ending
badly, put them into words,
like this:
Sound the vowels first,
vowels alone,
then the consonants,
only those.
Breathe into the syllables. Ex-
hale
and let them go.
*
Ema died in Mar Heshvan,
……………Malca in Tammuz.
Rain, therefore, and
hemispheric rays—
Heaven’s gate
the burial mound:
……………I’ve written—to believe.
Sun the love
that licks the bowls of spoons:
Metaphor—for making likeness kind.
Elana Wolff lives and works in Thornhill, Ontario—the traditional lands of the Haudenosaunee and Huron-Wendat First Nations. Her poems have recently appeared (or will soon appear) in Arc, Contemporary Verse 2, Galaxy Brain, Literary Review of Canada, The Mantle, Montréal Serai, The New Quarterly, Pinhole Poetry, Prairie Fire, and Taddle Creek. Her latest collection of poems is Shape Taking (Ekstasis Editions, 2021). Her cross-genre Kafka-quest work, Faithfully Seeking Franz, is forthcoming with Guernica Editions.
