it was never going to be okay
jaye simpson
Copyright © jaye simpson, 2020
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright, the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency, www.accesscopyright.ca, [email protected].
Nightwood Editions
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Canada
Cover design: Angela Yen
Typesetting: Carleton Wilson
Nightwood Editions acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council.
This book has been produced on 100% post-consumer recycled, ancient-forest-free paper, processed chlorine-free and printed with vegetable-based dyes.
Printed and bound in Canada.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: It was never going to be okay / by jaye simpson.
Names: simpson, jaye, author.
Description: Poems.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200213679 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200213687 | ISBN 9780889713826 (softcover) | ISBN 9780889713833 (ebook)
Classification: LCC PS8637.I4863 I89 2020 | DDC C811/.6—dc23
For all the queer NDN foster kids out there.
let me be clear: any love I find will be treason
– Hieu Minh Nguyen
I’ll sing to you until you sing back
– Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
sea glass
call me sea glass: found after a dreamy hot day, beachside stomach full of fruit, skin kissed by the sun.
call me sea glass: smooth around the edges just the right amount of opaque, clear & cloudy.
call me sea glass: auntie loved it, had me framed in mosaic above her fireplace, wind chimes of me singing through coastal wind.
call me sea glass: because i once was sharp broken tossed in tumultuous tides thrashed on barnacle- & coral-clad rock, pitched on log after drunken sunset witnessed by shifting bonfire light.
they hardly ever remember
i used to cut.
they forget
that in order to love me:
i had to break, smashed apart.
i held poison, dripped venom on flesh, kissed on the lips straight out of the bottle. how often you find me smooth & soft after being torn through countless grains of trauma;
coping:
you like me only then.
only when i am smooth around the edges, when i am the perfect amount of opaque, when i am wound in copper laid upon your chest.
when i am wind chimes & picture frames & after i can no longer cut.
call me sea glass because you can only love me
when i’m broken & small & harmless.
call me sea glass found on the shore, foamy salt waves lapping at my edges, you find me:
beautiful.
teeth & sharp bones (a dialogue)
some of us had lived long enough to think that we had made it out: so some of us decided to start a new love again, try & bring fire back into this world.
what we didn’t expect was to be burying our own children, because when they entered the world of the living— we thought we had truly made it out alive.
yet still they hold these babies accountable for the sins of our ancestors, let’s get something straight for once:
we didn’t commit any sin.
unless you count breathing as sin. so i guess that john a. macdonald wanted us dead was sin enough.
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
when i was a child you took me from my mother, you said she didn’t know how to be one, you stole her mother & her mother’s mother before her, gave us to white women wolves & got mad at us for having teeth & sharp bones.
of course we’d have edges & sharpness what did you expect when the white women wolves decided they were hungry for a little more than some quick income every month:
they’d sink their teeth into our soft flesh, carve contemporary runes of colonization & abuse into our bones.
don’t get mad at my teeth & sharp edges; even after moving mountains & oceans i couldn’t stop this— couldn’t change this cycle in its tracks: even i, all fire & flood bloodline & bloodlust couldn’t stop these colonial governments from trying to steal my kin.
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
i’ve buried too many of my cousins and now i’m burying their children too; don’t think this anything new. you call us bad parents fail to recognize you stole our parents the moment they were born— & you call their parents bad parents again, fail to recognize you also stole their parents when they were born, hell, you stole their parent’s parents when they were children, trying to flee from white men & women adorned in red and black.
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
some of us lived long enough to think we made it out: & now we’re burying our own children & they’re burying us too.
don’t dare think this cycle ended with me i couldn’t stop it. you call us dangerous when you took away all our weapons except our teeth & bones & now you’re upset your flesh got caught on the sharp edges.
why were you there in the first place?
boy
i am eight & my foster father lets me read in his library,
the piano mournfully sings mozart & i am under it hiding from my siblings’ cruel laughter & delight. as