Tag: poetic compression
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On Longing
I wrote On Longing after placing my hand near the wood that held my mother’s name. The poem examines how material boundaries fail to contain loss, and how darkness presses identity into one shape that cannot be separated.
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Settling
I wrote Settling from the memory of watching mothers place their newborns into cribs for the first time—the motion was exact, almost ritual. The poem examines how objects record tenderness through weight and release rather than emotion.
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A Loss
I wrote A Loss after burning a photograph that refused to fade on its own. The poem examines how ritual and chemical reaction replace sentiment, turning memory into residue and pressure.
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Butchart Repose
I wrote Butchart Repose after walking through the Butchart Gardens in British Columbia. The poem began as a record of fatigue and distance—the moment when beauty becomes something you must leave behind.
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A Mother’s Request
A Mother’s Request emerged from a desire to honor the physical and emotional pull of homeland in the face of death. I wrote it as a response to the quiet grief of diaspora—the longing to return, not metaphorically, but bodily, to the soil that shaped us.
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Late January Arrives
“January Arrives” emerged from a moment of stillness fractured by motion—a hare vanishing into snow, my dog’s bark echoing through the cold. I wrote this poem to honor the tension between presence and disappearance, between the human gaze and the animal trace. I wanted to create a lyric that holds without reaching, that observes without…
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Prometheus’ Last Day
Prometheus’ Last Day began as a meditation on endurance—what it means to rot without rescue. I wanted to strip the myth of Prometheus down to its final gesture: not defiance, but surrender. The poem resists metaphor and dramatization, choosing anatomical precision and ethical collapse.
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Mourning Mom
This poem emerged from a moment of speculative grief—imagining my mother’s aging voice as a thread I never got to follow. I wanted to write an elegy that refused sentimentality, that honored absence without ornament. The poem’s structure mirrors that ethic: short stanzas, pared-back language, and a final line that lands without flourish.
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For My Older Brother
“For My Brother” came from a quiet moment my brother and I shared, shaped by past pain and recovery. The poem uses body and thought as symbols, with the slash mark showing how deep wounds can leave lasting marks. I wrote it to honor his survival and the work he had done to heal.