publishing poetry only
 


Monday's Poem



Gillian Sze was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Her work has been published in University of Winnipeg's creative writing journal, Juice, Concordia's Headlight Anthology, University of Calgary's NoD Magazine, Tendril Anthology Series: Navigating Customs (Cumulus Press) and Contemporary Verse 2. She has work forthcoming in Prairie Fire. In 2004, Gillian received the University of Winnipeg Writers' Circle Prize. Her first chapbook, This is the Colour I Love You Best, was published by Withwords Press in January 2007. Presently, she is completing her second chapbook, A Tender Invention, which will be available in the spring. She is currently pursuing her Master's degree in Creative Writing and resides in Montreal.

"driving home from the airport" was previously published in CV2.

Links:
withwords press
Gillian Sze
Contemporary Verse 2




© 2008 Gillian Sze

driving home from the airport

Sitting in the backseat,
my mother tells me
how intruders broke into our home yesterday
when my brother was in the shower.
He ran out after them, still wet,
dressed in only his boxers,
but they were gone.
He came back inside with icicles on his back.

I try to absorb the scenery,
remembering that the last time I was here,
we travelled the same curving boulevard,
only backwards,
on the other side of the road.

The city has evolved
by the overpass about to be built,
the new theatre behind Starbucks,
the strangeness of a new store
interrupting the sameness of the strip malls —

and I myself changed,
altered,
wearing a different pair of shoes,
my hair longer,
my insides tumbled and strained from
something so simple
as living away from one's mother.

Looking out the window,
I nearly forget how the snow
piles itself in heaps beside the highway,
or how the deer leap across the hills of the golf course.

And some time yesterday
in this place not so same,
not so as remembered,
a brother not so baby,
not so little,
dashed barefoot into the cold,
to catch strangers.