I have spent seven years

Trying to memorize the contours of your body

Your textures, shapes, and spaces

With my lips and fingers

And the palms of my hand

But no matter how hard I try

I cannot hold you

Cannot kiss you

Cannot recreate you

When you are not here

.

I have spent seven years

Trying to memorize the sound of your voice

The pitch, and timbre, and intonation

Seven years spent

With the smell of your hair

And the space at the back of your neck

Seven years

Trying to memorize

The way you look when you are astride me

And the taste of your sweat

Seven years

To recall the way you fit within my arms

When I first get home

And the burst of your laughter when you are delighted

And I am ridiculous

But when you are gone

You’re gone

And I cannot bring you back

Not one part of you

.

My darling

I am impossible

Without you

In my dream the social services

Are kicking out all the Indigenous people

And calling them too aggressive

Because their anger reveals

That they have not yet been fully colonized

It’s an unconscionable sin

To refuse to open your heart

To Whiteness and conquest and pipelines and Jesus

All wrapped up like a charitable gift

.

I get ready for work and reflect that

It’s such a fine line

Between killing the Indian in the child

And just straight-up killing the Indian

And Canadians have never much cared

To firmly distinguish between the two

As long as one or the other occurred

(although, to be fair, Liberals incline towards the former and Conservatives incline towards the latter and moderate centrists look for ways to do both)

.

During a meeting at my work

My boss lectures the community residents

About things she doesn’t understand

“Fuck you, White lady,” an Indigenous man says on behalf of them all

A few days later she tells me

That maybe he doesn’t understand community living

Maybe he’s got to go

.

I work hard to make things right

I work hard to prevent further harm

I work hard to pick up the pieces

But it’s hard because my hands

Are covered in blood

Discussed in this post: 8 books (Process and Reality, The Assassination of Lumumba, Anarcho-Blackness, Mutual Aid, We Will Not Cancel Us, For Joshua, Waterlog, and Permafrost), 1 film (Gwen), and 4 documentaries (Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets, Killer Inside, Class Action Park, and You Cannot Kill David Arquette).

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Okay, this year I read 140 books. Sadly, I was unable to maintain my monthly reviews (2020 got a bit busier than expected) but I hope to return to doing those in 2021. I’m not going to write a review of every book in this post but will, instead, highlight my most and least favourite books in each category as well as my overall favourites this year.

So, let’s start with the best of the best. My favourite reading of 2020 is not a single book but the works of a single author: Robert MacFarlane. I read three of his books this year—The Old Ways, Landmarks, and Underland—and each one was remarkable and filled me with a sense of beauty, wonder, longing, sorrow, acceptance, and comfort. They are difficult books to describe. Are they travelogues? Memoir? Nature writing? Contemplative meditations? Literature? Yes, they are all of those things in different ways and all at once. At one point in Underland, when visiting cracks in the earth and pits in the Dinaric Alps—a breath-taking place, but also a place used by the Nazis to engage in mass executions of civilians during the Second World War—MacFarlane asks, “What is the relationship of beauty and devastation in a landscape such as this?” It is a question that he is constantly circling around in all of his work and, for those of us living through the sixth mass extinction of life on earth, it is a question that we must all confront as we seek to live our very brief lives responsibly, thoughtfully, and, yes, even joyfully.

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Black poets
Especially young Black American men who are poets
Sure do mention the ways in which American cops
Murder Black American people
Especially young Black American men
A whole lot more than other poets do
Like middle-aged White men
Talking about reconnecting with nature
And profiting from the spirituality of the same Indigenous peoples
Whose lands they stole and made into National Parks
Or the lot for their forever home
On Whidbey Island
Which also provides the base for the navy’s tactical electronic attack squads
Flying the EA-18G Growler
Or popular young White women poets
Talking about how the princess doesn’t need no prince
In order to slay the dragon
By which they usually mean some White dude
Who feels entitled to their bodies and everything else
And not the Black man
Trying to watch birds in Central Park
Because they’ve been slaying men like him for generations
And slayings that are so taken-for-granted
Don’t merit mentioning
In their poetry
Or at least this is what I thought to myself
When I thought about the next poem
I wanted to write
And what it was going to be about
I’m thinking maybe something about
The challenges of home ownership
Getting Registered Retirement Savings Plans started early
Or what to look out for in middle management
Maybe something about what kind of wine to buy for others
When you’re climbing the ladder
I almost always suggest a Bordeaux

Do you remember when Pip met Estella in the long-cooled ashes of Miss Havisham’s estate, darling?
Do you remember the feeling of possessing great expectations?
We were all ablaze,
All a blaze,
Like the wedding dress on the bride of the groom who never came.
But we were young, darling,
We burned without feeling the flames.

Pale fire.
We were writers in exile,
Chasing butterflies,
A long, long time ago.

What could Pip say to Estella, darling? What could Estella say to Pip?
I was cruelly hurt, as were you.
As were you.
And I hurt you, too.
I hurt you, too.
And we now live in the long-cooled ashes of the selves we never had the opportunity to be.

Dolores, Dolores!
We walked the sorrowful way,
We died in childbirth.
And the rest is footnotes and stardust
Gone tender with madness,
A long, long time ago.

Now silent but for the buzzing of insects,
The chatter of songbirds,
And the wind that flows invisibly
Through spaces we once filled.

There are convicts in the marshes, darling,
Leave them be!
Leave them be.

Even good-hearted men fantasize about killing women
I thought to myself as John Darnielle sang about
Going to Georgia
And I found myself getting a little more sad
Thinking about all the sensitive indie musicians
Who have identified with serial torturer-murderer-rapists
In songs intended to be both provocative
And caring and sweet
Nick Cave and Jack
Will Sheff and the Austin Yogurt Shop killer

(And oh my god
Sufjan Stevens too
If we factor in the sweetest song ever written
About a man who raped and murdered at least thirty-three
Young men and teenage boys
But of whom Sufjan says
That’s me, I’m him)

All these beautiful, shy-boy misogynists
(or closeted homo-antagonists?)
With soft hands
Dewy eyes
Gentle voices
So patient and attentive
They display their vulnerability
Awkwardly
only partially ashamed
But doing their best to not be like
Other Men^TM
Wanting you to feel safe and comfortable
So that you’ll fuck them
Or
At the very least
Freeze up
Not say no
Not stop them
From fucking you

Well, due to life being what it is, I have been unable to complete monthly reviews and am now, instead, moving to quarterly summaries. In the first quarter of 2020, I read 54 books and watched 0 movies and 0 documentaries. So, instead of my usual divisions, I will break things down by genre.

In the world of “literature,” I have one book to review (although a number of the books in my “science and nature” category count as literature of the highest quality). One book only, but what a book! In the Dream House, Carmen Maria Machado’s memoir of her relationship with an abusive partner is astoundingly good.

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This is a poem about a poem called you have nothing to be ashamed of and I’m so proud of you and things are hard but we can get through this together, I’m here for you, it’s an honour to be here for you, you just relax for awhile, darling, you’re sacred, curl up in my arms, we’re going to be okay.

There are some words that only have power during a fifteen-minute window once every five hundred years. Like in old stories about a keyhole that will appear in the side of the ocean when a solar eclipse occurs during the season of the strawberry moon—then, and only then, will you be able to enter the undersea, if you have the right key. All other times, the key is useless, there is no key hole, no matter where you put it, the ocean will not open. There are some words that are like this and, if you are present in that rare moment when the keyholes appear, and you do not have them, even if you find them later, by then it will be too late.

There are some stories that can only be told at certain seasons, to certain people, by certain storytellers. There are stories for winter and stories for harvest, stories for children becoming adults, stories for young lovers, stories for cellies, stories for the bereaved. There are stories that only runaway slaves can understand. There are stories that only children can tell to other children. There are stories you can only hear in the forest, stories you can only hear on the water, stories you can only hear under the earth. And there are stories that can only be told after you die, stories you will never hear, stories whose time has not yet come.

There are some poems you can only understand when you are very old. And others you can only understand when you are very young. And if you do not hear them then, you never really will.

This is a poem about a poem called it’s not your fault and he says he is punishing you when he beats you but that’s a lie and you don’t deserve it, and when he doesn’t show up and you are longing for him that’s not your fault either, and some parents are always terrible, and some parents are sometimes terrible, and some parents start terrible and get better while other parents start okay and get worse but, regardless of the state of the parent, this is a poem about a poem called all children are born innocent and so full of love that they will believe every kind of awful thing about themselves before they believe that those whom they love are abusers who abuse them for no good reason at all.

This poem is full of words that are magic keys: You are lovely. You belong here, together, with the rest of us. You matter. We aren’t going to reject you, abuse you, push you away. You have a specialness that is all your own, that is only you, that has never been before you and will never be again after you. Add these words to your key ring. Carry them with you everywhere. Attend to the appearance of keyholes—there, after the third crow calls, six minutes before dawn; there, after your brother stops coming home; there, in the water; there, in the stone; there, in your body, your hands, your feet, your side; there, in that moment, and that moment only.

Speak carefully. Like poets who have given up on crafting masterkeys and who instead form one word, maybe two, and they give them to the world, seed scattered on soil, shots fired while blindfolded, in hope that one person, maybe two, will read it and it will be just the right time and just the right place with just the right before and just to right after to fit.