Canadian Currents
by Laura Bourbonnais
eroded maple flags
link sea-sick landscapes,
fathered by sorry settlers
sculpting them into capitalist chronicles.
lush prairies hush the Rockies’
wail, cradling knots of gulfweed,
effervescent lakes luring the
blissfully illiterate cartographers.
leisurely, currents swell sunbaked sails,
summer seeping in unearthed soils,
slick ships sink in the ebb,
sanctimonious sprays mothering cornucopian sod.
ancestral earthquakes echo from Awkwasasne
to the Anishinaabe,
white prestige washing up in Canadian textbooks,
residues of residential schools on the shore.
polished wastewaters twist
parched assault stories into sex,
putrid essays on the people’s past
buried under debris of patriarchal patents.
welcome signs halt the incoming tide,
iridescent immigration rocks refusing
the flood safety. Canadian turf
reveals its secret saints.
Laura Bourbonnais is a twenty-one-year old French-Canadian (Montreal native!) third-year YorkU Screenwriting and Creative Writing double major. She is the Winters Free Press Editor-in-Chief, the AMPD Journal Lead Editor, a York Her Chapter Co-Head Editor, a HOLR writing intern, and an INKspire volunteer writer. She is a versatile artist with experience in competitive dance, music, film, theatre, and the visual arts. She strives to keep educating herself on systemic issues in and outside of Canada.