Slant into an impossible French Me those luminous
venetians their light propelled by the heat shimmering
from the red brick above the dry cleaners at that
very moment the afternoon toujour with cousins an
absolute translation of ancestry not + beyond which an
occasional “Darling” assembles itself on the wire aware
of a secret syntax buried in a knot of class + spoken
subjects not to mention les suie + the scant wipe as the
slat bends + you can see the smelter on the hill across
the river.
Fred Wah has published many books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, from Lardeau (Island Press, 1965) to his latest poetry collection, is a door (Talonbooks, 2009). Waiting for Saskatchewan (Turnstone Books, 1985) received the 1986 Governor General’s Award and Diamond Grill (NeWest, 1995) won the Howard O’Hagan Award for Short Fiction in 1996. The False Laws of Narrative (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2009) has been edited for the Laurier Poetry Series by Louis Cabri. Fred was the LRC’s poetry editor from 2003 to 2005.