if you threw your shoe into the machine of the world
if you have a shoe
if we all threw all the shoes at once,
jammed its great cogs and pistons,
if it groaned and gradually slowed.
if the trucks pulled over, and the drivers abandoned them,
if they went home to their families.
if you ate what was in your cupboards or your garden
Basma Kavanagh is a poet, visual artist, and letterpress printer who lives and works in Nova Scotia, in Mi’kma’ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq People. She produces artist’s books under the imprint Rabbit Square Books. She has published two collections of poetry, Distillō (Gaspereau, 2012), and Niche (Frontenac, 2015), which won the 2016 Lansdowne Prize for Poetry. Ruba’iyat for the Time of Apricots will be published by Frontenac House Press in fall 2018.
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