By Vicky Liu
On the bus, I saw one of the Translink poetry entries on an ad slot.
It was incredibly lazy. You could interchange ‘bush meat’ and ‘powwows’ for any other cultural buzzword and it’s identity would still lay bare and skin deep. Canada will emphasize ‘contemporary stories’ and ‘stories about hardships’ like it’ll bury out all marks of tarnish like a corporation manufacturing a diversity plant. When they care to.
Canada always cares. We don’t bury a blood-baptized history of howling, pine trees rotting at the heart, and harsh fabric against fabric. This pain is home. Canada cares. Our buses are hideous. Our flag is crimson and burns like the shades of a maple leaf.
Canada needs stories because we have no stories to tell but genocide. One day poetry will be an archaic medium and these stories will trickle and become indistinguishable to advertising.
Infernos and deaths at stake feel like love, love ferments into wine, and wine coats your throat and the bottle is heavy and you are the bottle and you are your labored breaths. Love is the Indigenous reserves that cake in grime and are liminal and linear, it is a friend’s house, a mimesis of home and so is this country.
Museums exist because they enjoy the raze and digging through the earth’s roots just to find evidence of a supposed life outside of Sapiens. Aliens do not exist because diversity is a myth. There are real humans and there are failed humans.
They let the Inuit hunt in Northern Canada but there’s nothing to hunt and no one knows how to.
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Vicky Liu is a 14 year old writer from British Columbia with a love for tea and empty rooms.
Diamond Gazette 