Going Home / Somewhere Borrowed

Going Home

Pay attention.
These are not the windows
of the red-light district
smeared against the sky,
the snow not unusual
in place of tulips.

Once they gave great joy.
(Pay attention!) Familiarity forgets

the truth sometimes, the vowels dulled
by train wheels, your ghosts
preceding you. Cue
the prairies. Cue the Gangetic plains.
A condition of the skin to hold a carriage
that holds language that holds you.

lynda_diamond

Marriage of Da Vinci and Van Goghby Lynda Diamond

Somewhere Borrowed, Somewhere Blue

I thought I knew where I came from,
but I lied. I shift my truths
like furniture in a rented house.
Cumin, coriander, tuberose: what does it
matter if my memory draws
blanks? Even perfumers are anosmic.

Everywhere I go
belongs to other people.
I must be careful with my words:
they are borrowed currency.

About Ayesha Chatterjee

Born and raised in India, Ayesha Chatterjee has lived in England, the USA and Germany, and now calls Toronto home. Her poetry has appeared in The Missing Slate (Pakistan), The Moth (Ireland), The Rusty Toque (Canada) and elsewhere as well as being featured by the (Great) Indian Poetry Collective and on the official website of Canada’s Poet Laureate, George Elliott Clarke. Her first collection, The Clarity of Distance was published in 2011 by Bayeux Arts. She is currently President of the League of Canadian Poets.

About Lynda Diamond

Lynda Diamond was raised in Los Angeles and schooled as a scholarship student at the San Francisco Art Institute, where she received her BFA in painting. Lynda then made her way to New York City, where she established herself as a hat designer and opened a retail store to help pay the bills while continuing to develop her paintings. The hat business flourished, and eventually Lynda chose to leave the world of design in favour of her true passion: classical oil painting. Yearning to live a life closer to nature, and with less stress, Lynda moved to Nova Scotia, where her work is now her painting and teaching. See more of Lynda's work on her website.

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