An excerpt from Canisia Lubrin’s forthcoming collection Bright Machine.
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Do you have what’s left on the Armfield.Shovel by shovel. Mountain by mountain.Rockies to Andes. Fear piled into foothills.I absorb any trace of that busy-busy feareven the dead possess. A bright lost grief.Graves emptied past any reasons to stay.How we drift in the blood-scent of cloven days.So, fair. Leave our portraits to history’s ashtray.So lucky to be spared. Fear of IV tanks. Warships.This early morning of the Eurasian eagle owl.Of pepper spray. Bruised water. In 4.6 billion years.The museum’s 4th hour ornaments (y)our courage.Sounds the rescue trains, Tallawah. The trumpet’sdemotic syntax gesturing to drum. Barrel, my tubeperfecting the world left to raise itself through dying.I know the usual morning is unusual today.In any book of dates. I scribble a coldfront. Lonely as a shark.The palm was mine. I noticed it in wine. Noted mainly after(y)our runaway tramcar, a half-millennium auction perched on ametal eye’s hungry rim. The Boer War presage of questions, inches:Will the wars ever finish? Is this present rave for the dead?Is the brow and groin still opposite? Sistren, does every life(time) defy our old boneyard. Mirror more story than grave.Archive of pneumonia. Hives and poly-fevers. Fit new livesgrowing into self-mockery. I (under)estimate in second publics.A (dis)continent survives these hungers. The crest of policy to time.The landfills begging. Change. Shelling our antique mouths. Forward,Persona Non Grata, sent to greet us. Handcuffed as a stage. Again.I love what no one loves. The fact of tradition. Days with you.I could double-deal from the piercing slopes. Someone’s freedom.To the hen: Fly! Leave us backburning violins. Badly voiding ties.Remembering minor men. Small hunters in (dis)criminating century.
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Biography
Canisia Lubrin has authored five celebrated books of poetry and prose, including The Dyzgraphxst, Code Noir, and The World After Rain. This extract comes from Bright Machine, Lubrin’s fourth poetry volume, forthcoming in 2026. A teacher and the poetry editor at McClelland & Stewart, she was born in St. Lucia and lives in Canada.