Poetry by Rachel Small

                        Marketa CC



maternal language 

you first learned the word 
bitch 
from your mother. it is how
you made your religion. 
practised it in the mirror 
until your teeth hardened. 
your mouth became just like a 
hard mark, almost as straight
as the horizon from the window. 
razor sharp. a fine line. at night 
you say it like a prayer, seeking 
out the soft ridges that press into your 
tongue. if you looked past 
the curtain there would be 
a dead girl underwater in 
the old cow pond. maybe you’ll
end up like her, eventually, with a mouthful
of plastic. isn’t that where all 
the bitches end up?




​
The Canadian Death Undercarriage (and True Crime)

     1. 

seasonally                        our hair 
freezes when bones are lifted 
out of the dirt. papers once 
promised the bodice of the country
as whale bone aesthetics, bordering
white blanketed plains of space. 

      2.  

formal papers serve to remind 
effigies of Sex Offensive behaviours. 
over time we take hands to skeletons
pulled from generational grief to 
examine the silhouettes of their bones. 
admiring the upright thumb. 

       3. 

our eyes skip over pigs farms and 
celestial bodies. a dozen stars could
fall and not a chart would document 
it. Canada is lingering here;     giving
and receiving, shedding and accepting. 
we cannot pause long enough to feel 
a singular loss. 

​

Rachel Small (she/her) writes in Ottawa. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in magazines, including blood orange, many gendered mothers, The Hellebore, The Shore, and other places. She was the recipient of the honourable mention for the John Newlove Poetry Award for her poem "garbage moon and feminist day".

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