I Can Communicate If Communication Is Another Form of Sinking by Jaclyn Desforges

Jaclyn Desforges has made the 2023 CBC Poetry Prize shortlist for I Can Communicate If Communication Is Another Form of Sinking.

She will receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and her work has been published on CBC Books.

The winner of the 2023 CBC Poetry Prize will be announced Nov. 23. They will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, a writing residency and have their work published on CBC Books.

Jaclyn Desforges is the 2023/24 Mabel Pugh Taylor Writer In Residence at McMaster University and Hamilton Public Library. She's the queer and neurodivergent author ofDanger Flower, winner of the 2022 Hamilton Literary Award for Poetry and one ofCBC Books' picks for the best Canadian poetry of 2021. She's also the author of a picture book,Why Are You So Quiet?. Desforges is the winner of the 2018 RBC/PEN Canada New Voices Award. She holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia and is working on a novel. In 2022, Desforges was areader for the CBC Poetry Prize.

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Desforges told CBC Books that her inspiration for writing I Can Communicate If Communication Is Another Form of Sinking came from a lived experience: "I was out with a friend, doing our usual hike at Princess Point in Hamilton. We quickly realized something terrible had happened the tallgrass prairie where we walk each day had been completely burnt up. There were all these scorched snail shells. I looked it up and learned that this type of controlled burn is done by the Royal Botanical Gardens every spring to help manage invasive species and recycle plant nutrients. It's good for the landscape. Still, it was unnerving. And the birds sounded different they weren't singing in their usual way. It sounded more like screaming. I took a recording at the trailhead and sent it to my partner.

"Later that day, I wrote about the experience, which got me thinking about trauma and healing. And the ways we manage to connect with one another to love one another even and especially after we've experienced terrible pain."

You can read I Can Communicate If Communication Is Another Form of Sinking below.

WARNING: This poem contains strong language and is sexually explicit in nature.

In spring men come with flamethrowers to do a controlled burn. This is good
& natural. The snail shells get scorched and sprouts pop up
little green soldiers! The whole thing smells like a wet barbeque.

At the trailhead I take a video and tell you to turn
the sound up. Last week the birds wanted to fuck each other
but today they're screaming it happened

as if telling the story enough times will make it not
have happened. A seed is a small thing, you only need fire
& lately I've been thinking: if I plant a selfie of you and a selfie of me

in the same plot, will we become one person?
If we become one person, will you carry this parcel? I don't want to carry it;
I've been carrying it all day. There are droplets of sweat on my upper lip

& I keep hoping you'll lick them off. I think eroticism is hair,
parting, & sometimes when I think mouth I say mother
& sometimes when I say mother, I peer into my own mouth.

Pregnancy draws calcium from the femur
& when I fell down the stairs while holding my baby
I contorted my body to protect hers. My left ass cheek bloomed

like wildflowers & my elbow hurt for a year. But the mistake
happened long before the fall, long before the bruise,
long before that fly landed on my tongue and I couldn't admit it,

so I went without water. All night I dream about a man with a crossbow
at the bottom of the ocean. I guzzle vodka from an unlabeled bottle.
You'll be even drunker, he explains, on your way back up.

I never know how my dreams end when I reach the surface,
I'm already awake. I check myself into rehab, a spring-scented place
there are feathers in the pillows & all I need to do is eat.

All I need to do is chew until everything I remember is chewed up.
I'll feed it to the birds, who are screaming about fire.
When you get to the bottom, it's all about praying

so I slap my palms together like dead fish. I press my eyes
against the viewfinder, I press my forehead against
your forehead. What I'm trying to tell you is when I'm wrapped

up in you, I don't feel like myself. What I'm trying to tell you
is when I'm wrapped up in you, I feel like all my selves.
And I don't want to leave yet. I want to be ghosts with you.

I hope the birds shut up about it. I hope there will be new snails.

Even now, can you see them? Eggs clinging to the leaves

the sun is out, it's not too hot. It's raining just a bit.

Read the other finalists

• restitution OR Nanabush speaks to the settlersby Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm (Neyaashiinigmiing, Ont.)
• Variations on Genesisby Jillian Clasky (Ottawa)
• lotus flower blooming into breastsby Kyo Lee (Waterloo, Ont.)
• Sweetness | by Anna Swanson (Guelph, Ont.)

About the 2023 CBC Poetry Prize

The winner of the 2023 CBC Poetry Prize will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, a writing residency and have their work published on CBC Books. Four finalists will each receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and have their work published on CBC Books.

If you're interested in the CBC Literary Prizes, the 2024CBC Nonfiction Prize opens in January and the 2024CBC Poetry Prize opens in April.The 2025CBC Short Story Prizewill open in September.