from FRAYER by Marie-Andrée Gill, translated by Kristen Renee Miller


 
 
We the unlikely
the aftermath
what remains of heart-muscle
and the black earth

We in a word:
territory

*

We have plans for you, they say.
And we laugh. As narcotic ghosts cling
to the storms of our bodies
we laugh.

*

sometimes the sky pulls down his starry leggings
and comes hot
in the lake’s wide mouth

it’s there forever in the color
of mixed diesel pulsing
through the two-stroke organs
of our winter bunkers
 
 
Marie-Andrée Gill is a Master​ of Letters student at ​the University of Québec ​at ​Chicoutimi. ​Gill was born in the Ilnu community in​ ​Mashteuiatsh, ​and her writing​ ​blends kitsch and existentialism, ​​combining​ ​Quebecois and​ ​Ilnu identities. She has published two collections at La Peuplade,​ ​Béante​ ​(2012) and Frayer (2015), forthcoming in English translation from BookThug.

Kristen Renee Miller is a poet, playwright, and translator living in Louisville, Kentucky. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Guernica, The Madison Review, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and elsewhere, and she has received awards from the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival and the Humana Festival of New American Plays. She is an editor and director of educational programming at Sarabande Books.