Happy World Poetry Day! Thank you to everyone who submitted to Poetry Moves on Transit this round. We received 110 astonishing poems from 73 Edmontonians, who shared their voice with us via Twitter, Instagram, and email.

Please join us in congratulating the winners of this round, Nicole Lachat, Elisia Snyder, Hailey Siracky, and Kelly Shepherd. Their poems will be traveling on Edmonton transit vehicles during April, National Poetry Month. If you see them, snap a photo and use the hashtag #pofestmoves on social media!

Immigration Poem
by Nicole Lachat

To you, who would leave me with nothing
but the inheritance of my people’s disappearing
know, that the lines on my mother’s face
are a road-map home, and the deep brown
of her eyes are river stones shaped to outlive
drought and flood. Having to overcome for centuries,
my people have learned to birth bridges. To keep fire
within. All we need is to flick our tongues
like flint against steel, open our languages to see
how they warm, how they light —

Nicole Lachat is a locally grown poet, and occasional flâneur.

——

How do you use your voice?
by Hailey Siracky

Sometimes I don’t.
Sometimes I hold it in my hands like a firefly,
watch it glow in the dark of my cupped palms:
the swift, rare thing I caught in the night,
the small light I don’t know how to set free,
the beating wings in the cave of my hands, whispering,
shy.

Hailey Siracky is a librarian who (naturally) is happiest surrounded by books.

——

“dear busperson”
by Elisia Snyder

practice            kindness.
           perfect it.
      fail.
remember that.
practice it
    alone
               or
                       with a competitor.
beat yourself
at it.

Elisia Snyder is a poet/comedienne/waitress in Edmonton.

——

Midden
by Kelly Shepherd

Caragana seed-pods break underfoot:
each crack predicts a green burst
through asphalt, the birth or explosion
of a star. The dark red and white swirls
on the seeds are maps of galaxies,
watersheds, inner ears. Patterns painted
on bison skulls. A field of dandelions
gone to seed: an orrery made of summers.

Insomnia Bird: Edmonton Poems, Kelly’s second poetry collection, is being published in fall 2018.