Poet’s Statement:

My poetry tends to circle a single controlling image and then I push it as far as it’ll go, trying to find the strange or hidden truth underneath. This piece, like much of my work, is set in the Canadian Prairies, placing the mythic next to the everyday. In this poem, that means a cryptid in a suburban retention pond.

• Listing ID: 39586
• Poetry Author's Name: Magnus Briar
• Poem: The Sage Creek Thing
  
  Past the pavement where developers dug,
  something moved in before the concrete cured:
  a wet black church pew surfacing at dusk,
  here when this was grassland,
  chewing the reeds like a landlord.
  
  Nineteen people said carp. Sharon knows it wasn't carp.
  It predates Treaty One, the frost-bitten surveyors,
  the grid of wanting achingly to belong
  like a drowned thing belongs to its field.
  
  The cryptid does not apply. It continues.
  It outlasted every Brad in a zip-up vest
  who wants to brand it something with Estates.
  It regards Brad. It descends. Brad is a mayfly.
  It ate a goose at a party and left the neck.
  
  Though I wept into my parka in the mud,
  I bring it things after dark at the reeds:
  a plum, a tooth, a rotisserie chicken,
  which felt like tithing.
  
  The water answers in a slick of bubbles:
  the low digestive gospel of a god with no use for me.
  
  I stand there, newish and hopeful,
  while the oldest resident rolls once, immense,
  and goes back down to stay,
  the only miracle I want.
• Poet's Bio: Magnus Briar (they/them) is a poet based in Winnipeg, Canada. Their work fuses the regional and the mythic, exploring themes of displacement, ecology, recovery, and queerness. Their work is forthcoming in various journals.

1. Check all listings by this user
2. Add to favourites
3. Report abuse

Contact listing owner

Please, login to contact this listing owner.