From the Archive: Nyla Matuk (CAROUSEL 33)

Staff/ November 16, 2020/ Poem

NYLA MATUK

On Distance and Heartbreak

Gift of grey from Man Ray,
my heart was the shape of Australia.
If p, then q. Incalculably wide marginalia.
Plain, upside, down under, safe as houses.

I didn’t trust the data accounts,
the ville fourmillante’s thousand mounts.
And that old dissonant airbus in the distance.
It smarted like a barrier reef of a wound.

Nyla Matuk is the author of two books of poetry: Sumptuary Laws (2012) and Stranger (2016) both published by Véhicule Press. She is also the editor of an anthology of poems, Resisting Canada, published by Véhicule Press in Fall, 2019. In 2018, Nyla served as the Mordecai Richler Writer in Residence at McGill University. More: nylamatuk.ca

On Distance and Heartbreak
appeared in CAROUSEL 33 (2014) — buy it here