Red
love in the red room
a liminal gore just
between the body and the spirit,
tunneling with our own voices, open chords and
our hands in the wind
like lungs, cameras don’t take these memories
they inhabit, it is what he looked like when you loved
him, and his body is in the breeze
he said red to my lip then, spoke like I could keep
this body here, and in the red room
I could see it breathe
molt
open window as wet dream
cloud handmade the rain in sheets
bed is a harbour in heavy green
the quiet failures hold the most water
softest corpses those buried at sea
driftwood for a while, then underneath
James Collier is a queer poet of settler descent living, writing and studying in Edmonton on Treaty 6 territory, on stolen Papaschase and Métis lands. Their work has appeared in Glass Buffalo, The Hart House Review, antilang., Augur Magazine and CV2.