JESSI MACEACHERN

C Waltz

I do not think we have a settler inside the room

The light loosens itself from the grasp
    the light slowly opens

An empty wooden chair is pulled out from a table
    its surface entirely eaten by one large kettle

Here is a housewife complete with child, apron, mop
    water boiling or rushing up river

In the close-up of her face
the handsome woman has                fixed her eyes

A kitten winking
    to its twice-large shadow

— listen to Jessi MacEachern read C Waltz

Red River Jig

We cannot recognize or name these
electronic instruments. The listener’s body
lodges into the expected fray

                                    It is the ocean
or the sea. I’ve paused

while the horizon is dipping. The jutting fin
one shade darker than the water

It swims through

                                    A priest is walking
with a wooden cross over his shoulder

Whose luggage is this?

— listen to Jessi MacEachern read Red River Jig

Jessi MacEachern lives in Montréal, QC, where she teaches English literature. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Touch the Donkey, Poetry Is Dead, Vallum, MuseMedusa, Canthius, PRISM and CV2. Her debut poetry collection is A Number of Stunning Attacks (Invisible Publishing, 2021).