British Columbia, Canada, 2021: We are surviving the vagaries of climate change

1. Heat dome: I’ve had to water my plants two times a day so they don’t die.
2. Five hundred and ninety-five people died as a direct result of extreme heat.

When Mom flew off with the Canada geese you made me promise that we would never leave one another.

In the charity shop I try on a coat
flocked with fake shearling,
shaved-soft almost: fibres
fired onto plastic to fool the wrist.

You’re a character, a Roman numeral,
an internet meme. Descendant
from a peasant’s crook or cattle prod,
you’re the twelfth letter of the alphabet,

Being quiet and easily tired by being alive among people, I take
the cowardly route to community. I curate a digital garden of oddity.

At best my phone is a menagerie of queers: trinket makers, amateur
playwrights, witches, and, over and over again, my own personal monarchy.