swifts  &  s l o w s · a quarterly of crisscrossings

beneath the tiny fragments
Laura Swart

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from Songs of Anguish

11.


last night i spread bedsheets over the tomato plants
careful that each green fruit
was covered
protected from the frost
and resting behind the veil.

12.
morning tide is in
and a lone seagull stands still
listening to my cries
waiting for me to settle.
then a dozen ravens smudge the sky
and start cooing—
not like senseless doves
but like ravens—
the way they talk to you
tell you they hear you and will stay with you
until the tide retreats
and you see air bubbles in the sand again
and know there is life
down there
beneath the tiny fragments.

from Songs of Understanding

we’re all in this together

but I’m still working
still earning a living
and my Ethiopian friend
(who lives on a small street next to a highway)
he was building a food truck
and he told me his dream:
Ethiopia will come to Canada!
wat, injera, kinche, gomen kitfo, farsho!

now, he sits in his little fourplex
with black mold in the walls and five kids and a wife
his truck propped up on wooden blocks
and there isn’t gonna be a food truck selling porous Ethiopian bread.
there just isn’t.

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Laura Swart is a novelist, poet, and playwright living in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.. She has taught creative and critical writing to adults for over thirty years, encouraging students to find and raise their writing voices. Her humanitarian work around the world—most recently in Ethiopia and Ukraine—have shaped her thinking, her teaching, and her writing.

You can also read Laura Swart’s poems NGO Compound  and Tigrayan Tents on Arteidolia →