Earthseed: The Book of Life, a Cento

Mahalia Smith

Earthseed: the Book of Life, a Cento

by Mahaila Smith

After Octavia E. Butler 

The gifts of the earth are brought and prepared, set on the table.1
Birches dance and they 2 watch white stars spin
dizzy as drunks and yearn 3 at me
so deep in the dust and dark, 4
drinking a coffee that takes an eternity. 5

You can find me on the moon,6
particles nearly turn to antimatter,7
here I have a star’s eye view8,

in this kingdom by the sea,9
in hunger of the world.10

By darkness this twinkle we made in a corner of emptiness,11
with twelve locks on the door.12
Bones flexed like tendons,
the spine like a seahorse,
the heart far.13

I should learn to look at an empty sky,14

I’ve spent my life on nothing.15

1 Joy Harjo, “Perhaps the World Ends Here” from The Woman Who Fell From the Sky, W. W. Norton, 1994.
2 Dennis Lee, “400: Coming Home” from Civil Elegies and Other Poems, House of Anansi Press, 1972.
3 George Elliot Clarke, “Blank Sonnet” from Whylah Falls, 2nd ed., Gaspereau Press ltd, 2000.
4 Robert Browning, “Life in a Love” from Men and Women, Chapman and Hall, 1855.
5 Gwendolyn MacEwen, “A Breakfast for Barbarians” from Magic Animals: Selected Poems Old and New, Macmillan, 1974.
6 Andrea Gibson, “Andrew” from The Madness Vase, Write Bloody Publishing, 2011.
7  Tomasz Rozycki, “Headwinds” from Colonies, Zephyr Press, English Translation 2013 by Mira Rosenthal.
8 Daniel David Moses, “Hotel Centrale, Rotterdam” from Sixteen Jesuses, Exile Editions, 2000.
9 Edgar Allan Poe, “Annabel Lee” from Sartain’s Union Magazine of Literature and Art, 1849.
10 Jerome Rothenburg, “A Glass Tube Ecstasy” from New Selected Poems 1970-1985, New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1986.
11 Earle Birney, “Vancouver Lights” from One Muddy Hand: Selected Poems, Harbour Publishing, 2006.
12 Kate Hall, “Insomnia,” from The Certainty Dream, Coach House Books, 2009.
13 Sina Queyras, “from Euphoria” Poetry, December 2010.
14 W. H. Auden, “The More Loving One” from Homage to Clio, Random House, 1960.
15 Lorrine Niedicker, “[What horror to awake at night]” from Collected Works, edited by Jenny Penberthy, University of California Press, 2002.

 

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MAHAILA SMITH (any pronouns) is a young femme writer, living and working on the traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishinabeg in Ottawa, Ontario. They are one of the co-editors for The Sprawl Mag. They like learning theory and writing speculative poetry. Their debut chapbook, Claw Machine, was published by Anstruther Press in 2020. Their second chapbook, Water-Kin, was published by Metatron Press in 2024. Their novelette in verse, Seed Beetle, is forthcoming with Stelliform Press. You can find more of their work on their website: mahailasmith.ca.

Earthseed: the Book of Life, a Cento was edited by Terese Mason Pierre. It can be found in Augur Magazine Issue 7.2.