1st Place (Tie):
Symphonie-de-survie – Nankafu Gisèle
Écoute, ô cœur, l’histoire de celle née dans la tourmente
Durant la guerre où les cris et les larmes étaient notre chant.
Je comprends la vie autrement, bien plus que ceux
Qui se prélassent dans les châteaux, abrités par la paix.
L’insécurité m’a poussée à fuir, à quitter mon pays
Avec mes parents, mes sœurs et mes frères, main dans la main.
De la patrie congolaise, je me suis retrouvée
Au Kenya, précisément à Nairobi, terre d’accueil et d’espoir.
Tel un oisillon à qui on apprend à voler,
J’ai appris la résilience, la force et la volonté d’embrasser l’inconnu.
J’ai dû m’intégrer dans une nouvelle société, guérir du traumatisme de la guerre
Apprendre une langue nouvelle, sans fierté, mais avec détermination.
L’insécurité linguistique me hantait : la peur des fautes devant les autres,
Et mon accent différent, révélateur de mon origine cachée.
Prier en swahili, chanter en français, penser en anglais,
Un mélange de sons et de mots, une symphonie de survie.
L’anglais, parfait dans ma tête, mais fugace quand venait l’heure
D’ouvrir la bouche, mon cerveau s’envolait, mon anglais s’évanouissait.
La plus grande épreuve, surmonter cette barrière invisible,
Et pourtant, mes petits anges, dons du ciel, s’expriment sans peine.
En trois langues, ils dansent, rient et grandissent,
Je les regarde, souriant, avec une fierté infinie.
Mon cœur taquine ma lenteur d’apprentissage,
Mais je ris, car ils sont nés au Canada, ce pays de mille visages.
Leur mère, congolaise, a vécu au Kenya, et leur père
Sud-africain, apportent une richesse de cultures variées.
Je suis impatiente de voir leur futur, de raconter leur histoire,
Dans ce monde, où s’entremêlent cultures et espoirs,
Notre symphonie de survie vibre de souvenirs et d’amour.
Immigrant – Danie J Botha
immigrant lips forget to breathe—
hands sewn to a single suitcase,
its contents: a lifetime lived
beyond an ocean, place of the wildebeest,
baobab, blood-soaked bougainvillea,
round red suns, wide white skies
immigrant eyes—unsmiling passport picture,
country of birth; purpose-of-visit-papers
presented
the man in customs: only ever heard
of the Congo, asks about gorillas and gazelles,
then remembers Kunene and Kariba (but that’s not the Congo!)
immigrant voice unwavering
answers yes sir, no sir, thank you sir,
in stilted Anglo-Saxon
“you cannot be from there,” his eyes insist,
calculates the pigment in our faces
our hides paler than desert sand
immigrant heart silent within
an empty chest, bleeds in obsidian soil,
pulses in a far-off fatherland
one hand-flick and we’re through. “welcome!
be on the lookout for peeling paper birch,
beavers, and bears.”
immigrant ribs remember to breathe—
how to escape
the single suitcase
2nd Place:
Green Windows – Jaya Brata Bose
In the crimson night of my sleep
I lay awake sometimes – in another room
wooden windows in green
open, like eyes to the dark outside.
The tubelight paints the walls white
as conversations flow like a river of words
meandering into my conscious mind,
as the mumbled utterances of sleep.
My mother’s sari clings to me – a mellow scent
redolent of jaba flowers garlanding
the dashboard-goddess of the taxi
that presses through a darkening alley.
Alley after alley, a convoluted geometry
deciphered by the moonlit veins
of leaves swaying in the sea-wind.
Leading up to the lanes, a strange address
at once familiar, now forgotten
a room with green windows,
where the child I knew still lives
hidden from daylight,
stirring my sleep with his silent breath.
3rd Place:
Mother Tongue – Hazel Aduna (preferred name)
Inang wasn’t thinking about conjugations or syntax when she spoke to me, me who
spoke one language and was even less worldly at the table
For this child of her child she mastered an economy of words:
Had I eaten? Kain na.
and then provided a menu with items as curated as these stanzas.
Steaming hot and savoury chicken adobo, greasy fried eggs
Mahal kita tasted like rice sweetened and pounded into bibingka
I love yous were kept in yellow-topped jars as ginger snap cookies from the grocery store
Like me, my husband’s mother was born here
and we both speak the cuisine — lumpia, pancit, kare-kare — without hesitation
My tongue pampered as a nourished child
Hers honed by the whetstone of prowess in the kitchen,
plating fleeting morsels of a childhood she never knew, from a country she’d never been
to please the palate of a parent gained,
flying the flag of family
My mom says the secret is a specific brand-name ketchup
I think the secret is developing dishes over decades,
every iteration with a more confident wrist
to swirl in patis, skim off scum,
be generous with garlic.
She can coax the same cow into dual citizenship:
Pot roast, served with baked potatoes and gravy
Mechado, best the next day over rice
She brings me meals even now, to my home across the city
Old standards evolved
The same palabok I sliced eggs for on their wooden table
served with crumbled chicharon and pork floss, this time,
at my dining set, clamoured for by our little ones
who know even less of the language
than I did
If I want my children to remember the way my mom says sinigang, I must
Worry after their stomachs, their sleep, their smiles
and mash taro root into the broth
If I want them to learn how to say empanada as my mother-in-law has, I have to
Keep my home open and heart warm
and not forget which shortening makes the best dough
On a whim in November, I put a box of ginger snaps in the cart
and understood why after having the first one at home:
A chew of spice bright like the apartment in my memory,
Sweet like salamat po in my mouth, a thank you thick in molasses;
Inang’s birthday on the calendar.
Honourable Mentions:
Diaspora – Vindra Jain
I am one of the scattered bits (seeds)
Or maybe a weed
since I sprouted here and was not
Intentionally planted.
I blew in on a trade wind and
Hibernated through the Sharad Ritu for Hemant Ritu*
End of dry season harvest.
My mother, swollen and blooming through
Summer heat and then cooled as the leaves changed
Colours to fall…Fall.
The world, dormant as I grew
Within her.
My premature arrival came with snow and bitter cold, but
JustintimeforChristmasbreak.
A shaky and uncertain start
I took root
in this new land
securing my family
to this new nation – Canada.
Their Trini boughs were to be
Tethered to this place for their lifetime.
No going ‘home’… they were already here.
I am the ‘little one,’ born away and not part of
‘Back home’.
Do I sound like I’m complaining?
Really, I’m not.
*Indian seasons are divided into six seasons – two months for each: Sharad Ritu (Autumn), Hemant Ritu (Pre-Winter). Trinidad has the dry season (June to December) and the wet season (January to May).
Being Born – Sarah Mercer
A typical look (agony) not mistaken for another,
the usual emptiness on arrival—womb, arms; tummy, tabula rasa?—
but the exiting is greater than the entering,
obstructing the before, displacing the after.
The unknown parent:
Wizard behind the unpulled curtain (“No, Toto!”);
someone you could walk by on the street without realizing.
The mysteries of life need no augmentation.
The rubble does not tell of its early majesties,
the chasing billows after the toppling,
the sifting of the regions.
A daisy refashioned by love-me-nots:
not a sun but a lone polka-dot.
Where does the centre of the rose go
when all of its petals have been plucked?
Shifting states like melting chocolate still formed
or a yolk first-pierced;
viscosity resisted by living the in-between.
From the earliest generations,
birth and death have nestled—not as opposites.
Progeny without agency:
Historic royalty and pauper mixed like newspaper and glue,
the outer print still legible;
cruel and compassionate beings portioned out to all.
I do not bite my own hand.
Some young are eaten, some are spit out
with denial, signing of papers—
What will the people at church think?—
by family deciding who is family.
Wanting to speak sing the mother father tongue consume tradition rites—how?
Are bells that stay silent still known as bells?
The weight is heavier when not moving.
Does the metal retain its
pitch pealing (or tolling) keeling (or, oscillatory) motion centre of gravity patience?
Let me declare: My name is Bell! My name is bell.
A Grand Mother – Jennifer Tesoro
bright jasmine-white petal prints
boldly scattered against cottoned vermillion
draping the female physique
an everyday duster donned by cultured queens
signaling strength through love
decades laundered and generations sun-starched
squeezed clean, hung-out-to-dry
yet unyielding:
these are threads of
a mother’s pambahay*
see her then
tango about the rooms, in to-and-fro preparation
twilight dreams dissolved by sunrise or sunset
rendered illusive
sturdy-soft nut-brown legs
holding firm against the persistently
playful hemline of her pambahay
see her now
squat over discarded tree pilings
old brittle remains once-upon-a-time outstretched boughs
of a fruit-gifting tree
pieced and parceled in death
heaped into hope and promise
of a rebirth into life-saving heat
see her there
bent with task and toil
magnetised to purpose
working the beginnings
of smoky embers
throwing crooked stems and patches of bark
to feed the newborn glow
see her here
crouched: back to the world
perched: face into fire
flame-licked retina
ignites the corona ablaze
crowning her chestnut iris
burning with determination
recognise grandmother’s spirit reflected in daughter’s fresh suckling gaze
both bathe in memories father relives of his mother and long gone-by days
