I look no further than the edge
of my body my map
to gather you oh brother my brother
my brown skinned brethren
my kin and distant loves
my turbaned uncles my unclejis
crowned like kings
backs alder straight
I gather you from the bastion of a ship
a ship that sat ashore
my uncles whose feet did not land
I gather your hearts inked tattooed
with SS Komagata Maru in cursive longing
I gather you my aunties my auntiejis
your dupatta fringed faces
blooming across an ocean wide
I gather the glint of your bangled wrists
your bindis your third eyes
revealing fate and flaw
your eyes my eyes find no virtue
in the lengthening of time
the strengthening of kingdoms
I gather you sister my sister
your battle cry
tethering us to a shared past
to the discourse
between warm-blooded kin
and cold-blooded monsters at our heels
I gather your feet
the sound of your feet
each step each footfall
I gather the language in your throat
shake open your heart
your memories in my hands
your presence in the glimmer of leaves
I gather you in sheets of clouds
the sleep of long slumber falling
from our eyes like dark silence
at the alter of birch forest
where we pine for a different past
the unholding of a new future
I gather you my mother oh mother
hold you on the tip of ancestral tongue
lost tongues mother tongues
of vibrant matter
in dark bodies of light and beauty
I gather you father my father
the waves you make on paper in ocean
as blue as amnesia as weeping sky
I gather your inner blaze
of twigs and limbs for this kindling life
your vigour your splintered selves
I gather up your needs your wants
your fleeting animal hungers
your tempest dispositions
I gather your hair your petaled hair
thick and raven flowing home
I gather you my people
in the moan of broken loam
your embered landscape your light
your candlelight the flicker of soul light
shiver of flame and bone
your sorrows your tender
your flesh-coloured fear
your head held high eyes always open
I gather you and take you home
Moni Brar was born in rural India and raised in northern BC on the land of the Tse’Khene peoples. She received the 2022 Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Emerging Artist Award and The Fiddlehead’s 2022 Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize. Her writing appears in Best Canadian Poetry and Literary Review of Canada.
