Ancestral magicians perform not tricks, but truly magical acts, like taking a blue and white pearl the colour of the earth and placing it in her work-hard palms. This is my mother, entangled in sisters, brought to peace in age, throwing off years like a hot fur coat, years of bitterness turned some days sweet. And there is magic in the transformation, not whipping the white cloth off the table, leaving the sterling cutlery and gold-edged porcelain intact – or even neatly putting the woman back together – the dimpled assistant with the pageboy cut who was cut in half, hands and feet waving improbable from either end of the box – not even that, but simple attention to the real, the magical real, the glorious real, the real fantastic, which is luminous, which is merciful, which is powerful, which is grace.
Pauline Peters is a queer African-Canadian writer living in Toronto on the territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples. She has been published in Room, The Fiddlehead, PRISM international, Prairie Fire, The Malahat Review, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, The Salted Woman, was published in Britain by Hedgespoken Press and her work was included in Best Canadian Poetry 2025.
