“1979, Main Street”

Moni Brar

Artist Statement: This poem straddles the political and the personal while illuminating transgenerational trauma resulting from an erased, marginalized history and existence. My work aims to take an oppositional stance and seeks to heal the rifts of colonization with language.

it hasn’t always             been this way this         gentrified street neatly lined    

with shapely trees        bakeries offering          bespoke cupcakes       

and yoga studios          for the hip and fit        was once the place      

 

once a year       we would tumble out          two dozen brown bodies  from the back

of a cube van       legs cramped from sitting         cross-legged knee-to-knee   

   for an hour on cold metal       hands stained               from a summer

of hard farm labour     ready to rifle      through silks and satins         smooth softness

          sold by the yard     we were primed                for a day of taking          

- fabric, sweets, spices, rice -    after a long season of giving          momentarily oblivious   

  to the shifting air            a rapid autumn approaching             our wandering

constrained             by the comfort of              the familiar sights and smells  

of those two blocks                 a whole city beyond our reach

 

Moni Brar has multiple nominations for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. She was the winner of the 2021 SAAG Writing Prize, runner-up in PRISM’s Grouse Grind Prize, and honourable mention in Room’s poetry contest. Her work appears in Literary Review of Canada, Prairie Fire, Hobart, and Passages North. She believes that poetry contains the possibility of healing.