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LAURIE KOENSGEN

Window-shopping with my Dead Mother 

 

You’d have called them skinflints.  

Who manufactures cloth 

thinner than moth-bitten, fibres so sparse 

the ultraviolet burns us though our garments.  

 

Our skin’s becoming flint. 

When struck we spark, 

splinter into  

elegant shards.

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Du Jour 

 

The day is hungry for us—mouth agape,  

teeth trained. I feel its humid breath.  

It will eat the small pieces of us  

we let fall, the tender parts  

we leave unguarded.  

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As with a fly that moves     

 

unobserved along your leg,   

​

in a threshold instant felt

at the tender curve 

of your ankle or your thigh 

 

—its straw-shaped tongue and bent-twig limbs  

and labyrinthine eyes, repellant yet exquisite  

on that ribbon of your skin—  

 

so love moves: undetected,  

in a quiver realized. 

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Laurie Koensgen is a poet and culture worker who lives in Ottawa. Her work appears in Arc Poetry Magazine, Literary Review of Canada, Barren Magazine, Juniper: A Poetry Journal, Kissing Dynamite, Black Bough Poetry, Burning House Press, Nightingale & Sparrow, The New Quarterly, and elsewhere. Her poetry has been featured in gallery installations. Laurie works with the Ottawa International Writers Festival, encouraging poetry writing among middle school students. She’s a founding member of the Ruby Tuesdays poetry collective.

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deathcap is Coven Editions' online literary mag featuring a curated collection of poetry, fiction and community pieces.  Review our Submissions Guidelines for more information if you are interested in contributing to deathcap.

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