Lucy flies from Calgary to Victoria

Lizzie Derksen

Sleepy, digestive, thick, very Zen,
dopey in the thin air,
cramped in a plastic seat,
my blood collects in the head and arms
of a child whose uncle
is giving her an airplane ride.
Heavy little localized body,
picked up in one place,
put down somewhere else;

in the intervening few hours or few seconds,
hanging curious and precarious
in the balance.
Before the child touches the ground,
she sees the world-as-centrifuge
separating into lumps
of brown and pink and green.
The lands she will not investigate
pass under me.




Lizzie Derksen is a writer and filmmaker from Treaty Six Territory. She is the poet through whom Aunt Rachel speaks and one of the authors of the collaborative novel Project Compass (Monto Books 2017). Her writing has appeared in PRISM International, Room, Funicular Magazine, Poetry Is Dead, The Vault, and on CBC Television. Lizzie lives in Edmonton, Alberta, where she walks her dog, hosts a multi-disciplinary salon called Open Apartment, and works on her proverbial first novel. lizziederksen.com