personal apocalypse

Whitney French

it’s my father’s knife
the weight of it, do I
carry him on my hip?

I can’t pick out a bad
lover but I pick out
a bad drop when I see one

three drops of bleach
can go a long way when
working with muddy waters

my teacher told me only the men
can skin a lynx, the girls are better off
with rabbit hide, even fox, but my teacher
is long dead, this lynx freshly dead & I am
no longer a girl

camomile calendula rosemary witch hazel

bundled tight, tucked
under my shirt—I read somewhere
if you wrap a body, flu-ridden,
in milk-sopped sunflower leaves
by three days they are cured seeds
braided in my sister’s hair she is/was
the one who showed me how long to
soak before pushing in soil, soft words
& open palms to the sky
quick-time ceremony

a flint
a canteen
a companion
a compass
a conscience
a good pair of boots
a great sense of humour

moonseed looks a lot like grapes. if I was better
fed I’d ignore them, but I haven’t seen anything
resembling food in days—the stem tucked
at the base distinguishes what is juicy & what is
deadly—to be sure, plantain leaves
chewed up & spat out keep me
going, keep dotting the path, draws
the attention of ants

a two-way radio
a roll of gauze
an aversion to bullshit

never underestimate the versatility of a big-ass stick

a lot of safety pins
a resistance to the cold
a source of non-perishable protein
an ability to be vulnerable

his initials burnt into the handle
of the knife, they’re my initials too
softness of my thumb against razor
after all these years, still sharp

my brother is/was taller
than my father at twelve
but I was still stronger;
helping drag the lynx meat
to the shed to be cured—
the space smelling of flesh
& heat & boys shoo-ed me

out the door under wooden steps
grow reishi the size of my palm
a careful cut to keep it growing my mother
is/was a fan of wild harvest mushrooms,

“forage when you can,
that’s your version of hunting.”

a keen eye, a pack of matches
a firearm without a magazine
a spool of fishing wire
a knack for gender-bending many layers
double to keep me warm to keep me androgynous

butterflies often mean
flowers sometimes mean
fruit less likely mean food;
against odds, I follow
my winged friend, my back
against a swaying tulip tree
resting with perhaps my last
living relative

later:
wrapped in the silence of a summering eve
slicing stem to procure wild serviceberry
in a hemlock field, I am meeting a new part
of myself in the reflection of this blade
against moonlight.

Whitney French

(she/her) is a writer, multidisciplinary artist, and publisher. She is the editor of the award-winning anthology Black Writers Matter (University of Regina, 2019) and editor of Griot: Six Writers Sojourn into the Dark (Penguin Random House, 2022). Her writing has appeared in Arc Poetry Magazine, FIYAH Magazine, Geist, The Ex-Puritan, and others. Whitney French is a certified arts educator, a creative writing instructor at University of Toronto, and the co-founder of Hush Harbour, the only Black queer feminist press in Canada. Her novel-in-verse, Syncopation, is forthcoming with Wolsak & Wynn. Currently, she lives in Toronto.