Poetry

by Shazia Hafiz Ramji

Poem with Periphery as Constraint

There has to be more than this

Waiting for my parents to fall asleep

Midnight: The Wedge on Much Music

I know the words to the national anthem

I refuse to sing — I refuse to sing —

On the first night with a new lover

We play a game, A Few Acres of Snow

There is money in the bank

Indians bought as weaponry

I cheat — I refuse

A question of allies and arbitration

I want the drugs to tell me

That the game is less real

Punk bands at Future Shop in the burbs

Nostalgia is not a limit or a feeling

Comfort food is also American

Rémy Marathe and the many betrayals

Safe to know some separatists

When the land is a verbal trope

Acknowledgments could remain fiction

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