Snow, rain, snow again, rain.Chill silver air gusts, threatens.Clouds obscure mountains, mist shrouds the river.It is morning in April, grey and dreary. Rushing pattering raindrops on the windows.Warmed by coffee, I cocoon inside,resisting. The storm takes a breath, a lull in the wind.Listen, listen! says the silence. I listen.The birds, unbothered, have retreatedinside the tall … Continue reading Secret Joy
We know what kind of woman she is,wearing eyeliner and a suitand a new surname. Changed her name? We know what kind of woman she is. We know what kind of woman she is,a rabenmutter, workingwhile her children go to daycare. My wife knows her place. We raise our own children. We know what kind … Continue reading raven mother
I come from a teenage mother a blue-collar father a small mining town where they don’t know MBA-speak. I come from parents who split up on the wrong side of the tracks in a dirty home in the trailer park and I smelled like cigarettes. I come from love and contradiction shame and abandonment the … Continue reading Origin Story
A mother’s world consists of countless interruptions, smashing her thoughts back to reality, back to the spilled cranberry juice, a red puddle of accusation on the carpet. All attention, however fragmented, must be aimed at the child at hand, by the mother. Ideas fall away in a shower of glittering fragments, yet tiny moments of … Continue reading Treasure Chest
If I cross off all the days on the calendar that you weren’t here, whole months would be cast adrift into oceans of black ink. Disconnected, broken apart from the other months, only reachable by telephone. Hello? When will I see you again? My island is too far from shore to remember what you look … Continue reading Presence / Absence
Photo credit: Diggers2004, Creative Commons license https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2017_11_25_142837_Vietnam_Hanoi_Ceramic-Mosaic-Mural_x_27.jpg Fragments In Hanoi, Vietnam, there is a Ceramic Wall so long it holds a Guinness World Record.A tall, muscle-bound, blonde, white man leads my fat tourist’s body through a jog. He explains the features of the Ceramic Wall. Nearly four kilometres in length, it flanks a thoroughfare packedwith … Continue reading Fragments
Inspired by the events leading up to January 6, 2021 Have you ever forcedyour own soundtrack overtop of the TV newsheadphones in earsblocking out assaultby political commentarymaking pundits movetheir lips in sync with the beattheir arms waving,their eyes shouting,their mouths, futile.They are tragic figuresof speech,Silenced. Published in Black Bear Review, December 2021.https://blackbearreview.ca/writing/poetry/soundtrack-by-gwen-higgins/
Life is the river your father drowned inWhen the tailings dike failed,Or his friend died in the mineshaft,Or some such thingthat your mother won’t say. It is lunchtime in the house that smells of cigarettes and mildewed laundry and damp basement, ashes wafting from the polyolefin couch and green sculpted shag carpet. Gott in Himmel, … Continue reading Downriver
Gwen Higgins 
