OANA AVASILICHIOAEI

(Canada), born in 1977. She teaches creative writing at Dawson College, and organizes the Atwater Poetry Project, a monthly reading series featuring poets from all over Canada. She is the author of two books of poetry: Abandon (Wolsak & Wynn, 2005) and Occupational Sickness (translations of Romanian poet Nichita Stanescu, BuschekBooks, 2006).



A collector’s burden

The train moves in small sobs:
a loose anchor dragging on an ocean floor,
a body with a shell instead of a swollen belly,
and the roar of a conch instead of a throat.

The train moves
grinding rust off its weariness.
Through the window a scent of train lags;
thyme, oil and hot metal.

Skin sticks to plastic seats,
an orange peel falls on the floor,
everywhere the babble
of human sweat recoils.

See that woman in the corner
lurching with each movement of the train?
In that bag she hides people’s used stories.
She will hide yours in exchange for your shirt.