The Bites of my Diasporic Mouth

Geographically, I am a place that does not

exist. Outside of a map, too many questions

arise. I am dangerous as a

multitude, the way that three-tongued girls are sacred.

The art of migration in species

is following a northern star in a storm,

shaking a broken compass.

When a shark hunts its prey

the blood is the only thing necessary

to be alive &water bound &wounded.

To this extent, the ocean is my holy, absolved word.

When I say homeland,

I mean to crane my neck far from my body,

my nose chasing memory like a bloodhound.

I want my natal tongue to be desperate for me.

When I say mother,

I mean water gathered in lonely bodies, rejected constellation

& specular mirrors.

At 2am an ocean breeze raps on my door

spells daughter with salt and throws it over my shoulder.

I will not remember the smell on its breath from

the welcoming      years later

even when the wind cries

I am apart

apart

a part    of you.

Historically, I am a body that does not exist

outside of an ancestor’s dream.

Don’t you know

Children of the diaspora,

you are dangerous when a history

keeps you unfed for too long,

that three-tongued girls

& their unbound mothers are sacred?

about the poet

Jordan Redekop-Jones is a mixed Indigenous/ Anglo-Indian writer from Vancouver BC. She is the recent winner of the 2024 Austin Clarke Prize in Literary Excellence for Poetry and a 2024 Indigenous Voices Award in the unpublished poetry category. Her work has appeared  in Prism International, Arc Poetry, The Ex-Puritan, The IHRAM Quarterly Literary Magazine, SAD Mag, and elsewhere. She holds a BA in English Literature and is a recent graduate of Simon Fraser University’s The Writer’s Studio. You can read her work and follow her writing journey on her Instagram page: j.r.jones__