Maria Giesbrecht
Gala Dalí visits my Thursday dreams
The hard truth: a poem about an island
is neither a bridge nor the island. Nobody
knows how to slaughter the soft part
inside of themselves that wants to sting.
Once, I grew a bloody moon on my left
ovary. Everyone else called it a strawberry
moon. I hate July. I hate the way violence
is a palate cleanser before the next joy. Go
away until your pain is purple. A sunset,
not: the recoil of being alive, a warning shot.
Gala, too, let a garden grow under her
belly. Notice I said let. Notice the sun
doesn’t even have a choice.
Maria Giesbrecht is a Canadian poet whose work explores her Mexican and Mennonite roots. Her writing has appeared in The Literary Review of Canada, Grain, CV2, Narrative and elsewhere. She is the winner of the 2025 Jack McCarthy Book Prize, The 2025 Lesley Strutt Poetry Prize, a finalist for the 2025 Narrative Poetry Prize, a Best of the Net nominee, and the founder of Gather, an international writing community that connects poets worldwide. Born in Durango, Mexico, she now lives near Toronto, Canada with her fiancée.
Artwork: “Bathe” by Daniel Lurie
Digital