WAKE
Truck to Port Renfrew with nets, hip waders, buckets, stove, frying pan, sleeping bag. We embark, offer ourselves up to the wave. Trap, troll, trawl. Pull in smelts for the family, for the cat. Stray blue nets make new nests. Watch shells tossed whole. Tides grind sand—so many lives. Liquid can be so heavy. Abusive. Sums of salt, stripped beech, kelp whips. Toss us around, keep us alive, just enough.
Leanne Dunic’s writing has been described as genre-fluid, experimental, poignant, provocative, elegant, and brutal. She is the leader of the band The Deep Cove, living on the unceded and occupied traditional territories of the Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh people.