David Cummer

TANTE SEIBEN

Little mice nestling in a coffee can,
but mice are never this color,
blue, as erasers.
The label, a joyful sun yellow/sky blue,
has peeled away with age,
showing corrosion.
Tante Seven lies pinned to the wall, like tattooed skin,
like a medical drawing showing routes and channels of blue, of mongrel blood,
like a First Nation skin showing history and culture*
like Asher's mother in the cross.
"Make it pretty, Asher. Make it pretty."
But there's nothing pretty about Zyclone-B,
a tin of blue poison,
like sleeping mice.

*so subversive it can only be a footnote to a footnote to a footnote.