Peach, by Catherine Graham

Portrait de Marie-Melanie Quesnel, Canadian School (Canada) c. 1810

Peach
 
permanent shrug
collarbone tilt

skin   the tint 
of peach fabric
 
hair coiled 
into question mark
 
her pressed lips
about to speak
 
Catherine Graham
 
Catherine Graham is an award-winning poet, novelist and creative-writing teacher. Her sixth poetry collection, The Celery Forest, was named a CBC Best Book of the Year and was a finalist for the Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry. Michael Longley praised it as “a work of great fortitude and invention, full of jewel-like moments and dark gnomic utterance.” Her work has been translated into Greek, Serbo-Croatian, Bangla, Chinese and Spanish and she has appeared on CBC Radio’s The Next Chapter. She teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto SCS where she won an Excellence in Teaching Award. Publications include Arc Poetry Magazine, Poetry Daily, Glasgow Review of Books, Event Magazine, Joyland, The Malahat Review and she was recently shortlisted for the Montreal International Poetry Prize. Æther: an out-of-body lyric and her second novel, The Most Cunning Heart, are forthcoming. www.catherinegraham.com @catgrahampoet