The Peddler of Tears

by Margaryta Golovchenko ​

Her wares include bleached coral
beached bone and bits of long-extinct
wood extracted from the earth’s face along with its kin.
This is the assortment of one who spent
her life in the sea
before becoming it, fingers extending into spiralling foam
that frolic and crash onto the shore,
a mythical stampede of horses who learned to graze
on moonlight to avoid human touch.
If asked for her name,
she is silent, points down and then up at the two forces
that dictate her porous being. If further pressed
she sighs and refuses the M,
anything to do with royalty or fish tails
and all the liminality in between.

Margaryta Golovchenko (she/her) is a first generation Ukrainian settler-immigrant, poet, and critic from Tkaronto/Toronto, Treaty 13 and Williams Treaty territory. She is the author of three chapbooks, most recently Daughterland (Anstruther Press, 2022). Her individual poems have appeared in Talking About Strawberries All of the Time, Channel Magazine (Ireland), Prairie Fire, Menacing Hedge, and Long Con, among others. She has written art and literary criticism for a variety of publications. Currently, she is a PhD student in the art history department at the University of Oregon, located on the land of the Kalapuya peoples.