The Extended Mourning of Orca-J35 by MA|DE
The Extended Mourning of Orca-J35 by MA|DE
Published September 16, 2022
like wailing in
whalesong or waning
on a blue morning
the sea carries
sorrow for miles
do the fish hear
it like we do
mothered for
seventeen months
before birth
Orcinus unnamed
of the realms
of the dead
alive
only for a
brief moment
behaviour set
adrift through
perinatal space
the first phase
of grief lasts for
seventeen days
pushing this shape
the space between
the droplets a
body of water
carried a thousand
miles
rostrum
as a new womb
epimeletic
until it is pushed
past the destiny
of darkest
etymology
she waits two years
for a third chance
at loss
MA|DE
MA|DE (est. 2018) is a collaborative writing entity, a unity of two voices fused into a single, poetic third; it is the name given to the joint authorship of Mark Laliberte and Jade Wallace, artists whose active solo practices differ quite radically from one another. MA|DE’s writing has appeared in various literary journals and three chapbooks. Their third chapbook, A Trip to the ZZOO (Collusion Books, 2020), shortlisted for the bpNichol Chapbook Award, was the seed for their recently completed debut collection, ZZOO. [ma-de.ca]