Angel T. Dionne
Joy
my neighbor pushes
a naked raw chicken
into my mail slot
every morning
and I wrestle
with the world
and with the cryptic meaning
of this sanctified act
uncooked chicken
makes a pitiful deity
A Child’s Questions
What made me?
a centuries-old tree
with empty-bottle fruit.
What am I?
a hoard
of yellow pollen.
Where are we?
beneath the bloodied bodies
of deflated dreams.
Why are we?
because soot falls from our bones
and becomes the universe.
How was I born?
insects multiplied in the crook of my arm
and the stalled train cars knew not their use.
A Story of Hunger
An old man collects
dirty bottles
along the highway,
licks them clean
of rainwater,
and brings them
to the nearest redemption center.
I need a favour,
says the saffron-haired boy
behind the counter.
I’ve lost my birthstone.
Can you dig
beside the building
and find it for me?
Be careful not to swallow it
or it’ll grow a watermelon
in your belly.
The old man weeps
and digs,
digs
and weeps,
tearing his cuticles
on frozen earth
fingernails splintering
against clay.
When he finds the red stone
he swallows it—
a desperate gulp—
and his belly swells
into a grotesque,
pregnant moon.
Later,
he births a misshapen lump
on the redemption center floor.
The boy seizes it,
tosses it,
atop his pile
of broken bottles,
beats his fists
against his head,
in an act of mourning.
The writhing mound
squalls,
a hungry newborn’s cry.
Angel T. Dionne is an associate professor of English literature at the University of Moncton’s Edmundston campus. Her writing and art have been featured in several surrealist and experimental publications. She is the author of a collection of surrealist poetry, Bird Ornaments (Broken Tribe Press, 2025); a collection of short fiction, Sardines (2023); and two chapbooks—Mormyridae (LJMcD Communications, 2024), which contains surrealist poetry, and Inanimate Objects (Bottlecap Press, 2022), a collection of strange flash fiction. In 2020, she co-edited Rape Culture 101: Programming Change (Demeter Press). She lives in Canada with her wife, cats, parrot, lizard, and mormyrid fish.
Angel T. Dionne at Poets & Writers
Poet’s notes on the poems: These are three surrealist poems I wrote after hearing about David Lynch’s passing. It led me to revisit a few of his early short films—The Alphabet (1969), The Grandmother (1969), and Six Men Getting Sick (1967). These poems came together soon after. I actually wrote “Joy” while watching Eraserhead. I hope the poems capture the fever dream quality I was aiming for.
David Lynch Obituary at The Guardian
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