"Strawman" by Vienna Claire Jeffery
we patch the worn jeans
haunt house and home
make scarecrows of ourselves
my father elects to stand in the cul-de-sac
to watch for trick-or-treaters
who’ve graduated and moved to university.
“promise you won’t ever leave me,”
she says and I stuff my legs into straw.
“mom, I’m just outside.”
Vienna Claire Jeffery is a nationally recognized slam poet currently residing on the ancestral and unceded Indigenous territories of the ʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations (Vancouver, Canada), as well as a Sociology student at the University of British Columbia and current Slam Master and previous Vice President of the UBC Slam Poetry Club. Vienna combines poetry and comedy in her writing to share her childlike wonder of all things, advocating through both performance and page the unrestricted adoration of the mundane and the importance of loving one another endlessly and entirely.
Instagram: @viennaclaire
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