[Editor's Note: This is the seventh of 10 current Canadian 'blockbuster poems' running each Friday in The Tyee. Find out about the idea of the series and read the previous poems here.]

 

c1, n4: noah

By Larissa Lai

               in the desert
i saw my father's shame
                            i told my brothers     sold the pun's fun
a lark for the mark
               of ham not cain
blame game precipitates guilt economy
               astronomy places stars crossing my southern horn
master's cold shoulder enslaves or indentures
innocent generations to mechanical motion
               human checked in middle passage
                    nantes to neverland
land of the cree     home of depraved

From Automaton Biographies (Arsenal Pulp)