put Canada in parentheses

Issue 13

https://manyworlds.place/issue-13/joanne-merriam/

by Joanne Merriam



Text of an encyclopedia entry can faintly be seen through two columns of ink; on the left, burgundy shading to orange then to gold, and on the right, royal blue shading to sky blue, to green, to dark grey, with the words remaining outlined in burgundy on the left and silver on the right, such that the words can be read in two orders:

In
old houses

the houses have evolved arms
to
fight with the
architectural environment

[and here the reader can read in this order:]
betraying its origins in
in the street the political urgency of agitprop,
; when we lose the
past images and ideas
their meaning eroded,
in careful
reproof

[or can read in this order, with the remainder at the end of the poem:]
in the street
; when we lose the
past

[continuing to:]
transformed by
its history
we
order the de-
struction of
a myth

Using slide projectors,
images of this myth
sug-
gest collusion and
we construct
around mountains, and
nuclear weapons, with the
projection of
the image on a rock face

[here there is a line suggesting the word order can be read as:]
concumventing the confines of poetry

[or if the reader disregards the line as decorative and read the shorter version of the poem above, the remainder of the poem can be read as:]
poetry
circumventing the confines of
betraying its origins in
the political urgency of agitprop,
; when we lose the
past images and ideas
their meaning eroded,
in careful
reproof


Joanne Merriam lives in Nova Scotia. Their writing has appeared in dozens of periodicals including Blood & Bourbon, Riddle Fence, and previously in manywor(l)ds. Their debut novel, Aether and Ego, comes out in September 2026 with Inanna. They are also the force behind Upper Rubber Boot Books, known for the first English-language anthology of solarpunk, Sunvault. More details at joannemerriam.com.