POETRY WEEK 2025 CONTEST
Runner-up

BY MARK THOMAS

Copyright is held by the author.

Cancer ripped me
like a skunk attacks a garbage bag.

Outwardly,
just a small hole,
a delicate puncture
in our bottom left-hand corners.
But inside
the contents of the sack
are somehow
completely scrambled.

Garbage day.

Unfamiliar things trail
from a tiny plastic wound.
The detritus looks cosmically random,
not like castoff bits of me:

waxy paper and twisted rags,
crumpled love letters
and takeout menus,
scraps of electrical wire
and coloured yarn,
empty vitamin bottles
and coffee grounds.

I shuffle onto the porch,
touch my abdomen,
and survey the

mysterious innards
pulled across the lawn,
and echo
the wonder and amazement
of the neighbourhood.

Dogwalkers and morning
joggers shake their heads
and marvel.
“So much damage,” someone says,
“from such a small snout.”

***

Mark Thomas is an artist and writer living in St. Catharines ON. His latest book is Next to Ewe, published by Between the L:ines.