spring’s sentries
shrill with chlorophyll
rubber-banded phalanxes
fill farmers’ market stalls
adolescent stalks
spindly impudent spears
with their scaly fauxhawks
those rebel yells out in force–
the first sign winter has lost the fight
or, echoing snow,
arrive deliberately albino–
inexplicably bunkered
by exuberant Germans
sparkling over April’s Weißspargel,
then shipped out in glass cylinder galleries
stolid in citric lymph
aching for a hollandaise duvet
Bio
Christina Shah
Christina Shah lives in Vancouver and works in heavy industry, where she drinks from the firehose of knowledge. Her poetry has appeared numerous Canadian literary journals, including Arc, The Fiddlehead, Vallum, Grain, PRISM international, EVENT, The Malahat Review, The Antigonish Review and elsewhere. Her work has been shortlisted for The Fiddlehead’s 2021 Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize, and selected for Best Canadian Poetry 2023. She is one-fifth of the Harbour Centre 5 poetry collective. rig veda is her first solo chapbook (Anstruther Press, 2023) and videopoem. She has some strong opinions on soft pretzels.