shot glass
title
Issue # 5 September 2011
"... brevity is the soul of wit ..."
- William Shakespeare

Bio


William Leonard Felepchuk was born in North York, Ontario, of rich diasporic ancestry. He grew up in Ottawa. He is a student of Aboriginal Studies and Geography at the University of Ottawa. He has been funded by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for his work. He loves trilliums, chickadees, and his daughter Maria Saoirse.


William Leonard Felepchuk


 

Layers

Let me see your sunlight—
your prism empty of colour.
Give me no tanager,
nasturtium, or soft wet lip,
no toothed smile or page as host,
no bruise or wine,
or oak shade, or topography,
no dust-layered attic
or Neolithic fire.

I want no sunflower, no shy cheeks.
No colour. No earthen–curl lash,
brief earring, river-water eye,
freckle wisp—

nor any of the many shades
you turn as I learn to love you.