Christina Shah, if: prey, then: huntress

 

pinky laundry

their dirty custard ranks
present a row of grooved tongues crooked
for a six-quarter shakedown
with a thin rinse 

pregnant, trembling, spinning
boxing bloodied socks and jeans
punishing the textile transgressions
of poor days dodged 

into the side-gyre
mesh drum tumbling
but chaos rising in five-minute increments 

here, we’re our own hunchbacked bellmen
wheeling out low-slung carts
below entombed fluorescent bars
Charons ferrying terrycloth,
folding the rabbled souls.

I’m intrigued by this full-length debut by Vancouver poet Christina Shah, if: prey, then: huntress (Gibsons BC: Nightwood Editions, 2025), a poetry collection that “invites the reader to take a freight elevator ride into the guts of heavy industry,” and featuring back cover blurbs by Canadian poets Tom Wayman and Kate Braid, two of the originators of the 1970s Canadian “work poetry” ethos (amid those Kootenay School of Writing origins) that also included early work by poets Phil Hall and Erín Moure [see my longer note on some threads on “work poetry” as part of my recent review of Philadelphia poet Gina Myers’ Works & Days]. Shah’s lyrics provide a fascinating patter, one that utilizes the subject matter of labour across scenes of industrial sites and restaurant workers, composing what appear at first glance as first-person descriptive narratives, but one capable of nuanced twists and turns of sound and meaning. “dendrobranchiata,” begins the poem “prawn,” “you throw your roe out / like you remove a cava cage / spill the wine, let life flow / into its briny flute [.]” There’s almost a way her lyric is closer to the language model of poets such as ryan fitzpatrick or Peter Culley than Wayman or Braid, existing somewhere between those two points, offering labour as her building blocks but language as her poem’s propulsion. “here,” begins her poem “fear and probability,” “a woman’s soft body / is found only / in cubicle fabric nests // but I am a huntress / sparkles under steel toes / shuffling between petrochemical rainbows / into open bays / under heavy-lift ulnae / along the riverfront [.]” She offers her perspectives through and around labour, and around gender, a conversation less prevalent than it should be, even despite the high percentages of women working across various industries for decades. The language flourishes, provides flourish. While labour exists as her surrounding subject, much as Gina Myers, Shah sets her poems at the moment of actual, concrete and physical work, writing, as the short poem “ulnaris/radialis” begins: “egret, backhoe— / hand origami’s / carpal puppetry / prepares her for / the work of days / of women; [.]”

dear Rudyard

Well, the twain met—
not at the gates of Vienna
nor on a date at the Prater,
but in an artificial city
by Trudeaumanic accident. 

I learned to make killer Vanillekipferln—
blond almost dust and cultured butter,
gorgeous orchid’s wizened finger buried
in bright sand to dispense
migration’s black grains. 

I learned to consume my mezzaluna origins
in time for Midnight Mass—
marveled at the old man’s Sunday absences;
the porcine avoidance
of his distant past.

Through the poems that assemble into if: prey, then: huntress, the poems still seem to feel out their coherence into a larger structure, providing a looseness I’m curious to see evolve into whatever she attempts next. Ultimately, through if: prey, then: huntress, concerns and descriptions of labour are set as foundation, or as perpetual backdrop, but it is through the flourish of sound and rhythm that the poems sparkle, find their ultimate magic across the grounding of the concrete floor. As she writes as part of a statement, posted recently as part of the “Spotlight series”:

There’s a surprising amount of colour and sensory detail in some of these industrial environments– at least that’s what I try to highlight in my work. Buff yellow, UV-faded hunter green, and blazes of colour from the tugboats or safety gates and stairs. I like to explore the contrast between the built and the natural environment while enjoying the view and the people along the way– one of the perks of what can be complex and dangerous work.