Terese Mason Pierre, Myth

 

Transfer

Much occurs in the glow behind my eyes.
With every blink, memory expires, guides me
to a new construction. In an ideal world,
my mouth works properly, my hands hold
my skin with love, the body between
my sheets is my own. In the conspiracy of
imagination, birds sound notes above
the coloured truth at high tide. My open chest
can house many stories about loss
and unrequired admiration. I feel every inch of it
like glass. No one mourns more than me.
No one hopes for change more than the sun,
the daughter, the carrier of light through
a lake filled with what looks like water.

I know there have been many eager to see what Toronto writer and editor Terese Mason Pierre could do through a collection beyond a chapbook, so it is good to see the release of her full-length debut, Myth (Toronto ON: Anansi, 2025), a collection of physical and precise poems on and around stories, storytelling and how stories take hold. These are poems as foundational as the earth or the ocean, offering sharp and astute first-person observational, declarative and descriptive lyrics. “My grandfather says we can eat what we kill.” she begins, immediately setting the tone with the opening line of the opening poem, “Fishing,” “We wade into the water and find a shark.” Terese Mason Pierre’s poems tells stories, including those that hint of their implications, meanings and true purposes. She wants you to listen to what these stories are saying. As this particular piece continues: “In the bleeding night, we carry it home, across / the mountain. The way your feet land before // mine, I memorize. I copy your plan for leading / me out of this spectacular cycle—fold it in and over // ourselves until our parents finally call for / the doctor. Our love has never allowed // itself to be gutted.”

Set in five section-clusters of shorter lyrics—“Expanse (the sea),” “Interlude (the deep),” “Brink (the earth),” “Interlude (the cosmos)” and “Swell (the stars)”—she interplays the elements with the cosmos with a call-and-response, the “interlude” of the Greek chorus, providing asides to the main narrative as part of this main narrative. “I’ve done it because it was what I wanted. / My neighbour’s garden grows mangoes beyond / a rotted fence,” she writes, to open the poem “Rich,” “and I stole one as it they’d require / a descendant if caught. But this trope is old. / This means nothing.”

In the end, myths are the stories we tell ourselves and each other, the stories that warn, catch and inform, stories that can propel us forward, hold us back, distract our attention or inform our world-view, including times when all of the above occur simultaneously. “My mother tried to tell me I was broken,” begins “Dead Living Things,” “and I shut her away. Who died and made her oracle? / Where my mouth falters, my skin reserves.” Oh my, this is good. Myth is a striking and deeply complex debut.