An excerpt from Issue 305 (Autumn 2025)
— Vivek Sharma is a graduate of UBC’s MFA program. His poems have appeared in Arc Poetry Magazine, The Best Canadian Poetry 2026, The Capilano Review, The Malahat Review, Prairie Fire, and The Walrus. His chapbook, Between two valleys, a lake (Anstruther Press, 2025), is an exploration of displacement and return. He lives and writes on the unceded territory of the Syilx Okanagan peoples.
In Kelowna
by Vivek Sharma
Tell me, Siri, what’s the weather like in Kelowna?
I say it over and over, almost chantlike, in Kelowna.
Pour something for me, Saki: a drenching ale to douse
the slow-burning remains of an ember-life in Kelowna.
Kathmandu burns for a different reason. And some-
thing uncommon: a slow & dull hunger strike in Kelowna.
When the acid rain of yesteryears gushes in torrents,
all you can do is shrink — within, inside — in Kelowna.
It seems like yesterday we were at Knox, listening
to the forest’s soliloquy on a brief mountain hike in Kelowna.
On Doomsday we drove all the way to Osoyoos, away
from the fire’s eye. We left: shadows — ghostlike — in Kelowna.
It’s in my blood to fight, says John from next door.
Defy the flames, lionheart, and stand saintlike in Kelowna.
These days I often ask myself: what takes a person
to go unhinged, and also the how and the why, in Kelowna?
Watching this shitshow on TikTok, I’m transfixed:
the orange sacraments billowing — cloudlike — in Kelowna.
If this doesn’t make into your ghazal, I don’t know what does.
Tell Matt I’ve tried; to write & make a life in Kelowna.
Read this poem and others in Issue 305 (Autumn 2025). Order the issue now:
Order Issue 305 - Autumn 2025 (Canadian Addresses)
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