Mouth Prayers by Luka Poljak

Vancouver poet Luka Poljak has made the2022CBC PoetryPrize shortlistfor Mouth Prayers.

He will receive $1,000 fromtheCanada Council for the Artsand his work has beenpublished onCBC Books.

The winner will be announced on Nov. 24. They will receive $6,000 from theCanada Council for the Arts, have their work published onCBC Booksand will attend a two-week writing residency at theBanff Centre for the Arts and Creativity.

Poljak is a Croatian Canadian poet currently in the BFA program at the University of British Columbia. He is a board member of the non-profit YouthCO and is currently working on his first chapbook of poetry.

Mouth Prayers was inspired by Florida's 'Don't Say Gay' bill, which passed in March 2022,Poljak told CBC Books.

I find it more important than ever to explore the queer identity in my work.- Luka Poljak

"I find it more important than ever to explore the queer identity in my work. As a young queer poet, I want my work to highlight the dichotomy of both the injustice and the incredible beauty of being a gay man in Canada in this day and age. Mouth Prayers is my attempt at that," he said.

You can read Mouth Prayersbelow.

WARNING: This poem contains strong language and is sexually explicit in nature.

I.

Leaking through this town is a road watch the little boys slip down its
curves like a tongue to a railroad track that goes rum drum rum
drum twigs choked between fingers laughing like chainsaws for
warmth rum drum drum rum drum drum and here the lights are
not working they are never working they flicker black-yellow
black-yellow wingless bees wailing in morse code and there's something foreign about our hands how the hands of the first boy I fucked in a bathroom purpled around a steering wheel going slingshot down the freeway how his body sandpapered the pavement baptized his insides in glass how the trees were screaming too like a wind that curls itself into a fist before coiling back like a punch and somewhere two boys sit under a kitchen lamp whispering about their own bodies like secrets

II.

Tonight I am a boy sitting on a bed with another boy our fingers twined like barbed-wire in prayer smiles worn under jaws like chokers to pleasure a pain when I split my legs I am begging the other boy to stretch me open fill me with the weight of my loss to lick the existence off my armpits like syrup peppered in sweat the metaxy formed between our tongues a silence the length of a double-ended dildo the meaning of stop when I tell him it hurts as if to sew the moonlight gushing in through the window from night's open wound he says pleasure is a key he'll open with lips unlock the crotch waiting to be licked which is to say he wanted to be in my room and by my room he meant my bed and by my bed he meant inside me and when he is I imagine a sky sprinkled in fireworks bursting like fruitpulp impregnating the sky in pink

III.

In our house my father tells me about the war that cauterized his country the chalk cliffs and fig trees and pink oceans of a land I will never visit the fingers his countrymen lost from a cold how it plucked them off like grapes says hands are sacred to be careful where they touch how he broke his own hand one morning beating me when I asked if men kiss other men and kicked me out of his house each word a pickaxe out out years later I will pass a brick sign that reads my being does not birth children and punch the wall break every bone in my fist that night I will dance to my brokenness while the sound of gunshots outside tempo my body I am a love story I carve flowers into my arm to feel beauty those bullethole nights I dream of sliding down the road that birthed me to a wood watch my toes lift up from snow to night's pimpled face pop stars from the sky rip through the black sheet above and tear my whole body through like paper to moon only to fall in love with a spacerock that can't love me back heartbroken I come back to earth to a man sitting on my bed drenched in dark his foot pressed on my face while he fucks me and the lights are not working they are never working and this is somehow okay and the man keeps saying it's okay it's okay it's okay and I whisper the man's breath back to him okay okay okay

Read the other finalists

• From the Mouthby Rachel Lachmansingh (Toronto)
• To the Astronaut Who Hopes Life on Another Planet Will Be More Bearableby Brad Aaron Modlin (Guelph, Ont.)
• Grief whiteby Kerry Ryan (Winnipeg)
• Spell World Backwardsby Bren Simmers (Charlottetown)

About the 2022CBC PoetryPrize

The winner of the 2022CBC PoetryPrizewill receive $6,000 from theCanada Council for the Arts, have their work published onCBC Booksand attend a two-week writing residency at theBanff Centre for the Arts and Creativity. Four finalists will each receive $1,000 from theCanada Council for the Artsand have their work published onCBC Books.

The 2023CBC Nonfiction Prizewill open in January. The 2023CBC Poetry Prizewill open in April.