ONE ART’s Top 10 Most-Read Poets of September 2025
Tag: Leanne Shirtliffe
Suburban Psalm by Leanne Shirtliffe
Suburban Psalm
I walk through the valley of suburbia
seeking no more evil. Two women,
stooped with back cracks over sidewalks,
collect the daily litter of others. Two
streets over, a multitude of child-painted
birdhouses sway from fledgling elms
planted in a boulevard, invisible to all
save nesting birds and slow walkers.
There’s a dream to carry
where we see goodness and mercy
comfort us through a single day. Look!
He braked so a car could merge. She
shovelled her neighbour’s walk. A stranger
stopped to say, “Your scarf is so beautiful.”
*
Born and raised in rural Manitoba, Leanne Shirtliffe is a writer and educator now based in Calgary, Alberta. Some of Leanne’s recent poetry appears in The Kenyon Review, The Baltimore Review, and Funicular. She writes the Substack, Chasing Wonder.
Killdeer Migration by Leanne Shirtliffe
Killdeer Migration
There is no time for dancing when you grow up the middle son
of five in a farmhouse filled with somebody-else-might-get-this.
Maybe that’s why he loved killdeer. Maybe that’s why
he performed his own scrape ceremony three-quarters
of a mile from the original nest, shoring up the river-backed
yard so it would weather future floods. Maybe that’s why
he performed his own broken-wing dance, luring
a rabid skunk away from the wedding tent before
nailing it with a single shot the day his youngest married.
Born in ground nests, killdeer chicks learn to run quickly
to increase their chance of survival. Maybe that’s why
I left.
*
Leanne Shirtliffe is a writer who teaches literature and creative writing in Calgary, Alberta. She is at work on a poetry collection at the intersection of farming, feminism, and family. Her latest work appears in Stanchion.
Twitter: @LShirtliffe
Instagram: @Leanne_Shirtliffe