what if I become my mother my grandmother her grandmother
Poetry | Art | Jessica Joy Hiemstra | Issue 47
Excerpt from Blood Root
halo of my mother’s hands easing water around my body I saw the open body of pheasant as a child eggs a string of pearls the universe housed in every dead body I was given a stolen story to understand who I am what if I become my mother my grandmother her grandmother * may God drown in the rage of mothers there’s no cure for white women I grew up by a river in Badela a creek in Bobcaygeon in nations looted by my ancestors my parents were missionaries so I loathe God I think God’s an asshole to tell you the truth I listen to snakes they aren’t the devil I’m not ashamed of my breasts I’m ashamed of the Dutch in Indonesia
* Anton de Kom’s mothers and fathers named bushes Parrot tongues, fiery love, hanging lamp P’pokaitongo, fayalobi, angalampu a firefly is fayaworon a deerfly lands on me I kill her without thinking I don’t want the truth to be limp I don’t march because it reminds me of church I’ve failed Breonna Taylor because I’m a coward I still think it’s about me while the world ends everything feels possible when a baby’s born even love, even a father’s love I want God in the diminutive * I miss praying, I confess sometimes I think I’m prayer I pray when I hold a child whisper to a turtle, neck exposed to crows prayer’s the bright darting of a red-winged blackbird I want God to be good my drawings are hymns for slow ghosts of turtles what’s holy is the whole body in light while I’m human to be human mothers all the way down
Jessica Joy Hiemstra is a visual artist, writer, and designer. Her writing has appeared in chapbooks, essay collections, journals, and in four full-length poetry collections that she also made art for. Her most recent collection, Blood Root (Icehouse, 2025), has sequences of stills from her animations of animals. In 2018, she won Toronto’s My Entertainment World’s Outstanding Set and Costume Design award for her work on Shannon Bramer’s The Hungriest Woman in the World. In 2021, she received second place in Brush and Lyre’s Palette Poetry prize for her multimedia entry, “Cormorant”, an animation of cormorants in flight over Lake Ontario/ Niigaani-gichigami. Some of these drawings appear in Blood Root. Jessica lives in Gunning Cove, Kespukwik, Mi’kma’ki.
Excerpt from Blood Root by Jessica Joy Hiemstra. Published with permission of Goose Lane Editions.
Blood Root by Jessica Hiemstra Goose Lane, icehouse poetry, 2025
Reflecting on a dual upbringing in two villages, Bobcaygeon (Canada/Turtle Island) and Badela (Sierra Leone), Jessica Hiemstra’s new collection of poems delves into her relationship with home. In Blood Root, she interrogates questions of legacy, land, belonging, and the breathtaking intimacy of death. One moment tender, the next moment dark, hard, and raw, Blood Root blends diary entries, drawings, and lyricism to hold up a polished mirror to colonialism and its echoing impact. Considering beauty and horror in equal reverence “so I’m not human once removed,” Hiemstra cuts through pretence, bearing witness to humans as they confront and connect to one another and the larger world.
From Sadiqa de Meijer on Bluesky:
Jessica Hiemstra's Blood Root is out in the world. A fierce and gorgeous book. As editor I admired how Jessica could take a breath and bravely answer to what a poem was asking for, even when that also meant a revision of the self. The result is breathtaking - I hope it finds all the readers.
The book's atmospheric and poetic illustrations, on the cover and throughout - breathers, landing places, transitions, transformations between text sections - are Jessica's own.
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