APRIL 4: Tanya Bellehumeur-Allatt
Freelance
I’ve been weeding
all the weaponry
out of my words:
bring out the big guns
drop a bomb
shoot me now.
It’s insidious
how they’ve muscled
their way into my speech.
I’m up in arms.
You’re killing me.
Some might argue
words are mere syllable or sound.
Innocent. Innocuous.
But words are power.
I want them pure,
like maple syrup, honey.
Unadulterated.
Some words have a nefarious past.
Take “freelance” for example:
a medieval term
for mercenary soldiers
willing to sell
their lance
to the highest bidder.
The freedom appeals,
the violence doesn’t.
I’m triggered.
Remember
when I was twelve,
looking out my window
at American warships
in the port of Beirut
with their guns pointed
right at me.
Hit the target.
Bull’s eye.
Tanya Bellehumeur-Allatt is the author of the critically acclaimed Peacekeeper’s Daughter: A Middle East Memoir (Thistledown, 2021) and Chaos Theories of Goodness (Poetry, Shoreline Press, 2022). The Hospitality of Trees, a new poetry collection, was released by Shoreline Press in 2025. Tanya’s award-winning essays, poems and short stories have been published in numerous journals and anthologies including Grain, Prairie Fire, Malahat Review, The New Quarterly, and Best Canadian Essays 2015 and 2019. She holds an MA in English Literature from McGill and an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC. Tanya’s latest memoir, Carrying War, will be published by Dundurn Press in August 2026. https://tanyaallattbellehumeur.com/