David Leo Sirois was born in Edmundston, New Brunswick, Canada, & grew up across the border in Madawaska, Maine.
Poems have appeared in Those That This, THE BASTILLE, Belleville Park Pages, Two Words For, Paris Lit Up, & Terre à Ciel (which also published his translations of Paul Valéry, Adéline Baldacchino, & Déborah Heissler. Altogether, he has published over 70 pieces, including his work in The Keystone Anthology (Guildford, England), the anthology Vignettes & Postcards from Paris, & in the U.S., The Opiate, the anthology Becoming Fire: Spiritual Writing from Rising Generations, as well as Silo, Poesy, & more. He is currently submitting a chapbook, Silver Shiver Fragment, for publication, & finishing a full-length manuscript, The Flavor of Water.
Over the face of naked waters
a nameless breath was blowing
In wide wind
white seeds of weakness & weightless
days of realization
whirled in one confused flurry
A subtle hand separated-
light from dark
dark from salted sky & turned to lift
solid water above
from undulating dark
seas beneath
On the second day
a sphere of raw fire
was carried up
into blank dark
to make day & a round stone mirror
rose into
the opposing sky
in a shower of sparks
to make night
Our globes green skin
split into countless
shoots of wet grass & the bark of trees burst
into soft green flames
Blizzards of birds
brought fresh brilliance
to foliage & seven oceans flooded
with flashing blue life
of countless fish
At the next dawn
dark infant soil
learned new red languages-pulse of horses & bulls
Massive shadows of
elephants & rams
spilled into wilderness-wildness of rain-wind
On the following day
plots of dull clay
were shaped into
articulate human fingers
Between blood & blood
skin & skin
man & woman-the two took shape
Held in delicate hands
of sentient trees
one unique
in rich scarlet fruit
pregnant with secrets & seeds that carried
rumors of death
Amidst wrinkled branches
a serpent made
of the yellow muscle of want
wound insidious whispers
You will know
yourselves& fathom the sky
if you bite a blood-colored fruit
Each stretched a fleshy hand
toward one apple
that was their own
crimson consciousness
Man & woman shared
that dark-starred fruit
until their lips bled with vision
Taste of sunset
inside the sky
Naked
they ate
red within the red
as the first leaf wrinkled & blindly fell
