After We Undress Quietly in the Sun

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

Note: All words (except titles) from garbage collected at the swimming hole in Cape Broyle, NL.

We are a queer candy
in the underwater light.
The sugar sting of the crush.
The ionic thirst & against
all odds, the quencher.
Like the lesbionic hand of god
rang a bell, like time spilled
green again in our laps
& we turned to one another,
soft as we dared.
 
 



Excerpted from The Garbage Poems (Brick Books, 2025).

Audio: Anna Swanson reads “After We Undress Quietly In The Sun”

Photo Credit: Britt

Anna Swanson (she/her) is a queer writer and librarian. She is the author of The Garbage Poems (Brick Books, 2025), which won a 2026 Lambda Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Raymond Souster Award. Her first book, The Nights Also (Tightrope Books, 2010), won the Gerald Lampert Award and a Lambda Literary Award. Her writing has been widely published in journals and appears in anthologies including Best Canadian Poetry, On Occasion, Impact: Women Writing After Concussion, In Fine Form: The Canadian Book of Form Poetry, Watch Your Head: Writers and Artists Respond to the Climate Crisis, and Torah: A Women’s Commentary. She recently completed an MFA at the University of Guelph and lives in St. John’s on the island of Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland), where she works as a poetry editor for Riddle Fence Magazine. Her special interests include collective liberation and wild swimming in all seasons.

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"After We Undress Quietly in the Sun" by Anna…