Cowtown Elegy
This land is your land,
This land is my land,
From Bonavista to Vancouver Island,
From the Arctic Circle,
To the Great Lake waters,
This land was made for you and me…*
We’ve landed. Immigrants from the East.
The land is something we take over
In a second-hand station wagon we dubbed The Green Bomb
we glide into golden terrain
Wheat. Oats. Barley. Rape seed.
A marriage of a limitless blue sky and a flaxen sea
We discard our laksa and belachan into straw-burnt fields
ploughed among waves blonde with promise and profit
Speak only English! was my mother’s command.
So we don their ways, perform their polite grins
eat Wonder Bread sandwiches
mark Canada Day with a KFC bucket and neon green coleslaw
During the Stampede rodeo week, the cowboy gear wears us.
I’m contained by a pink cowboy hat, rigid and absurd
my look cemented by stiff western boots seeding blisters
funny, no one dresses ‘indian’
At the parade, amber moccasins pound the pavement.
Cree Piegan Ojibwa Sarcee Blackfoot Blood
drunk office workers clad as cowboys whoop it up, awakening to
toasty pancake rounds punctuated by red sizzling bacon
Mum comes home from her 9-to-5 reeking of beer and party sweat.
she flips on the radio and gyrates to the Doors,
Hallo I love you won’t you tell me your name?
at the time, I hear ‘dream’ not ‘name’
Barrel racing. Calf Roping. Bull Riding. Chuckwagon Races.
sometimes, horses had accidents and had to be put down
The show continues. Children shriek on the rollercoaster.
we are consoled by a massive firework display raining golden
A giant Pow Wow roars with dignitaries paying heed.
dancers stomp to thumping beats on buffalo hide
the esteemed guests, bestowed white hats, yell
Yahoo! presumptuous of their own goodwill
Drums and blood-curdling chanting slices raw bone.
interred by dirt fertile with toil and blood
producing harvest upon harvest
deep in the fundament, a life force smolders
Makasins walk softly upon the earth.
in search of dispersed sacred relics
Children are violently reaped from families
returning by unnatural and brutal means into the ground
We paid the price to work and play.
our souls subsumed by tainted soil
as the dead and their dreams join the darkness
This land was not made for you and me.
*Canadian version of the 1940 Woody Guthrie song, This Land is Your Land
JUNE CHUA
I used to read stories out loud to my little sister when we lived in Malaysia on the island of Borneo. Eventually, we moved to the Canadian prairies, first living in a trailer! My first years in Canada were filled with magic and mystery as well as cold, hard adaptations.
In 2015, I quit everything and left for Berlin, landing with three pieces of luggage and a box of shoes. I had no plan and few contacts. By then, I’d already spent two decades as a journalist, filmmaker, and communications consultant, having made award-winning documentaries and published numerous articles.
I now work as a writer/editor and help filmmakers and artists with their proposals, scripts, and descriptions, while cultivating my creative writing.
During COVID, I took writing workshops and busted out all kinds of stories and poems. Ode to the Dandelion, published by Berlin literary magazine pocolit.com, was a response to anti-Asian hate. It ignited a dormant roar in me that continues to roil to this day.
Then, Foreign Body, was included in 2024's 'Back Where I Came From' Anthology by Book*hug Press Toronto.In June 2025, my first poem was published, Curry – A Re-Storyation.
Also in 2025, my first short fiction story, Code Yellow, appeared in the print-only Tough Poets Review Issue 1. It was nominated for a PEN America prize. Since then, my poems have been featured in Yin Literary and Burningword Journal Issue 117.
I’m returning to myself these days, seeking ancestral echoes and exhuming the past to re-imagine the stories of lineage, the currents of history, and myself as a means of liberation.
This piece is part of the first prose and poem collection I’m developing, supported by a literary grant.
You can find me at: junechua.com (https://www.junechua.com/) & @re.juneration
