Excerpt from grenoside by Jessica Popeski
grenoside
i
grenoside recluse
foun dead
at iz muther an dad’z
up stephen lane
detached treacle-black brick
clematis climbin
potted pansiez
bruise-yellow an mauve
int back bedroom
newspapers piled
curtainz shut clam-snuff
andsewn sanderson cotton
out back, greno wood
bluebell droves ringin
bullfinches, chiffchaffs
an redstarts in hysterics
fourth oldest
second youngest
o five brutherz
ed seen george,
a joiner,
month before.
a king’z own yorkshire
light infantry lad
not a knob o coal
int fire
innards maggoted
by pancreatic cancer
ii
life an soul
e waz, our david
sat up to t table wi little unz
russets stewin ont
stove fo t crumble,
lemon curd an custard
tarts already in.
e ripped paper off
fag packets,
drew horsez trumpin
for our girlz an
firemen in gold button
uniformz fo t ladz
laughin, allus laughin
lot ov em.
e want same aftuh
bergen-belsen
emptyin those ovenz
o teeth, e said,
elbow-knuckles
sticks o bone
sheffield fellas first lot in,
social workerz smackin
ont front door
wi rosez round.
e went dead quiet
like e were allus there
like e nevuh come back
iii
auntie frances
allus walked
between er mum’z
st. mark’s
an ourz
past poppiez
clotted int sage green grass
up t ginnel
in a mustard balaclava
bout three or four wooly ats
wi pom-pomz
an az many coats
button-holes pullin
roastin red like
a maris piper
whatever t weather
afraid o catchin cold
wantin marmalade
butties makin
first o six sisterz
all but one spinsterz
from fellaz who wound up
downt trenches
an never made it back
—excerpt from grenoside reprinted with permission. Copyright Jessica Popeski, 2026.
Jessica Popeski
Jessica Popeski's grenoside turns back time, multiple generations, transporting the reader to war-torn Sheffield, the birthplace of stainless steel, a city flattened by The Blitz and other air raids, and where “headz were rollin down snig hill.” Written by a descendant of anti-Zionist, secular Ashkenazi Jews and World War II veterans, these poems ask loud questions about why, for decades, depression has decorated the medical notes of the author's family, as if the ink stayed wet, rubbing from one manila folder to the next. Written phonetically in Yorkshire dialect, grenoside explores the matrilineal inheritance of class-related song and oral identity, historically suppressed voices, womanness, madness, accent, dialect, and class.
Jessica Popeski is a dis/abled opera singer, professor, and internationally published, intersectional ecofeminist poet. Her work can be found in carte blanche, Room, Hart House Review, Riddle Fence, The Woven Tale Press, Grain, swamp pink, Best Canadian Poetry 2027, The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead, filling Station, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of multiple scholarships and awards, and was named one of Tkaronto’s “exceptional up and coming writers” by Open Book. She authored Oratorio and The Wrong Place with Anstruther Press, and the problem with having a body and grenoside with Gordon Hill Press. She was raised, for the most part, in Moscow, Russia, and Sheffield, England, by her mother and grandmother, and lives with her pitbull-poodle rescue, Maggie, on land which is covered by Treaty 13 and the Williams Treaties, the traditional territories of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples