Misha Solomon
$6
Southern Two-Toed Slothpublished in Ottawa by above/ground press
Everyone represents the self’s less attractive
features with words that seek to distract, to deflect,
to scapegoat. You may think me slow, they try to say,
or lazy, but I’m so much better than the sign
to which this sinful word now points. And here I am,
and yes I’m slow, but the effort that it takes me
to go about my selfsame days is of a scale,
a magnitude, that far exceeds the limits placed
by semantics. There is no animal called lust,
called pride, called wrath, called greed. And if there were a beast
called gluttony, I’d envy them their liberty.
Nature rewards profligacy, in the short term.
I know not what it rewards in the long—my pace
implies perdurance, but I live no more for it.
April 2026
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
This title is literally a response to Montreal poet Stephanie Bolster's chapbook BIODÔME (above/ground press 2006). A twentieth anniversary edition of BIODÔME, with a new introduction by Misha Solomon (above/ground press), appeared earlier this week.
cover credit: Naomie Hadida
Misha Solomon is a homosexual poet in and of Tiohtià:ke/Montréal. His work has twice appeared in Best Canadian Poetry and in journals across Canada. He is a student in Concordia’s Interdisciplinary PhD program. His debut full-length collection, My Great-Grandfather Danced Ballet, appeared with Brick Books in March 2026. Misha Solomon’s Biodôme: A Bestiary after Stephanie Bolster is his third chapbook.
This is Solomon’s second above/ground press title, after FLORALS (2020).
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