The Thieves Have Gone
by Christopher (Kit) Kelen
Left less than traces. Bestowed a quality of absence, …
by Christopher (Kit) Kelen
Left less than traces. Bestowed a quality of absence,
invisible like fingerprints. 'Justice is an art of theft,'
Plato's Homer says. It took us time to know they'd been.
So many toys in the cupboard! It's negative theology.
You sense something, go on until you know they've gone
through the whole house. One can only imagine the frenzy
of greed. Is there even adrenalin? Police say that they
took their time. You're still really not sure what's missing.
Have to make a claim. The company knows that you'll
go on discovering things not there for years. And
not discovering. Some things you'll never know were
gone. This means that you had already moved on.
It's like that with the model aeroplanes mother threw out
because they gathered dust, then grit. How long until grief
came to them – and how long did that last? For years
the echo goes on this way – a death far off in the family.
Makes you wonder how it is to be raped, think what torture
is to survive. How little our losses we first-world-most
to whom more always comes. This little theft that stays
with you makes precious what you have. It's all so long
ago now, what's gone so inessential. Still you see them
gloating on, enjoying always what was yours. Makes you
think what it is to lose a country, to be banished, to escape
just with your skin. Now elsewhere of yourself, you must
make another meaning. Will you find welcome? You
don't forget. Every theft is with us. We are the past piled
up. You wonder about the country located right now
underfoot. It's personal, the passage of time, like
the colour of your language. You find yourself looking
sometimes suspiciously in the street. Is that someone
stranger playing old records? Does he/she wear my ring?
We know to be better than that however. First curse
forgiveness reconsiders. Can parties unknown be redeemed?
Anyway, the old theft's not so different from your own
packing up to go. What you've lost is just as you. It's only
the remembered missed. We're privileged with a choice in
such matters as – why come, why part, whether to return.
You see yourself sitting in the empty room, time vanished
here because you took it. Not far off the mystery's solved.
So all along and after all at least you were a thief too.
Christopher (Kit) Kelen is a well known Australian poet and painter and Professor of English at the University of Macau, in south China, where he has taught Creative Writing and Literature for the last seventeen years. The most recent of Kelen’s fourteen poetry books are Scavengers’ Season and A Pocket Kit. Translated volumes of Kelen’s poetry have been published in French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish, Chinese, Filipino and Indonesian.
Esos Huesos (Them Bones)
by Lawrence Kessenich
He would play differently beating on a hip than he would …
by Lawrence Kessenich
Horatio “El Negro” Hernandez, growing up in Havana,
would cadge old x-rays from hospitals and use them to
replace broken drum heads.
- The Boston Globe
He would play differently beating on a hip than he would
on a knee, the former deep and visceral, the latter light
and flexible. Ribs would bring to mind his grandfather
who’d broken six in a bar room brawl at seventy. When
rib x-rays began to crack beneath his pounding, he’d feel
the old man’s pain. His sticks would run up and down
the length of foot bones—on those nights his playing would
devolve into a marathon where all he could do was put
one stick in front of the other until the club closed down.
Shoulder blades would make his drum sound like castanets,
fingers like the clatter of bamboo chimes. Skulls brought out
the best in him, made him play with intelligence and style
that complemented the balls of fire that were his hands.
On other nights he responded to the names on the x-rays.
Silvana Fernandez’s long, slim femur infused his playing
with passion. Romario Diaz’s dislocated shoulder
made his gestures loose and rubbery. The shattered skull
of Ernesto Lopez led him on wild, uncontrollable solos.
Later, when he was famous and could afford real drumheads
he missed the hundreds of companions who had accompanied
him to dim, dirty clubs, lent their bones to his music, felt
the rhythms of his heart’s soft tissue down to the marrow.
Lawrence Kessenich won the 2010 Strokestown International Poetry Prize. His poetry has been published in Sewanee Review, Atlanta Review, Poetry Ireland Review and elsewhere. He has a chapbook, Strange News, and two full-length poetry books, Before Whose Glory and Age of Wonders. Three of his poems were nominated for Pushcart Prizes and three read on Writer’s Almanac. Kessenich has also published essays, short plays, short stories and a novel, Cinnamon Girl. His website is www.lawrence-writer.com.
Blue Curtains
by Anthony Lawrence
The laundry curtains were pinned …
by Anthony Lawrence
The laundry curtains were pinned
together where the neckline
on a woman's blouse might be,
so that when my grandmother
stood behind them, her head
like hurried portraiture above
the pleated folds, or before them,
poised with a spilling armload
of clothes, I could never be sure
if she were, as it were, on the other
side, or had passed on through,
her blue shirt joined with a large
silver pin, but I was young, small
for my age and, if what my mother
says about my recollections
from the time are true, often
impressionable, and could reinvent
or painstakingly reinstall a scene
from the ground up, brokering
details I had witnessed with things
I'd imagined, which, as I was soon
to learn, is all you need to know
about the art of transformation,
so dialling in the season and year,
I can see my grandmother
behind blue curtains, or about
to part them, and in one variation
she turns, pegs in her mouth,
then runs back into the house
to where my grandfather, while
climbing back into bed, had
called her name out of surprise
or fright, as he had fallen.
Anthony Lawrence’s most recent book is Headwaters (Pitt Street Poetry, 2016). His books and individual poems have won many of Australia’s major awards. He is a Senior lecturer at Griffith University, Gold Coast, where he teaches Creative Writing and Writing Poetry.
Walk Along the Berlin Wall
by Aimee Mackovic
In Berlin once there was a brick wall …
by Aimee Mackovic
In Berlin once there was a brick wall
carving the city in two, a knife
through the heart of a country, the heart
of its people, the heart of a world.
From 1961-1989, a thick wall of bricks
said more than any fevered king ever had, crying
you can't go there, quit your snivelling crying
or else. Barbed wire adorned the top of the wall
keeping everyone on their side of the bricks.
Over 5,000 attempted escape, nothing but a knife
and the sweaty clothes on their back. The world
consumed the over 100 who died. It is said a heart
can physically break from pain. How many hearts
were lost? How many died before death, left crying?
How many lovers who had made a world
of themselves were left with empty hands? The wall
was 77 miles of no, towers with guns and knives
at the ready. To many, the wall was not brick.
It was the layering of a philosophy, like stacked bricks,
It was the deliberate calcification of one's heart
for the “greater good,” a new Germany, the gentle knifing
of a collective spirit, a will that brushed off crying
and laughter, those pesky mosquitoes, on one side of the wall.
The sun blazed and baked down upon two different worlds
for thirty years. In 1987, David Bowie showed the world
its own ugly self at a concert in West Berlin - the bricks
still intact. We can be heroes, he sings, to those over the wall
in East Berlin, to a pulsing, bleeding mob of hearts
who just want to be free, an end to the dulled crying
in their hollow bones. The music was a blistering, thick knife
to the gut. The German word for knife
is das Messer. Yes, we all made a mess of the world.
But, sometimes, the naked act of crying
can cleanse. Sometimes not. Some moments, like bricks,
stiffen in the brain. Some people never master their hearts.
Today, beautiful art covers one side of the fragmented wall.
In the end, knives couldn't keep love from destroying the wall.
A country cried and dripped happy tears onto smashed bricks.
A world bled together, pumping yes through its patched, moaning heart.
Aimee Mackovic is a professor of English and poet living in Austin, TX. Her first full-length poetry collection, Love Junky, will be available as of November 2017 from Lit City Press in Austin, TX. Her two chapbooks, Potpourri and Dearly Beloved: the Prince poems, can be ordered at aimeemackovic.com.
The Ways
by Marjorie Main
When you wake, and again when you get home, walk out …
by Marjorie Main
When you wake, and again when you get home, walk out
into the cold and go round the farm.
Just walk. Think nothing, but know your breath
is bringing in the outside.
It begins as an adventure, to be alone.
The wind coming in from Antarctica
is company enough of an evening,
cutting cold across the paddocks.
But somehow, it stirs you up
as the old gumtrees flinch and creak,
their damp leaves winnowing free;
seized, just as you are, by something.
Go stand on the stone helmet of a hill
or in the plunging midst of a paddock of grass.
Stand in wait for an idea of yourself
that seems as if it might grow steadfast.
Keep turning to take in the horizon as it slips
away and think again about what lies
beyond vision, past the ways you know
of how trees bend and wind moves across the waves.
Do this as if in preparation, for you know not what
will come afterwards. Follow along the ways
where you’ve walked before,
going into what you have come out of, again.
Marjorie Main was born in 1994 and grew up in Torbay, Australia. She currently lives in Melbourne, where she is completing her Honours at the University of Melbourne and putting together a poetry manuscript.
You Have to Love Them Enough to Let Them Be Wild
by Kathleen McCracken
That’s what Steve said …
by Kathleen McCracken
That’s what Steve said
about the mustangs
up on Pryor Mountain –
no sugar cubes, no carrots
no coaxing, stroking, gentling
no whispering
no ropes, no tires, no pick up trucks
no dust storm swing low choppers
no Judas horse
no gathering, no holding pens
no PZP, no freeze brand
no breaking in, no putting down
no auction block, no slaughterhouse
no flank strap, no fast track
no stockyard, no consignment
no snaffles, bridles, saddles, spurs
no blankets, shoes, or blinders
no rodeo, no latigo, no cincha
no clipping, combing, currying
no conchos, braids or bells
no ranches, no reata
no binder twine for breech births
no ligatures, no doctoring
of tears & rends & bites
no vaccination, no inoculation
no sterilization
no intervention
just bales & bales
of air
seep water, galleta grass
the animal vegetable mineral
earth
exacting, punishing, available
Kathleen McCracken is the author of eight collections of poetry including Blue Light, Bay and College (Penumbra Press, 1991), which was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for Poetry, A Geography of Souls (Thistledown Press, 2002), Mooncalves (Exile Editions, 2007) and Tattoo Land (Exile Editions, 2009). Most recently, a bilingual English/Portuguese edition of her poetry entitled Double Self Portrait with Mirror: New and Selected Poems, was published by the Brazilian press, Editora Ex Machina.
Photo credit: John T. Davis
Odile, The Black Swan
by Una McDonnell
Impossible to look at her without thinking dark water, depths …
by Una McDonnell
Impossible to look at her without thinking dark water, depths
where light doesn’t reach. In the diner on Dalhousie,
her presence commands the booth, though only the decrepit
at the counter sees the water rising, water-
line gurgling just beneath her chin. Flutter
of a dark wing that briefly stretches. Sally, a regular, orders
coffee between johns, eggs at 4 a.m. They arrive, sunny side
silicon perfect. Minivans line up to glean sorrow
from her eyes. If only I could dance, says Sally. When the sky
turns pink, she’ll sleep. Odile once had an act involving lit black
candles and a snake. Smoke she could conjure on demand.
Rose on stage, an angel from the black lake.
They all desired her, but one. Before Champagne Rooms,
loose laws, when looking was enough—
She holds her mug as if it could contain her.
The transistor radio tin-tin-tins demented heart songs
tie a yellow ribbon … and getting caught
in the rain… and I’ll never have that recipe again…
Pale-skinned fries rise like broken limbs from plates, tendrils of vinegar
seep down. The scent is grease, acid, hot breath and chrome.
There are no new ways to be alone. There are no new ways to mourn.
Una McDonnell has recited her work at readings and music festivals, and on one occasion, in a boxing ring (Jill Battson’s Fighting Words Series). She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC. Her work has appeared in Arc, The New Quarterly, Ottawater, Prairie Fire, Rampike, and Musings: An Anthology of Greek-Canadian Literature, and has been on the longlist for Prism International’s Pacific Spirit Poetry Prize, and twice for the CBC Literary Awards.
Photo credit: David Irvine
On the Other Side Of An Hour
by Amber McMillan
Let’s say you had known then what you know now: …
by Amber McMillan
Let’s say you had known then what you know now:
on that morning you came to visit your friend at home,
even when you knocked on his door, let’s say you’d known
when you entered his room that he would already be gone:
let’s say you held a mess of wildflowers in your arms;
you had brought the blooms to improve the atmosphere,
to lay them along his quiet body and in so doing draw
communion to him and the slow opening of stained petals
spread along his forearm and stretching to his bare shoulder
where you imagined he would have placed them himself.
Let’s say instead of losing, or held at bay as you were,
you had traced the loose map he kept guarded in his mind,
a private reckoning that laced, like stars, a to b to c—let’s say
you had seen it all so clearly it was as if you understood:
the end, the beginning, love, the cockeyed cedar tree.
Amber McMillan is the author of The Woods: A Year on Protection Island (2016) and the poetry collection We Can’t Ever Do This Again (2015). Her work has appeared in Arc Poetry Magazine, PRISM international, Best Canadian Poetry, The Walrus and others across North America. She lives and works on BC’s Sunshine Coast.
Sewing
by Bruce Meyer
Each darting plunge …
by Bruce Meyer
Each darting plunge
like fortune’s wheel –
the bobbin spinning
to her toe’s touch,
her tongue locked
between front teeth –
such concentration
held our lives in check;
or when she’d baste
my sister’s puff sleeve
or hung nautical drapes
to keep nightmares out,
she’d snip a length
as if to cut a cord,
then pull a seam
to test its strength
on a wear-worn dart.
Piece by patient piece,
she fashioned our lives,
a Singer, her delicate art,
racing to beat the light,
dancing on heads of pins,
repeating patterns of memory,
until line held tight.
Bruce Meyer is author of more than 60 books of poetry, short fiction, non-fiction, and literary journalism. He won the Gwendolyn MacEwen Prizes in 2015 and 2016. His most recent books of poetry are the award-winning The Seasons, The Arrow of Time, and 1967: Centennial Year.
Snow Crabs
by Bruce Meyer
The crabs are there, melting into …
by Bruce Meyer
The crabs are there, melting into
their familiar habitat, fallen on
zoology’s harder times, patient
yet pure as the driven snow.
They are seldom seen by anyone
because no one ever speaks of them.
They are fauna’s seedless Clementines
before the word for orange was said.
Like memory of what has no name,
they bear the invisible weight of time.
They eat the silence of a hidden life.
Like a zodiac sign after daybreak,
or the silent truth below ocean storms,
they love in white and delicate bodies
masked from everything but a name
and multiply throughout the winter,
learning to sting in a veil of ice.
They count among the raw spring stars.
They pince the sun until it melts them.
A lone streetlamp cranes its neck
to count the diamonds of their eyes
Bruce Meyer is author of more than 60 books of poetry, short fiction, non-fiction, and literary journalism. He won the Gwendolyn MacEwen Prizes in 2015 and 2016. His most recent books of poetry are the award-winning The Seasons, The Arrow of Time, and 1967: Centennial Year.
Aubade
by Mary B. Moore
Karl foregoes jogging today, burps …
by Mary B. Moore
Karl foregoes jogging today, burps
the coffee carafe for one more slug
of umber pluck, and brief-cases, lunch-bags
it out the door, into the Sacramento sun,
the understoried sycamore and elm,
the hydrangea-blue skies. He pauses in the Subaru.
Wishes catch up with him, wannabes.
He’s ariaed a few, poemed some.
Two cardinals red-shoe the bare oak limb,
red song, red wing. A phoebe tuxedoes the eave.
What they be, they do. Karl hums
the tenor part from Aida,
seconds the first tenor, keys
the ignition, sings and is singing.
Mary B. Moore’s second full-length collection, Flicker, won the Dogfish Head Award (judges, Carol Frost, Baron Wormser, and Jan Beatty), and the chapbook Eating the Light, won the Sable Books’ Award (judge, Allison Joseph): both appeared in 2016. Cleveland State published The Book of Snow (1998). Georgia Review, Poem/Memoir/Story, Cider Press Review, Drunken Boat, Birmingham Poetry Review published recent poems. She won Second in the 2017 Pablo Neruda Poetry Contest’s Second Place Award.
The Story of Us
by Anna Murchison
As is the custom with starting new things, I am doing this not well but with the intention of …
by Anna Murchison
As is the custom with starting new things, I am doing this not well but with the intention of
improving. This you & me, which we may as well call us – this face to face & heart & lung(s) &
other vital organs we’ll be needing for this trip, most impressively in your case brain (& please
do notice how I flatter you here because it may be some time before I do that again) – as
terrifying as that sounds, & is, & will be, feels to me to be nudging like a fat tender grub towards
something not uncomfortable, towards not gross, inching its way into the fragile world of light &
air & utter transience. It is a feeling not standard.
I am a pretentious little thing, including & especially in relation to matters of the aforementioned vital organs – i.e. heart, lung(s), brain – & I feel the kidneys, too, deserve mention here, given their job of filtering out all the crap. I imagine there will be plenty of that ahead of us on account of us both being human n all, ergo, fully weird.
Or is it the liver? & what the hell is a pancreas? Perhaps if I had listened more instead of undressing
with my eyes the man I will simply refer to as Mr Biology (albeit my execution was
meticulous). Cellularly speaking, he remains not insignificant – which is more than can be said
for the box of frogs he had us dissect & spear (in not that order). There’s nothing quite like that
timeless combination of amphibian death & bad aftershave to stir the primal lustings of a
thirteen-year-old. I am sorry in advance for all the crap your organs will be required to deal
with. & I will just add here in my defence that failing science is a long-standing family tradition
(with the exception of Phil the doctor who we mostly don’t talk about, hence the parenthesis).
Anyway, this is me saying hopelessly hopelessly but with what I hope you will assess to be a
commendable level of enthusiasm that I am more than moderately impressed with the start we
have made, despite my opening gambit & notwithstanding our various inadequacies,
idiosyncrasies & other nouns which makes us sound more complete than we currently are. The
thing is, I think that together, in time, we might become so – that in time you might teach me
important things such as how to use words like ‘antecedent’ & ‘diaspora’ for reasons other than
fashion or fear, & that I might teach you things, mostly smiling-related, such as how to smile at a
leaf & at not winning the lottery & at good things happening to bad people such as bad people
winning the lottery, & that together we will grow worthy. & armed with this shared knowledge,
this shared worth, we will go forth & make a story which we will breathe into the eversphere so
those passed into energy may admire us for our valour & our pluck, & blow: Well done.
Isn’t it funny how verbs are called doing words & adjectives are called describing words etc.
when presumably all words are just trying to be themselves? Perhaps we should just let them be
– or at the very least stop typecasting them.
I also apologise for my insistence on believing that my casual (mis)use of language in some
intangible but charmingly hipster way heightens my appeal. I hope to soon grow out of this. For
now, I will sing along the exceedingly long floorboarded hallway of our soon-to-be house & at a
certain point, just here, I will stop. to listen. to the story of us. Are there children? Are there
cakes with candles? Is there loss? Are all the usual too strange too wonderful things of life
present?
Anna Murchison hails from Tasmania, a wild, anarchically situated island (see: bottom of the world) inspiring a rich literary tradition. Anna started writing poetry as a means of not losing her mind while working on her first novel. People tell her this has proved only partly successful. Anna finds herself responding to the prevailing noise of narcissism and self-interest by thematically deep-rooting her work in the messy subsoil of life while stubbornly seeking its light.
Stranded Conch, Alabama Coast
by Peter Norman
Not quite beached but perched …
by Peter Norman
Not quite beached but perched
on a sandbar yards from shore;
water only inches deep
bares the conch to air
and cormorant and gull.
Tipped by surf it lolls,
flesh-side up, shell in sand,
and writhes to right itself,
its meat the dense, freckled
pink of a piglet’s tongue.
A blot resembling mussel-shell disrupts
the pink—operculum, I’ll learn:
a door the conch shuts fast
when it retreats and seals itself
inside its fabled home.
We two in swimsuits huddle, gape
and prod—until a snort
from the shell’s long siphon states
the creature’s urgency to self-propel
to deeper water. So I push it free.
We stand. Backs ache
from stooping, shoulders from the sun.
Country music booms onshore:
a man acquired a woman, built a home—
or lost those things. I’m never sure.
We wade back to the land.
We carry buckets of the shells
we’ve picked up—polished, vacant, bright.
The living conch has veiled itself in sand
and sealed its doorway tight.
Peter Norman has published three poetry collections, most recently The Gun That Starts the Race (2015), and a novel, Emberton (2014). He lives in Toronto. Read more at peternorman.ca.
Syzygy (Scrabble with Ivy)
by Felicity Plunkett
Edge, swerve, disturb, you’re all ….
by Felicity Plunkett
Edge, swerve, disturb, you’re all
verb: pressed to you, wilfully
irresistibly, like ivy, sighingly, I climb like
an adverb unattached, insouciant, this high
wire, thighs and strive, brine and hive, like
glide and tine: riskily, out along the wire
wildly shuffling the letters I have to find
my lines, a sign: my evergreen, my ground-
creeping, my hedera rhombea, my
araliaceae, my nouns, my verbs, my rising
to scale these outcrops, my um-
bel, my unlobed adult leaves, my
fertile flowering stems, my
marginal list of small words to hold
the edges of other words, fold
into yours like buds or lovers, and my
you are fine, high-scoring, blithe, you
spell out my secret names (bind-
wood, lovestone), syllables
no one uses except to access this
bingo, palmately, this lucky hand, this
random allocation, all squiffy squeeze, as I sigh
against artery and inferior rib in the crush
of these tiles and us, defying windfall damage, my
greens deepen, words like birds arrive
to disperse seeds like leaves, until my –
like a happy hand of letters, like
za or qi – and quixotry – this syzygy.
Felicity Plunkett’s is the author of Vanishing Point (UQP, 2009), Seastrands (Vagabond, 2011) and the editor of Thirty Australian Poets (UQP, 2011). Her new collection is forthcoming with Pitt St Poetry. She is an Australian poet, critic and editor, and Poetry Editor with University of Queensland Press.
Caesura
by Erin Rodini
I remember hearing about them, the babies …
by Erin Rodini
I remember hearing about them, the babies my Grandma never had,
and though I’d never held such a seed in my body, I felt the want
of them. Five children with ghost-spaces between. She believed
unbaptized souls went to Limbo, which to me meant low,
so I saw them spread like mica in the soil beneath her roses,
and in the gauze of grasshoppers that rose with every step
through summer grass. On my Grandma’s ranch, I watched
a barn cat lick her living kittens clean, leaving some still
sacked. Little grapes, their mother’s warmth unreplaced by their own.
When I bled, I locked the bathroom door. Later, I pressed a still-
frame of my only ultrasound inside my Grandma’s copy
of The Secret Garden. Little unblossom, little mausoleum.
I’m not religious anymore, but I grew up with God,
the grandfatherly one who knew I was bad sometimes,
but loved me anyway, and I could always talk to. It’s a hard habit
to break in the cathedral of my sleeping daughters, that consecrated dark
gauzed in white-noise, a halo of nightlight. My prayers are always
some variation of Don’t you dare, and Please. Somehow, I know he was a boy.
The middle brother. So little now, so nothing. My daughters don’t know
the word God. They know earth and death and rain. They’ve watched
that silent sleight of hand replace a caterpillar with an iridescent bud
of wings. They’ve seen me clutch a spider between paper and a plastic cup,
only to crush a mosquito against their bedroom wall, its body smeared
with our family’s mingled blood. They are learning to be merciful
doesn’t mean to be good, only powerful enough to choose.
After our cat died my oldest kept asking Where is she? I know she’s dead
but where is she? First, I spun a heaven-place, then I changed my mind,
stood her barefoot in the garden and said Here, look down.
The dirt is full of root and bone. Oh, my darlings we are so small.
Lie down, back to summer grass. Feel how we are always falling
into that star-spread black expanse. And feel too
the way the earth holds us and we are held.
Erin Rodoni is the author of Body, in Good Light (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2017) and A Landscape for Loss (NFSPS Press, 2017), which won the 2016 Stevens Award sponsored by the National Federation of State Poetry Societies. Her poems have been included in Best New Poets 2014, nominated for Pushcart Prizes, and honored with awards from AWP and Ninth Letter. She lives in the San Rafael, CA, with her husband and two young daughters.
Ode to My Period
by Kate Rogers
My “great aunt” rarely visits …
by Kate Rogers
In Cantonese women tell each other
“Yi ma lai doh”: My great aunt has come to visit.
My “great aunt” rarely visits
now but she found me in Sichuan
half way up the slope of Er Mei Shan.[i]
I was on the way to the peak
with four other women when great aunt beckoned
the monkey to leap from his leaf nest
in the mountain camphor tree onto
my pack full of apples. The monkey bared his fangs
when we shouted and waved our arms.
He lifted the pack flap and reached in for two pieces of
fruit. Then later, the raven that sauntered into
the women’s toilet in the monastery garden
didn’t fly away when I squatted over the stone hole,
plucked my used pad from the bin. He ambled
outside, scattered scarlet petals
of its blown blossom on the breeze.
Great aunt has retired since that climb,
but sends notes in the beak of
a dark bird. The stain of her sunset returns
after an afternoon of love.
[i] Buddhist holy mountain in Sichuan province.
Kate Rogers’ poetry collection Out of Place debuted in Toronto July 2017. Her poetry is forthcoming in the anthologies, Catherines the Great (Oolichan), and Twin Cities Cinema (Hong Kong-Singapore) and has appeared in The Gaurdian, Eastlit, Asia Literary Review, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Morel, The Goose: A Journal of Arts, Environment and Culture (Wilfred Laurier University), Kyoto Journal, ASIATIC: the Journal of the International Islamic University of Malaysia and Contemporary Verse II.
The Carnivores
by Linda Rogers
say grace and photograph …
by Linda Rogers
say grace and photograph
the animals on their plates:
pink lamb and rare beef,
radioactive Fukushima fish,
so underdone they might get
up and walk or swim away.
Thanks and Amen.
While we name our martyrs, War
Children stopped in their tracks,
their flight patterns
are outlined in chalk
on streets where blood
flowers push through
pavement cracks, bomb
craters, sinkholes and
holes in the ocean,
their souls transposed
to yearning hybrids, algae
blooming and poppies
growing in killing fields
from Flanders to Damascus
to Sierra Leone, flesh so
underdone we might be
forgiven for thinking
prayer or shock therapy
might get them moving again.
Linda Rogers, a Victoria Poet Laureate and Canadian People’s Poet, mother of four, married to mandolinist Rick van Krugel, writes fiction, song lyrics and literary and social criticism. Her most recent novel is Bozuk, a Turkish memoir from Exile Editions. Forthcoming is Repairing the Hive, the final book in her Empress Trilogy and Crow Jazz, a short story collection from Mother Tongue.
25 November 2016
by Margarita Serafimova
It is morning, you look past me to the windows, …
by Margarita Serafimova
It is morning, you look past me to the windows,
and your eyes fill with light,
your eyelashes are jewels, reflections of your inner beauty.
And I – I have the strength to not for another instant
turn my gaze away from you
Margarita Serafimova has published two collections in the Bulgarian, Animals and Other Gods (2016), Demons and World (2017). Her work appears (is forthcoming) in London Grip New Poetry, Agenda, A-Minor, Trafika Europe, Minor Literatures, The Journal, Noble / Gas, Ink, Sweat and Tears, The Birds We Piled Loosely, Obra/ Artifact, Futures Trading, Poetic Diversity, TAYO, Ginosko, Dark Matter, The Punch, Window Quarterly/ Patient Sounds, Peacock Journal, Anti-Heroin Chic, In Between Hangovers, and elsewhere. Pieces of hers.
Old Blue Suitcase
by Chloe Sparks
by Chloe Sparks
Born and raised in Australia, Chloe Sparks spent the better part of the last decade living in Vancouver, BC working on various film and television productions and at a local newspaper as a research assistant. She is working towards a Masters Degree in Communications and building a social media presence.
Homestead
by Elizabet Stevens
Let the fox go back to its sandy den …
by Elizabet Stevens
Let the fox go back to its sandy den
Let the wind die down. Let the shed go black inside.
Let evening come.
Jane Kenyon, Let Evening Come
Alders, subtle but insistent, crowd the lane
Barbed-wire guards raspberry and wild rose
Waist-high grass hinders humans
and hides the fox
creeping like a landlord
among his butchery of bones
Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Big snows, rain and scorching summers
have worn away traces of the man who
played the organ, cut wood
a woman who baked bread
Wind blusters in the trees
shushing echoes of children’s voices
Let the wind die down.
Only a shed remains that once held stern talks
embraced calendars of bogus blonds
displayed expired license plates
a clutter of broken furniture
nails, rake and a hoe
now empty
Let the shed go black inside.
Darkness may be a comfort
please
Let evening come
Elizabet Stevens lives where she was born in Southern New Brunswick. Her poem “Homestead” is from a recently-completed collection, Blue Forensics: a case of heartbreak. Her work has appeared in literary magazines and received recognition in poetry competitions. She has taken part in readings as far away as Effat University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia where she was an instructor. A former journalist, Elizabet worked for the CBC, and was a contributor to the Globe and Mail.