The Church in Ruins
by John Foulcher
1
It struck our apartments, that
first bomb, kicked out the walls,
scattered our earthly goods
all over the street. We heard cries.
The second grabbed hold
of the road, shook it out, sent cars
spinning into the supermarket.
A third hit the bank, withdrew
all our life savings. An ATM lurched
past us, tumbled like a gymnast
into the grocery, where fruit split
like livers or spleens, it was all
dismemberment. Then another bomb,
and another, until only the church
stood below its spire, its holy
transmission, turning its other cheek.
We took shelter there, in that
stained glass trance, that calm. Then
the rose window blew in, showered us
with shards of heavenly truth.
2
The nave trickles through slats of sour
air. The walls are crusts of shadow,
the floor a sea of dust and grit, the pulpit
listing above the pews. At the altar,
a splintered frieze of the lamb and the risen sun,
a rusty glow across an empty chalice,
deciduous gold apostles. The light
in the sanctuary is a dull, ashen
scratch. It is not unlike nightfall.
The church creaks, as if at sea. A trickle
of voice from the priest, his prayers
about cost and forgiveness. Outside, iridescence.
Oriole
by Allyson Weekes
The curtain shrouds my room my heart my lungs from Sahara’s fine and dangerous dust
Your hesitant scales cut the air I am silent at the window with my phone
to catch your voice. Through my world’s veil I capture your life’s art, or try
It is one of five tunes you play, the one where you test the air
You can hear my heart beating, I am sure though I think I am absolutely still
just as I hear you shift on the branch. I know when you glide from soursop
to guava. I long to lay eyes on your careless vigilant beauty
but you will be gone if the curtain shifts, if you hear my heart change, my weight fall
The curtain lifts lightly air whispers on my bare belly
I let my arm fall to 90˚ so the blood fills my fingertips, four minutes in.
I delude myself I have captured you you are there, gone.
Are you here, singing this rare song, to celebrate
yesterday’s first rains, come too soon? Are you here to mourn the two lost weeks?
You have moved, and from the carambola I hear your other song, and then I know,
what you sing, what we do, you on the branch, I in the house, listening invisible
to each other’s hearts, your need to keep moving, my jitter
after a night without sleep, my hand suspended in the air your voice splits, your head
on the curtained stage, bobbing as you listen to me
the insects teeming at the root the quick wings of the next threat
what I know now after years of inhaling the dust of my ancestors
my heart’s quiver is your song.
Dereliction: And the Ocean Too Weeps
by Salim Bhimji
Through restless centuries I have powered
Heroic onslaughts by commanders
Of the great empires.
Across the ages, man has longed to unravel
The mystique that shrouds me.
The scholars of science reach
For me to uncover secrets of the past.
Pioneering men seeking out new lands
Deemed me the crowning conquest.
Mighty industries flourish because of me
And dynasties shaped, by men
Who wove their steel through me.
For entrenched within, like incipient gems,
I meld the very elements with which kingdoms
Power prosperity. Yet no man can own me.
Agile and self-replenishing
I am a mirror of the heavens,
Nestling every rhythm, in cycles rippling.
To the unwitting I am formidable.
But the same seek solace in me;
In the soft, soothing songs
That dance through my being.
I am the cradle of life for billions.
Yet, for all my elegance, I am now bereft;
Wounded. The turning tides, so harsh,
Have left me ravaged; in anguish.
How I yearn to be cherished again. Grant me the dignity
I deserve. That dignity which was once unspoken,
Then, almost broken.
To survive, I must search reach clutch
At new ways to reinvent myself.
A mere ritual since times long past.
Except these are dark days
And I face ferocious thunders ahead.
Yes, I am wrenched by the unknown.
Though known by many names, I am unique.
That I might look invincible
Is simply part of the mystique.
Beyond the drifted ocean,
A heroine’s grief, spoken.
Salim Bhimji is a research and data analyst based in the United Kingdom. He is an Executive Director of Ocean Press & Publishing Ltd. He began his creative writing education at the Poetry School in London and describes himself as an "incurable student" of poetry.
Mother Takes Molly Home
by Lelawattee Manoo-Rahming
On the evening I saw a jet trail orange-pine
in a bluejay blue sky, I thought of you. It was the Great Mother
swirling, with love, two strands of hair into one curl.
I knew she was braiding Brahma and Jehovah to make you
whole once more – a little Indian girlbaby suckling
at my nani’s breasts which smelled of cows and burnt cane,
though you could not know it then.
One time, we looked at a photo of you, black and white,
smooth-faced, pretty in your midcalf fit and flare dress. No sari
for you, a fifties fashionable teenager. You said you never
liked living in Curepe. I asked why. You answered, “I just didn’t.”
I did not press you. But now I think
you couldn’t voice the words to speak of the stink
of unmarketable tomatoes rotting in the fields
amid odorous piles of cow dung; or to tell me about the boys
who tried to pull down your panty. You were a strong eleven-year-old
and they had no bookbags. You swung yours, filled with books,
like Hanuman’s Mace – the boys scattered like Rawan’s foot soldiers.
You never felt safe after that
Perhaps, when you got the Civil Service job, it was the way
your colleagues snickered when they spoke of “dem coolie people” –
three little word-daggers mutilating your self-esteem, so when you looked
at your neighbours, you felt shame. Then you became a Witness and married
a young David. Did he heal your scars when he took you away?
Did Uncle David’s africaness veil your coolieness?
Years later, for the first time, you cooked curry mango –
fragrant julie spiced with karapule. You were hesitant.
There was no need: it was moreish, like your coconut ice-cream
that we hand-cranked, our young mouths watering;
and your icebox cream-of-wheat cake, tasty like halwa.
On your last morning, you could not eat, you complained of heartburn.
That night, as you clutched your breaking heart,
no one else roamed your house Except the Goddess
She caught you as you fell and cradled your body, humming a lullaby.
The evening I saw the jet trail, my heart soared.
I watched you re-bloom into my radiant Tanty Molly. I thank
the Goddess for making you whole, for taking you home.
Easter Candles
by Kelly Norah Drukker
Park Extension, Montreal, 2022
We meet in the middle
of the street, stamping cold.
From the church steps, floodlights glow.
The voice of the cantor echoes
against the pavement, sings
from the raw belly of sorrow.
The rising notes dip
as they fall, arrowing
toward their hidden mark.
Under night clouds, the sky
is a thin skin, stretched grey.
Beneath it, others shelter
in basements, factories. Bombs,
exhumed from memory’s vault
explode, real as day.
The church doors open,
a seam, spilling light.
Mothers walk, stately, gripping candles;
children dart beyond reach,
dodge fathers who smoke, laugh,
as fireworks streak the air.
A young woman approaches,
Christos Anesti
dips her flame to our cups
and we glow,
a chorus of firelight, glimmering
lives trailing home, guarding the flame
with tinfoil and lanterns.
We weave through streets
grandmothers blessed, long ago
on their midnight walks—
keepers of the hearth, they knew
how a light could be snuffed
by a careless hand.
In this stone-grey season, we raise
our candle tips, etch a cross
above our door, please bless this place—
if but a wisp of smoke
could cross the ocean,
mark each doorway safe.
The Man Who Repairs Electric Chairs Speaks of Art
by Damen O’Brien
If you must do something, do it well. My father taught me that,
he’d send the chisel searching through the wood, the mallet
followed, tapping like a bird sorting seed, and coiling for him,
the scrolls and mugging ogres, arching cats, sinuous snakes and
dragons, in bannisters and handles, and the rails of rich men.
Even when he knew the detail would be missed, the message lost,
a cunning nick of wood to make an eye, a flourish for a tongue,
his initials in the branches of a fruiting tree. I have a different grace:
I replace the perished leather, make the buckles bright, polish
what can be polished. I have my ticket, so I can check the fuses,
rub machine oil in each junction, torque the screws just so. I am
my father’s son in that. The State is happy with my service and
when I come home from a hard day’s work, I spend what gentleness,
what art remains upon my child. We have a joke we tell whenever
the brownouts that come in summer make the light flicker, when they
make that burning afterglow and when our little TV zaps into
a point and won’t return. Was that one of yours, Daddy? She will say,
and I say, not one of mine. All of mine work perfectly every time.
Hamoukar
by Ross Gillett
Located in what is now Syria, the city of Hamoukar, a centre of the obsidian trade, was destroyed around 3500 BC. Slings and thousands of ovoid clay bullets have been found. This may be evidence of the earliest urban warfare known in the Middle East ( joint Syrian-American expedition 1999-2010)
Hamoukar
there’s a new you
orange black clouds
unfurling from the earth
dark blooms lined with fire
the incinerated marketplace
doused cars
triggered steam
thermal vents in the wreckage
shapes of ash and dust and vapor
the dead escape the superheated streets
Hamoukar
we found you
infested with the handiwork of your enemy
lethal seeds
a murderous clay grain
where are your trade routes now
your obsidian history
your craftsmen hunched over dark glass
it’s oil instead of obsidian now
a market trade truly unprotected
frail stalls blown away
Hamoukar
obliterated city
your people are old earth
we who are good at turning people into earth salute you
flag bearer for the wrecked civilisations
with your excavated grid
your bewildered bones
you taught history everything it knows
people are dust
families exist to be torn apart
no one lives anywhere
achievement
by Ross Belot
all morning we have had
rain so i have been inside
dealing with small things
the phone tells there are
flood warnings in Milwaukee
that is a long day drive
from here the place you
and i searched for graves
the place with its own
beer and food i liked that
my white cat naps beside
me on the beige couch he
has been dying and not
dying for months now today
he is not oh little boy i say
to him as he wakes stretches
old cat eyes shine green
half there the insurance co
leaves a message that is
urgent but impossible to
return small things some-
times crumble like christmas
wishes it is spring rain stops
but is promised to come
again why would you want
to do anything else i ask
i do not i answer sitting in
this end of an ending feels
frothy writing this poem with
a cup of tea the one from the
other day you started for me
Stuffed Little Puppy
by Dora Rumbold
I keep a stuffed little puppy by my side when I go to sleep at night
She’s been my best friend since I was four
When my dad bought her from Toy Dreams at Strathcona Square
She was a tiny little chihuahua with a hole in her back but I loved her very dearly
My dad did his best to sew her up, and on days when the world feels like too much
I trace my fingers over the messy brown stitches, asking myself
How did we get here?
I even brought her to my first Show and Tell in kindergarten
Proudly showing her off in her hot pink fluffy sweater
I remember the day I dropped her in the toilet and my mom found me crying in the bathroom
She fished her out and threw her in the washing machine while I waited for her to be clean
I remember when my stuffed little puppy was there
The first time I was admitted to the psych ward
She kept me safe and I held on her tightly
But she had so much love to give
I had to share her with the others
Held by the hands of patients whose wrists had deep wounds
My stuffed little puppy would come to life
Giving them kisses on the nose and whispering to them
You’ve made it this far my friend
See what happens if you keep going!
She said those words to me when I cried in my bed while I was on vacation with a friend
The day I realized what he did to me
She sat beside my head while my tears rained over the pillow
Speaking to me softly
Giving a kiss on my nose
My stuffed little puppy repeated
It’s not your fault
It’s not your fault
You’ve made it this far my friend
See what happens if you keep going!
She kissed my nose again
It will never be your fault.
A Killing, Corazon de Madera
by Abigail Ardelle Zammit
Rio Negro, Armila
the medicine man said
awaken the wood with breath with fire
the spirit of the tree
dwells in each branch
but we heard a trickle in the foliage
gluttonous river
bearing traces of wave of tide
Rio Negro rooted in tree's trunk
ibe igua qirsu naba
naki naki asiswar
we grasped the machete
as if it were part of our longing
fearing caimans
nameless birds
dressed in night’s electric blue
he said never sever the trunk
so we chopped it down
tree had traces of mud
salt-soul from the Pacific
igua ila nispero naki
we grasped the machete
as if it were part of our longing
ibe ila ila
sobga asiswar
a clean unwavering cut
"Corazon de Madera” - literally meaning “the wood's heart,” which the natives would never remove. Instead, they cut some of the branches of the oldest trees to keep the wood for its healing and spiritual power, praying over it to awaken it. All italicized words refer to different types of trees in the Guna language, spoken amongst the indigenous Cunas of San Blas, Panama.
Enduring Love
by Miranda Pearson
Fields after rain. Cobbled, set with silver coin,
shining hoof prints and chevron. River that dreams
itself road. I'm foolish for lovingly kissing you,
sorrow for all the people you've hurt, a virus spreading.
The train is cancelled—a body on the track.
A man shouts at me for wearing a mask.
I'm a posh girl so polite and forgiving,
nannying you, tripping over myself.
Why don't you fuck off and retire, sit by a river.
Watch the ducks bred to be shot by the rich,
their flights as if suiciding, their sudden hangings.
Dogs bark and bark. A branch bent across the path
like a Dubai arch. Your hands the bones
of your feet their long skeletons. You say
the purpose of life is to pass it on. Look down
into the well, a portal to the underworld where the
herd gallop, jump into where the deer live, and the fox.
Sex, I don't miss it, aside from when I see tufts of grass
growing in the mud, waving, and when the wind is
blasting in my head and the perfume of the wood
before we burn it, like human hair.
Your greedy mating above the flood line, a statue
from where my weakness stems. I read you.
The two ways of leaving, like tulips
shrivelling or mad opening. Let us be the second.
The Nighthawk Swallows Its Prey in Flight
by Laura Zacharin
Nighthawk, from Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows – A recurring thought that strikes you late at night…
A hairshirt is worn against the chest. Also known as sackcloth or cilice/cilicium
from “Cilicia”, where wild goats run free and the cloth originated. Twigs
are woven in to irritate the underlying skin. Nighthawk
is a misnomer. The nighthawk flies at dawn, feeds on clouds
of insects hovering at streetlamps and other light sources, including nightlights
Hard heartedness, inadvertently, under duress or willingly, by foolish talk, improper
thoughts. Bristles surround a tiny beak to help corral the prey. Nighthawk eats
and defecates in flight. In the small hours when the rest of the world sleeps the blue sleep
of the innocent I try on the shirt the nighthawk brings me, bespoke, make sure
the fit is right and the bristles irritate just enough but not so much that I can’t wear it
under ordinary clothing. Things you can do in a hairshirt: watch tv, preferably
a long dramatic series with 8 seasons and a simple plot line, apologize
even though the person on the other end is sleeping, eat cereal
from the box, bite your nails until they’re even or they’re bleeding, whichever
comes first, feed your dog, play online scrabble. The 8 letters
of my online scrabble game line up to spell GUILTWOE. I can’t play this
as one word. The board won’t accept it. Even if everyone else
is asleep. Other things you can do are harder to recall, drowned out
by the whoosh of nighthawk wings and its sharp electric peent call, and of course,
the pungent odor of its defecation. For example, peel off sections
of the brilliant Murcott mandarin, brew small batch coffee, listen for the footsteps
running down the stairs when the toast pops up or that song comes on. The smell
of freshly laundered sheets, and the dog breathing is unbearable. If only I didn’t have
these bristles poking into my skin my life would be perfect. Ascetics, penitents
and saints etc. consider the discomfort akin to fasting. I also fast. I call it fasting
but the truth is I’ve lost my appetite. At night I lock and double bolt. Turn off
the porch lights, my devices. Windows and doors are air-tight with caulking. A kettle
of nighthawks can be made of thousands of these crepuscular birds. It will bring you
to your knees. I can’t tell where the voice comes from. It comes from everywhere
Hundreds or thousands of tiny bristled nighthawk beaks. I bend forward to my knees
Committed openly or secretly, knowingly, unknowingly, with evil talk, coercion
by disrespect for, by scoffing, with impudence, prattle of the lips.
Theatre
by Anthony Lawrence
My father was home after an operation
to remove an aggressive cancer
called glioblastoma. He told the surgeon
and anaesthetist he was happy
to remain awake so he could entertain
theatre with his jokes, but in the end
he said, with a lop-sided grin, his offer
was ruefully declined. This was prior
to his stories of a previous life
as a Mindoro Dwarf buffalo, and after
he started missing buttons on his shirt
while dressing, and closing the door
repeatedly on his foot, getting into the car.
I like to count the scalpels in my stape,
he said. He'd started spoonerizing things.
At the butcher he asked for a lack of ram.
I've still no idea if his wordplay
was intentional, or if scarring on his brain
had gifted him the art of vowel-reversal.
We were watching cricket
on television, the sound turned down.
A bowler was at the end of his run,
scraping a line with his boot
the way some animals mark ground.
You've got less than a quarter of a second
to play a shot when this bloke bowls,
dad said. The camera panned around
the crowd and came to rest on a woman
applying sunscreen to her face.
What is this? A passion farade?
We watched the game in silence.
Swallows were skimming their own shadows
from the outfield grass.
A Mexican wave stalled then died
at the Members enclosure. A line of sunlight
shivered and pushed off from the fence.
Autumn
by Leila Chatti
Her crying unfinished
but the day forged on, requiring her
ordinary labor. The cat
with its innocent hunger.
Trash festering below the sink.
She listened for some proof
she was loved, but God was busy
not existing. Then she looked a while
at the sun through the tree
through the window, otherwise
unframed. Well, not the sun
but the light she understood
as the sun, as so often she confused
something’s origin with its consequence—and she thought
this substitution might reveal something
important about her, then
she thought there might be nothing important
about her, and a little
residual feeling welled up
and whatever it was kept shining shining shining.
The Venus Effect
by John D. Kelly
after The Rokeby Venus by Diego Velázquez
Feather-light fingers flap, ruffle. They arch like
the tips of my wings. My quills are in a swan's way.
A Frenchman's gloved hands. White shadows
on a curtain of velvety blackness. A stage. A silent
movie miming the fantasy of a Bolshoi Ballet.
A black pen flying, gliding then landing − splashing
into the inky murk of an artificial lake in Combray.
Watch me closely. For once I’m without my bow.
The ghosts of a Beatle and no less than three
marvellous Marcels invoke more than the Spaniard
in this work. Umbras and penumbras caress you
They overlap inside you, plumb the very depth of you.
Can you sense them? Can you feel them
in the wings − in the shadows within passages
of lost time played out in mimed motion
hidden, much too long, in the lamp-black darkness?
Let your involuntary memory snag
on the lead-laced impasto of an old coloured palette.
Let the medium of linseed oil and turpentine conjure up
the acrid smell of gasoline that once filtered through
your nostril hair. Time to be away in a bus with Bishop
and that female moose. You’ll see Duchamp at his work,
taking the piss again with a porcelain fountain before
charging his brush to begin to paint a naked muse frozen,
a multi-facetted woman descending a staircase again and
again in a futuristic haste while a crystal-clear hourglass
form, safe-set in fine-turned cherry-wood, shares all
its sterile cubist ore through a conjoined neck − a waist.
Those grains of sand are, again, my silvered looking-
glass. They have melted and fused, once more, in a heat
as hot as was Her embrace when Diego asked me to cast
that glance from Venus back, to also paint Her face.
Sturgeon Devouring His Son
by Leanne Dunic
For fear of being usurped
Saturn ate his children
My father taught me how to feed myself
How to gut snapper, rock cod, flounder
He put names to each berry creature tree
And spoke of an ancient fish that could live over a hundred years
That still live
Sturgeon have endured salmon infested with sea lice
lures gasoline fabric foam bottlecaps batteries diapers razors masks
Growing demand for their caviar
Decades ago, as my friend learned of warming oceans, extinctions
And the endless more
She declared with love and seriousness
I have to kill my children yet she didn’t
Have the strength
Now, they’re grown
––with hearts breaking, environmental anxiety
And an app that delivers tuna tataki in forty minutes
To avoid maternity, I swallowed pills
Until I learned of the estrogen and progesterone
I pissed into the river––the one already weakened
From extra celsius diminished salmon and smelt
The same river where a fisherman took the photograph
I’ve titled Sturgeon Devouring His Son
Food scarcity, they say, due to floods, pollution, overfishing––
One must eat child or stone
Tongue on his spawn
A sturgeon survives
Midwestern Film Summit
by Ash Adams
This place is only like the movies
in that there are no mothers
or they are only here to kill you.
I am not the princess or the servant girl.
I am the yard covered in pink flamingoes,
or I am one pink flamingo
caught in a spotlight I thought I could outrun,
but my legs are backwards, plastic, and I have just one of them.
Really, I am the toilet-papered tree, but forgive me, viewer,
if there is no folding chair, no gaunt woman in the driveway
smoking all the cigarettes in my mind,
yelling about how fast the cars drive by,
how will the protagonist hold her girlfriend
in the kind of summer light that sets everyone on fire
while someone says Ohio rivers burn forever?
How will someone call her a survivor
as though it is a good thing.
Home Range Nocturne
by Sam Morley
Somewhere up on the hill, Sellotape
straps carnations to street saplings
there are big painted letters on the road’s
camber where the boy was pack hunted
and his stabbed heart lost its air, hardening
from a thin glow to flecks of tar.
I never walked that pavement’s buckle
I turned before his loose-leaf shrine
and the boy with pools at his feet stayed
out of reach under a slice of streetlamp.
As I went on, words jabbing my tongue
were depletion and squander and waste
they covered the field of this wine
dark morning where I walked my pup
in rags of night, twitching at every Frog-
Mouth landing and leaving with its haul.
If the words turned then to absence
there was surely something present
bopping between tallgrass, parting
pond reeds, the vixen’s pelt flaming up
embankments loose with clay stone.
And when the blades of its eyes flashed
strobic to my gut, its stainless steel
unblinking, its trot struck out toward us.
I waited, watching as my dog (with no wild
left in it) had no sense that dying
has a definitive snick and downwind the pad
of predation came calm, two fox stars
meant only for those caught seeking.
So I stayed my right to bloody an animal
the word I longed for then was question
asking each flare of hair, each twitch-wire
what is the value of running or staying
when the whoop of a killer comes.
And that thick arm of fire-tail drifted out
then in in the sparked air between, turning
to find another tear in world, staying low
to the ground and spiriting toward that hill
drawn to something silent before light
before the day’s promise and its peril.