spring 2021
Table of Contents
Return to Home PageThe Year We Considered Foster Care Sunni Brown Wilkinson
White Rhino (Ceratotherium simum) Coyote (Canis latrans) Blue Morpho Butterfly (Morpho menelaus) Jordan Mounteer
Self-Portrait as Used Condom Riding the Wonder Wheel Melissa Eleftherion
Ghazal With Malbec, No Cigarettes Oxytocin Pandemic Love Poem Lisa Richter
The Retrograde of a Frigid Planet Self-Portrait as an Internal Dialogue on Rue St-Laurent, 2016 Lauren Turner
arma virumque cano Revelation on Baptist Hill Libby Maxey
Fits and Starts Natasha Pepperl
Drought Flash Flood Samantha Jones
No Fixed Thing Space Follows Adam Day
The Deer Who Sneak Into Father's Butchering Shack at Night L M Schmidt
The Guilt of Not Wanting Ashley Prince
Ghazal with Malbec, No Cigarettes
Crouching in tall grass by the prairie dugout at sunset, a black cat
swivels its owlish head in my direction, then quickly looks away.
Church Street, my old neighbourhood, post-Pride. A kicked
pop can’s skidding metallic slices through my new tinnitus.
Peggy’s Cove, late December. We stand parallel with a lighthouse
beneath the wind-washed sky. The roughness of the sea’s burly pelt.
Harold and Maude, my nth viewing. A military cemetery, tombstones
teething verdant fields. Where have you gone, Yusuf Islam?
New Year’s Day, we parse the thinning light over 3 p.m. breakfast.
Outdoors, the crunch of snow-boots. Sparrows scour the ice for crumbs.
Red-eye flight, YVR to YYZ. Beyond the portal, there is nothing
but watery dark. I’ve lost interest in my book. Everyone sleeps but me.
Tenth month of grief. My father was never dying, only suddenly, dead.
In the silent kitchen, I switch on CBC radio, fill a glass with dry red.