spring 2021
Table of Contents
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The Retrograde of a Frigid Planet
Self-Portrait as an Internal Dialogue on Rue St-Laurent, 2016
Lauren Turner
Self-Portrait as Used Condom Riding the Wonder Wheel
Melissa Eleftherion
The Year We Considered Foster Care
Sunni Brown Wilkinson
The Guilt of Not Wanting
Ashley Prince
No Fixed Thing Space Follows Adam Day
Fits and Starts
Natasha Pepperl
Ghazal With Malbec, No Cigarettes
Oxytocin Pandemic Love Poem
Lisa Richter
The Deer Who Sneak Into Father's Butchering Shack at Night
L M Schmidt
Drought
Flash Flood
Samantha Jones
arma virumque cano
Revelation on Baptist Hill
Libby Maxey
White Rhino (Ceratotherium simum)
Coyote (Canis latrans)
Blue Morpho Butterfly (Morpho menelaus)
Jordan Mounteer
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.