MICHAEL CHANG (they/them) is the author of Toy Soldiers (Action, Spectacle, 2024) & Things A Bright Boy Can Do (Coach House Books, 2025). They edit poetry at Fence.
Literature
A Fragile Hunger
I am not hungry, I say. I am not hungry. I have said it so many times that my mouth is compost and the words are larvae, getting stuck in a craw, spinning wheels in the snow, spewing on the lawn. It is winter, and the birds are hiding in the trees. I watch them through the places my breath has...
unit of ordeal
when we lay on the sand as a triangle trying to invoke some truthful looking, there’s much disturbance. might be the sky or the shadow of a leaf that distract us from actually staring at the upstairs’ void. we have the unrealized knowledge that Space is red. but whenever we look up we see a...
Jagged Little Pill
When you grow up in Cornwall, Ontario Ottawa is The Big City just an hour away making Alanis a huge deal. Our homegirl who made it big in ‘95 ………………………………………the year I moved to Vancouver for grad school. Having survived my home town secondary by being a class clown, a charmer maybe ………….I was the...
Reclaim the peasantry
A tale of two weekends: a) Twists and turns like shimmer ….of gentle ocean, thirst ….in dreams and waking hours. ….Still, like blue ….at the pit of the morning sky ….—where do I turn? Forgive me. ….We had a good day. b) I can’t pretend I’m not wounded …...
Siren Season
Ten years ago, the mantle of Sun Coral’s Innkeeper fell to me, and in the four centuries that it has stood in Coveter’s Cove, I became the youngest member of the Lirio family to ever manage it. My mom never failed to remind me and my brother Ethan of this. I probably accepted the job when I was...
Reviews
Connection, Comfort, and Community: A Review of Anomia by Jade Wallace
Reviewed by Shannon Page Jade Wallace, Anomia (Palimpsest Press, 2024), 230 pp., $21.95. Readers of Jade Wallace’s poetry will recognize a familiar vibrancy of language and surrealism in Anomia. Sitting comfortably in the liminal space between genres, Wallace’s debut novel defies easy...
Writers' Room
Wet: An Interview with Leanne Dunic
Interview by L’Amour Lisik In connection with the annual Victoria Festival of Authors taking place October 16 to 20, 2024, Plenitude prose editor L’Amour Lisik interviews Leanne Dunic, whose latest poetry collection, Wet, was released in Spring 2024 with Talonbooks. Leanne Dunic transgresses genres...
News
Pride Reading at the Vancouver Public Library on August 1
It’s a Pride mashup! For Vancouver Pride on August 1, Plenitude Magazine is pairing with the Vancouver Public Library for a literary reading and speed friending event! At 7pm, hear local Plenitude contributors read their poetry and prose. Readers include Shaelin Bishop, Meghan Kemp-Gee, Catherine...
