Two months in a psych ward, 2008 Do not crush. Do not split. Do not chew. Pills in tiny paper cups each meal. They know how well you sleep. They’re weighing you. We all know the surveillance state’s not new. And oh, when the psychosis hits, it’s real. Do not crush. Do not split. Do not chew. Don’t...
I want this Ramadan to last a little longer, so that I may continue to love the sun for a few more days. As I’m sitting inside the mosque, observing the world within a world, I glimpse a man walking in, wearing brown dress pants and a green shirt. He takes off his shoes with the demeanour of a man...
1. One rib still aches from Winnipeg: ….not injury, just weathered memory. 2. Hormones sealed in a Ziploc, ….pressed between Saskatoon receipts ….and a rosary ….I no longer negotiate with. 3. A chest discovering its own storms: ….hail where there was once quiet. 4. A...
Power to force, I have none. I cannot make things/ humans happen. In the hostel, a tall, narrow window by my pillow opens only at the top. It has no screen. I wake in early morning to the sound of distressed wings— two monarchs fluttering by my face, on the ledge, a metre below the opening. One...
Cruising public bathrooms used to be the only life-threatening activity that we had to worry about. You back your truck into a shaded parking space in the far corner of this well-known cruising spot in a moment of desperation and desire, hoping that someone will park close to you. However, after we...
Mommy J always drove home in the dark. Today my chest lifted & I pretended it didn’t so it might stay longer. It is rare I cry. I love myself but not entirely. Sometimes I’m so vain even I think it’s stupid, if vanity is the right word for what I do in secret. Like googling myself—it never gets...
Reviewed by Drew McEwan Gwen Aube, Missed Connections with Tall Girls (LittlePuss Press, 2026), 104pp., $22.95. I mean this as the highest compliment: Gwen Aube’s 2026 poetry collection Missed Connections with Tall Girls is the most t4t (trans for trans) book I’ve ever read. I mean this not in...
Interview by Loch Baillie In this contributor spotlight, poetry editor Loch Baillie talks with Plenitude author Adam Arca about duality, mythology, and liberation movements, and how they converge with Adam’s poetry. Adam is a Filipino migrant rights organizer and writer living on unceded Musqueam...
Get your poems ready for a chance to win a cash prize and publication in Plenitude Magazine! Plenitude’s new Summer Poetry Contest will run August 1 to September 21, 2026, and will be open to LGBTQ2S+ writers at any stage of their career, anywhere in the world. The contest judge is Misha Solomon...
