Today my mother sent me a framed picture of her heart,ladybug stickers in each corner. A chest preparing for new growth. I’m not sorry anymore that she doesn’t like her life. My poemsare dispirited by her, thick mentions of roadtrips, and landscapesand pissing into Lay’s Stax canisters while...
On the night of a restless saucer moon, as the budding surfs jitterbug and the cold sleeps inside the toothy groove of your back, I wind my wet linen around your neck like a corsair’s love noose, make it loose as the meaning behind the white honey frothing within your open mouth, blue lips...
1. They Say Fish Don’t Feel Pain As a new intake, I’m ushered through a maze of clinical rooms, a noisy lunchroom and a bustling gym. Joanne, the program coordinator, shepherds me, waiting as I shuffle with my cane and pelvic brace. We end at a darkened room set apart from the rest of the...
There was no book on how to girl. I read all the books about animals at the library. When my mother gave me a book on puberty, I drew penises. I became track suits, jean jackets, short hair. My bones grew. In the city, I swirled caught without ponds, between asphalt and decay. My friends were boys...
I know you will make your own way in the world.The way you favour linen and leather, and walk like a boy.Your teeth are like pomegranate seeds, sucked clean.Your motorcycle helmet unleashes copper strands.You do exist. The way you bathed me in mud, adding champagne and orchids.I flogged you with...
Marjan Every year, for two weeks in mid-May, the city is struck by cherry blossom fever. In April, the city waits on the edge of spring, which should be soft like rabbit ears or tulips. More often, spring in the city is sharp, the mornings still mean and frostbitten, the grey dusks prickling with...
Reviewed by Amy LeBlanc Jillian Christmas, The Gospel of Breaking (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2020), 80 pp., $14.95. The opening line of Jillian Christmas’ new collection The Gospel of Breaking reads: “tell me what is a body.” This line can be read a few ways—I read it as a question or a plea...
Interview by Rebecca Salazar In connection with this year’s free and virtual Victoria Festival of Authors taking place September 30 to October 4, Plenitude poetry editor Rebecca Salazar interviewed VFA panelist Danny Ramadan about his writing, fundraising work, and literary festivals. Queer...
As part of the Victoria Arts Council’s Poetry in Public project, Tharuna Abbu’s poem, “Emergency Measures,” has been published into five different languages! This poem first appeared in Plenitude in July 2020 as part of our Queer Isolation in a Pandemic series. Here is the full excerpt from...
Today my mother sent me a framed picture of her heart,ladybug stickers in each corner. A chest preparing for new growth. I’m not sorry anymore that she doesn’t like her life. My poemsare dispirited by her, thick mentions of roadtrips, and landscapesand pissing into Lay’s Stax canisters while...
