Ambika Thompson [mks_dropcap style=”letter” size=”52″ bg_color=”#ffffff” txt_color=”#000000″]I[/mks_dropcap] was making an egg salad sandwich when Charlie called over. I told him, before he could get a word in edgewise, that I had lost a tooth...
Category - Literature
Naanwich Was the Last Thing
Kayla Czaga Do you remember the baseball diamond beside which we ate naanwich, Liz? It tasted nothing like butter chicken. We’d wandered all morning without eating and hunger revealed to us the aggression in nearby seagulls. I loved your light lisp, how softly you smelled of vegetable broth. I...
Our Longest Point
Greg Marshall Only after Dad broke his neck diving into the ocean in Hawaii did we start playing tennis together. Partly, this was a matter of timing. I was ten at the time of the accident; Dad was forty-two. More importantly, though, it was a matter of handicapping. It took Dad fracturing his top...
Meet the Author
Meaghan Rondeau 1999 I announce that I don’t want kids. My mom’s reply: “You’ll change your mind when you’re older. Life is meaningless—” She actually says this! I shit you not! Meaningless! “—without children.” Years later, I tell her that remark still bothers me. She says, “I never said that.”...
My Masculinity
Julian Paquette My masculinity is red and hot, excited and vibrant—a body that’s been too long ignored. An acutely sensitive organ of denial. My masculinity is tight and wants to loosen. I can feel the tension of repression against it. I can feel myself opening to my man. My voice lowering; my...
Excerpt: From Up River and for One Night Only
Brett Josef Grubisic Please note: The following excerpts do not appear consecutively in the novel. Déviation: Aptitude [mks_dropcap style=”letter” size=”52″ bg_color=”#ffffff” txt_color=”#000000″]W[/mks_dropcap] ith the exception of...
What Will Sustain Us through the Winter?
Esther McPhee i. It’s not spring weather yet but I want it to be. Winter’s lasted too long—I’m still not accustomed to the strength of east coast snow and I miss the rain, how February at home marks the first of spring, thaw of green frost and the crocus beginning. But here Joel starts...
Promoted to Glory
Christine Higdon [mks_dropcap style=”letter” size=”52″ bg_color=”#ffffff” txt_color=”#000000″]T[/mks_dropcap]omorrow, I’ll be the same age he was when he died. He was ten days short of seeing the first man on the moon. We six were...
fragments from the belly of the whale
Erin McIntosh they told me i would be like jonah, minus the comfort of speaking directly to god. i told them alright. all is well. stuck swimming in my own little world, waiting for the whale my saviour to scoop me up in his jaws, some man who could carry me to where i needed to be. i want...
I Lie on the High Line
Lucas Crawford I. I never went to the High Line or sucked transgender clit or dick. I never asked for three free samples at Milk Bar’s lower eastside locale; it’s just that I never find enough to lick. I never asked a stranger to pull over his car so I could take a hot dump in the woods. I...
Nipple Clamps, Vintage Porn, and A Guide for the Naive Homosexual: History with Illustrations
Brett Josef Grubisic A few years ago I got a mid-afternoon call from a friend. Originally he and I weren’t friends, not exactly; as strangers we’d made contact surreptitiously online and met for quickies on sporadic afternoons, work routines permitting. After a while the camaraderie flourished as...
Nephrophilia
Julian Gunn Lemon drops. Bitter torque. Al Pacino cruising for watersports. Born again by stoma, your new topology. A hole as always the gap of meaning. In medias res: Seattle. Nephrophilia. The scene in the basement. The old boyfriend pissing on the floor. A student of the body on hands and...
The Henry Moores
Andy Sinclair [mks_dropcap style=”letter” size=”52″ bg_color=”#ffffff” txt_color=”#000000″]S[/mks_dropcap]orry for the impersonal nature of this message but I wanted to let you all know that I am making a clean start! Dave and I have decided to...
Winnipeg Sucks
Billeh Nickerson When my friend challenged me to write a poem about the Winnipeg police who accidentally turned on the speakers to their taxpayer-funded helicopter only to broadcast a lurid tale of blowjobbery and oral salaciousness to the communities below I was momentarily titillated as...
Brian
Meaghan Loraas [mks_dropcap style=”square” size=”35″ bg_color=”#505556″ txt_color=”#ffffff”]B[/mks_dropcap]rian is irritated that the television isn’t working. I tell him not to do it but he’s sixteen and he does what he wants. He grabs my broom. He...
Excerpt: The Horrors
H for Heteronormativity Charles Demers When I was about twenty years old, my brother around seventeen, our dad took us out for what was meant to be a nice family dinner at one of Vancouver’s tackiest sushi restaurants. Fairly close to a university, the place’s tagline was “Miso Horny” (Get it? Just...
Leaving New York
after Frank O’Hara Adam Meisner I’m leaving New York, again. Under swept trusses & skirting Harlem at the early hours of Columbia’s Sunday young. The drive piddles over the Washington & under another flag– the progeny of powdered wigs held higher ten years after I watched a...
Poem for Scott Who Gave Me Conjunctivitis
Marcus McCann Scrapper, if swollen open lids allow before the vanity—cramped, lit like discount grocery—I’ll tilt my skull back, squint, note this bacterial shiner, sacré coeur eye patch. A nightbird laid a heavy pink shit in my socket. A camera is a bad eye, my eye now a bad camera. You...
Halloween
Nicola Harwood Note about names and pronouns: Names have been changed in this story to protect privacy. Around the age of seventeen, Antwan changed her name and asked to be referred to as female. She has asked that we use male pronouns when referring to the times before then when she still...
Railway & Steveston Hwy
Jade McGregor When I say poetry saved my life I should mention other forces– by 1999 all the cars cruising the kiddie stroll had power lock doors, crystal meth turned the girls —Amber Dawn, titular piece, How Poetry Saved My Life My mother lived beside herself in fear I...
I Steel Myself
Arleen Paré if anyone asks tell them I’m sane as stainless steel I heat the pot before I make the tea when the Jehovah’s Witnesses knock I stand stock-still behind the drapes I harden myself against the swords of winter rain against December’s bucket of black night before they hatch I do not...
The Gospel of Breaking
Jillian Christmas Dear God, Is it wrong that so long after our separation, I still see your face everywhere? The holy water between my legs when she touches me The wet in her eyes, head pressed back, her sinner mouth too full of heaven This bruised knee city Springing with all the wrong...
Rental
He's got one hand on the wheel and the other on her thigh, and Mae can't quite remember but she's pretty sure this is what love feels like.
Spare Change
Sierra Skye Gemma This piece first appeared in Plenitude magazine, Issue 2. Published here with permission from the author. The first time I see Stacey, I am standing in front of the courthouse on S.W. Morrison, in downtown Portland, Oregon. I’m with all the other punks in our usual spot. This is...
Honeymoon
Pamela Mosher How to prepare for the bed and breakfast lavish with tajines and import rugs, absurd with Québecois music and Americans who couldn’t afford Paris? We couldn’t believe our room of roped curtain, in-suite fireplace, and crystal wine glasses (we filled with cheap depanneur red) We...
Beach Story
One ex-wife was looking sexy in a retro green bikini with a built-in, conish bra. She seemed taller than she had the summer before, her legs longer, her toenails redder.
Silva for Sylvia Plath
Sugar le Fae —after Collin Kelley’s “Saving Anne Sexton” In the library in Florence, Mass, I found her shriveled up small, a sibyl living in the hollow of her own book: a flask, a handgun, neatly rolled cash. Everywhere you looked, her curls!— in the red cursive script across the cover, in...
All Summer Growing
Joelle Barron All summer I’m growing: sugar snaps, raspberries, fat tomatoes streaked red and green. Plants are easy to love. My dog stretched out on the spruce-shade lawn is easy to love. Flutter in my belly might be you, might be gas. Too early to tell, but every night I drip milk. I...
Squeaky Wheels
Rhiannon Catherwood When I was ten years old, I ran away by accident. Every day at recess, I sought out the same secluded alcove in the outer wall of the school. I would sit, take out a spiral notebook, and write, relying on a plastic digital watch to let me know when my thirty minutes were up. The...
A short history of my writing career
Alex Leslie We’ve changed You said to me “your assorted minority identities” I misheard it, my sordid minority identities I routinely mishear labels as compliments this is a survival skill I don’t remember not noticing acquiring this skill You are so articulate have you considered being a...
Virgins in Time
Neve Be The best sex I’ve ever had was with a sixteen-year-old boy. The thing is, at the time, I was also sixteen. And no, I’m not saying that my literal high school experience was full of good body feels and good sex, because it wasn’t. This hot, affirming sexual experience took place in May of...
Message in a Bottle
Justin Karcher Sam, we have to clear our mental garbage. It will take work to mend these holes. If we don’t, We’ll end up marooned on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch spanning waters from the West Coast Of North America to Japan. Garbage is magnetic. It flocks to other garbage, like blood...
From the Paint Stains
Rachel Charlene Lewis [mks_dropcap style=”square” size=”35″ bg_color=”#505556″ txt_color=”#ffffff”]I[/mks_dropcap] keep losing my colouring; I am a blob of human. I should probably see a therapist, but for now I’ll stick to drinking a lot of...
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Dina Del Bucchia and Daniel Zomparelli 1. I don’t really remember much these days, when the bones arrived I talked about paper or the way glass isn’t something I want to be around. Did you remember the way love works, I told you once in a small elevator that the world closes in...
Like Magic
Taylor Basso [mks_dropcap style=”square” size=”35″ bg_color=”#505556″ txt_color=”#ffffff”]T[/mks_dropcap]he cab was long gone but they were still standing in the same spot where they got out. Mario had handed the driver a twenty, didn’t even...
Because We’re Going to Camp Mockingee
Shannon Webb-Campbell in the truck, on the way up, we talk around the meaning of marriage, we find an uncharted knowing driving down dirt roads, passing sheep, old barns, soon-to-be-made memories, alpacas by the time we make it to the highway, we conclude, love is truce, a pact to honour and...
Catching Fire (Or Waiting For You)
Lynx Sainte-Marie I stand by the window. The night endures, and shadows are suffered by streetlamps. They mourn for the darkened lull of True Winter: that stillness where light is starved, begging for penance. For a while I had sat by my desk, looking busy. My eyes moved silently along the...
Underworld
Aaron Chan I don’t know why I’m here. Before I left home, I told myself it was because I didn’t want to listen to my mom’s grating voice anymore while she yelled on the phone. On the SkyTrain, I convinced myself that my soul aches, that after years of searching and countless failed attempts at...
Together Six
Amber Dawn I watched your breast which was fuller than the night on my porch when I first undid your buttons. The sheet beneath you was green It was almost our anniversary –“Epiphyte 2: Moss,” Jane Eaton Hamilton I watch your breast which is fuller than when we met I thought...
Daddy
Davey Davis [mks_dropcap style=”square” size=”35″ bg_color=”#505556″ txt_color=”#ffffff”]T[/mks_dropcap]he Falcon is caged into its lot by prickly pears and a queue of stunted palms. Beyond it sprawl the fallow rice fields, and beyond those the...