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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Claire Matthews I Like ferns in the desert, you said we were impossible. I drew you a giraffe, a frond in its mouth, taped it to the fridge, said, Use your imagination. Around your neck hung the patron saint you wore when you saw your mother. In the living room, the only photo of her turned...
Jim Nason Here, above/ cracks in the buildings are filled with battered moonlight. —Elizabeth Bishop [mks_dropcap style=”square” size=”35″ bg_color=”#505556″ txt_color=”#ffffff”]K[/mks_dropcap]ent had snuck the tent and two sleeping bags...
Ruth Daniell Everything came back to me, in snippets, later, after the smell of his cologne on a stranger wafted through the doors of a bus and the details swept into me like dirt maltreated by a broom— his hands on me, his eyes seeing my fear and ignoring it, his voice telling me to stay...
Calvin Gimpelevich [mks_dropcap style=”square” size=”35″ bg_color=”#505556″ txt_color=”#ffffff”]I[/mks_dropcap] met Gina sobbing on the bike racks behind my work. She paused to hiccup and check her cell-phone display before heaving into another...
Nico Amador Seasons have changed, even if doubts haven’t. Up north we’re together in the final blue curl of daylight, watching each iteration of trees out the window, their latest bit, that wild dead orange. It’s cold and I feel calmer in my clothes. I’m answering the call of old books...
Monica Meneghetti Vancouver wears its October sky like a toque. I long to pull off that sodden wool to reveal the cascading golden curls I know are itching underneath. Back home in Banff, the first skiffs of snow are melting under blue sky while yellow leaves still cling to aspen and poplar. Here...
Michael V. Smith I’m in the chapel on the Titanic but it’s modern and kind of tacky. The ceilings are twenty feet high. There are huge dark panels on the walls where stained glass windows should be. When you walk past them, you can see in, see three-dimensional representations of...
by Arleen Paré ask yourself how you bear this state everyday this chromosomal state of x and x like the day you step from the number 17 cross the street up the concrete steps faster along the everyday academic corridor into the university classroom late and a boy with a semi...
