Mother, then setting off— I see the world in which you inhabited sand breaching between land and seafoam you left clues, spinning sagas in my all too Canadian body of a place so delicious in warmth, the providence of natural resources prone to warships and the occasional genocide. Mother, on the...
after “Dick from a Girl with Autism” I love autistic gay trans queens Us sensual sensory gals Euphoric smut and top-shelf memes From squishy a-spec pals High-stim, low-stim Not him, zmm zmm Tattoos, role play Bound by the High Fae Head pats for days and no more shame I hear you call my name I wanna...
When she was eleven, Alex spent about a week out in the Missouri cornfields, crawling along the bottom of the stalks until she found a natural divot in the ground that was big enough for her lanky frame. There she burrowed down, surrounded by dirt and worms, and covered the top of the hole with the...
My father told me he came from an island. A boat in the middle of the night took him and his brothers to the city. They would grow into men, become part of another land to tell stories from, be named in— no longer speaking ways of the water. When my father became a settler on the prairies, I came...
I am writing you this letter from the bottom of the ocean where my eyelids are bottle caps and my stomach turns burnished copper. Maybe it is time for a new oral tradition. All day I flicker and sometimes I go out and leave in my wake the faintest trace of sweat and hibiscus. Maybe I am an embryo...
By the early 1950s, the town where I grew up was turning into a modern suburb of Montreal, just across the river. New streets were being carved into the surrounding farm fields of the St. Lawrence valley, but the house my parents had put a down payment on, not long before my older brother was born...
I removed my belly button and paid attention to the healing process. No one believed I could feel the hole closing over, that it reminded me of being born. My mother was laid out on the kitchen table for a week. Formaldehyde high, you never noticed when my skin blackened. I felt undesirable. You...
Her body was part-whale, part-mouse—behold the lie! It lives in your belly. Like an unborn baby you mould the lie. Slice my ears with the jagged stars. What did you ever do with the gift of music? I buried the violin and told the lie. This lamp in the ocean. A wolf with feathers for fangs. The...
The ringmaster thinks about the words work and pride and feels nothing. Glowing tubes writhe and pulse through colours as they pass over the audience, who scream or laugh or noiselessly gape up into their futures. One tube pauses above the ringmaster, changing to match the black and purple of his...
I don’t really have a preference. Which name you use. The coffee beans. Fonts or flowers or flavors. Except when it comes to bubbles. Keep my water flat, I don’t need it to be interesting. I’d prefer not to say—that’s a preference. I’d prefer to stay—that’s a...
The Hunter’s Moon reaches bloody illumination tonight obliviously obscuring what would be my first glimpse of the Draconids. I’ve yet to witness a meteor shower which is to say my blood still burns from when I saw a star fall by chance years ago and didn’t make a wish— how dare the moon rise...
Naegleria Fowleri infects people when water containing the amoeba enters the body through the nose. This typically happens when people go swimming, diving, or when they put their heads under fresh water, like in lakes and rivers. The amoeba then travels up the nose to the brain, where it destroys...
i think of myself in images: oranges split down the middle, pavement damp with rain. spring fields are the same as being under water and fill the hollow in my gut where a rib used to be. sometimes, i am a row of naked bodies on different planes, reaching out to touch fingertips that...
We buy a speckled ceramic vase for his mother and then we buy a new vase for ourselves. The vase we buy ourselves is glass, hand-blown, twisted and prismatic. There’s an Italian word for it, surely. Before this glass vase we had a ceramic vase: floral and millennial pink, yet vaguely 70s. We grew...
Finn (not her name) described herself as a grief artist as though this were a familiar term, wanting to see how the person she was talking to asked for an explanation (chastened, as if they ought to have known already, in quotations, to make her feel foolish so they didn’t, not at all). To her, it...
I try to end it the night we lunge lung first into the north country, the unappeasable shores of Lake Superior and me too unappeasable, restless and reckless, tensing the edges of the waves. We can’t tell if they’re advancing or receding. Gravity forgets us our measures of depth, the possibilities...
after Lisel Mueller How I would paint your future: A lush peach, full of juice and...
“Now that we’ve been seeing each other for three weeks, should we be exclusive?” « Oui, parce que je vais pas rester avec toi si tu veux voir un autre homme. » “Sounds good.” Henrique and I spoke best in the absence of a common language. I was able to understand French but spoke it poorly, and he...
a speckled bloat of metal-ridged rooftops come to life from deep under the roots of blue grama grass stuck over a cast of wither-dry sun beams boredom is rampant plastered in checkered flannel top countertop stale coffee over a pot she is homegrown straight from chernozemic soil Moose Jaw is an...
d i m e n s i o n s w e c a n s c a r c e l y r e c o g n i z e. ever been. The balance of our faces will be alien— nostrils, our eyes round as planets, wide as they have ourselves going grey, left with only the twin slits of our move more swiftly toward our demise. Soon, we find human cells...
The first time Lenny does her wash at your house, she comes with a bottle of gin in her laundry basket, folded into a cardigan. You’re standing out back watering the lettuces when she calls your name over the fence. “Ginger?” She holds up her laundry basket. “This a good time?” “Of course!” You let...
Not a pretty structure No beautiful content Ruthless Lots of typos Lots of mean adverbs Repetitive form Contrasting voices Yelling in Farsi Shouting in English Not pragmatic Just dark Stuffy, complex not like-me words Redundant Maddening Screaming in capitals Calling people that not who No clarity...
the world sleeps while i listen. the faucet sings frère jacques frère jacques dormez-vous dormez-vous. what language would i be dreaming if i were. i ask the pillow to consider how in its breaking legacy leads to sitting. leg assis. assis one of many words rooted in my tongue. the pillow says it...
The life of a writer can be wonderful. With no employer’s thumb to struggle out from under, one can indulge in more enjoyable forms of exercise: walking to the liquor store, etc. It can be a lonely life, too. Alas, it usually is. It’s no wonder so many authors are alcoholics. Bullfighting...
Dogwood blossoms return men materialize down by the tracks one slumped over a shopping cart says he will make some graffiti drink some beer holds up a Bud can—cheers a guy in the alders with a flip phone gingerly raises his hand says hi hi hi by the flattened Coors cases Absolut bottles soot from...
I was as an orchid wearing nothing but the light. You hammered an I into me like a nail, taught me the language of glass as you forged my eyes from the surfaces of sight. You’ve seen it all: the feral child putting on his Halloween werewolf suit, the teenaged boy kissing his breath-fogged...
My sister Barb and I were sitting in the kitchen at the big oval wooden table, staring at the television perched in the recessed shelf of the wall opposite. It was the late 1960s and we were still watching a black-and-white portable television; I was 9 years old, and Barb was 5. The world consisted...
It’s 2:56 and you are awake. The pulse under your jaw throbs. Carotid arteries throng your brain. The senses reside here, below your jawline, so does speech. You say “service” aloud like a wish. Go to the road, again. Go. It’s 3:12 and you are awake. You paddle your feet under the covers. Your...
Begin by noting that there’s no path to the other side of rain.The only way is perpetually through. A bicycle on two wheels forthe first time. At the viewing, only the mourners keep the emptiness at bay. Before and after, a room of objects. If youreached across, it would...
You ever listened to Roy Orbison? That voice. That fucking voice. Cuts deep into you, slicing you bit by bit. Until you’re just chunks of meaty, exposed flesh on the ground. All that remains is the pain you had before you started listening to one of his songs. Been listening to him a lot lately...
seafoam sours beneath my tongue spills over in the speaking of a name a tide in my throat, a surge of syllables the gravity of the words i swallow turns my body inside out tears my teeth from my mouth. secrets dissolve in my mouth drops of nectar spear my tongue to my jaw, i speak without saying...
After the painting, The Juggler, by Spanish surrealist, Remedios Varo (1908-1963) Yesterday a great many pellets of graupel shot out of the low grey sky— bouncing ice-balls! Spring’s thunderous shout muffled by its cloudy facemask. We have been too knotted into death counts & pollen counts...
Centerpoint Mall doesn’t know the fate that awaits her. The dust that will soon rise from her roof, the way her shadow will shrink from the parking lot. She thinks what we all think about our bodies. Imperishable. Centerpoint is an immigrant mall full of immigrant things. Baadeh. Cameo...
and aspire to something that looks like love. Or is it just the margarine version? Try to do all the things originally on your five-year plan. Pretend they are still achievable. Pretend they will make you happy since what makes you happy can change within a single unexpected glance. How what you...
Pear trees line the grove, netting the sun, sheltering the predators encroached behind the thick green leaves and bodies fat and round. You pass me a knife and ask if I would carve a feast for you, a garden under golden skies and pear skin peels as cries of insects pitch the air. Fireweed...
At many stages throughout my life, I often wondered: If I were the same age as my dad, would we have been friends? I knew my dad loved me, but did he like me? Whenever I cleared my mom and sister out of the living room by letting a particularly loud one rip, Dad would grin and say “Like father...
“The one you would choose: Were you led then by him?” “What longing, O Yaar, is controlled in real time?” —Agha Shahid Ali (Ghazal) i dreamt of tulips today they opened their mouths in a yawn the kind that engulfs the sun in its vacuous mouth like a little hurricane; the sort of yawn that could...
But how could it not, when you used the precise alphanumeric sequence needed to land your words in my inbox? Not what you meant? Let’s begin again. Sarcasm arrives too easily when I’m nervous. Yes, I am well. As in I am doing well. As in I remember to steady myself with deep breathing when...
Content warning: this story depicts domestic violence and has discussions of sexualized violence. The Johnny Cash records. Well, we left behind all the records, along with that battered record player in the teal case. All of us, when we were little, liked to play with the metal clasp on that case...
before lockdown i dreamt that a serpent tried to kill me. so i tattooed it to my forearm in the place of my neck, a vision of black scales & black eyes blazed alight beneath the red of an imaginary sun. when an alien summer leaves you hypomanic it makes perfect sense to carve nightmare...
