Liselle Yorke i put an entire nation into a cardboard boxhandled them with care down the basement stairsopened the last door for themthe last act of common decency i put them on the cold floor of the crawl spacetucked between winter gear and holiday lightsalongside seasons that have passedi leave...
Rob Colgate Finn drowned me he wanted to there’s nowhere to read this and my rubber filled with lungs pushed the stretch of my back thin water no I’m sorry white water yes it was less costly to sink the...
Kate Cayley There was a small bathroom off of the gym changeroom. Grace knew it was almost never used. It was behind a beige door between two rows of lockers, and it only had three cubicles. The bathroom was L-shaped, the cubicles facing the sinks and mirrors, and then a corner that ended in a...
Samantha Sternberg Wafer paper and moonlightspread across the swept table.A fresh pen. Start at the waist. Hands on hips.The small-leaved lime treehad the greatest girth in Łódź, 2017. There must be enough to hold onto.Eat, eat. Few of her words I remember.Six years we shared. Zeyde stayed late to...
Aylin Malcolm Sell gender to the highest bidder. Curate crisis. Have graceless breakdownover plans made. Undothe bed, shiver. A day weighed downwith hashtags: new year, new war. Splinters of time and death, merepartitioning the river. Noone wanted this. We wantedto push...
Leanne Dunic A woman who was in my kindergarten class remembers me as the girl who had a crush on the Ghostbusters. I didn’t crush on all of the Ghostbusters, mainly the quirkier of the bunch: Egon Spengler and Peter Venkman. In Venkman, I found humour, self-confidence, street-smarts, and...
Courtney Love on all night in his low attic roomtesting with toes, jokes that weren’t jokesand soon, the lingering hand— how I loved his lingering hand!Fingers in the boxer band, our hardness!I shook in the sheetsout of joy for him that night. The next morning was Lady Di’s funeraland we were up...
She asked me my feelings. Disclosure on demand. As though they could pile and inspect them. I couldn’t find any in my small square, the place where I store things. I must have put them in another box. I have since misplaced my scattered belongings. Luke Smith-Adams is a 32 year old living in...
Emilie Kneifel the first years they fumbled through the office door, always late, always elbowing each other as they rush-brushed their teeth before they plopped in the chair. a boy and his older sister, who was the moon to his moving car: always behind, same angle, same distance. emily would have...
Roxanna Bennett In Oxford on OxyContin, in Ajax on Ativan, in Paris on Percocets, in Cobourg on Clonazepam, in Switzerland on Seroquel, in Scarborough on Serentil, Berlin is a blur of Baclofen & Nabilone, Old Town is absinthe, Abilify & absence, Montreal is Mirtazapine, codeine &...
This is a nonfiction story that deals with emotional abuse, and may resonate with readers on many different levels. If you or someone you know needs to safely reach out for help, we invite you to consult the Canadian Women’s Foundation list of support services, found here. Katherine DeCoste Having...
Jake Byrne My second boyfriend’s husband’s boyfriend pulls the page of cups I feel the only way I should: ecstatically We’ve put on the red light Concrete floor wet with verruca and lube A dampness on my perineum I composed this poem while David fucked me and apologized for not being fully present...
For mobile devices, this poem is best read in landscape orientation mode. Tharuna Abbu Day 1 the enemy is not the virus 3a Day 2 ...
Johnny Alvarez When I first read it, I think it’s a mistake. I think I’m groggy, mentally displaced, as I often am at this hour. I open it in bed, staring not at the envelope as I tear it, but out my window to far-off Baker Beach. It’s a shitty, grey Bay day, but a few persistent souls have found...
Chelsea Lee Wood As if they knew our fear the crows made strange calls, their crackling laughter. And eagles flying overhead flaunting a catch we can’t make. Today, a bird that shall not be named calls, their laughter cracks us open. And eagles joining up three, now four, soon none. Today, a bird...
Michelle Poirier Brown Not just any so good. So good the way you say so good. The way you close your eyes and sink into your breath. The way you weep with me when I am happy. So good the way you greet your animals. So good the way you greet your tea. It’s infatuation. It always is. That adoration...
Elizabeth Mudenyo the way I keep coming back I’m sure a part of me has stayed at age 12 I walked gaze lowered until my best friend told me not to and looking back I want to unfurl my fingers bent on impossibility my head filled with futures for somebody else and their body I did the work of...
Joshua Wales You plead to see my toaster every day and I make you count down before I flip the camera round to let you see: Three-Two-One Toaster! Raise the stakes is rule one of distance cinema. It’s just a dented chrome four-slicer but you find in its regularity a precious metal that only a two...
Sydni Zastre We land Saturday around two and it is warm, but the pilot warns us to expect heavy wind in Málaga, coming down from the mountains. The Norwegian boys next to me have been talking since we left Gatwick, while I slept fitfully and read Tipping the Velvet, and they keep talking as I stare...
Vicky Chen sharp knives in a kitchen cut from crisp asian pears and pickled radish stored in jars you promised could become more than glass prisons. turn back time, so you can ask me again: 你想吃什么? no shortage of berry, melon, spice from careful cupboards you have hidden loneliness in a place for...
Naomi Arden Paragas Pasatiempo “Tell me a ghost story,” I ask, curled in bed with my Naynay Rosie. It’s our first night in the Philippines, the first time she’s seen me since I was three. Night crawls over Manila. Our hotel room is sixty stories high, overlooking the city. Even from up here, we can...
K.S.Y. Varnam It’s like how I feel after too long in the country; there’s too much space between. I live in the city for the loud voices and the night chaos. I love trees and open fields and clean air, but I need the bustle of human lives around me too. I need graffiti in the back alleys behind...
David Ishaya Osu both tomorrow and the tomato will ripen into a song / no song is through with your body cry outside your robe will know why we laugh the boy and his ball lead inside, too i am too big for a ghost everyone faces the mirror and then says no, no, no David Ishaya Osu is a poet...
Jim Nason And then! Oh, the noise! Oh, the noise! Noise! Noise! Noise! The Whos would start singing! They’d sing! And they’d sing! And they’d SING! —Doctor Seuss From balcony and rooftop, from sidewalks and cars— bicycle and dinner bells, pot against pan, spoon against glass, clapping and whistles...
Chris Slater You’ve been dead three weeks and it’s time to clean out your trailer. Sun glints gold off the dangling leaves. The sky faded denim. I could think of a hundred things I’d rather do today. A thousand. At least Brian’s working too. It’s silent up here in the boonies, no horns or sirens or...
Katherine Abbass My roommate is a pilot; we watch the sky for signs of life. On warm days we sit out on the patio and stare at the stucco building beside us, our neighbour walking her iguana on the handrail, giving us a wave, a cigarette dangling from her winter lips, dry and scaly as her pet. My...
For mobile devices, this poem is best read in landscape orientation mode. Cecilia Stuart I put something down, you pick it up. I write theletter e and you pick it up. You go on waiting,waiting. I draw a barrier around myself. Closeenough for you to graze...
Lucas Crawford The swab isn’t sublingual after-all so for now my secret cure remains safe. He counted to three and went up my nose with a stick longer than the smallest dildo that my Montreal landlord stole. Great. Now I have a nasal fetish. Dare you to dig deeper than him and risk reaching the...
Tawahum Bige after Eve Joseph nipawatan wecîpweyânâhk nipihtos-mihko ewîkiyân tahtwayak ekwa âyiman I’m used to battlefield the way cannons fire and ancestors’ bones gather, just to shatter again. Dene rising are more story than poem— our throats carry cargo, long thought sunken...
Clara Otto I’m looking at my window when I realize there might not be anything special about it. I had always thought that it would reveal something—about the way dull senses wake up, without explanation, after years of monotony, or why walking down your childhood street can evoke a deep and sudden...
Grace When my succulent began turning yellow, it dropped one fleshy leaf every day, indifferent to my panic until only the stem remained naked and alone. You could still see the hollows that were homes for phantomed limbs, where love [was] tried. * I call my plants my children and give them either...
Rob Colgate Staring out the drippy window. Wanna go to the top of the rock. So happy up there boy so happy so happy. Want the river up there with me. Wanna be alone. Not my boyfriend. Covered in slimy nacre so the dirt is worth it. All of this used to be colder. Rain on the fire escape, street...
Ashley-Elizabeth Best The bench is moist from my sweat. I push my right knee down on its centre, left leg anchoring my body to the floor. My fingers grip the dumbbell as I methodically begin pulling the 50lbs up and down, my bicep flexes and tears, each pump tightening the slight curve of my inner...
Leslie Joy Ahenda the nice ones all got shot. a woman knots her fists & disregards her joints—swelling means her blood is not yet on pavement. in sleep a woman majesticizes a man unshackled. wakes to a man praying only for his brothers. please. nigga fronts like the lust in his eyes is a yellow...
James Collier cloud unsettling little winter, in April it is all local, grappling with small stakes and nothing real, Caeneus unknowable to the body I feel, glance down, glazed and terrible it is all so apathetic, the snow smothers what is not already home, and Caeneus, I am sorry, but the crush is...
Brian O’Neill Jud wasn’t agoraphobic when he moved in with me. We had been friends for years and he was one of the most social people I knew, which was why I was happy to invite him to live with me. (I mean, that and I could’ve used help with the rent.) The circumstances were rough—his ex’s...
Roxanna Bennett after “Bilingual Pathways” by Dominik Parisien In Paris the air tastes like pain, ancient, golden, Gauloises, Gitanes, paint the skin with guttersweat grease. I learn to limp through the Louvre, loving the Winged Victory of Samothrace...
Interview by Rob Bittner Here is the final of four interviews and story excerpts as part of our Youth Spotlight project. For details on this series, see our original post. “Sushi Tears” by Emma Bishop chronicles the process of coming out while also interrogating gender norms in the context of...
Interview by Rob Bittner Here is the third of four interviews and story excerpts as part of our Youth Spotlight project. For details on this series, see our original post. Rhyan St. Louis’s “To Be the Moon” utilizes a somewhat claustrophobic timeline along with earnest dialogue to create a palpable...
Michael Russell I hold the last picture of you fold it into the pocket of my mouth, chew. Daddy, you taste like love and devastation. My teeth rip you the way you ripped yourself from me. In front of the bathroom mirror I ask Where is Stephen? The steam lifts like a bridal veil and I vomit the wolf...
