Reviewed by seeley quest Trynne Delaney, the half-drowned (Metatron Press, 2022), 144 pp., $18. Near the end of Trynne Delaney’s first book, the half-drowned, comes a thematic question: What reality might hit after the end of belonging? The speculative fiction novella is set in a liminal future...
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You Hope This Message Finds Me Well
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...
The Things We Left Behind
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...
crying at the jay som concert
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...
Joy Should Be Honoured: A Review of Brian Francis’ Missed Connections
Reviewed by Melinda Roy Brian Francis, Missed Connections: A Memoir in Letters Never Sent (McClelland & Stewart, 2021), 240 pp., $24.95. I am a late bloomer. I came out as queer at 32 and was diagnosed with ADHD two years later. There were signs of both, which I can see when I look back; my...
I love you, kiss me
I am you in your jewel-domed reading room, I am you in your kayak skimming. —Phyllis Webb The sky was inverted. I called you in the bare yellow night. I am you against the river of clouds, I am you in an energy current shaking down the kitchen walls, you in the contrapuntal stream of two trees...
