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...
Reviewed by Cara Kauhane Andrew Kushnir & Khari Wendell McClelland, Moving the Centre (Talonbooks, 2022), 160 pp., $19.95. Moving the Centre consists of two documentary plays, “Small Axe” by Andrew Kushnir and “Freedom Singer” by Khari Wendell McClelland, as well as accompanying essays. Relying...
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...
Reviewed by David Ly Meghan Kemp-Gee, The Animal in the Room (Coach House Books, 2023), 80 pp., $23,95. As a poet who is always interested in incorporating animals into my poetry—as they lend themselves particularly well to vivid imagery and nuanced metaphors—my curiosity was instantly piqued when...
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...
