In Loving Memory of Simon (1992-2022) * in the city that screams beauty occurred to me between the city and the city there’s a body of water and a ferry * we have found in ourselves a great proximity to danger we are born of fire and blissful taste of forget I forget how many Is I have written into...
Latest Stories
The Work of Immortalizing: A Review of Manahil Bandukwala’s Monument
Reviewed by Namitha Rathinappillai Manahil Bandukwala, Monument (Brick Books, 2022), 96 pp., $22.95. In her debut poetry collection Monument, Manahil Bandukwala immortalizes the historical Mumtaz Mahal, empress consort of the Mughal Empire, who is most often known as the woman for whose burial...
Of Rats and Floods
There are rats in the house. They gnaw basket-straws, the cardboard edges of things. Their shit, softening in repeated washings, hidden in the fingers of a glove. Grey stains along the baseboard. They track each other, smelling. Eyes dried berries, swiveling. The intelligence of their tails...
Witch Lessons
She spent the afternoon the same way she had every day that week, digging around the lake after swimming lessons with the dog-eared blue book tucked under her arm. In her bag, a rosemary sprig, a stubby white candle. All week, Fran had been considering the jaw of the squirrel, and now she walked...
the core empties
i fear the deluge of careerists tapping concrete in oxfords & ballet flats chic folx in Barbour & Burberry coats released from desks to trains or after hours off king west dead ass with pretty young things, all beauties and good vibes only—so kalos kagathos—made flaccid by business manz...
Ephemeral Traces: A Review of Hannah McGregor’s A Sentimental Education
Reviewed by Vange Holtz Schramek Hannah McGregor, A Sentimental Education (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2022), 176 pp., $24.99. The full-scale uptake of social media since the rise of mega platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have led to many critiques of Millennials and Generation...
The Past
Read to me in tongues aflame in blame, I asked the past. My prayers burnt to accusations, I cannot get past the past. Killing, not violence if you believe a killer rearranges a body’s time. Rubble of muscle, not soul. All have killed before—so vast the past. I bathed my shadow in a rainstorm...
When It’s Over
The frosting on today’s cupcakes is bluish-grey, the colour of blah—the colour of this moment. But the smells of cinnamon buns, movie popcorn, and French fry oil fill the air and remind me of the verb wafts, so I turn away from the dessert shop and try to forget it’s there. I make my way to a...
Balancing
A flying woman, balances between the cruel heat-drafts of mid July She hovers, between tin-can house-music and picnic-fattened ants whose licorice-backs gleam in the merciless summer heat Her support? The co-conspirator to this rebellion against gravity? Perhaps she’s a childhood friend, a lover...