The woman smoking meth across from the bodega looks like your sister, so you offer her a pack of cigarettes and forty-three dollars if she’ll pretend to be her for one night. You could afford to pay more, but this is all you have in cash and she takes it. Up close, she looks less like Reed: acne...
Her eyes glow green under obsidian skies She gives the midnight cowboy a silver dollar and he hands her the elixir sealed with wax She tells me that life begins when you open your eyes in the morning She wants to show me the field where the wild horses run while their watcher sleeps Her eyes glow...
Reviewed by Namitha Rathinappillai jaye simpson, it was never going to be okay (Nightwood Editions, 2020), 112 pp., $18.95. Shortlisted for the Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ2S+ Emerging Writers, and the Indigenous Voices Award (2021). In jaye simpson’s debut book, it was never going to be...
1. Write what you worry about on sticky notes. Throw them on the ground and draw a circle of water around them. Sprinkle salt onto the circle to light it on fire. 2. Start by texting, “I’m worried that…” in a message to yourself. Think about how sweet pecan pie is, and allow...
This one Sunday night I stood in my bathroom with the door open while Cass talked me through her most recent horrible week. Cass was tall, blonde, thin. Light on light on light. Except, she kept her long hair dyed bright colours and wore baggy clothes with a lot of patterns. This all had the effect...
Pain thuds the drum before I leave the ear appointment, but the clinic staff wave me out the door. The throbs become thumps of bass through floor boards and I call 811, wincing against my pillow. The thumps release into fizzing, then sputtering I laugh off over tea and a roommate’s raised brow...
Reviewed by Kegan McFadden Billeh Nickerson, Duct-Taped Roses (Book*hug Press, 2021), 96 pp., $20.00. Billeh Nickerson’s new poetry collection Duct-Taped Roses begins with the lines: “When we wrap our legs / around one another’s / I’m not sure.” This first poem, “Mermen,” is situated just...
after Claudia Rankine / Today: You perch at your kitchen table, a swell of distraction surrounding your screen: discarded wristwatch, stained cotton wipes full of thick black nailpolish, your third pot of bitter tea. You click between determination and avoidance, between the crushing metronome of...
My left pinky was first. During the icebreaker at my college dorm’s first floor meeting, when I was asked to give three interesting facts about myself, I lifted my pinky-less hand. The first fact was: “I grew up on a farm about four hours away.” The second fact was: “I lost my left pinky finger...
