Kateryna Kobylianska is a Ukrainian abstract artist based in Montreal. With a portfolio featuring over 20 exhibitions worldwide, she has been pushing her artistic limits since 2018. She is getting inspired by nature, cultural theories, and the whole wild ride of human thoughts and behavior. The artwork: “A big bird flying away from the small cage”

*Poems from the Crowd* is now available!

Explore the poems of contemporary poets for the donation price of $2 CDN (in digital format). We’ve also published a special, limited print edition of 100 copies for this first issue of the series: Summer 2025. ($8) Happy reading! 

Interview by T. Liem with Ockert Greeff // Winner of the 2024 Vallum Chapbook Award (No. 39)

Congratulations on winning the 2024 Vallum Chapbook Award with A Mass Choir of Little Things!

T. Liem: In this work images and memories accumulate with a weighted pace, whole stanzas repeat like time-slowing refrains, and certain words become chant-like as in “A Letter from The Sea” with sea and see. This feels like a particular kind of musicality. Would you talk about where your experience as a drummer intersects with your experience of composing poetry?

An Inked Shorthand of Marks

T.Liem: The Whole Catastrophe was a pleasure to read. With my pencil in hand, I was tracing ideas, underlining phrases, and noting recurring lines. There is also so much sound-joy in reading it aloud, hearing your patterns of assonance and slant rhyme. It is this musicality that lets readers draw themselves along the earth with your speaker. These are poems which also feel like invitations. Congratulations on this publication and thanks for taking the time to talk about it with me!

Announcing the publication of A Mass Choir of Little Things by 2024 Vallum Chapbook Contest Winner, Ockert Greeff!

A Mass Choir of Little Things seems sculpted by decay. Poet and percussionist Ockert Greeff examines physical evidence of impending disaster and recent loss, from leftover clothes to leathery faces. Bodies and landscapes bear wounds of time and the promise of finality. In one poem, his mother giggles like a girl; in the next, she cannot recognize him. But Greeff’s sparse, vivid language also finds life within endings. He imagines his elderly mom as a baby turtle wading into the water; he chronicles organisms that persist. An orange pickup truck in the desert, a swimmer lifting his arms to the sky. Greeff’s preoccupation with “the dark mass that is taking us all” reveals a gentle attention to existence — the rhythms of a haircut, the silences of a funeral — figuring death as one part of the story.

ANNOUNCING NEW CHAPBOOK BY JAMI MACARTY:

“In Jami Macarty’s The Whole Catastrophe, every asterisk indicates something precious. Macarty uses the poetic form to create space for what is otherwise omitted: the fresh air outside car windows, the stars blotted out by city infrastructures, a friend gone too soon. Chronicling a road trip to the Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico, Macarty reflects on fragility, greed and the disasters we must withstand, from toxic feedlots to carbon monoxide poisoning.

POEMS FROM THE CROWD series

If you would like your work to be considered to appear in Vallum’s new digital series, submit your poem. Guidelines for the “POEMS FROM THE CROWD” Series Submissions are accepted from September 15, 2024 to January 15, 2025. There is no fee to submit your work. Submission Requirements: Poem: Submit one poem with a maximum […]

Announcing the winner of the 2024 Vallum Chapbook Award:

Ockert Greeff, for his chapbook: “A Mass Choir of Little Things” Excerpt from chapbook:    *     *     * I let go of my yellow lunchbox Watch it swirl away in the dark water Past the boy who cannot give up He is swimming, lifting his arms up High out of the water, […]

Vallum Workshops Spring 2024

Our talented facilitator, Heather Brunet, recently conducted a workshop titled “Poetic Maps” at St. Gabriel Elementary School (SEEDS classroom). Known for her dynamic approach and ability to connect with students, Heather introduced a powerful method to use metaphors, guiding sixth graders to explore and express their chosen places through poetic language. The workshop was a […]

FEATURED VALLUM CHAPBOOK:

RECURRING AWAKENING by FRANZ WRIGHT “Franz wrote fearlessly about mental illness, addiction, and loneliness, as well as about faith and the unending beauty of his world, no matter how broken; he never wrote a line that wasn’t fiercely important to him, musical, as witty as it was deadly serious. Franz lived for poetry—at times it seemed […]

INTERVIEW WITH ROSIE LONG DECTER AND VALLUM CHAPBOOK-WINNER MAYA CLUBINE

From the Immediate to the Timeless: A Conversation with Maya Clubine

Life Cycle of a Mayfly chronicles more than the life of a river bug. Maya Clubine’s collection, winner of the 2023 Vallum Chapbook Award, takes mayflies as a departure point for thinking about ecosystems, interdependence, and the lessons that we pass down through generations. Clubine considers the growth of a fly from nymph to imago alongside changing seasons, bird migrations, a father’s passing, a daughter’s return. Along the way, cycles tangle like a fishing line. In this interview, critic Rosie Long Decter talks with Clubine about structure, repetition, and the relationship between the cosmic and the minute.   

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Vallum Chapbook Award 2024 | Submissions are open

Submissions for our Vallum Chapbook Award 2024 are now open!

WINNING CHAPBOOK: PUBLICATION + $300

ENTRY FEE:
$25 for Canadian entrants, $30 for U.S. and international entrants. Submissions and payments are processed through Vallum’s Submittable account.

Check out Vallum’s new Chapbooks 2023

Exciting News: Two New Vallum Chapbooks Now Available! 📚We are thrilled to announce the release of two captivating chapbooks that have been carefully crafted by talented poets. These gems are now available for you

2023 Poetry Award | SHORTLIST

We are thrilled to announce our short list for the 2023 Vallum Poetry Award. It was a pleasure to read everyone’s work and we are awash in gratitude and admiration for these poets gracing us with their work. Congratulations to the shortlisted poets!       Murray Mann, “How I Kept My Pace With The […]

Willow Loveday Little | GALATEA FEELS FEAR FIRST

A pull so she pivots on her heel. There’s a little girl clutching a book.
Galatea smiles consciously, imagines the process of petrification.
The girl’s eyes are a dark name scratched in an oak tree.
I read about you in art class. You’re my favourite. Medusa is too.

Madelaine Caritas Longman | BREATHING, NOT COUNTING

after the deluge, there’s the quiet. one colour
blue, an eyeless blank sky where i once felt your mind
close over my own like water in water.
death was a circle i broke when i surfaced,
emptiness splintering down on my shoulders — light
falls all over me, not passing though.

Rachael Cain | ERASURE

I’ve started carefully extracting you from family photos. Slice/slash. Thankfully scissors. Thankfully fire for a last labour of lost love, I blacken your aching silhouette ‘til that one shot becomes a queen sized bed, my small frame curled against a shapeless ghost. Do you know the one? Call it foreshadowing: I’m asleep, feeling safe. Your […]

Ken Victor | INVITATION

Everything starts today. If renewal were easy,
we’d all begin again. We’d drop our endless searching
for four-leaf clovers that declare us topped up
with good luck. Our efforts at self-improvement

Callista Markotich | YOU ARE NOT

Pygmalion, one arm draped across the cool white shoulder of Galatea,
the other hand dangling a martini glass, or maybe, in sensual fingers,
a cigarette in a holder. He rivets attention forever, her enduring form
endorsing his obsession. O, he compels, he scintillates.

Drew Lavigne | AUTUMN REGRET

Water when separate seeks again a place to pool. Tonight under the full autumn moon I feel the pull to return to water. The dewy heat from my heart moves away like the yellow leaves blowing from the tulip tree. Since you left, my body longs to return to a place of its kind. It […]

Amanda Wong | FRAGILE BEAUTY

it hits me at the strangest times
snow falling down on my hands
standing outside the psychiatric hospital
sometimes the snow is so silent
i think i’m the only one in the world
and i’m alive, i’m alive.

Cassy Welburn | THE GOLDEN GATE TO THE MIND

Trees parked on the Boulevard of City Lights wait for the signal to change
from restless rapture to loving outrage at the taking down of his words,
jelly beans of rhyme spilt out in a golden stream.
Trees with arms outstretched like St. Francis drawing the birds in white chalk
across a charcoal sky, statues of the world reaching out for poetry.

Maya Clubine | River Bug on the Black Sea

from Life Cycle of a Mayfly, the winner of the 2023 Vallum Chapbook Award The sun sinks down toward the thin horizon. The weary peacock falls asleep inside its crowned flask. The Philosopher sits on a rock and jots a few brief observations about a river bug above the Black Sea. The river bug flies, […]

Karen Solie | DUST

Returning home from evening mass
in the big car,

they were like canal boats then
sliding through the loose gravel, in the back seat

she pushed my cuticles up
with a silver file not unpainfully

House Within a House by Nicholas Dawson | Review by Katia Grubisic

“Intellectual curiosity about one’s own illness is certainly born of a desire for mastery,”: so writes the American poet, novelist, and essayist Siri Hustvedt. So quotes the Chilean-born Québécois poet, novelist, and essayist Nicholas Dawson as he investigates his own illness, pushing through the multiple layered skins of depression, turning it over to examine it in this light and that, as a prism that might allow some strand of light into the complex, ailing self.

Gravitas / Poèmes deep: An Interview with Amy Berkowitz

Interview by Lauren Turner A contemporary study of the institution, Gravitas boldly explores academia’s tendency to tolerate gendered abuse. Amy Berkowitz lifts the veil on the ordinary violence that female students are subjected to — violence that goes so far as to interrupt their writing practices and distort their relationships to words and literature. Illuminated […]

Maya Clubine | 2023 Vallum Chapbook Award Winner

Vallum is so pleased to congratulate Maya Clubine as the winner of this year’s award for her chapbook Life Cycle of a Mayfly, which will be published in the fall alongside a new chapbook by Karen Solie! About Life Cycle of a Mayfly Maya Clubine’s careful poetry avoids the easy delineation of beginning, middle, end. Rather, cycles of […]

Luce Hua | Of Dreams and Nightmares

This collection pulls and weaves the wool of the ideal and ‘real’ over (and under) critical aspects of identity; it is a small representation, a particular angle and nuance, on broader themes of culture, race, ethnicity, colour, ability, and queerness. It is my taste flight of fancy in the growth and inspiration that has come from ‘winging it’ as a queer artist of colour: each collage piece is a different flavour of ‘the dreamy and not so dreamy’.

Vanessa McCuaig | EVERY NIGHT, IN OUR DREAMS

Every night, in our dreams, we make a space
for us, somewhere no one else can find.
This evening, we arrange a rendez-vous in Gizeh,
where time is an eternity—a sparkle that blinds,
slicing lips in prismatic laughter, we can forget
future anxieties far too many to mention.

Cara Nelissen | MORNING

I dreamed I dug my own grave and looked
at the clouds as they lowered my coffin.
You weren’t there. I know this, because
even when I was dead I wondered.

Unlike me, time moves on quickly.

Justin Timbol | 22:22

You rooted your life
in magic numbers and rabbit’s feet
instead of something concrete
like your mother’s religion
now your perception is fading
so you set the clocks to military time,
try for one more hour of catching angels:
charge your stones, the moon is full
but veiled in vapour
pull the stars closer to your lips

Julie Paul | MAYBE IT WAS THE GRASS-FED BUTTER

that gave me nightmares
or maybe it was the giant hole
in the logic of importing butter
from New Zealand
or the giant hole in the ozone—
wait, isn’t that healing? Didn’t we do
one thing right? I don’t miss hairspray.
Or maybe it was the giant gap
between me and the suffering
and yet I am still suffering,
still count myself among them,
paper cuts versus daggers

Richard C. Owens | ANIMA

My reflection fades and distorts in the fogged damp
of double-panes, hanging against a fading, ice-blue
afternoon. Beyond the window frost coats trees
and stones not yet snow-smothered. It’s a ghostly world,

dead as the moon.

Colleen Russett | PHANTASM

Experiment
as you like: on your back
circled by vultures, your hands muffled
by your pillow. Still,
every night, senseless ocean worries over
the little deaths that
fold themselves
inside the big one.

Guy Elston | THE DREAM HISTORIAN’S DREAM

At an average of five a night
that’s over 300 million daily in Late Antiquity
alone, or the Mediterranean Pagan-Christian
Intermediary Period, as my department

Was last rebranded. Funding cut.
Break the seal, play on double fast-forward,
salient images only pause on, note
and if typical stamp TYPICAL

Rose Cullis | A NIGHTMARE IS A WEASEL

that gets in and kills every last one, that fastens

on what it finds there and leaves a gory mess, yes

a nightmare is being trapped with its slippery

muscular intention and the means to do it

to smell the rancid Mustelid before it

weasels triumphant through a small wire hole

Tanis MacDonald | BESIDE

A stutter-self, a shadow without edge,
a last echo, mitochondrial must,
every question I don’t want knowledge
of or an answer to. What lives in dust

Catherine Graham | LAST SHADOW

Flying only happens in dreams.
No one sees the moon-chord

direct the dead through the underground
or bones grip roots.

We lengthen as herons mid-air.
Our past melts yellow for the day’s heat cradle.

Jan Jorgensen | INCUBUS

i feel its twisted desire
it hisses an incantation

calls down the shadows of
betelgeuse bellatrix saiph rigel
to pin my shoulders my hips
against the bed

Neil Garvie | ESCAPE FROM AMBIGUITY

Have you ever found yourself in a dream
following a path that seems familiar
a rutted winding way surrounded by uncertainty?

You pass through shadows of the forest
You cannot see ahead, but continue
trusting what you must

Hana Woodbridge | OUR THIN PLACE

somewhere in New York, a woman collects
our dreams—

ear-tags our fleshy sleeping psyches and lines
them in neat taxonomies on her shelf

in mine, the bees have gone extinct and the fish
have sunk to mud and the backbones of

our ecosystems have collapsed under human weight

Misha Solomon | OPEN YOUR MIND

How do you know you haven’t been infected
by the fungus that turns ants into zombies
and then erupts from your head, its fruiting
bodies releasing spores, which in turn infect

Léa Taranto | LOST

we promised each other we wouldn’t

But you’d told me long ago you never planned to live past 30
But you didn’t even get to be 30
But while you’d always wanted children, I didn’t, that hurt you
But as a child in elementary school, they labelled you “delinquent”
But as a teen, being a dropout made you “badass”

Shane Molyneaux | COMA

I was seven levels deep inside myself
on
floating a
lake
of ganglia

each level had a door that led to another door opened
with a sound I translated as

Alden Wallace | COUSIN MAC

Winter pushes unto the land & a cold flame rises. A palmprint fades from the glass & the child wonders where it leaves to. A letter has just come in from the old country & everyone gathers around. Cousin Mac tells of a dream he’s been having lately in which he finds himself in a cave running

Samantha Martin-Bird | MISHIPESHU

the summer I spent on the lake
I dropped some semaa as we jumped in the canoe

kwe told me stories of mishipeshu
of violence and death and vengeance

the wind picked up and blew against us
the entire way back

Kevin Irie | PERCHANCE TO DREAM

I do not think one should read poetry at night
just before sleeping,
for how can someone lay down to rest
when poems lift up your mind
as in “Bullet Points,” or Love is the love of
who we are, it is a form of knowing…

Natalie Podaima | FURNITURE

three hours of tremble
on a thin blue mat i trace
escape routes on google maps
fantasize quiet in my palms
i am fevered and adept i bode
vibration bid low on eBay

The Most Charming Creatures by Gary Barwin | Review by Bill Neumire

Thus, with the poem “Everything,” begins Gary Barwin’s latest poetry collection, The Most Charming Creatures. Barwin, who has written 26 books, is also a composer (he earned his PhD in music composition) and multidisciplinary artist. Progressing in four sections, The Most Charming Creatures—follow-up to Barwin’s recent 2019 Selected Poems: For It Is a Pleasure and a Surprise to Breathe—takes its title from a science monograph. Explaining the title in an interview with Open Books, Barwin said:

Trailer Park Shakes By Justene Dion-Glowa | Review by Tara McGowan-Ross

Trailer Park Shakes is a lot of things, and in being a lot of things contains a lot of things to like. It’s working-class writing, in the classical, economic-theory sense: this is not the writing of a suburban expatriate who just learned the word “kyriarchy” in their MFA. This is not even the explicitly Marxist poetry of writers like Joe Wallace, Avery Lake, or Brendan Joyce—it expresses, in fact, the violent ways capitalism robs the most economically vulnerable of the material requirements for organizing (From “The Slow Creeping Feeling that Everything Will Not be Okay”: “rebellion quelled by the almighty dollar / I’m too busy / I gotta go to work / I got a family to feed”).

From the Archive | Tasha Hefford

i’m really sorry for spreading erroneous nutritional information   I don’t know if I believe the world is enough to hold the door to a drowning lullaby, to be_right_back.zip but before you find a way to RollbackTM the space in-between, it all happens very quickly you fall asleep waiting for your friends to join your […]

Luce Hua wins the 2023 Vallum Art Prize

We are thrilled to announce the the winner of the 2023 Vallum Art Prize is Luce Hua for their series of collages “Of daydreams and nightmares.” Hua’s work is immediately compelling and evocative, revealing and reveling in the layers of each collage. Bolstered by an artist statement that is beautiful, playful (as you will see […]

Stephen Kent Roney | A Review of War Canticles

War Canticles George Elliott Clarke Vallum Chapbook Series, 2022 35 pp         I was married to a ghost on a mountain in northwest Seoul back in 1994. A trivial enough anecdote; I mention it to suggest that I might know a shaman when I see one. George Elliott Clarke is a shaman. […]

Happy Holidays from Vallum!

Poetry for Our Future! In 2021-22 VSEAL continued offering workshops through our Poetry for Our Future! outreach program. Our partner organizations were QPIRG, Spectrum Productions, Lasalle Elementary, the South Asian Women’s Community Centre, Unravelling in Rhymes, AGIR, Yellow Door, the Dawson Boys and Girls Club, Say Ça, Bridges Adult Learning Centre, For Francis Public Library, Sioux […]

Scott Cecchin Reads an Excerpt of HOUSE

    AND HERE THEY DREAM (ii) Then the hallways multiplied. Your aunt was there, wandering, a book held in her hands. She’d sewn patterns into the pages, but many were still blank. She approached you, urgently: “I need help with this one,” she said, pointing to the book—at which point you left the dream. […]

Issue 19:2 OPEN THEME Is Here!

This issue features new poems by Lambda Literary fellow Nora Hikari, Terry Watada, Evan J, and more. Plus, an excerpt from George Elliott Clarke’s War Canticles, as well as

Leah Oates | Transitory Space

Leah Oates has B.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design, an M.F.A. from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is a Fulbright Fellow for study at Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland. Oates has had solo shows in Toronto at Black Cat Artspace and in the NYC area at Susan Eley Fine Art, The Central Park Arsenal Gallery, The Center for Book Arts, Real Art Ways, The Brooklyn Public Library and at the MTA Arts and Design Lightbox Project.

Mark Neely | ANOTHER IDIOT

My email bleeps. The sky goes grey. Cars ease by the mute bell

tower. Time’s cosmic joke—it speeds up when
you need it most. I thought I had wrapped my mind

around it like a bow

Zak Jones | NO PHOTOS OF RALPH

Before me mounds of food on Formica,
crooked mouths of porcelain at parties.
Before me staged smiles in tempered tonalities:
and we’re going back in time.
The cheap bleed of a red-tinged photograph—
and another, and another.

Jan Jorgensen | DESDEMONA REBUKES OTHELLO

after “The Ballad of Othello Clemence” by George Elliott Clarke A ghost, I no longer know how to weep yet grieve the madness of false words believed. I recollect how I adored recitations of your exploits, how I traced the outline of your calloused hands, …your biceps, your lips; marking them ……with my scent, curling […]

Caitlyn Alario | STRAY

we had to draw the old temples on a map from memory. they were destroyed centuries ago, rebuilt to different gods & destroyed again. now they’re grassy platforms, marked & open, as if the air stays holy when not even rubble remains.

Kit Roffey | VESSEL

Sometimes it takes two hands wrapped around to pour
if the vessel is full, if the liquid is at the lip.

Sometimes a curve forms from my wrist to forearm to rest
against thick glass or the raised ridges of spotted ceramic pulling
tendons to match the melting morphing slopes of my organs.

Evan J | ON A HILL NEAR STAIG

In the car lot,
I used a fob to lock
the only car’s door
as an old man
walked down from the hills
with an old dog
slowly trotting behind
stopping to smell every post
of the old wood fence
that kept the sheep
near the old ring fort…

A Conversation With Frankie Barnet | Interview by Rosie Long Decter

Frankie Barnet is a Montreal-based writer. Her debut graphic novel, Kim: A Novel Idea, is an auto-fictional blend of real-world pain and celebrity fantasy that tells the story of a grad student trying to make sense of an online world and her own stubborn sadness. Protagonist Frankie spends her days scrolling Kardashian Instagrams, reading about sexual violence on social media, trying to help her boyfriend process the loss of his father, and talking to her vicious but infinitely wise cat Catman.

I Wish I Could be Peter Falk by Paul Zits | Review by Bill Neumire

Invoking Willem Dafoe, Neil Armstrong, Ryan Gosling, Shia Labouf, Nicolas Cage, and Peter Falk while also tapping into American Psycho, GQ, Vanity Fair, and Instagram—Paul Zits, author of the previous collections Exhibit, Massacre Street, and Leap-Seconds—creates an ironic speaker who marauds the earth searching only its “Instagrammability”…

Garden Physic by Sylvia Legris | Review by Bill Neumire

Although Sylvia Legris’s sixth book of poetry, Garden Physic, opens with a poem titled “Plants Reduced to the Idea of Plants” which are then further playfully reduced to “woodcuts / (circa 16th century) reduced to Victorian floor tile,” this collection clearly accomplishes just the opposite: it elevates, celebrates, and even apotheosizes plants…

2022 Poetry Award | SHORTLIST

We are thrilled to announce our short list for the 2022 Vallum Poetry Award. It was a pleasure to read everyone’s work and we are awash in gratitude and admiration for these poets gracing us with their work. Congratulations to the shortlisted poets!             Abdulkareem Abdulkareem – “Self-portrait Of The […]

Unravelling in Rhymes Workshop | Registration Open!

Each year Vallum Society for Education in Arts and Letters supports workshops throughout Montreal, Quebec and elsewhere. The next workshop has been made possible through a partnership between Unravelling in Rhymes and the South Asian Women’s Community Centre, along with the Atwater Writers Exhibition. Details below!

19:1 “Bridges” Launch | July 23, 2022

Join us on July 23, 2022 at 3:30 PM ET for an online launch of issue 19:1 “Bridges.” Featuring readings from Robyn Maree Pickens, Meghan Kemp-gee, Matthew James Weigel, Julie Mannell, and Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi! The reading will be approximately 1-hour and Zoom’s closed captioning will be turned on. The event is open to all […]

Poetry Award Deadline Extended

We are so excited to read your work, but we’re giving you an extra two days to get your Poetry Award entry ready! Take the weekend to polish off your submission and get it to us by Sunday July 17th, 11:59 PM EDT.

VALLUM CHAPBOOK AWARD 2022 SHORTLIST

Each year we receive hundreds of entries and we are grateful so many poets trust us with their work. After much consideration, we are so excited to announce three finalists for this year’s Chapbook Award.

2022 Vallum Poetry Award | Submissions Open!

The 2022 Vallum Poetry Award is open for submissions until July 15   The winner of the Vallum Poetry Award receives $750 and one finalist will receive $250, as well as publication in Vallum magazine. The submission fee is $25 for Canadian entrants, $30 for U.S. and international entrants. Payments are processed through our Submittable […]

Issue 19:1 Bridges Is Here!

19:1 | Bridges This issue features an interview with bpNichol Chapbook Award-winning poet Matthew James Weigel and new poems by rob mclennan, Johnson Cheu, Jami Macarty, and more. The issue also includes poems from the 2021 Vallum Poetry Award winners, Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi and Robyn Maree Pickens, as well as reviews by Bill Neumire and Deanna Fong. Artwork is from […]

New Chapbook from George Elliott Clarke | War Canticles

More than a decade after George Elliott Clarke’s first Vallum chapbook, The Gospel of X, we are thrilled to announce the publication of War Canticles in a limited edition of 125 copies. And we’re publishing it in the spring, rather than the fall, because it’s been a long, difficult winter and we deserve some poetry! Visit […]

Nora Kelly | ENTANGLED

Winner of the 2022 Vallum Cover Award “Entangled” is a series of paintings dealing with the emotional and psychic landscapes brought about by the pandemic. In the artist’s own words: When the pandemic hit in 2020, the world quickly transitioned from “normal” to the unfamiliar: new rules, new information and new ways to live our […]

Lawrence Bridges | NEW DAY

It feels, no looks like a pearlescent pond.
It’s quiet, reflecting a faraway sky that moods
neither dawn nor dusk. It looks, no
feels like the lightest pressure on wet leaves

Nora Kelly wins the 2022 Vallum Cover Award for her series ENTANGLED

  ENTANGLED “Entangled” is a series of paintings dealing with the emotional and psychic landscapes brought about by the pandemic. In the artist’s own words: When the pandemic hit in 2020, the world quickly transitioned from “normal” to the unfamiliar: new rules, new information and new ways to live our lives. One of the most […]

AGIR x Vallum | Four-day workshop series for the LGBTQIA+ migrant community, facilitated by Angelic Goldsky

Four-day workshop (March 5, 6, 12 and 13): Coming back to yourself through poetry, play and performance AGIR in collaboration with Vallum Society for Education in Arts and Letters is hosting a four-day workshop series facilitated by Angelic Goldsky. AGIR Montréal (Action LGBTQIA+ avec les ImmigrantEs et RéfugiéEs) is an autonomous non-profit organization, by and […]

VSEAL Workshop in Partnership with The Yellow Door: To Revision and Beyond!

To Revision and Beyond!—A Poetry Workshop from Page to Stage Calling all poets! You’ve written and rewritten your poem, maybe even workshopped it and incorporated the feedback of others to make it stronger—more poignant, innovative or musical. Now that you’ve accepted the gift and branded the poem “finished” (or close enough): what now? Lock it […]

Vallum 18:2 is here!

18:2 | The Power of Words At long last, Vallum‘s newest issue has arrived! This is our first-ever digital only issue which is being released in conjunction with our new website. To celebrate the occasion, this issue has been made available to read completely for free online. This issue features a translation of Daniel Saldaña Paris by Louis Sanger, new […]

Matthew James Weigel Wins the bpNichol Chapbook Award for “It Was Treaty/It Was Me”!

Matthew James Weigel’s 2020 Vallum Chapbook Award-winning work has won Meet the Presses’ 2021 bpNichol Chapbook Award! Here is what judges Jennifer LoveGrove and Jordan Abel had to say about Weigel’s work: “Matthew James Weigel’s It Was Treaty/It Was Me is a uniquely unconventional and innovative poetic exploration of colonial archives, in which Weigel explores his personal connection […]

Dottie Gordon | FLORIST COMMENTARY

Dottie Gordon is the featured artist for Vallum 18:2 – The Power of Words. Artist’s Bio Dottie Gordon (JG) // // * 1993, Canada. Dottie is a textile printmaker, illustrator and painter who is self-taught, but grateful to have had the guidance and care of many mentors and a considerable amount of support from their […]

J. R. Solonche | WORDS

WORDS Words say everything, he said. So many words to say everything, I say. So many times to be sure everything is said. Then the words have the final word: Let us live here, we who have no place else to go. Author’s Bio Nominated for the National Book Award and twice-nominated for the Pulitzer […]

Neil Garvie | MSPIELELD BY SGTRANE

Mspsieleld by Sgtrane I’ve nveer been mcuh of a splleer my teehcars uesd to tlel me soohcl wasnotmy ftroe Iwas furttuane to psas, asyousee I’m lkucy to hvae ajob taht dsnoe’t need sniplleg osierwhte, I’dbe uemnlpeyoyd onthehood tankhs, dadandmom, forthe flmaiy beiunsss asCEO I slhuod do rlaley good Author’s Bio Neil Garvie resides in Comox […]

John Barton | 1122 VIEW STREET

1122 VIEW STREET The building’s gone, but its shadow’s not, torn down, white adobe, and, behind the red door, a paved courtyard open at one end where past notice I at one time lived. Worn rugs, walls aslant, scaly acoustic tile and a window I’d not lock, ivy-draped to shroud a burglar’s light-fingered escape the […]

Catherine Owen | ACCORDING TO THE SURVEY

According to the survey If I had one word to describe myself? Irrepressible. One fruit? Strawberry. One meal? Garlic prawns with a peanut butter sandwich. One piece of playground equipment? The merry-go-round. What a delectable monster I’ve become it seems, wading through the middle of life as if it were a strange kind of kiddy […]

John Wall Barger | ENJOYING A WALK AROUND A FROZEN LAKE

Enjoying a Walk Around a Frozen Lake ……….Came a sound: a sparrow-Mozart …..…..…..…..…..playing a tiny rusted piano! …..…..In the gathering light, I stopped. Straining to hear, …..…..…..…..…..I could almost feel …..…..ice expanding into the path of least resistance, starting in the mind, …..…..…..…..…..down the throat …..…..to the heart. The sound scattered—the wind on the lake […]

Jon Alston | INHALE

Inhale Evening burns pale blue edges while yellow-brown smears separate that blue from oranges, reds, and purples extinguish in black cityscapes and trees tops. Above, blue drains to night, spreading to black. And the sun sets to sleep. And we all sleep. Cities pretend to live on, awake, lighting the night with electricity, the sun’s […]

Mary Ann Mayer | WE STILL HAD SCRABBLE

We Still Had Scrabble When we lost our way with words, when I could no longer talk to my mother, all utterances turned to confusion – ……….Now that you married your father… We still had Scrabble. Simple joy in adding a good word, working the edge, reaching the dark blue square, or triple word score […]

Domenico Capilongo | FETOSCOPE

fetoscope fetoscope noun fe·to·scope | \ ˈfē-tə-ˌskōp\ definition of fetoscope 1 : an endoscope for visual examination of the pregnant uterus 2 : a stethoscope for listening to the fetal heartbeat my mother works as a receptionist, my father, his grasp of english still slippery, works in a factory down the street. the shipping truck […]

Jessi MacEachern | IDLE AND STEAM

Idle and Steam Obligation exists as a stabilizing force. Without it, our flesh would slide from its bones. This suggests obligation is also a physiological force. And it is, at least insomuch as every social pressure is felt by the body. Sitting in this same spot on the sofa, the right side, the side closest […]

Lauren Carter | ONIONS

Onions This argument is about onions. The proper way to cook them. The shadow of my father, standing over my shoulder, a dark heft, the abused child turned to a man: belittled, cowed, gaslit, instructed to ignore his own father assaulting his mother in front of the three siblings. In the kitchen he tells me […]

Derek Webster | EMERGENCY OPERATION IN CLOUDS

Emergency Operation in Clouds Songs are too happy, sermons too long. Poetry whispers through the cream and the fear until the spin of service calls us to attend. We raise our right arms and scribble a promise, asking language to stand in our stead and fix the burning engines of the underworld. I am here […]

Robert Colman | DRIVING HOME FROM THE RESTAURANT, I FORGET ONE WORD

Driving Home From the Restaurant, I Forget One Word The night is bitter winter chill, the car unfamiliar, streetlights yellowing the driver’s face as he concentrates on the road. Off-guard, my father asks me, “Have you got far to drive tonight?” The car is unfamiliar to him, the streetlights yellow my face, but I don’t […]

Jan Ball | WITH CONDOLENCES

With Condolences The cards people sent when my mother died— reproductions of vases filled with pastel flowers, empty green forests, beaches with ebbing waves, friends and family meant well, but I only believe half of it: Your mom had a good life and is in a better place written in long hand. But then: May […]

Pamela Denyes | SUFFER FOR THE WORDS

Suffer for the Words Did you suffer for the words? Was it painful to put them out when they had come in aright? How did you bear the carnage, the disemboweling of your own fresh first thoughts? Does crimson flow on every page, in bloody bone-cutting sparseness, so clean there’s no meat for the dog? […]

Frances Koziar | ABLEIST

Ableist While you were sending flyers for running groups to people in wheelchairs you sent me a job ad the month after my retirement; a retirement, —I know—that you didn’t agree with, ignorance clouding your sight like a thousand mosquitoes, buzzing over my words of permanent and disability, poisoning your flesh until your tongue cut […]

erica hiroko isomura | MOTION

MOTION After Mayor Gregor Robertson’s apology for the City of Vancouver’s role in the 1942 internment of Japanese Canadians THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT this writer-poet does hereby claim full perspective for their experiences. With both self-determination & sustenance, the writer-poet completely informs their sense of historical displacement, under- stands the colonial nature of a […]

Oana Avasilichioaei and Zoë Skoulding | IN MESHES

IN MESHES the I, this I, an I is an uneven piece, a mismatched piece …………….a piece tugging at the corners that encase it, contain it ……..trying to stretch them, undo them, redo them the “corners” (which are not necessarily corners or at right angles) form a puzzle, a net, a fabric ……..……..……..……..……..……..in which the […]

Kath MacLean | TALKING APPLE

Talking Apple Another night like this I’ll be split nerve. Say it’s the wind’s rattle, somethin’ crazy, juddering. The limping house quivers a bone, bruises a calf, & humming a pretty heel, breaks my mistress’s shoe. A feeble dance. Broadway’s fumble–up-the-stairs; its blunder –back-to-bed. Fraying the carpet’s thread. Beating wool & silk. Unravel blunder. Cloud […]

Glenn Hayes | PORTRAIT OF THE POET AS TARGET

PORTRAIT OF THE POET AS TARGET I’m reading A.M. Klein’s The Rocking Chair – rescued from the basement bargain-bin of a now bankrupt used book store – just to kill a little time while waiting for my wife and kids on a bench by the loading area at IKEA in the heart of old town […]

Russell Thornton | GESTURE

Gesture On my way out of his room I said I’ll see you. He raised his arm. I didn’t think he had the strength. His forearm straight up, his knuckles facing me, he pumped his fist, bright, bitter glory in his eyes. Was it an insult? Was it pride flaming in him even when he […]

Vivian Li | WHAT IT MEANS TO SING FORWARD

What it Means to Sing Forward i cycle through phrases of songs calling us alien, dirty, virus-infecting like the lady who struck me and screamed to an audience of fairies for five stops like shattering car windows— a Chinese doctor who couldn’t arrive at work like laying-off a factory manager after a decade like tethering […]

Jeff Bien | THE HISTORY OF THE UNKNOWN

The history of the unknown What recoiled in the white moth, the glacial eyes, the history of the unknown. Glass slippers for the moon I said, and meant I flew into that flame, immolating the self. Obituaries for saints, and cockles and bee padding pistils, the golden blossom of the marrow. Loving hounding sounds, that […]

Nathaniel Dolton-Thornton | ESTATE

ESTATE they’ve replaced the apricots with apricot walls now they’re painting the stairs sixty years ago, every relic was sixty years nearer to hand the gold clocks on the ground floor hunker down in fifteen-minute intervals though only the duct tape ignored on the counter tells the time I walk outside for fresh air but […]

Maurya Kerr | AFTERWORD: INHERITANCE | Excerpt from TOMMY NOUN, Honourable Mention of the 2021 Vallum Chapbook Award

Afterword: Inheritance Author’s Bio Maurya Kerr is a bay area-based writer, educator, and artist. Maurya’s poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and has appeared or is forthcoming in Blue River Review, River Heron Review, Inverted Syntax, Oyster River Pages, Chestnut Review, Mason Jar Press Journal, Harbor Review, and The Future of Black: A […]

PLUVIOPHILE by Yusuf Saadi | Review by Bill Neumire

Pluviophile Yusuf Saadi Nightwood Editions, 2020 Deifying rain and language, Yusuf Saadi’s debut poetry collection, Pluviophile (lover of rain), flows with a playful dedication to the music of words. In an interview with Ariel Gordon, Saadi said, “I don’t have a theory of language or understand it at all, really, but I do often find […]

SOME LEAVES by Gary Barwin and rob mclennan | Review by Bill Neumire

SOME LEAVES Gary Barwin and rob mclennan above/ground press, 2020 In a collection with a title that rings Whitmanian, seasoned collaborators with over 50 books published between them, rob mclennan and Gary Barwin offer five brief pages of poetry that come closer to feeling very Bradburian, examining the the collision of nature and the technology […]

THE MIGRANT STATES by Indran Amirthanayagam | Review by Jonathan Harrington

THE MIGRANT STATES Indran Amirthanayagam Hanging Loose Press, 2020 Indran Amirthanayagam has published seventeen books of poetry and recorded two albums with Haitian musicians.  He is both a US diplomat and a citizen of the world who writes poetry in English, Spanish, Haitian Creole, French and Portuguese.  From the rousing preface to the final poem […]

THE ELEVENTH HOUR by Carolyn Marie Souaid | Review by Steve Luxton

The Eleventh Hour Carolyn Marie Souaid Ekstasis Editions, 2021 Both the title of Carolyn Marie Souaid’s latest collection of poetry and the book’s cover graphic—the former warning that time has all but run out, the latter depicting a burnt orange moon overhanging shadowy, monolithic industrial buildings—threaten the reader with a premonitory, possibly dispiriting literary experience. […]

VALLUM AWARD FOR POETRY 202O WINNER | j tate barlow | WALKING INTO AUGUST IN EAST-END TORONTO 2020

WALKING INTO AUGUST IN EAST-END TORONTO 2020 Is it how spruce don’t think, just do—arrange their boughs for things withwings to dip andglide on through? Or how the yellowcrane looms—strange arabesque-sur-bleu, distraction-dance, wide arcs boom-swung and slow—dwarfing all thatgrows nearby? Stow yourthrone in a box on high look down waydown to read what’s spelled below […]

POEM OF THE WEEK | George Elliott Clarke | WHITEWASH

WHITEWASH White is waves bright as crinkled sunlight—or sunrise, done up in foam White is Grevens Paerecider, Ironworks Pear Eau-de-Vie, Lunenburg County Winery Montbeliard Pear Wine, and Belle-de-Brillet Poire-et-Cognac White is the missing link* between Michael Jackson and Elizabeth Taylor White is a spic-and-span E.R. with a scatalogical surgeon wielding a shit-smeared scalpel White is a […]

VALLUM CHAPBOOK AWARD 2021 FINALIST | Nisha Patel | THIS IS NOT A DISORDER

Nisha Patel is an award-winning queer and disabled artist. She was the City of Edmonton’s 8th Poet Laureate, and the 2019 Canadian Individual Slam Champion. She currently works as the 2021 Regional Writer in Residence. She is a recipient of the Edmonton Artists’ Trust Fund Award and the University of Alberta Alumni Award of Excellence. Her debut collection COCONUT is available now at Glass Bookshop. You can find her at nishapatel.ca.

Nisha Patel was one of the finalist of the 2021 Vallum Chapbook Award for her chapbook Not a Disorder.

POEM OF THE WEEK | Janine Certo | CONSPIRACY THEORY

CONSPIRACY THEORY a circle of reason / a proof that cannot be proved or disproved / a mad mixture / a template for order / cast, shaped, readymade and launched / requires immediate response (response must have no minor errors) / a distrust, a witch hunt, an elaborate dance / behind the scenes / eyewitness […]

VALLUM CHAPBOOK AWARD 2021 FINALITS | David Harvgreaves | WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE SOMEDAY

POSTCARD FROM THE ICE STORM — Independence, Oregon. January 2021 Dear N— Gone to bed happy, one hundred percent chance of a snow day, they say— midnight—gun-shot reports of tree-trunks cracked in two, ice-glazed oak chandeliers shattering on the rotunda floor. Utility poles crushing cars, the arctic insurrection cuts internet access, freezing assets and truth conditions. […]

VALLUM CHAPBOOK AWARD 2021 FINALIST | Emma Rhodes | QUEER/JOY

TAPAS The first time I thought I was queer was after kissing my best friend in 7th grade. Or maybe …………………….. it was when I ate an apple. ……………………………………… The curve of the core and ……………………………………… seed so hidden and ……………………………………… poisonous. Maybe …………………….. it was drinking tea ……………………………………… with another friend and playing chess. […]

VALLUM CHAPBOOK AWARD 2021 FINALIST | Sally Quon | LAID WASTE

ONE MORE MOUNTAIN SUNRISE One more mountain sunrise, golden light, clouds of peach and lilac. The forest calls – I answer. Road dust and moss, pinecones and birdsong. I was going to write a poem for you. Instead, I chose one more mountain sunrise.   Sally Quon is a back-country blogger, dirt-road diva, and teller […]

POEM OF THE WEEK | Matte Rader | ZERO + ONE

ZERO + ONE

No thing, a zero in the amber of time, then one. At the edge of the mind a soft rime: then one.

The brook was running clear. Now it’s gone. I’m here, cried the killdeer, I’m here. Now it’s gone. Jewels of rain like We’ll grow rich with water, Like every number were prime. Then one. We built a small house in the womb of the woods. Twice you gave birth there. Now it’s gone. A storm sky etched by lightning, dissolved by light. Twelve bodies trenched with lye, then one. My name flashed in your mind, the[…]

VALLUM CHAPBOOK AWARD 2021 FINALIST | Malcolm Sanger | STONE SERIES

if the forest heard is …………… it’s mirrors …. over ………………offering ………. until
a ….. jungle ….. here ……………. turn …………………………………… .dressed
leaping in ………………………………………………………………………. … mistakes
…………………………………………… are, as they all say ………………. embarrassed
…………………………………………… over—whelming …………………..mushrooms
…………………………………………………………………………………………… images

POEM OF THE WEEK | Ashley Hynd | ONE SHOT OVER THE LINE

ONE SHOT OVER THE LINE — after Kevin Carter Necklacing: the act of hanging a tire soaked in petrol around a person’s neck then lighting it on fire It gets heavy after a while and they always fall over crumpled into a pile of human remains in the sand the smell stays in your clothes […]

POEM OF THE WEEK | Shanan Kurtz | GRASP

GRASP

have you forgotten the terms of this pact, the lines we once lifted from songs that remind me of bells and stems, a collection of waves, a kill, a cure, a whim made permanent, arcane

did we ever lie close in the black of a room belonging to no-one, switched like breakers curved to conduct the pitch of a laugh, a meteor shower, a shimmer, a culvert, a quarry turned sleight of hand so thin the grasp of whispers held for hatching plans to stay somewhere within your reach, an iceberg, an archive, steady, remote unflinching, done and[…]

POEM OF THE WEEK | Naomi Kanakia | THE GIRL

THE GIRL The girl from high school—not my high school—had long straight hair and a foxy face and her body, a cylinder, with slightly wider hips, was perfect for the sheath dresses she wore. Vee was a Circassian, famous beauties in their day, well-prized as slaves, her mother a refugee from Turkey, never marry a […]

Gary Barwin | QUICKNESS

QUICKNESS 1. let there be bears when you need bears and quickness like with rocks something that says watch 2. let there be quickness like with bears let the past arrive when you need sky like a wrist let the future 3. let the bears let the quickness let the rocks the sky let the […]

Tom Prime | PERCENTAGES

PERCENTAGES I’m 100% sure that I’m not 100% sure who I am. I’m 78% sure that I’m not a good person. I’m 75% sure that I’m not a bad person. I’m 82% sure that my favourite colour is blue. I’m 100% sure that I’ve never used needle drugs, but I’m 100% sure that I’ve thought […]

Sharon Black | DANGEROUS DRIVING

DANGEROUS DRIVING ………. I clocked you on the verge as I dawdled in the slow lane— …. knew I shouldn’t stop but slowed and rolled my window down— ……………………. you pulled out sharp ………. your bumper glancing mine. …. Now my heart’s a demented engine: It brakes at green lights ….. speeds up at red […]

philip gordon | THESE BODIES, SOMEHOW

THESE BODIES, SOMEHOW how quickly the past has burned with throttle and forgotten fire with lifelines and bloodlines and scalding astronomy how dense the eyes of the mind thick to the tongue, sweetening of shadow and raw as yew bark, peeled free with fingernails or the plying of a rusty pocket knife how vast and […]

Paul-Georges Leroux | TANKA

TANKA Sous l’oeil vif-argent Tes pensées s’accélèrent Fresques zébrées d’or Crépitent soudain Tes paroles Perséides   Author’s Bio PAUL-GEORGES LEROUX has published poetry and short stories. As a screenwriter, he has written and co-written both documentaries and fictions. He has lived in Iceland, France, and Greece. His poems appeared in poetry magazines such as Mouvances, […]

Lesley Battler | CLOUD

CLOUD …………………… like a metaphysician …………………… on call, the cloud scales to meet your unique business ………. needs, no matter where you sit ………………………… in the celestial …………………………………………….. org chart curls range from kinky to soft ringlets. whether ………. you’re black white Asian …………………… Latin Mediterranean ………. or any glorious combo of the above, there […]

Kathleen Hellen | THE CULTURAL BOOK OF THE DEAD

THE CULTURAL BOOK OF THE DEAD — for James Dean The little bastard speeds into the canon …. An icon cloned on postage stamps ….On posters Transfiguration of a fan-fuelled self-absorption ….A leather jacket stoned on youth ….brooding fast-forwarding ….You know the reaching for a six-pack, the remote A script the cause for grief The […]

Jim Fisher | PRIME MOVER

PRIME MOVER Teapot Dome North of Casper, near the seeps Of crude at Powder Spring That brought the early wildcatters West into Wyoming Speeding over drilling fields Where oil and water meet In pools beneath the horsehead pumps Lifting on the downbeat Up ahead a hundred feet A kiting bird of prey Pale wings flashing, […]

Jacob Scheier | NOTE

NOTE After we met I emailed you and asked if you wanted to have coffee with me and give me advice about finding an apartment in New York since you had recently moved there but you never responded because I think you assumed the apartment thing was just an excuse to see you again and […]

J. Mark Smith | JURISDICTION OF THE SELF-CLEANING OVEN

JURISDICTION OF THE SELF-CLEANING OVEN [Alberta in late 2006] That booze-wise, two-stroke shill the party boss. An assembly close to thirty years redundant. Civic revulsion stillborn. PR gloss the face of untried force: plain truth best blent with ooze, like bitumen under a cap of moss. More realtors by the day, his agents, sent corkscrew […]

Gerland Arthur Moore | WARRANT OFFICER HAWKO

WARRANT OFFICER HAWKO —for Jason MacPhail Crow-nosed; cigar stub of a face, slaps blueberry pie into an outstretched tin canteen cup like an insult. Acting as if I was a freckle-wristed Dickensian character holding out a bowl for more. Slams in sludge-brown army stew, tills the muck with ladle; churns it until the mess-kit metamorphoses […]

Darryl Salach | THE WEIRD KID SEATED AT THE BACK OF THE CLASSROOM

THE WEIRD KID SEATED AT THE BACK OF THE CLASSROOM Speed freak is what they called him No speed was too great for this maniacal son Backing up in an easy roll his heartbeat quadruples Intensity white hot against a delicate summer breeze Engines simulate orgasm as pistons compress and eject their fluid Moonlight invigorates […]

Daniel Goodwin | SPEED

SPEED Saint Senna saw God, so he said, as he zipped around the track at 300 km/hr. Slipped beyond design constraints, was a genius in the rain, this Brazilian bad boy not from the wrong side of town but the wrong hemisphere. Trashtalked with his motor mouth, showing up the Europeans at their sport on […]

Anthony Labriola | THRIFT

THRIFT Thrift, thrift. Will’s word for speed, acceleration, ………. tempo of betrayal, the time it takes to hasten ambition, poison your brother, ………. marry his widow, speed up accession. Thrift is the itchy finger on the trigger, ………. split-second timing of do or die, blink of an assassin’s eye—thrifty shutter speed ………. in the quick […]

Andy McGuire | WHY WE CRY ON PLANES

WHY WE CRY ON PLANES Barred from our devices It’s painfully apparent— The world goes on without us. Inhaling the stale air Of many moods, Our freedom to choose Clooney or Witherspoon, I bear the breakneck interval Silently chanting Cancun, Cancun, Cancun.   Author’s Bio ANDY MCGUIRE releases music under the alias John Alice. His […]

A. Garnett Weiss | HESITATION MARKS

HESITATION MARKS I have worshipped the wrong gods and grace in the space of one heartbeat, ridged with bright shards of broken glass. My future lit by bridges and their burning or hot-wired to this smear of light and speed, tied up with ribbons into the shape of a man.   Author’s Bio A. GARNETT […]

A NONPARTISAN CONVERSATION WITH GEORGE ELLIOTT CLARKE | Interview by Henry Kronk

A NONPARTISAN CONVERSATION WITH GEORGE ELLIOTT CLARKE  Interview by Henry Kronk Henry Kronk: You were just elected [or, as I should have said, appointed] to be the parliamentary poet laureate. Congratulations, by the way. George Elliott Clarke: Thank you, Henry. Merci beaucoup. HK: Would you have thought twice about [accepting] that appointment had Stephen Harper’s […]

Katherine Noone | WINTER WIND

WINTER WIND How do you kick up your heels with such gusto at three in the morning? Your rage rattles windows  and  doors, your wails mournful as  a  banshee  scorned Awakened we  dangle  on  bedsides like  tree  branches bent  from  your  rampage.   Click here to watch Katherine Noone read this poem. Author’s Bio Katherine […]

Peter Dale Scott | CHAINSAW DHAMMA

  CHAINSAW DHAMMA After the pre-dawn hour of chanting and meditation in the dhamma hall on Setting in Motion the Wheel of Dhamma lokutaro yo ca tadattha-dipano (that which is beyond the conditioned world) and after the hot oatmeal prepared by the anagarikas in white …………………… lay attendants remains of frost dripping off the kitchen […]

Tia McLennan | HOW TO MAKE MONEY FROM HOME

HOW TO MAKE MONEY FROM HOME Woken by the erratic siren; coyote weaving the valley chanting code: three yips, a howl, pause. Looped. The moon floods the frozen world, the coyote’s voice stitches together our careful, private distances. So close at one point she seemed just under my window, calling up. Calling on all the […]

Andy Verboom | THE MEGAFAUN: FACT OR FICTION?

THE MEGAFAUN: FACT OR FICTION? It’s thought they died with their necks bent. The twelve-foot splay of their antlers the tonnage of their antlers driving their muzzles into ploughshares. A sacred knot in their shoulders a perpetual shrug in their shoulders heaving their bodies over plains endless with grass their heat through continents of ice […]

Anthony Labriola | UNTAMED HEART

UNTAMED HEART Candles spark and flicker on the Cardiac ………. Unit, one for each year of my mother’s untamed ………………. heart. Her ticker flutters wilder than the rhythms of eighty-eight birthdays before. Beds in the Quad ………. cradle four heart patients, one for each chamber ………………. of the wordless heart. The lifespan longer than a […]

Elana Wolff | CORD

CORD First the forces: gases, heat and radiation; stars. We are stardust sing the physicist and bard. We are quartz and bats and roses, we are poetry: Rimbaud, Blake. Baudelaire, Bidart. We’re fugue of Bach and Glass; Celan. World gets into us every breath. Yes to every sentence. I held to the imbecile cord—till it […]

Miki Fukuda | BESTIARY

BESTIARY There is no place to hide before God ………. whose name we invented as if our imagination needed a shelter from the storm or a hut of our own to come home to or, perhaps, a safe to put away our terrific ………. treasures. There is no place to hide before animals, ………. themselves […]

Amanda Earl | BEDLAM SPRING

BEDLAM SPRING* write in ink as green as arsenic wallpaper that killed Napoleon take photo of azure hole in clouds inebriate your eyes chartreuse leaves their new spring leap into fresh untamed season but bide a while bide a while burn your Russian amber drink your Irish tea stay away from strange men on the […]

kjmunro | SCHIZOPHRENIC

SCHIZOPHRENIC the story starts with a daughter image of a white dove & stops with a shrinking room the crushing ceiling rushing to meet her between the beginning & the end his voice visits her from time to time the sweaty fear of fear glides by, a bicycle he wears a cock-feathered cap she has […]

Aaron Kreuter | SHIFTING BASELINE SYNDROME

SHIFTING BASELINE SYNDROME A cup of coffee was always a dollar fifty. The fisheries were always at their current level. From the windows of an airplane the Great Lakes were always noosed in four-lane highways. The land was always distributed in neat tight little stamps. There were never any birds here. A moose was always […]

Jim Fisher | THE BEAST IN THE GARDEN

THE BEAST IN THE GARDEN “Mountain lion tours Gourmet Ghetto” —Berkeleyside (headline), August 31, 2010 Pecking and pecking at the chicken-coop wire The chicken cannot hear the chicken-keeper; Eggs fall apart; their shells cannot hold; Loose embryos are spilled into the world, The bloody yolks are spilled, and everywhere Sustainable ingredients are spoiled; Chefs waste […]

Mary Jo Bang | THE SCURRYING WHITE MICE DISAPPEAR

THE SCURRYING WHITE MICE DISAPPEAR Where have they gone? The cage door unlocked is left open but that answers nothing. The snow outside will hide them if they are successful in crafting flattened versions of themselves and leave through the space where the high wall ends. This is only the nothing that is. Not a […]

Kyla Neufeld | RATATOSK

RATATOSK In the Old Norse, “Bore-tooth.” Family: sciuridae, from the ancient Greek: skiouros, meaning “shadow-tailed.” He is a streak of red zigzagging down that grey ash, hind legs outstretched as he runs away from the Eagle. He has new words for Nídhögg, can easily leap onto that scaly head, whisper them into his ear, brown […]

Robert Priest | THE WEED THAT GROWS WILD

THE WEED THAT GROWS WILD The weed that grows wild That you can’t stomp out Green leaf purple buds The weed that gets you talking Laughing Presence weed, fabulizing weed Washington’s weed That makes a great shirt Weed you can’t ignore growing on the path So aromatic That weed you had once in Ireland In […]

Genevieve MacKay | ODYSSEUS

ODYSSEUS In the worst moments, when the sea rises up to engulf him or fires the arrows of the sun to scorch his eyes, the image he clings to is not the nymph, or the sorceress, or his wife or unknown child. It’s the thought of roots, strong and hale past death, stretching into the […]

Laura Matwichuk | DECOMMISSIONED PLANES

DECOMMISSIONED PLANES It’s not easy to pull the track blinds, look for cedar waxwings or passenger jets through dad’s cheapo binoculars, check the furnace filters, pilot light, as engines rumble overhead. Decommissioned planes in long-term storage in the Mojave are obsolete yet invincible. Because of the dry climate, they don’t rust, parts are recycled or […]

Michael Quilty | CONCUSSION 0H08D

CONCUSSION 0H08D (or “Back Way To The Mental Hospital”)  Haphazardness with uncertain quirks. The last main corner juxtaposes a junkyard. Psychiatrists never follow a script, what you feel is tolerable. The obvious route has padding that stops mid-air. Every change conveys ability, impromptu symmetry. If you jump you’ll feel it later— your sunken body escaping […]

Sebastien Wen | PTERYGOTA

PTERYGOTA Two moths lie perched on a May leaf quivering downwind beats jacked legs torque, coursing electric They are the underdogs of meetings, the pheromones calling lost bottle, directionless longing for her. He looks at her with lidless kaleidoscopes. He does not speak English but he knows what love is. It is written on the […]

David Romanda | ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE

ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE But it’s gotta be Authentic And we both know We’ve never known Real love (Not even close) They sing about it And it’s gotta be Out there Somewhere (Please darling Leave before We get any deeper) Please tell me you believe   Author’s Bio DAVID ROMANDA was born in Kelowna, […]

Paul-Georges Leoux | LE THORKELL MÁNI

LE THORKELL MÁNI L’Univers dans sa patte de marbre Tient déjà solidement mon cerveau Il m’envahit, me parcourt Me libère, me désarme Me d lestant de tout mon superflu De ce monstre agité De cet acharnement de drames Au profil de mes traits Se découpe ma vie Tout contre mon coeur Un animal de lumière Criblé […]

Paul-Georges Leroux | LE LIVRE DES MUTATIONS / BOOK OF CHANGES

LE LIVRE DES MUTATIONS Dans le wagon-restaurant le fortune cookie conseillait sobrement: N’ajoutez aucun Bonsa à votre jardin. Je ne laisserai donc plus entrer une nouvelle arborescence dans ma vie. Ses branches déploieraient Quatre saisons de petites tristesses. Le sentiment laqué de ce qui s’en va, Le noir tunnel de ce qui s’en vient. Le […]

Miki Fukuda | THE FALL

THE FALL October ripens as the fallen apples rot on an orchard bed. In the woods of Golden Acres Park, daylight descends whitely on branches, leaves, and the crushed-stone path that winds through the trees turning in fall. It is afternoon, is customary on the bed of stones for a hoary slumber to pin a […]

Barry Butson | RUNNING AROUND LISTENING TO THE CARS

RUNNING AROUND LISTENING TO THE CARS Up to my ears in work, a family in the background, those late 80’s found me in a metallic blue Camaro listening to “Drive” and driving I was the streets of Woodstock and roads of Oxford, especially from spring ‘86 to fall ‘88 Stopping for humid night tennis and […]

Cam Scott | OIKONOMOS

OIKONOMOS If there’s no getting over it, you’re going under. I’m afraid We’ve always been religious in this way. After the fight over the microwave You swore never to give an inch. You said Life was too short to share, which scared me: No one thinks of life that way when they’re in love— Like […]

Jennifer Footman | THINGS SHE IS AFRAID TO DO IN AMSTERDAM

THINGS SHE IS AFRAID TO DO IN AMSTERDAM She cannot enter a coffee shop. No way could she swim into dark caverns of leafy decor where people nibble cakes and cookies, smoke and drink coffee. If she smoked a joint she could forget herself, abandon control and reject the diamond in the carbon. As a […]

Nyla Matuk | FAMILY HEIRLOOMS

FAMILY HEIRLOOMS Quartzite A crevasse decorated with icicles rose ahead, as if the deep cleft just now surmounted had not provided sufficient majesty. We considered clusters of clouds; they contained almost everything that was important to us. Schist Not this dent du requin, nor the quartzite and schist, granite and gneiss, which, despite their styles […]

James K. Zimmerman | EPIPHANY

EPIPHANY yes is it possible that there lies buried deep in the irascible and rough-hewn pod ………. of the wild purple vetch a pearl-green orb so perfectly matched to the bleeding gold of the setting sun no certainly not in colour or grandiloquence but in a numinous glowing intensity of such power that it flings […]

James W. Wood | HEARTBLEED VIRUS

HEARTBLEED VIRUS — for Dominik and Phoebe Diamond  She added one to my one: but no-one saw this fling as more than binary. My processor said “it’s just for fun”— good enough for now, anyway. But O her 0 got to my 1, my fan superheated, all or none, her cipher stuck in my circuit: […]

Leland James | FIG LEAVES

FIG LEAVES In our doing and undoing, in our designs, the nakedness we try to hide: the corpse beneath the sheet laid out upon a stainless table. Plainly there, plainly. But we go on in our intricate designs. The clink of glasses, a swirl of opulence upon a porcelain plate, the tasteful tie and jacket, […]

Steven Ross Smith | OLIVES

OLIVES It’s always the springy stir plan, plant, hope slipped into earth-skin’s slopey pores (soon to be cellular mirrors) ………. glinty, green, spring flares ……….sprung from soft mossy pads as you slice on the chopping board This truth’s a bit musky for most ……….(like the unwashed uncle ……….invited for fettuccini champignon) “Tsk, tsk” or “snicker-snicker” […]

Babar Khan | THE YEAR THAT SLOVJ ŽIŽEK FARTED

THE YEAR THAT SLOVJ ŽIŽEK FARTED The bride was displayed in her seven dresses—and one more—to the women, who could not take their eyes off her. At last the bridegroom was summoned to the chamber where she sat enthroned. He rose slowly and with dignity from his divan; but in so doing, for he was […]

LILAC PAINTED WALLS AND BLACK FABRIC: A CONVERSATION WITH MONICA MCCLURE | INTERVIEW BY JAY WINSTON RITCHIE

LILAC PAINTED WALLS AND BLACK FABRIC: A CONVERSATION WITH MONICA MCCLURE | INTERVIEW BY JAY WINSTON RITCHIE

 

Jay Winston Ritchie: When did you start writing poetry?

Monica McClure: I always wrote poetry …. I remember covering my lilacpainted walls one day with black fabric and writing very disparate poems on the walls. One was an Edna St. Vincent Millay poem that was about the death of a friend, and not accepting that death. I loved the brazenness of it. It goes: “You have gone to feed the roses so elegant and curled but[…]

Tom Howell | THE WISDOM OF CONFUSIONS

  THE WISDOM OF CONFUSIONS One mustn’t confuse a scintilla with the Antilles. A scintilla is small The Antilles, also. But on a larger scale. A scintilla is closer to an iota, not to be confused with Antarctica. An iota is dotless. Antarctica is dotted with penguins. This is how you tell them apart. Iota […]

Crystal Hurdle | BUZZ

BUZZ Self-actualization and its derivatives were fun words Are you feeling self-actualized today? I’m so self-actualized I achieved self-actualization last night It could mean anything Libidinous silly virtuous Mockery just heavy enough to taste It webbed in your mouth Cotton candy Today, it’s empowerment When you allow your staff to take on your despised task […]

Joshua Levy | MONTREAL CHIC

MONTREAL CHIC Montreal looks like two chapped lips slightly parted on a map. Take that, Toronto! Take that, New York! But Italy —you chic leather boot from 40, 000 feet up— Goddamn you, Italy. You always have to look the best.   Author’s Bio Joshua Levy’s work has appeared in Oxford University Press, Maisonneuve, Feathertale […]

Yuan Changming | FOUR FROGS

FOUR FROGS For the past half century, I have never seen A single frog in this city, not even in the whole country But there are four big-mouthed frogs leaping around Afar in a ricefield of my native village, four frogs Squatting under the rotten bridge on the way leading To an unknown town, four […]

Jill Jorgenson | SPIT

SPIT The coffee bean bit that must have clung to the mug’s rim, now aswish in the coffee with which my mouth’s awash (—like a beached fish ………. flung, returned to the surging ocean’s rising tide— ………. or perhaps like Pinocchio or Geppetto spat ………. from a Moby Dick’s rancid gastric insides—), the bean bit […]

From the series NOMAD’S LAND | Yoann Cimier

Artist’s Bio Yoann Cimier is a French photographer based in Sidi Bou Saïd, Tunisia (North Africa). His practice is centered around human and landscape, in the Mediterranean area. His series (like Nomad’s Land) rely on a minimal or even sculptural approach to photography. His technique, which is part of the control of chance and coincidence, […]

Denise Raike | WORKING TITLE

WORKING TITLE Why, it got so bad that they began to laugh before I opened my mouth. —Dorothy Parker It’s not just the gin, I can assure you. An empty round of lives we bring to this blank page of a hotel, whining to be filled; the envy of every foyer and curtain club that […]

Greg Santos | ODE TO JOY

ODE TO JOY Something in the way you say papoose makes me smile. A nail file can come in handy in a jail cell in Mexico. Row boats are particularly romantic during foggy weather. Has anyone ever told you peacock feathers look fetching on you before? For the record, crazy glue much prefers to be […]

Ken Victor | INTERMARRIAGE

INTERMARRIAGE My wife—québécoise catholic, meaning lapsed—of eight hours is opening wedding presents in our hotel room. The tall blond shiksa Ken’s found himself (my uncle Herbie’s description) raises her blue eyes and bewildered by such family generosity, declares The first three presents are from the same couple—did I meet Mazel and Tov?   Author’s Bio […]

From the series LES AFFLUENTS | Louis Perreault

Artist’s Bio Louis Perreault (b. 1979) lives and works in Montreal. He deploys his practice within his own personal photographic projects and in the publishing initiatives to which he collaborates. Founder and co-director of Les Éditions du Renard, he also teaches photography at Cégep André-Laurendeau. His work explores the notion of place by trying to […]

Alice Major | PRIVACY ACTS

PRIVACY ACTS I’ve just been asked to sign a waiver so the boarding-kennel manager can hand out information to the vet ………. about the cat in an emergency—a recent edict of ………. the privacy act. I’m glad society’s concerned about protecting data on the cat’s behalf. He is a private animal, without a doubt, ………. […]

Gary Barwin | WOODPECKERS AND TV

WOODPECKERS AND TV we make the forests but they suck woodpeckers do not suck woodpeckers have no forests there is no TV for woodpeckers they know the forests suck the woodpeckers are darling they do not suck there is no TV for woodpeckers we avoid the forests during firelight and with little darlings but they […]

Maxence Yaëlle | THE OUTSIDER

THE OUTSIDER Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf’s a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down today. Nothing gold can stay. — Robert Frost — S.E. Hinton, The Outsiders Snide comments about the nature of […]

Jane Munro | IT’S WINTER THE GODS LOVE

IT’S WINTER THE GODS LOVE high and wind-swept where rivers begin and snow whirls like Sarasvati circling Brahma, his lust growing five faces to keep ten eyes on her but that comes after mountains moon, sun, an ocean of stars after darkness and light differ in winter, the gods shed headgear and garlands, sandals and […]

Sarah White | PAGE FROM A LOST NOTEBOOK

PAGE FROM A LOST NOTEBOOK It wasn’t a comic rhyme for someone’s birthday, but a serious poem, my first… ………. …two major classes of cardiac fibrillation, in praise of my brother—then young and strong—sitting hunkered, ………. atrial and ventricular— over a guitar, beside the campfire. ………. the rapid, irregular, unsynchronized contraction of muscle fibers— “Jumbled […]

John Wall Barger | THE SWANS FLEW OUT OF THE SUN

THE SWANS FLEW OUT OF THE SUN like scorpions of the air, like locust. We shot & they fell like laundry sacks. Bad idea. More came. White plumage blocked the sun, like weather. Like one bird. We watched the swarm from our parks & balconies. We shut down the city. We shot with antiaircraft guns, […]

Jan Jorgensen | AT WATER’S EDGE

AT WATER’S EDGE Let still water be your mirror and noonday clarity frame your face breathe according to the slow rhythm of butterfly wings—closing, opening let water trace the outline of your body as you slide through it— notice past infiltrates present— cup the water, redolent of leaves, in a curve of cheek, blow it […]

Stuart Ian McKay | AN INDENTATION IS ALSO A WHERE

AN INDENTATION IS ALSO A WHERE fires in the interior once gave ash that stormed over mountains. a glyph of troubled carbon …. vicarious on the wide green leaf of a sunflower proved there was no defence for a july of bleak material. back then ….definitions parsed moments of our falling into them until even […]

Jami Macarty | NOR’EASTER

NOR’EASTER The house on Atlantic Ave ………. teeters on the embankment’s ………. edge— ………. a feather could send it crashing. The black-blue sea there’s no stopping ………. kicks in the door, strangles shore. House’s floor: water’s feet. Walls: sand and froth. Salt: a tarnished coating. Wind: a burglar wrestling shutters ………. whistles a tune about […]

Jami Macarty | HELICOPTER

HELICOPTER To propel upward press through the clamped-down lid a two-way bed is all that’s needed. A mutable bed, a mutual bed. One moment replaces another. A tear table, a tea bench.   Inexact, uneven rotors supply lift, pull vertically. To feel the All— the wind’s lid open in the dust.   Author’s Bio JAMI […]

Sean Howard | SHADOWGRAPH 141: TO TRACE OUT A SHALLOW FIGURE

SHADOWGRAPH 141: TO TRACE OUT A SHALLOW FIGURE (poetry detected in douglas osheroff’s nobel physics lecture, 1996) news to them! ‘worlds just waiting/to be discovered.’ (school: children passing.) ‘the lower we go, the cooler we get…’ (the arctic circular.) when i married my results… beckett, ‘waiting the verdict!’ big fish, god caught/in one mind. (the […]

Carol Moldaw | KAKAPA BAY

KAKAPA BAY As if at the near edge of an expanse of blue chemise, froth scallops the lava collar bone of a rock point. Past the slate roof line of the house below us, the air is all fan snap, palms batting off wind. Across the water, behind a light haze, Haleakala visible atop Maui. […]

Carol Moldaw | AS FAR AS I CAN TELL

AS FAR AS I CAN TELL A lidless idleness designed to mesmerize, out of which hesitancy and reluctance give way to calibrations minute but not insignificant, day in, day out, rocked by the tidal bed the shell it’s attached to is attached to, complacent in its mantle of unconscious soft tissue, it grows radially as […]

Arthur Sze | HOLE

HOLE No sharp-shinned hawk perches on the roof rack of his car and scans for song birds; the reddening ivy along a stone wall deepens in hue; when he picks a sun-gold tomato in the garden and savors the burst in his mouth, he catches a mock orange spray in the air; and as he […]

Adam Scheffler | IVY LEAGUE GRADUATION SPEECH

IVY LEAGUE GRADUATION SPEECH Though you graduated from here, you have only dragged things out: eventually you will be spared nothing. After so much has been done for you, you will know what it is to be a means for others’ ends, your time a commodity, your life something to sell. They’ve told you to […]

Adam Scheffler | LEAP DAY BIRTHDAY

LEAP DAY BIRTHDAY Today, a bright one in February, sun made it down almost the whole way into the courtyard. Knucklebones of tiny trees. Arc of shadow on brick and glass as something enormous comes near, and decides to withdraw, peering out of the vertiginous blue, as it does sometimes. No, the off-years are better, […]

Nathan Mader | EILMER OF MALMESBURY

  EILMER OF MALMESBURY He had by some means, I scarcely know what, fastened wings to his hands and feet so that, mistaking fable for truth, he might fly like Daedalus, and, collecting the breeze upon the summit of a tower, flew for more than a furlong. —William of Malmsebury The votive candles flicker but […]

Brent Raycroft | SASKATOON AT THE END OF JUNE

SASKATOON AT THE END OF JUNE Just outside the zone the tourist map describes as downtown there’s a giant pile of some commodity that recently was underground. Gravel, road-salt, potash, coke? Giant piles stand out in this geography. The wind, though strong, is temperate that drives the grit on Twentieth against my cheek and then […]

Brent Cassan | SHIFTS OF BEING

SHIFTS OF BEING Distant parish bells chime for morning prayers. Overhead, … buzzards circle, …… slyly waiting as I munch Bavarian pastrami & brittlekorn on the brow … of my golden meadow’s ………. evolutionary fold. So begin exclamations in this fertile orb of life, … in this search for biological marvels across atmospheres of altered […]

Carolyne Wright | SYLLABIC ACROSTIC: HOODOOS (BRYCE CANYON)

SYLLABIC ACROSTIC: HOODOOS (BRYCE CANYON) A tall, thin spire of rock that protrudes from the bottom of an arid drainage basin or badland. ……….. —National Park Service Bristlecone Pines’ storm-scoured roots twist into limestone slopes yielding to ice that widens cliff-face caverns and grottoes, erosion’s slow slide gliding counterclockwise underneath afternoon’s unbroken blue. Numinous lithic […]

Jonathan Garfinkel | BOCIANY (STORKS): AFTER CHEŁMOŃSKI

BOCIANY (STORKS): AFTER CHEŁMOŃSKI It’s the current he supposes. To be warmed by faltering electricity. Women watch men watch football on dying televisions, men between beers. Storks grasp bramble and twig, not as souvenir, but as living theatre. ~ Chełmonski’s Poland, oil on canvas, circa 1900. A son and father in a field on a […]

Maureen Korp | OAHU

OAHU seeing something there a glint, quick light rippling in the tide half a heartbeat closer dark, silvered triggerfish back and forth . . . back and forth ships and planes and submarines reconnaissance, surveillance—coastal helicopters, back and forth, back and forth . . . in the tide, the triggerfish in the boxes up the […]

Tara Dourian | SAN GREGORIO

SAN GREGORIO San Gregorio has been there before her before those two wild dogs were. An ancient temple that I saw before but had not seen until now, now that I wanted to climb up its hill, feet digging into the glittering orange soil a sand mattress with olive tree springs spring almonds stone-cracked, savoured […]

Pamela Porter | RUPTURE

RUPTURE Pearls in a silver bowl, half the clasp, no string. Among the smaller stars, fallen planets. I was your final dance. The night and its prophets, all your eyes watching. You were a road, a river; now you’re spindrift, washed up. Where everything, eventually, is finished. Boarded up. Abandoned. Your cities of ruin. Little […]

Andy Lee | CARBON COPY

CARBON COPY Your third life starts the split second you die from a vaccination gone awry. Consolation: consciousness restored from a lifetime of metadata hoarded on Google servers. Virtual no more, a superhuman subroutine emerges from primordial digital soup, an avatar so flawless your lover and mother barely notice the quiet fleck of death gleaming […]

Crystal Hurdle | BOG PEOPLE

BOG PEOPLE and what voyage, spouseless, strangers have we embarked upon? if something untoward happens on this unseasonable Calgary day, unexpectedness and privacy its own crypt earthquakes, an overflowing Bow River pterodactyl-disaster, pre-punishment for what we could do (if) in another millennium which two Bog People would we be? museum exhibit, exhibitionism evolution, devolution a […]

Dan Murphy | HUNTER GATHERER

HUNTER GATHERER The Serengeti holds the naked man. Bare body hunched like a pink flamingo straining water for detritus; evolution’s fallen angel. The hairless string bean of the animal kingdom. Opposable thumb, binocular vision; cunning as a noun going straight for the jugular. I’ve studied the universe for the billiard game it is. The slow […]

Adam Lawrence | EVOLUTION

EVOLUTION Not a surface-world of steady, predictable motion. We’d much prefer the soft curve of canoe spooned by a placid lake, with little to no tidal break to upset the measured stroke. A demure hand would have no trouble navigating this rich velvet soupe de jour. But: something churns … grunts out with a little […]

John Mann | TEXT ME WHEN YOU’RE DONE, WORLD

TEXT ME WHEN YOU’RE DONE, WORLD Acceptable in thy sight could mean anyone. I am transforming. Watch that dog on the corner with the luscious coat of rust. It could be me. Hearing is going but I can still smell the rose lance-petals of beloved fireweed. Flames sweep over the land. Terror comes every night. […]

Sonnet L’Abbé | XLV

XLV They want a voice that performs its wry ownership of literary pedigree, that airily scatters namedrops into a liturgical giving of finger. Matthew Arnold elaborated on the flawless logic that hears genius wherever genius abides: those first-rate men seriously thought, they seriously felt, and their musicality demonstrates their sincerity … although these days, a […]

Shane Book | 20

20 What is a desert? This grips the machete that cuts the cane. What is smoke? Hoisting the basket of coal to the head. What are liberties? They pull on the tall boots that protect ………. against snakes. What is a wage? In the vapour of sulfur fields it brings the sarong tip ………. to […]

Jessica Bebenek | THE WORLD WITHOUT

  THE WORLD WITHOUT We cut ourselves on this regret like glass. Turn when there is no turning to be had—the small threat of our hands naked and shivering into the floating globes of our air. Shriveled grey of the salt-faced sidewalk to guide us—This is our own fault, own paws coy and dipping too […]

Anthony Labriola | TRANSMUTATIONS

TRANSMUTATIONS* Not when, how or why, but what for, and where to, in the face of chaos and expansion, from the Big Bang to an Unheard Whimper— All Things Counter, Original, Spare, Strange* are rigged in our favour or we wouldn’t be here. Something will come from nothing: nothing to water, water to a single […]

Mike Caesar | AVES

AVES — for D. C. I Each passing shadow a prodigy of light Oblivious to origins. The cloud, with the back of its hand, dismisses the brilliance of the field Grazing the darker geese below. A dissembling vee Its dimensions the shape of restlessness To which I contribute my own, ceaseless, pose. Poised along the […]

Alan Reed | AND THE GRASS, IT GROWS

  AND THE GRASS, IT GROWS — with thanks to Madhur Anand It begins with the sun. Or it begins elsewhere, earlier, further away, but we will not. We will stay here, we will say it begins with the sun and not the sun but in the sun, in the heart of it, where the […]

Chris Riddell | LAKESHORE

LAKESHORE Along this strip you could once find vintage Thunderbirds pulling into burger joints before the movies, and afterward they’d go ripping up and down the pavement, surfing on the lake breeze. That was when the edge of town boomed and everyone went to Lakeshore to eat in diners caressed by the cool wind, and […]

Jane Munro | TOPICAL PIECE: NOVEMBER 18, 2014

TOPICAL PIECE: NOVEMBER 18, 2014 I am near the front. Geeta is complaining about the terrible Canadian headstand. So she renovates mine. Abhi’s hands under my shoulders feel like hydraulic jacks. Gulnaaz has to hold my ankles to keep me upright. Take her to the wall, Geeta commands, with two tri-folded blankets under her head. […]

Jenny Wong | SUBMISSION GUIDELINES FOR JOURNALISTS

  SUBMISSION GUIDELINES FOR JOURNALISTS Try too hard to fit into a size 12 Times New Roman font weighing in at just under 200 words because that is the formula for blind and readable judgement, along with spell-check and 11/2 inch margins unless there’s an error, then the margins are set to 0 because there […]

JoAnn Balingit | LOVE SONG AS FIELD NOTES

LOVE SONG AS FIELD NOTES In heavily-wooded sequences the song ……. in my timed records ………………… varies from 2 to 31/2 seconds of notes burning down to a glow ……. In the space age of our courtship ………………… our love wore a cocked beret In the 18th century of our marriage ……. love enters ………………… […]

Zach Pearl | THE LOWERING OF EARS

THE LOWERING OF EARS Thirty thousand locks, like colonies of commas. All those pockets and roomy pauses, where our words refuse to fit. Every question is as boundless as a shark-eye. Each parenthesis a fishhook— the worm, your furrowed brow. I ask trivial things about the art scene in Calgary. Avoiding her name like nettles, […]

Zach Pearl | LEANING OVER

  LEANING OVER Leaning over a bridge in Bickford Park, larks and ermine burgle the Serviceberry. The chains we lug about keep me upright; it’s not falling I fear but the wilderness below. We slow down to swallow sound, rustling leaves and swaying grass—shielding Spring ciphers. Somewhere in the underbrush of seasons past loom answers […]

DM Bradford | CUTE BEAR

CUTE BEAR Rock darned ….. to singsong the elements ….. out my pocket .. the ghosts too many ……. in the quiet too quick before ….. our bedtime … followed …….. by robots of the night This is your prone breath ….. in the first heat wave ………. so sticky … with no touching I’m […]

Josh Stewart | STANDARD DISTRIBUTION

  STANDARD DISTRIBUTION Averages sentence most to ordinary measures of disappointment: mute car batteries and burnt toast what passes for catastrophe. The benign masses easily distinguished from those exiled to the margins, nature a balanced equation. The scale bends, extremes arcing, electricity pouncing from one prong to the other. Authenticity sounds out of tune the […]

Josh Stewart | THE PACIFIST

  THE PACIFIST If you knew, you could crumble empires a wink at a time. True power is not to inspire awe but to corrupt, twist moral gravity until it rains skyward. Your degraded youth stirs fear so potent it threatens to eclipse all bounds of discretion. I prefer to keep you broken in the […]

j tate barlow | RESCURE

RESCUE Hope is the thing with feathers— That perches in the soul— ………. —Emily Dickinson A spell of fresh hells has you composing nothing. Muse flown, focus flailed and you—reluctant to rip the bandaid off—attending to broken news, concocted truth, cannot look away til now, to notice how molten light out there muffles particulars, bevels […]

Gerry LaFemina | WHEN LYING WAS IN VOGUE

WHEN LYING WAS IN VOGUE Even laughter was a lie. Even sadness. The way highways stretched beyond the next curve with their markers every tenth of a mile & their exit signs promising fuel & coffee, the possibility of a bed with its vague suggestion of desire. Nothing so tawdry. It was winter. Snow didn’t […]

Shazia Hafiz Ramji | PRISM INDEX

  PRISIM INDEX He turns and it is 11 o’clock, face pulled into light’s straight tail boastful of time the slaves it illumines. Of us, smiles; beacons somewhere in a forest, a satellite swings its arms cupped and wide, hugging you a path made for you, the prisms that index spines. I thumb through your […]

Blaine Marchand | BECOMING HISTORY

BECOMING HISTORY History is a cyclic poem written by Time upon the memories of man. ………. —Percy Bysshe Shelley 1. Your breath almost imperceptible, the burr of hummingbird wings, as your chest rises and falls like the tubular flowers they scour for nectar. Then it stops and you become history. 2. As I walk home […]

Brent Raycroft | GHOST

GHOST That hearing of footsteps just that once when I was young— the screen door first, then linoleum, then carpet, then a pause then footsteps again, returning, carpet, linoleum, door, but no one coming or going no one crossing my view where I waited, turned in my chair, to see— could just as easily have […]

Devon Gallant | ARS MEMORIA

ARS MEMORIA Come: enter the theatre of my mind. Like Giulio Camillo, I invite you to step away from the bustling Venetian waterways, the charismatic, swarthy gondoliers, the mask vendors, merchants, and friars, rival factions of pundits and academics— and transcend onto a higher plane of awareness. You are not a stranger or spectator here. […]

Zach Pearl | BUZZING

  BUZZING   In awe and envy of the space-black fly as its peppercorn-body bounces ………………………………………… [like spitfire] off the edges of our attic bedroom, aware by the time it collides with another juggernaut of drywall it has already forgotten the intimate pain of pavement. Runaway punctuation from an ill-crafted sentence, the fly is faster […]

Klara du Plessis | WORDS ARE POEMS AND POEM ARE POETRY

  WORDS ARE POEMS AND POEM ARE POETRY Each time I phone home I hear about the conclusive water the lack of rain how the dams are drying up how the supplies are ending in a matter of days. Here the rain has been unremitting for a month straight busying itself with green leaning against […]

Kevin Irie | CURRENT

CURRENT The sludge-slow flow of a runaway current opens a path we can’t continue, tugs at what no hand can pull along. It’s how even water loses memory, travels a direction it cannot find, ……………….. a body let loose of its own skin to separate itself from what it belongs to— depth, surface, flow, source. […]

Jennifer Cave | UNBEARABLE PARADISE

UNBEARABLE PARADISE self was a song almost coming to mind in beginning to be able to sing it walking through dark forest light breaking canopy until a clearing alone yet not feeling so the context of the journey a mystery in the absence of remembering no word for forgetting a need to advance to find […]

Ghazaleh Abassalian | TILES AT JULES

TILES AT JULES The tiles at Jules fix everything in my life. The tiles at Jules take me back to everywhere else I’d rather be. These tiles remind me of the dinner Nicolas took us for: a memorable meal at that bistro in Paris, where the tiles are just like the tiles at Jules and […]

Su Croll | THE CONSOLATION OF TREES

THE CONSOLATION OF TREES with much taken away … it is a small mercy dementia patients have trees … their remaining presence ceaselessly focusing the horizon a horizon offering nothing that isn’t in the present tense but with much already lost maybe it is luck to have trees opulent … flooding the sky in dementia […]

Past Award for Poetry Winners

2020 Winners 1st place:”Walking Into August in East-end Toronto 2020” by Judy Barlow 2nd place: “Border Crossings” by Mary Trafford Honourable Mention: “Linger Factor” by Josh Feit, Honourable Mention: “we lost ahmaud” by Esther Johnson, Honourable Mention:”As Unnoticed As Possible” by Michael Trussler The winning poems appear in Vallum   18:1 | Space. Thank you to Lillian Allen, our 2020 contest judge.   2019 […]

Laurie D. Graham | ROOST

ROOST Quieter now, the engines, the road work, the generator, cement truck, track layer, steam roller, pedestrians hollering over the chunking of bike gears, the colossal vents of the curling rink, goose communication, your slow stabs of thought, and a winter of crows above, a system settling in over heated laces of concrete, under darkening […]

Charles Wyatt | POEM THAT DOES NOT MENTION LISA

POEM THAT DOES NOT MENTION LISA Billy told me that thorny vine was the Devil’s Own. You’ll have to dig up his root and it’s a runner. I do not like the digging of holes inside them so many rocks and roots that want to joust, to unshovel me, so I snipped him with my […]

Noah Zacharin | IT’S NOT AS IF I DON’T KNOW WHAT I NEED TO DO

IT’S NOT AS IF I DON’T KNOW WHAT I NEED TO DO   it’s not as if I don’t know what I need to do. …………………………………………………… this beautiful old barn. its owls and mice, musty air, misty pale yellow light … coming through high windows— a musical staff, populous motes singing across the lines. here […]

Mike Madill | FINAL CALL

FINAL CALL We shared a climate neither could breathe, its truth hanging low like smoke. Tight-held hands, then tight-held mouths. We reeled ‘til our whirl reversed, unwound. So many memories I keep behind bricks not quite high enough to stop the leaking of tarnished light. Blame the years, if you need to. More distance than […]

Adele Graf | MEMORY

MEMORY how can my brain remember to close my lips for the m lower the tip of my tongue for the s touch the roof of my mouth for the d so I can utter the words my sister died after my sister’s brain forgot how to breathe   Author’s Bio Adele Graf’s poetry has […]

Emily Rosello Mercurio | HUSK

HUSK   A night rain beats the windows, pushes a tree to the ground. I am writing you a poem on curls of garlic paper. The poem rasps, odorous, a minced head pressed by the side of a knife. It rains and rains in my kitchen. Heavy drops collect on the ceiling, skitter down the […]

Evan J | THE SUN SETS, ETC.

THE SUN SETS, ETC.   Air balloons over Gatineau. A setting sun. A family canoes across Dow Lake. Cyclists on the gravel trail. And in the park she sits alone. And she can’t describe. And she can’t be described. She’s lost solutions. There’s no solutions. They disconnect. Like Hass, trees sway like something. Like Muldoon, […]

Leland James | THE TRUTH HUNTERS

THE TRUTH HUNTERS Five o’clock in the camp of the Truth hunters: Talk, round and smooth as party balloons drifting on the evening air; almost casual, yes, beneath a fog of urgency. Seasoned veterans all beneath the canopy, canap s in hand, martinis, gin of only the highest calibre arming to encounter the countess and the […]

John Barton | LAST OF THE CATCHERS

LAST OF THE CATCHERS   I’ve never caught sight of what they catch, boys Static as old men, old men less awkward Than boys, patient as herons, as lizards Wrists flicked quick as tongues, flies pierced and deployed The lines cast far and teased, cast far and teased What cold voids the hooks slip through, […]

Elana Wolff | MAMILLA POOL

MAMILLA POOL   Brambles hamper access to the ancient reservoir. The pool—agape and empty, dried to stone. The impulse was to save. The one hard lot was in the ground. We wanted fresh pool-water, in the months of hottest heat we wanted mainly to be slaked; pay attention; pray. If praise could fill the pool […]

Kate Marshall Flaherty | FAITH

  FAITH So I read this poem about a rare spice with an unpronounceable name, and before I know it, I’m catapulted into sex and some car crash of emotions, and I think: Why can’t I write a poem like that? Why can’t I come up breathless like I do from under the surf for […]

Mary Gilliland | FLOATS TO THE SKY

FLOATS TO THE SKY Initially I did not plan …………. a painting of a ladder ………………… faithful to phantom ……………………………. noises before sleep wearing a clean chemise …………. beneath dirty shorts ………………… under a worn abaya ……………………………. in my pink slippers with my red cheeks in the shop …………. for spots of vitiligo ………………… and […]

Claudia Coutu Radmore | ONE SAUCY LITTLE CLUE

  ONE SAUCY LITTLE CLUE we’ve seen a thought but it was so quick we only got a glimpse not immediately realizing what we’d seen flash of red heels little tilted black hat a veil over the eyes satin stillettos that seemed to have rockets attached as the thought escaped nimbly as if its route […]

Monika Lee | A SEVEN-STORY MOUNTAIN

  A SEVEN-STORY MOUNTAIN She climbs the ben …………… the ragged, ……………………. jagged brae, seven stories soaring to Eden’s sunlit peak. Bounded by southern seas, the mountain is the world, its two paths up or ……………………. down steep bluffs canopy white spires hover as she scales to surmount the top ridge crested with a stream, […]

Sharon Black | PILGRIMAGE

PILGRAMAGE When the peregrine goes for the kill it’s the fastest creature on earth. On a column of air it wobbles, wings an upturned cradle for the surge of sky. Up there, a static speck to the naked eye, its eye is faultless, unwavering the world condensed to a single atom, a collapsed star in […]

Emily McKay | WALTZ

WALTZ I kissed you from the left, after you debunked the afterlife; she kissed me from the left, as if to neutralize you were warned by text of horsemen, you were warned by text of flames; she begged me to drown with her but she found the sea too cold. you saw and you believed […]

Ulrike Narwani | TO FILL IN THE BLANK

TO FILL IN THE BLANK Forms and questions on everyday slips require that I fill in the blank, that I answer in a single space —Who am I— for taxes or something or a census for jobs, of course, most usually for me they say, quite casually wife of a house. Almost extinct, I am. […]

Eva Rodrigues | BUTTERFLY

BUTTERFLY   remember me like this: limbs swinging, voice singing, me swimming through the world with fierce butterfly, arms-only, slowest in the pool but damn well determined to make it. remember how when you talked to me, you never knew where the conversation would go, if we would talk about mars or cannibalism or chimpanzees […]

Jessi MacEachern | A LOOK BACK

A LOOK BACK   Cradling the top-tasting gin-soaked ice the lines between whispers against neighbourhood regulations— Obscure the view Our thoughts have trouble living next to poetry careen from pillow down to city sidewalk the sun the air the stillness ………………….. is still …………………………….. consumes chews cuts holds complaints dear   Author’s Bio   Jessi […]

Erin Robinsong | A MUTENESS

A MUTENESS In the heatwave. It’s cold in the reading room and always have I work to do. A scholar opposite gives a little whinny Close to where I started. And far. Lake coming out the taps. Close. Close-ish. And far. Touching. Without speaking. The scholars here are hot— A woman with Tennyson hair wears […]

Louella Lester | TAKING OFF

TAKING OFF Some people like to make a lot of noise when they arrive (screaming hollow hellos/bottles clanking/scrunching cellophane wrappers from food they pretend to have cooked) or when they leave (smacking kisses/rooting about for shoes & coats/shouting promises that they are okay to drive) /// These ones don’t come or go in V-formation/ they […]

Susan Ioannou | FORBIDDEN

FORBIDDEN Invisible, the mesh where each is held within our tiny square of breath and wire-sliced if flesh would press too far, too hard forgetting, in that moment deep within another’s eyes when darkness opens into a bright pool of air, and radiant, both surface trembling—do we dare? but reeling back stare at the glinting […]

Mary Lou Soutar-Hynes | THERE’S SUPERRADIANCE*

THERE’S SUPERRADIANCE* in the motion of clouds —      concepts spinning particles      unseen ………….and falling,      dark matter’s ……………………..steady hum — ………….………….………….……..she lives in memory ……………………..now,      communes with cirrocumulus —      today ……………………..less real      than yesterday’s ……………………..still-stirring fires — ……………………..the gentling ……………………..strum of classical guitars,    […]

Ulrike Narwani | AT HILLSIDE COFFEE AND TEA

AT HILLSIDE COFFEE AND TEA A woman orders angel-wing tea. While waiting she reads the daily horoscope a newspaper cutout taped to the counter beside the tip jar. I ask her what her fortune is for today. She’s quiet at first, then answers, paranoia. I, too, order angel-wing tea. While waiting I see a dark […]

Jenny Wong | A 1990’S PHENOMENON

A 1990’S PHENOMENON Four base pairs, seeds encoded for our superficial surfaces but where is the connection from phenome to phoneme, that gene of recessive thinking known to cause assumptions about what language should have been burned into my mouth from birth even though I have never set foot on the land of the mother […]

Sergio Reyes | BROKEN WINGS

BROKEN WINGS The night sparkles in couplets, doodled in an ancient script. Rhymes and question marks sear the horizon rise and fall then disappear amongst the outlines of the trees. They’re trying to tell us something. I rush into the night. It’s so dark. Even my shadow doesn’t follow my overalls and bare feet racing […]

Marika Prokosh | AFTER SCHOOL SPECIAL

AFTER SCHOOL SPECIAL The work’s not bad; you’ve been here before, and you’re lucky the boss doesn’t care about the two-year crater in your resume. Just count change, smile, shelve biographies, A, B, C, tear into another midafternoon Oreo. Those kindergarten skills are coming in handy, kid. Count your blessings: the dust on your palms […]

Shanan Kurtz | GRASP

GRASP have you forgotten the terms of this pact, the lines we once lifted from songs that remind me of bells and stems, a collection of waves, a kill, a cure, a whim made permanent, arcane did we ever lie close in the black of a room belonging to no-one, switched like breakers curved to […]

Colin Morton | JUNIOR DICTIONARY

JUNIOR DICTIONARY Blog, broadband, voicemail, chatroom. How plugged-in the new dictionary is, how clean. No more need for words like beaver, boar, bullock, cheetah, colt, nor even gerbil, goldfish, guinea pig, hamster. Too much mess. When our children learn to cut and paste they do it cleanly with a mouse or better, a practised swipe […]

Mary Catherine Shea | LA FONTAINE

LA FONTAINE Leaves scud / sift / through parc at cross-posts, / like and dissimilar trying to come together. / Through incongruous sight, maybe. / I remembered you at the edge of the intersection, / remarking on passers-by: / a bare shoulder in November. / Wind in broken branches. / Clouds piercing the 90 degree […]

Mark Grenon | SAY HELLO TO CONNECTED LIVING

SAY HELLO TO CONNECTED LIVING They say it’s all connected. Departed. Departing. <Unborn> NB: your connection’s now the government. Rise, make connections with fellow bloggers, photographers, YouTubers and social influencers! #BREAKING: 51-year-old man charged with felony arson in connection with 9,600-acre #HolyFire A specific function for the zona incerta has not been determined but it […]

Margaret Hanshaw | OTHERWORLD

  OTHERWORLD wish that I were a field,       late summer wish that I were a woman picking up a fallen nest,       carrying it home in the fold of her dress wish that I were the bird,      outside her window the perfect ease of it,      not held, not […]

Mike Ferguson | DISCONNECT

DISCONNECT don’t adjoin me ……………………………………….no soupçon of infecting ………affection ……………..……………..……………..……no brush of a feather’s dust if it is the diffidence ………of a possible lie if it is the difference ……………..……………..of uncertainty ……………..……………..of unknowing ……………..……………..of unusualness ……………..……………..……………..……………..then a touch to test is good enough there can’t be ill ………..or illness …………………..in trying but don’t try to […]

Andrea Schwenke Wyile | CONVERSATIONAL CUL-DE-SAC

CONVERSATIONAL CUL-DE-SAC You say discussion is a two-way street but the road is rough — my way is impeded — Halted     Blocked …..by familiar signs STOP                     Wrong Way Yield                      No Passing Detour   HERE     […]

Meg Freer | SEEKING BALANCE

SEEKING BALANCE Locked in the psychiatric ward the patients may or may not see Christmas lights this year, or get to brush their hair, but one has seen stigmata on her toes. She says alien life forms drew wavy brown lines on broccoli stems in her lunch left on the floor of her room where […]

MA|DE | PITCHDOWN BAY

PITCHDOWN BAY the small sound of a falling snowflake, slow it down, low frequency rumble of a whale, both melting into the ocean in time, the water glowing as bright as lanterns, and sailors drowning as if they’d seen lighthouses, more lost men entering from the shore’s mouth, that emptiness between the stars, pupils compensating […]

D. Susan Willis Chan | UNITY AND DIVERSITY

UNITY AND DIVERSITY What’s time between us? Warp, wrinkle, the steady ticking of my kitchen clock. Electromagnetism runs to infinity a spectrum of paths, of highs and lows invisible, not without form and void. We are two souls, irreconcilable threads rising and falling in waves regular like the mindful breath. The lazy eye sees only […]

Joshua Levy | MY WIFE TEACHES ME TO DANCE

MY WIFE TEACHES ME TO DANCE When you teach me to dance I begin to notice fire dancing with wind, a fish with water, a car with colours in the traffic lights. When you teach me to dance I begin to see gravity dancing with a basketball, a comedian with a crowd’s laughter, the peanut […]

Stephanie Bolster | NOW

NOW Four months on a ship, 580 students, a famous poet, rough seas, rough seasons, assaults, the Amazon, that’s how the world is now, the vast world so small it breaks the heart that one could see it all. There remain in valleys or on hills possibly tribes as yet undiscovered, whatever that means. We […]

Harris Khalique | BLACK PEPPER POEM

Black Pepper Poem Black pepper was my guide into the world of spice. ‘Siyah mirch’, you would call it. Irresistible when my sunny side up, half fried egg is peppered black. The dark thin membrane is layered off by the first dash of hot toast, exposing deep yellow. I pepper the egg once again. Making […]

Leland James | LUST AND THE COSMOS

LUST AND THE COSMOS — a heresy of lost seconds   In the beginning, the genesis I fathom: two explosions, the two not quite coming at once; actually (except in Hollywood) more likely a big bang and seconds later another ignited by the first but needing twice the duration to, as it were, to come […]

Jacob Scheier | JUMBO ELEGY

JUMBO ELEGY “Paralysed force, gesture without motion;” —The Hollow Men The cement elephant plays chicken with a train, forever up ahead. With painted eyes he stares down the ghost of that locomotive. Makes it vanish. The town’s barren tracks like casket handles holding nothing’s ceaseless progress. Jumbo, the world’s most beloved behemoth, still as a […]

Evelyn Lau | BREAST

BREAST Over lunch we talk about the tumour. It has a name—invasive mucinous carcinoma— and a location, time-stamped on your breast: 4:30, in the lower left quadrant. A foreign language, but you’re a quick study, ready to navigate this strange land you never had it on your bucket list to visit. Everyone knows a few […]

Leland James | LOGISTICS

LOGISTICS On a transport ship out of Chesapeake Bay bound for Sicily —the Big War— a box mislabeled “Projector Parts” contained 40,000 Purple Hearts.   Author’s Bio Leland James is the author of Inside Apples, a full length book of poetry. His poems have been published in ten countries in many periodicals and anthologies, including, […]

Patrick Lane | ARROYO

ARROYO The dead do not come riding dark horses up out of the arroyo. They do not arrive in dust grey-shrouded singing the old songs. No, they arrive like turnips pulled winter-burned and cold from the soil. They lie at your feet, worm-riddled, creased with dirt in the furrows, fallen peasants left behind in the […]

Goran Bacic | POSTURE

POSTURE Good morning Good as in another Another as in plenty Plenty as in guilt Burden as in over-burdened The guilt of plenty Another morning’s “Good Morning!” It is still night with No sun to say “Rise!” No sun to say “Risen!” Still, a good morning A me to the right A me left in […]

Simon Perchik | *

* Side by side a planet that has no star you wander for years which means remorse has taken hold the way this dried love note never lets go its warmth though the afternoon becomes a place for constellations, is wobbling as silence and the end —where else can it hide is more forgiving than […]

Byron Stratford Davis | HUNTER OF MOONBEAMS

HUNTER OF MOONBEAMS There was a time, When hunters, Threw nets into the sky, To catch small birds in flight. So I have flown, Into the net Of the hunter of moonbeams, Of the dream walker.   Author’s Bio On January 7, 1950, at 14 years old, Byron Stratford Davis attempted to cross into the […]

Pamela Lisa | HELD ME LIKE THE BABY I WAS

HELD ME LIKE THE BABY I WAS we smell the forest fragrance red and the trees healthy or they are rotting the land is tilled to grow poison now we are not close enough to the water or the river or the lake and we go to sleep heavy in little houses or they are […]

George Elliott Clarke | ENOCH 1: 1-19

ENOCH 1: 1-19 The end is Horror: Mountains melt in slides of lava and mud; The globe flares sheer fire. So much blood will flood the Earth, it’ll tilt back, wobbling on its axis. Monarchs, millionaires, military monsters, traders, traitors, will be penned in a valley brimmed— rimmed—with flame. They’ll be banded with iron fetters […]

Kate Marshall Flaherty | WICCAN CRAFT IN THE WOODS

Wiccan Craft in the Woods Taylor Creek Park Wooden staff in hand, purple cord and tunic, the caller summons us, “Oyay, Oyay!” Norse metal rounds his neck, his voice commanding and gentle. We follow, tread soft on grass, form a circle while a priest cuts the space with a sword. A witty one sweeps away […]

Sabyasachi Nag | THE BURNING MAPLE

THE BURNING MAPLE This fall the Maples have said no To fear. Nothing can scare Them out their gold trappings. Others have quietly yielded: Judases, Sycamores, Tupelos— They’re done ghosting around The chicken fence, Between grass blades, inside brown bags. They are ready to zero down, again. The birds are gone. Naked Branches slither under […]

émilie kneifel | AH

ah red lips red buttons eyelash well-trimmed. google myself once a blue afternoon. the cannon call foot to ball a black flock instead. woodpecker. nail. an eyelash shell. blue. 14 is the night version. you and me, bent. what do they call it, parsimony? the harmony, parsing? the harm in me, parsing? the harm in […]

Jami Macarty | WHO THE STRUMMER

WHO THE STRUMMER I am two women who live in parallel universes trying to break and re-create all bonds. She is aware of me and I, her but our communication a febrile ogdoad a nadir of loneliness. This blood-webbing capable of rescue yet every hour wraiths nicker scattershot across irradiated sand. I’m tidal. She’s trickling, […]

Ilona Martonfi | PUPA

PUPA No, the dolls whisper. Patched monologues. Skip rope chants. Playing tag. Playing marbles. I came here one year ago. Bombed stone houses. Village of refugees. I only think about the dolls. I made one looking like my mother. Slipping under my skin. In the mirror I see her: she is there, in my body. […]

Adèle Barclay | OBVIOUSLY A SHITTY DREAM

OBVIOUSLY A SHITTY DREAM We’re at your wedding to alcoholism the invitation features so many photos of your face framed by branches I think you are getting married to a tree I enter the banquet hall and Vincent the MC makes me change into a stretchy fuchsia dress gives me a lollipop I’m sexy and […]

ONE THING — THEN ANOTHER by Claire Kelly | Review by Bill Neumire

ONE THING — THEN ANOTHER by Claire Kelly Review by Bill Neumire From poor to rich, small town to big city, East to West, Fredericton to Edmonton, Claire Kelly’s second full-length poetry collection, One Thing – Then Another, from ECW Press, travels Canada’s vast landmass in a restless search for settlement. Kelly, author of Maunder […]

A Conversation with Jason Camlot, Author of CANLIT ACROSS MEDIA: UNARCHIVING THE LITERARY EVENT | Interview by Rosie Long Decter

A Conversation with Jason Camlot Author of CANLIT ACROSS MEDIA: UNARCHIVING THE LITERARY EVENT Interview by Rosie Long Decter Jason Camlot is a Montreal-based poet and an English professor at Concordia University. Over the course of his formidable career, he’s published four poetry collections and several academic texts. Camlot’s scholarly research ranges from Victorian literary […]

Noah Zacharin | AN EXPAT’S PLAINT

AN EXPAT’S PLAINT of course such a thing no longer exists. move back? mais si, sans hesitation. with eyes shut, this gyroscope skull turns to where the mountain suckles a living blue and the fleuve moves to salt. “we’re all poets here.” was an ally in every quartier, nights of melody and Brador. nothing I […]

Noah Zacharin | A LITTLE HOMELESS

  A LITTLE HOMELESS I look a little homeless, have stopped changing clothes, close-shaving, washing my hair. all that was important is understood now to be without substance, so much vanity, vanity, all is… and it all comes down to a small fire of sterno or elder twigs or birch bark— 12-word poems in charcoal […]

Kyla Jamieson | SAFETY CAGE DIARY

SAFETY CAGE DIARY sometimes horizontal is the only way to be —Kai Minosh Pyle I’m typing in the room where our tent is spread to dry after your cousin’s wedding in the river valley I first called home. There is air between its layers & a metaphor in the way thin metal fingers of support […]

Robert Colman | THE PAINTING

  THE PAINTING ………………(Salford) You never see the machines, only smoke, red brick chimney, Stockport viaduct, a stadium. Not strict landscape—no landscape precisely this in Lancashire but Lowry and Dad agree to it. The shape fits a winnowing, sallow pedestrians gather for a portrait then forget. Whose hat is this? Whose pipe? Is he a […]

Jessica Bebenek | SELFIE

  SELFIE Today is a day. I did things. I guess. At any point, I could’ve written a poem or drank a blended beverage. Today is a day I can’t stop eating peanut butter from the jar. Performance presented itself to my body and my body listlessly declined. My body performed a listless decline. If […]

John Barton | A GOOGLE MAPS VIEW OF THE HOUSE WHERE I GREW UP

  A GOOGLE MAPS VIEW OF THE HOUSE WHERE I GREW UP Why must I see it from above, the time Lapse trapped in some undated spring I can’t Account for, the crabapples flaunting Flesh-toned blossoms in the backyard climbing Branch after retouched branch above unmown Grass past the roof, ambition noted, beds Impatient with […]

Sean Rea Sokolov | READING “IT”

  READING “IT”* Dumb and obvious but for that —floating off to the side, maybe at the tight centre of a ball of yarn the it whatever it was was only to be understood in the reaching out to touch —at which point it would scatter, which is to say retreat, and we’d be left […]

Esmé Pine | RUE BARRÉE

RUE BARRÉE Our street is an open gash, old plumbing exposed. New city pipes, like ……..burlapped trees laid out on the curb to be planted. Pipes so wide I could climb into each one and build me a nest of hollow concrete. In there it would be quiet. A digger is idle, a mountain of […]

Eric Paul Shaffer | THE PAINTER

THE PAINTER ……..The painter asks what color to paint the house, and he expects the familiar response of brown, gray, or white. He knows the many shades ……..of brown intimately: tan, beige, and buff, for starters, chestnut, mahogany (shades from the forest), chocolate, coffee, cocoa, caramel ……..……..……..……..….(good food hues), fawn, beaver, camel, and bear (the […]

James Wyshynski | ESCAPE INSTRUCTIONS

ESCAPE INSTRUCTIONS Take whatever your mother offers: piroghies, dented oranges, rye bread about to sprout some form of penicillin—once you get to Penn Station, you can give them to whomever looks in need—but draw the line at pictures, they’ll make a record you’ll use against yourself. Take the train, it’s cheaper. The conductor will say, […]

John Reibetanz | TREE TALK

TREE TALK Enter into the life of the trees. Know your relationship and understand their language, unspoken, unwritten talk. Answer back to them . . . soul words, earth words. ……….— Emily Carr, 1932 Where can I find your living soul? Not photographs, where clothes and pose conceal. Not canvases, their oil darkened and cracked. […]

Blaine Marchand | IN KEEPING

IN KEEPING Your stuff. Some call it junk. The bric-a-brac of ten decades, one hundred years of bobs and bits. On the windowsills—the rooster, whose changing colours foretold the weather, long since at a standstill; the clutch of porcelain roses in crystal vases that never require watering. In the glass cabinet, the prized bone-china teacups, […]

K. V. Skene | IMPERFECT VISION

  IMPERFECT VISION A secret at home is like rocks under tide ………..-Dinah Craik i. so you said everything that shouldn’t be said shouldn’t be       and the house exhales the children stare eyes the stained-blue glass of heaven of       angels ricocheting ceilings and corners and baseboards and doors even the foundations […]

Laurie D. Graham | DRIVING HOME

DRIVING HOME The extractive machinery scrapes away a wide, wide swath, an industrial-yard welcome. Buildings poke out of curved horizon, appearing as one in the distance, a tasteful sci-fi of dread. After a feeling of bush and home, recalling the warmth as a child of lights in the dark in the distance, of the city […]

Hugh Anderson | ÉMIGRÉ

  ÉMIGRÉ The language is still English; that much is familiar. Shifted in a moment from moss-bearded firs to birch and red pine, to sky threatened with thunder, I return like a lone horse to a fence I cannot cross. Once I walked the cracked pavements of this place, turned soil, planted, grew like aspen, […]

Aidan Chafe | MEDITATION ON ENCLOSED SPACE

  MEDITATION ON ENCLOSED SPACE A room is a refuge …………a reformatory ……………………a universe of thoughts a landfill of dreams A room …………keeps weather outside & others away A secret gives birth …………in a room, ……………………rearing its little rumours A border is a line …………on the floorboards ……………………in a room with two towns Two rooms […]

William Grant | DIGITAL BATH

DIGITAL BATH* The city is a mechanical ocean. Its endless murmuring hum of electricity, its circuitry of flood and tide, is a digital bath disconnecting us from life’s more visceral storms. Lost at sea in boats of stone, assailed by wind and waves of hostile matrices lulling us to sleep with waves of black and […]

Jade Wallace | ANEMONE

  ANEMONE I devoted my life to her after I saw her sleep. When she sleeps, she still hears everything— the planes of her face shift as I speak to her, but her replies seem all rote or nonsense. When she sleeps she is like God and I am too simple for illumination. My words […]

Frances Boyle | WE KNEW

  WE KNEW We knew it already knew without being told felt the weight of the knowing as we ate our cereal in front of the television which wasn’t usually allowed. We knew that the world would never be the same again even while we argued over Razzle Dazzle and the Mickey Mouse Club (I […]

Robbie Chesick | STILL HOME

STILL HOME The rains will come …………………..(they were never here) The Himachali sun is covered by desert dust …………………..(the desert was never here) The dust is gone, the rains have come …………………..(the dust was never here) The rain is here …the first clear drop fell and now (it was never …here) here is another and […]

talah e. | ANOTHER POEM ABOUT HOME

ANOTHER POEM ABOUT HOME these days it has been eight years since the sky of the mother above me the homeland should be moving into concept, i should no longer smell it, see the grey brick in all the corners of ‘here’ the homeland should be the yellow site of a wound half assimilated into […]

Jennifer Hasegawa | THIS LOVE LIKE A ROCK

  THIS LOVE LIKE A ROCK My dad hauled home a beautiful rock. It was three-feet tall and pocked like a wild sponge. When it rained, water pooled in the top pocks and cascaded down to fill the lower pocks. He told my mom, “Pele made em jus fo you, honey!” She said, “Fairy tales.” […]

Rae Marie Taylor | WHAT IS IT

WHAT IS IT about the voices of those we love that makes them …..song Is it our cells that sound beyond the child’s complaint or with the lilt of the toy’s story that meld the sister’s tone with the toast and jelly that carries and unfolds the caress that rings     in the sound of […]

Carolyn Marie Souaid | SPEAKING OF DEATH

  SPEAKING OF DEATH If I had my druthers I’d pick December under a sheepskin throw. In full view, attending to me, a constellation of earthly possessions: eyeglasses, ginger tea, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Logs flaming in the stone hearth. Hung from a nail, a winter scene framed in mahogany— horses trotting through […]

Michael Eden Reynolds | fMRI

  fMRI I go on the Internet. Walk through a house where I once lived into the blind spot where the optic nerve connects olefin runner down to the basement. I book a vacation in Wernicke’s area. We’re hung in the ash cloud. Arctic coniferous unexplored attic and seashore. Glass dust sopped in the grease […]

A. Garnett Weiss | WHETHER OR NOT TRANSFERENCE OCCURS

  WHETHER OR NOT TRANSFERENCE OCCURS For as long as she could write her sorrows, she fought an allergy to light and a photographic memory to become impromptu, a devotee of roses glorious behind one farmhouse, touched by caring.   Author’s Bio JC Sulzenko’s award-winning work appears in journals, anthologies, chapbooks, and online, in her […]

Michelle Poirier Brown | JET LAG

  JET LAG It’s not the time zones. I eat at the right times. Suffer insomnia at the right times. Am depressed and lively in keeping with past patterns. It’s that, in the morning, I am alone in a different place. Haven’t re-habituated to the compromises yet. What needs to be given up to have […]

Devon Gallant | CUT YOUR LOSSES

CUT YOUR LOSSES At some point, you have to cut your losses and accept defeat. Looking back on it, it’s the ones who jumped ship early that were the smart ones. Who put down their pencil crayons and picked up a calculator. We need them too, I guess. Probably, more so. Certainly, their money-filled lives […]

Jason Spencer | TOURTIÈRE

    TOURTIÈRE For EM Ma Mare lived alone. Little house in Penetang. Built by her sons. Raised seven kids by herself; nurse at psychiatric hospital. Wouldn’t say what went on. Whispers of experiments, another time. She always tended to her garden— even while nearing a century. Went to church, church with bells. Not all […]

Adam Sol | REMOVES SLEEP FROM THE EYELIDS

  REMOVES SLEEP FROM THE EYELIDS … המעביר שנה מעני ותנומה מעפעפי A good soaking overnight and now the clouds hover spent, going nowhere. Already the yellowjackets are up looking for someone to mess with. Blue jays mock my prayer which would be fine if only they’d help clear last night’s plates and tissues. But […]

Gary Barwin | NAMES OF THE HARE

NAMES OF THE HARE After Seamus Heaney’s translation from the Middle English a man met his left leg all is not right a man met his right leg all is still not right unless he descend from the ground what he holds in his hands what he blesses with arms how he forgets peace but […]

Josh Stewart | SUMMER AFTER THE APOCALYPSE

  SUMMER AFTER THE APOCALYPSE The sun blazes on, brilliant and unsympathetic as the last genius, while the birdsong is unwavering in its hopefulness. I occasionally turn to the empty chair beside me to comment on the glory of the weather before I remember. I measure hunger by the length of shadows crawling the silent […]

loudvoice | WHEN WATER BREAKS INSIDE

WHEN WATER BREAKS INSIDE I thought about pouring my death chills and cold sweats down the ……sink my stomach said well, I guess, you think? Because my worst memoirs defy the laws of physics They make my body contort, stretch, distort even against my greatest wishes knee-deep in the wreckage, covered in soot, the sky […]

Matt Carland | ALLOCHTHON

ALLOCHTHON it’s the assurance of solidity without stasis; it’s the promise of plasticity without vulnerability it’s the buried memory of the Flood; it’s the eternal emergency of the present it’s a half-remembered face, anonymous yet universal; it’s a soundless signal that broadcasts pure intent it’s a genetic memory, vivid and unrelenting; it’s a sheltering current, […]

Kai Cheng Thom | HOME IS THE FIRE

HOME IS THE FIRE by time you found our sanctuary for witches on the run your body was already half-burnt as you stepped into our circle clothes fresh from the rain your flesh was still sizzling your tongue was still aflame when you tried to speak the ritual greeting only the sound of crackling came […]

Yusuf Saadi | IS THE AFTERLIFE LONELY TOO?

IS THE AFTERLIFE LONELY TOO? Outside of Kantian space and time, do you miss dancing in dusty basements where sex was once phenomenal? How sunlight threads in morning frost, breath pluming in knots between you and the snow-marbled fields? When depression knocks, do the dead hide inside poems, in the corridors between stanzas, curling fetal […]

Yusuf Saadi | MILE END

MILE END From Mount Royal the dead watch over the city: perched on tombstones they hum vespers and chew …………………………………………on autumn leaves. Down St-Denis the rush hour cortège caravans past café patios where October beer foams from pitchers; on St-Laurent sprawls of vintage shops proffer fox fur, faded denim jackets, military boots sans eyelets. The […]

Antoine Janot | from PRESENCES

Author’s Bio Antoine Janot is a young artist living between Paris and Montreal, exploring different mediums such as photography, painting, cinema, and literature. After directing several experimental short films, he is now working on his first feature movie. He also published an essay, various novels and two poetry anthologies.

Stuart Ian McKay | THE SIX HOURS IT TAKES TO GET ANYWHERE

THE SIX HOURS IT TAKES TO GET ANYWHERE are never divided by anything else, so relax for a moment and settle into this one formative fact. Think about the weeding in the garden you promised you would do, the summer someone you love dies, how to watch a documentary and not talk about it later. […]

Don Russ | THE WANDERER

THE WANDERER If it’s the sort of house makes you wonder who lives there, and you stop as if it might be you, are you that poet passing by who dreams he’s lived there, forever fixed in one afternoon’s light? And if there’s a wife at a window, her mind her own but her mother’s […]

Bruce Louis Dodson | HOME AT LAST

  HOME AT LAST Watching the dance of leaves Tree on horizon bends to wind flow Moment in tune with life Beyond the plan of intellect So good to sit here By this window Sun goes down Soft pastel colors of the evening Undulating scarf of crows fly home above I’m not sure where that […]

Morris Bailey | RUNNING AWAY FROM OURSELVES

  RUNNING AWAY FROM OURSELVES You and I direct our search for a destination that breaks us free from our confinement, a celestial wanderer that is comme il faut to make our own. In this place, you and I make our home à la une; are enjoined to cry out, summon attention to chemical combinations […]

Louise Molloy | SHELTER

  SHELTER In the cramp of the city-circle tunnel, ……….a commuter backs up against a closed door, ……….one arm crooked, hand splayed against the carriage roof, ……….hunched within his winter coat, ……….chin tucked, eyes closed. Across the rooftops from the kitchen window, ……….homebound traffic drones to mealtime clatter, ……….and shunted out of weariness he blinks, […]

Mary Gilliland | STRUCTURAL UNCERTAINTY

  STRUCTURAL UNCERTAINTY You wrote the promissory note a year ago That he would not be improved on. Perhaps the day could magically be re-opened To a place where it would not collapse entirely. Perhaps your heart could be treated with robustness And lemon drops before you fall asleep. Not that you want an extension. […]

natalie hanna | TOKYO CINEMA

  TOKYO CINEMA tonight i want to hear no sound that is not your heart or your sated sigh as i hold you in the dark surrounded by strangers and kiss the skin that holds your sadness why have we never been so tender and so quiet? even once-fine machines will break their gears murmur […]

Lynn Tait | VISITATIONS

VISITATIONS Three o’clock, but our clock strikes one; to us, it’s our son Steve roaming the house. I slip outside to read on the porch – he probably glides out too, all gangbusters, but in a ghostly fashion. He talks to me outdoors more than in: sudden visits, message by snake, lizard, dragonfly, or cardinal. […]

Ashley-Elizabeth Best | MAGPIES

  MAGPIES Last night I had a dream. We were standing inside the entrance of a grocery store, pumpkins surrounded us you kept saying something but only magpies came from the dark stretch of your mouth. I’ll blame the concussion ever since that ladder fell on my head I’ve been dreaming of a life that […]

gary lundy | YOU WILL MISS THE ARBITRARY

  YOU WILL MISS THE ARBITRARY collisions of random exchanges they shuffle along sidewalks glazed in ice a car rolls circles moves too fast to avoid the billboard new high price hotel once last night we rolled over and out of bed turning our phone off smooth pits and curves an apple picked earlier in […]

Michael Trussler | AS UNNOTICED AS POSSIBLE, 2020 Vallum Award for Poetry Honourable Mention

  AS UNNOTICED AS POSSIBLE for Lucy, our original mother There’s almost always two of them: mother and (or mother with) her child up against a tilting shoulder, a breast about to tire     and four separate ………………..hands ………….each gathering …………….its own task …………….each finger …………an annunciation ……………….of trust. Care. And this particular pair, an […]

Josh Feit | LINGER FACTOR, 2020 Vallum Award for Poetry Honourable Mention

LINGER FACTOR The Department of Transportation sidewalk study ranked my neighborhood 15 points above average. A 24% linger factor. My neighborhood would score even higher if the DOT surveyed at night when youth appear in clinamen lines. The study found this: People who linger are ……….talking to other people, or buying       sandwiches, …………….…………….…………….…………….…………….using […]

Matt Pasca | VIRGA

VIRGA There is a kind of rain that never hits the ground never collects in fat pools to reveal your flaws wriggling like worms: the ex-wife, misplaced money, lost friendships strung like shark teeth on a thread. Do not confuse this rain with the kind pelting the hosta patch, deck chairs & bike chains, the […]

Denise Raike | MID-ATLANTIC

MID-ATLANTIC On hearing Sylvia Plath’s recorded reading of Daddy— her voice, vowels stretched in opposing directions, threatening to snap—you find yourself fluid in her Mid-Atlantic tones, gasping. When she confesses she has killed him, though dead already, you believe her, and almost yearn for the imagined murders of your own childhood, the ache of not […]

Jason Santerre | WHAT IT IS

    WHAT IT IS It’s the sky in your mouth a Saskatchewan summer s t r e t c h e d pulled taut across infinity back to some faceless city where you hear voices in the walls more than one victim in hiding down the hall, an injured bird squawking helpless then held […]

George Elliott Clarke | TOWARDS A DECLENSION OF “UNPRECEDENTED”

TOWARDS A DECLENSION OF “UNPRECEDENTED” The virus’s unnoticeable, studded, burr-like form is not unprecedented Terror, when one recalls medieval tortures, also not unprecedented— if we check Roman imperial customs— like crucifixion. Nor is it unprecedented that blanching corpses land in that ancient fridge, the grave. Unprecedented, but not really, is the disruption of plump rats’ […]

George Elliott Clarke | WHITEWASH

WHITEWASH White is waves bright as crinkled sunlight—or sunrise, done up in foam White is Grevens Paerecider, Ironworks Pear Eau-de-Vie, Lunenburg County Winery Montbeliard Pear Wine, and Belle-de-Brillet Poire-et-Cognac White is the missing link1 between Michael Jackson and Elizabeth Taylor White is a spic-and-span E.R. with a scatalogical surgeon wielding a shit-smeared scalpel White is […]

Roxanna Bennett | PETITE SPHINXES ERMITE

PETITE SPHINXES ERMITE …….At the Tate, (Modern not Britain), Leonor Fini’s Petite sphinx ermite answers all …….my unborn riddles: broken eggshells, bird’s skull, “a pretty pink” human lung …….swings “at the entrance of its dilapidated lair” as though through years she viewed …….me, remotely, lying here stillborn, slugging masticated slurry through a silicone straw. …….One […]

Waking to WAKING TO SNOW by Robert MacLean | Review by Jami Macarty

Waking to WAKING TO SNOW by Robert MacLean Review by Jami Macarty In mid-December, 2020, Eleni Zisimatos, the poetry editor and factotum at Vallum, asked me if I would be interested in reviewing Robert MacLean’s Waking to Snow (Isobar Press, 2020). Based on my experience that writing a reader’s response to a book I’m not […]

THE FOOL by Jessie Jones | Review by Bill Neumire

THE FOOL by Jessie Jones Review by Bill Neumire The fool’s manifestation in Jessie Jones’s debut full-length poetry collection comes as the speaker centers herself as an isolated sovereign, as an I fortifying itself against the world, which comes out at times as lonely, and at times as powerfully self-confident. According to the book cover, […]

PHILLIS by Alison Clarke | Review by Bill Neumire

PHILLIS by Alison Clarke Review by Bill Neumire In 1773 with her book Poems on Various Subjects, Phillis Wheatley became the first African American to publish a book of poetry. Hailed from New England to England as “the African Genius,” Wheatley, who was a slave, led a complex spiritual, aesthetic, and intellectual life, inspiring generations […]

Robert Hirschfield | ROBERT LAX: HOLLYWOOD’S CONTEMPLATIVE POET

ROBERT LAX: HOLLYWOOD’S CONTEMPLATIVE POET What kind of a mystic was Robert Lax? One who could make the dictionary sound otherworldly. He was once asked what advice he could give young writers. He advised studying the dictionary occasionally: “Inside are the seeds you’re going to plant in your field.” Lax was also the kind of […]

j tate barlow | WALKING INTO AUGUST IN EAST-END TORONTO 2020, 1st Place Winner of the 2020 Vallum Award for Poetry

WALKING INTO AUGUST IN EAST-END TORONTO 2020 Is it how spruce don’t think, just do—arrange their boughs for things withwings to dip andglide on through? Or how the yellowcrane looms—strange arabesque-sur-bleu, distraction-dance, wide arcs boom-swung and slow—dwarfing all thatgrows nearby? Stow yourthrone in a box on high look down waydown to read what’s spelled below […]

Christopher Levenson | MR SCHLESINGER

    MR SCHLESINGER A Jewish refugee, he probably came just before the war to our North London suburb, and stayed in our house for a while till the authorities took him away to an internment camp, maybe the Isle of Man, as an ‘enemy alien’ alongside captured Nazis, We never heard of him again. […]

Jami Macarty | LUSTROUS FUGITIVE

  LUSTROUS FUGITIVE O my Goddess come       and see ………..how I will the long now how memory’s return device guest-hosts my one ………..………………….featherweight life on a median island Goddess       will you will the time of will I to end ………..………………….my infinite future empty of children end my disgrace of form ………..…………………expectant […]

Julie Eliopoulos | THE ODESSA SHOW

    THE ODESSA SHOW Libretto. Afterlife. Odessa, in flannel, baffles in the morning storm, lull of her dark hair, the killing of an alarm clock. She is somber in the kitchen, picking the gem-fruits from the iron basket, and turning them to appraise their worth. Yesterday, you bought her roses that lie rejected on […]

Jeffrey Mackie | CRACKS

    CRACKS Someone has fallen through the cracks To lie on the sidewalk. Right in front of you. Do you wonder why they are on the sidewalk? Do you call the media to say someone is on the sidewalk? Do you look at statistics to see how many people are on sidewalks? Do you […]

Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán | ENTREATY: INVITE FROM THE OCEAN FLOOR

ENTREATY: INVITE FROM THE OCEAN FLOOR Round, it swells, bells, cling, clangs the vibration; clink, clank. We pray here. Resonant vessels vacillate. If each dancer vibrates the ocean of the other’s body, locate, for me, the shore. Is there a rudder? Sequence my star chart. Navigate our nearness. Astrolabe the archipelago. Kelp, bubbling, bends; wavering, […]

Josephine LoRe | DREAMS OF THE DEAD

DREAMS OF THE DEAD my grandmother is a hydrangea       petals pressed close ………………………….she opens in blue splendour my grandfather a bulltrout       slowmoving …………………………waters murky and what of Alex? ……………………………in one dream the ficus benjaminus turns …………………………………………to butterflies his lopsided smile ……………………………his bangs ……flipped to one side / thoughts …………………………………………..deep / wings […]

Francis Flavin | RAIN PORTAL

RAIN PORTAL Awash in rain. Transfixed. Amorphous absorption Of time and place. A scent only. Fleeting. Pine? Hemlock? But not here. Not now. Not this foreign place. The pool. The hotel. Markers only, In a trail of mist That takes one Where it will. Author’s Bio Francis Flavin draws upon his experience as an educator, […]

Julia Gibson | BEING SEEN

    BEING SEEN A foil of the stock magician, there is a man, who, with a needle pierces clean through the full thick of his arm without ever drawing blood. In that moment, the audience refuses to see him for who he really is— a man sticking a needle through his arm. There is […]

Jacob Scheier | A GHOST STORY

  A GHOST STORY Last night we walked down the old country road, new to us. The full moon hung too low, and out in the fields a thick mist clung to the immediate sky above the freshly harvested soy crops. This part was true presuming what we could see during the day remained once […]

Lynn Tait | NO CERTIFICATE CAN EXPLAIN ME

  NO CERTIFICATE CAN EXPLAIN ME I arrived on a Monday, from one canal to a cold, smooth grey world, light bending to a particulate blue. In time, I became a wound, too many colours for one woman. Painted into a corner, not passing through anything without your approval, all chromatic wheels at my disposal […]

Leland James | LAMENT FROM THE EIGHTH CIRCLE OF HELL

LAMENT FROM THE EIGHTH CIRCLE OF HELL “To lead you to an overwhelming question … Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” Let us go and make our visit. — T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” * A place between the first sip of coffee and a bite of buttered toast, I […]

A. F. Moritz | HOUSE

HOUSE It was a house plummeting through the night. At last I had a home. A place to stay, my own, a different place from the hideous roofless pesterings, the appearances and disappearings that never let me alone. It was a house collapsing into itself. When I’d swept all the floors, caulked the cracks, dusted […]

Naomi Kanakia | THE GIRL

THE GIRL The girl from high school—not my high school—had long straight hair and a foxy face and her body, a cylinder, with slightly wider hips, was perfect for the sheath dresses she wore. Vee was a Circassian, famous beauties in their day, well-prized as slaves, her mother a refugee from Turkey, never marry a […]

Shane Neilson | THE WEEPING TENSE

THE WEEPING TENSE — for the listeners There’s too little light in this room, I have something to tell you— Lean closer, I’ll write more quickly, I promise, I love you— don’t cry— over the kitchen counter today, clearing scraps, I started ………………………………………… weeping— Out the sliding door, I could see the unkempt grass bullied […]

Elana Wolff | SOTTO VOCE

  SOTTO VOCE When we’re in the den, they’re in the boidem. We hear the strains of opera, intermittently, from above; slippers shuffling near the ceiling, swish of a housecoat hem through a doorway: burgundy velour. I keep the fancy soaps in the upstairs bathroom, just in case. Your mother—I called her Ēma too— never […]

Dr. Deidra Suwanee Dees | MUSCOGEE PEARLS

MUSCOGEE PEARLS thin strand ………… loose end waving from the magnolia leaf, clear water droplets ………… in beaded ………… succession line up on the spider’s strand as dew retreats from first light; Muscogee pearls invisible to ………… COVID-nineteen   Author’s Bio Dr. Deidra Suwanee Dees/family descend from Hotvlkvlke (Wind Clan), following Muscogee stompdance traditions. She […]

Jim Nason | ENVY

    ENVY how the stars each day become again invisible, while going nowhere. — Carl Philips I wanted a line like that, just one. A jaw-dropper. An outward gasp. I tried to imitate, but faux poems never work. I stared up at the stars, watched them blink, waited for morning, the moment of departure. […]

Janine Certo | CONSPIRACY THEORY

CONSPIRACY THEORY a circle of reason / a proof that cannot be proved or disproved / a mad mixture / a template for order / cast, shaped, readymade and launched / requires immediate response (response must have no minor errors) / a distrust, a witch hunt, an elaborate dance / behind the scenes / eyewitness […]

Steven Heighton | FAMILIAL

FAMILIAL (An approximation of “Familiale” by Jacques Prévert, 1945) Mother is knitting a sweater The son’s away at war It’s all good, she thinks, whatever And the father, what about the father What’s he up to (Business) The mother with her knitting The son away at war And Daddy at his business It’s all good, […]

Steven Heighton | SINGING IN THE GRAVE

SINGING IN THE GRAVE In the dream, the brother I do not have says something about singing in the grave. I understand him to mean singing in the graveyard but don’t correct him — I’m astonished that he exists at all, though I may in fact have had a brother, briefly, who can say; when […]

Roxanna Bennett | SOMETHING TO CRY ABOUT

  SOMETHING TO CRY ABOUT ………. You were taught it’s cruel to keep a sick pet …. suffering but people, …. O people should …. pull themselves up, …. always up, …. by their bootstraps. Who can afford boots? Who has feet? What straps ………. hold up the steeples, skyscrapers, supermarkets, schools? “It’s not far, […]

Lauren Turner | THE SECOND PERSON HAS DEPARTED

    THE SECOND PERSON HAS DEPARTED A gold sequin dress isn’t any use in a fire. I scribble down every cypher I gathered about you. There is no kindness in letting you know when the world unclasps, emptying its prayer palms of us, our preordained survival. Did you expect me to carry a gun? […]

Fawn Parker | 1986, THE FIELDS COMPANY OF CHICAGO

  1986, THE FIELDS COMPANY OF CHICAGO In 1986 the Fields Company of Chicago purchased the rights to Muzak, a brand of song to be played— invisible—in background. ……. Specificity, I used to think, ……. was a hand trained to thread any needle; ……. there were constellations of muscles ……. waiting in the sky to […]

Julia Teeluck | WASTED

WASTED memory slips through crooked fingers, reaching for seventeen and its promises we were skinny things cocaine eyes and cracked lips sharing cherry gloss between classes “Thinner is the winner” we sipped Diet Coke at lunch a sky-blue cafeteria melting grease and thick laughter plates of poutine and pizza a game: how long to eat […]

Myna Wallin | NOT MY FAULT

NOT MY FAULT subway trains screeching Homer’s sirens shrieking can’t stop obsessive thoughts tackling other thoughts someone pushing random buttons brain glitches chemicals reconfiguring flashes cosmic insight memory lapses onslaught of sensory input thoughts of arson      self-annihilation masochist streaks of fasting, insomnia sustaining oneself      absurd dressing carefully to cover up strangeness […]

Susan Gillis | LATE OCTOBER, MORNING, EARLY, FACING SOUTH

LATE OCTOBER, MORNING, EARLY, FACING SOUTH a moment ago    a wind blew through the workshop      of an icon-maker in a dry village      at the edge of the world pure powdered gold      in thin sheets furling through time     just now catch on a flaring bush      at […]

Skylar Kay | SUBMERGED

………………………………………….I walk beside
………………………………………………a river
………………………………………………….which cracks
………………………………………………with insufficient cold
………………………………………….as ice breaks away
………………………………………………returning to itself
………………………………………………………..I cannot help
…………………………………………………….feeling
………………………………………………….there is something more
………………………………………………beneath that fragile surface
……………………………………………maybe that

Michael Ricketti | UNTITLED

He finished. Peeled the lemon away. The music from the spun the evaporation of sound the music incongruent to this place. He finished. The slatted window view. A woman on the street walked with a man she held. She held an umbrella against the sun. We are of the colorless dust the rages. He kept […]

Shazia Hafiz Ramji | IN SINGAPORE I WAS SERBIAN

IN SINGAPORE I WAS SERBIAN for Marcel Clearly my face changes when I leave this country. In Singapore my hair is matted to my head. A white man asks if I am Serbian. I am out in the open, unaware of air-conditioned tunnels below the city, chugging water at every crosswalk, I see a brown […]

Moni Brar | THE UNTOUCHABLES

  THE UNTOUCHABLES they’re at the outskirts that smudged edge of our village life tethered to a shanty of flies, filth and folksong lives and huts near collapse for generations, they bloom beside the lotus pond my father doesn’t see them his eyes no longer register their shapes, their bodies he steps around them sometimes […]

Matt Rader | ZERO + ONE

ZERO + ONE No thing, a zero in the amber of time, then one. At the edge of the mind a soft rime: then one. The brook was running clear. Now it’s gone. I’m here, cried the killdeer, I’m here. Now it’s gone. Jewels of rain like We’ll grow rich with water, Like every number […]

William Grant | OTHER SIDE

OTHER SIDE There they are, edging the aquarium. An accompaniment of blue creatures and orange captures their concentration. Glass walls seize and refract protruding light while bodies vanish and emerge amidst ascending pockets of life. A smallish one, old with age and boredom, cultivates their gaze, luring their attention to where other beings, capsules of […]

THE OUTER WARDS by Sadiqa de Meijer | Review by Bill Neumire

The Outer Wards by Sadiqa de Meijer (Montreal, QC: Signal Editions, 2020, $17.95, 88 pages) Review by Bill Neumire A hospital room, a distance from a city center, a defended outer enclosure—a ward is a removal. But then, of course, a ward is also a person in your care and charge. The Outer Wards, Sadiqa […]

Greg Santos | THE RUINS

  THE RUINS The town Had changed The barns and sheds Were gone Replaced with New wilted-looking Monuments To the old days. They kept driving On and on and on Until the sun Had reduced Their homes To dust     Author’s Bio Greg Santos is a poet, editor, and educator. He is the author […]

Amy Lerman | FOUR ON THE FLOOR

FOUR ON THE FLOOR You tell me you like house music— how the synthesized thumps traverse your veins, hippocampus, so you are twenty again, the exotic American, dancing with strangers and pint glasses at Le Beat Route. Then there is the music of house— the fridge’s decade-old respirations; unsettled, foundation cracks; the a/c’s throbbings, constant, […]

Kate Braid | HOW I’LL KNOW

  HOW I’LL KNOW In winter I’ll know by the harsh call of raven and in spring, by blossom. In summer, a warm wind will wash like a bath sweetening and in autumn the squelch of wet garden as it rests. Always, this knowing, body-deep of a particular earth beneath my feet solid silence of […]

Allan Briesmaster | SPACE ISSUES

SPACE ISSUES (best case) Each of the two of us, bounded in our immediate spheres, will touch along their edges and then the struck keys of our words propel semblances of a meaning through membranous curves. One side, inside, echoes back (heard or not); the other vibrates the other’s tympanum, on, into anything permeable behind. […]

Gavin Liam Logan | HYDROGEN AND HELIUM

HYDROGEN AND HELIUM from the window of a taxicab gazing heavenwards i wonder at spectral hydrogen clouds collapsing and condensing exploding into violent starlight and i ask as i look at the darkest night when was it ever a human right to burst forth foolishly seizing the night, with pathetic displays of these passing street […]

Aisha Hamid | UNHAPPINESS

— Video Credit: Bushra Saleem   UNHAPPINESS I am Mama’s eyes grey-black, glassy, distant eyes that belong somewhere else in someone else’s face walking places I can never learn the names of, places I will never visit, freedoms that could have been mine in another lifetime She is scattered; always anywhere but here Her life […]

THE MINUSES by Jami Macarty | Review by Bill Neumire

The Minuses by Jami Macarty (Fort Collins, CO: The Center for Literary Publishing, 2020, $16.95, 92 pages) Review by Bill Neumire According to Jami Macarty, “Even when there’s a minus—a dear one dies—life keeps living itself. This is the ethos informing the poems of The Minuses.” Macarty’s debut full-length poetry collection hovers through a prepositional […]

Kelly Norah Drukker | CAESURA

CAESURA windowless    the rain mourns black cabs on the highway speed by    empty buses passengers thinned like    weeds no one stops    speaking into tunnels of phones searching    voices for faces wind gleans the alleyways    recycling joggers jog    in place gloves    discarded    fall like broken    geese  […]

Dawn Macdonald | COLD WAR WASH DAY

COLD WAR WASH DAY When we integrated under the curve and the fuel ignited, when push came to rubber glove, and in all the kitchens food fell from plates, …….. we leapt into our holes and made tracks, one small, one just right. …….. One side makes you human. …….. One side wakes you. …….. […]

Robert Hirschfield | CANDLESTICKS

  CANDLESTICKS Candlesticks growling in tallow. How did they get in? Their edges find you. You let yourself bleed. You don’t move. Nothing on the table moves. You are like everything on the table. Even that herring pretending to be asleep.   Author’s Bio Robert Hirschfield is a New York-based poet and freelance writer. His […]

GHOST FACE by Greg Santos | Review by Eleni Zisimatos

Ghost Face by Greg Santos (Montreal, QC: DC Books, 2020, $15.45 CDN, 84 pages.) Review by Eleni Zisimatos Greg Santos is a poet of intense sensibility, who writes between the spaces of the concrete and the unseen. His book, Ghost Face, indeed embarks on the journeys of ghosts: the feelings or awareness that something is […]

Julie Cameron Gray | A DAY OF NOTHING IN THE MULTIVERSE

A DAY OF NOTHING IN THE MULTIVERSE What comes next doesn’t really matter. A stripe of light, watered down, the television a parliament of owls to wind me up, set the tension on an internal spring. Considering this: definitions are softening. What is the world if not an arctic of sound, a bowl of seeds, […]

Emily Chou | SWEETLY

SWEETLY am i wrong to miss it sometimes wrong to miss the midnight ovens glowing hot with bread narrow cobblestone would tight towers cut from other towers wandering through pastel hills just past seven being taken out and ordered for crying on the bed every other week can’t say i’ve ever been a head turner […]

Brennan Sprague | THE BONES

THE BONES The maze of bones sutured by the dark Call of the glass frame—currents shock The wish, the fluorescence. Pour a glass Of God, drown eternity in your throat. Then feel as it disappears. As it rushes Through you, into the brittle of your Fingernail. Then dream of moonrise. Of the pool lit by […]

Marguerite Doyle | ABANDONED SPACE: THE POLICE STATION

ABANDONED SPACE: THE POLICE STATION There is a riot beyond the chain-link fence bedding is scattered wildly about and the Sting, planned carefully by Nettle is out of control. Lassoing summer’s cold blue moon a Climber has gained the perimeter— wraps the barred windows about with trumpeting billows. They catch on hidden barbs like mouths, […]

Richard Sanger | INTO THE PARK

INTO THE PARK Into the park in late summer on your bike, the sudden cool of trees and shade, the breeze down the front of your shirt cool against your chest, linen billowing, a frisson tingling your nipples, as the afternoon heat lingering on the grass starts to retreat, the bike whirrs and into the […]

Michael Quilty | PREDICTIVE MESSAGING: CONCUSSION 22

PREDICTIVE MESSAGING: CONCUSSION 22 or “hidden disability” — for K. injured, i became inured — silent replies to you seem fine text unpunctuated blank space at the end Author’s Bio Michael Quilty derives nascence along the traditional land and treaty territory of Beausoleil First Nation (part of the Chippewa Tri-Council). The work of this poet […]

Paul Muldoon | Excerpt from THE BANNISTERS

Excerpt from The Bannisters MAYDAY 1 The desert would be an ocean were it able to withhold its judgment on wavelet after sand-wavelet and suspend itself over its own floor. 2 It’s not only death’s a Great Leveller. 3 The desert has its own version of spume, its own version of spindrift— that flurry of […]

Emily Osborne | END REPLICATION PROBLEM

END REPLICATION PROBLEM Thin caps bandage our DNA, this morning’s science news explains. Chromosomes only replicate in the middle. With each division, telomeres shrivel until the unclothed genome dies. It’s before seven, and I’m unsettled by the end replication problem. At the molecular level, stress shortens lifespan. A tough job claws at our nucleotide’s fine […]

Howard Wright | BLEACH

BLEACH Soak cloths in the sink and scrub down the steps, avoiding mouth and skin. Keep it out of reach under a child-proof lid. Twist, push, lift and share. Use it wisely, making the semi-circle glow in the cement, a force-field, a cordon sanitaire, because all that elbow grease is an open invitation to those […]

Kieran Egan | LOOKING INWARD FROM MARGARET RIVER

LOOKING INWARD FROM MARGARET RIVER Driving from Perth south to Margaret River, late in the velvet night my friend pulled off the road onto a dirt track where we bumped and swayed. A fenced-off field on one side, rows of vines on the other. I turned to ask where we were going. ‘Wait,’ he said. […]

C.M. Clark | TRANSPLANT OF MARROW

TRANSPLANT OF MARROW Your cruel April begins in the dark where there is still dark to these ends of days. Still a blue evening, somewhere lilacs still roosting with creatures nesting and dishes resting in racks to dry. Your dead-to-life April will last for the duration of spring burgeoning. Am I up to this task? […]

Nicole Brossard | Excerpt from A TILT IN THE WONDERING

from A Tilt in the Wondering 15 je dois decider du nombre de fois si le mot nuit peut se reproduire seul et immense on vit avec des yeux on vit avec de la nuit mathématique sentiment de vertige je dois me rapprocher au figuré de l’intime 16 la dernière page est pleine de douceur […]

Marc Perez | AUBADE, AN AIRPORT & THE SEAS

AUBADE, AN AIRPORT & THE SEAS — For Kaori   I reach for you as though for the mugicha we drank at a seashore teahouse in Kamakura while you sit on a metal bench losing your voice in separate spaces             with a brown hand a border agent tugs the pen […]

Roberta Senechal de la Roche | WASHED IN THE BLOOD

WASHED IN THE BLOOD I would call you a wing, but you might disappear into thin air, when I am not ready, or cannot say anything down to earth. Already you are twirling long dark hair behind your ear around your right index finger, looking outdoors at nothing in particular. Thinking too much where it […]

Bob Brightt | LISTENING TO THE “MOON MEN”

LISTENING TO THE “MOON MEN” The message is varied our s/salve soul solve solution boosters are clear send / sent a message or emissary a line an isle rocks on the path late facing meant or meet or manufactured for Cable & Wireless Ltd. probably find some more fucking fern under (or) on a rock […]

Rob Winger | A DOZEN MORNING TRANSLATIONS

  A DOZEN MORNING TRANSLATIONS When I talk, again, about Voyager 1 out there beyond the heliosphere, what I really mean is that none of us recalls the birth canal. And when I show you this photo of my favourite painting, made in Paris with palette knives in 1954, I’m giving you my boyhood’s village […]

John Kerkhoven | RESIDENCE

RESIDENCE She grew up in a city seven hundred years old, carillon bells in the basilica tower, reliquary beneath the altar; but a school girl at the lyceum when the invading tanks rolled into the centre of town, trailing daffodils. But she embroidered the signatures of liberating soldiers on a green silk scarf one of […]

2021 Vallum Chapbook Award

Congratulations to Heather White for winning this year’s Vallum Chapbook Award! Her chapbook DES MONSTERAS will be published in the fall. Maurya Kerr’s chapbook tommy noun. was an honourable mention for this year’s award. Read excerpts from both chapbooks in issue 18:2, available to read online for free!