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 […]
Grace Vermeer | FINDING THE FIELD WITH NO ROADS, Vallum Award for Poetry Honourable Mention
FINDING THE FIELD WITH NO ROADS I cast my bread on the waters, what I’d wanted and loved shuffled off on a raft, waved, promised to call then never looked back. Sometimes grief braids a rope, crafts a cage or a prison. I set the last brick, found a noose coiled round my neck. What […]
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 […]