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 […]