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, […]
Brian Henderson | THE INCOMMENSURATE /, 2nd Place Winner of the Vallum Award for Poetry
THE INCOMMENSURATE / Though incommensurate with itself language nonetheless Somehow shoots a few arrows into the vanishing point of things which have come here from a great distance Which makes it clear we have come here from a great distance or are asleep To the future or for example the untenable proposition of flight […]
Ali Blythe | WAKING IN THE PRECEDING, 1st Place Winner of the Vallum Award for Poetry
WAKING IN THE PRECEDING Hello my forever ago, don’t worry, you won’t be reading this much longer. You will have already returned in the body of a snowcloud which is suggestively, fashionably, only ever one second old. Yes darling, it’s me, it says as proof that in space, though there are many silences, fleeting […]