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 […]
Esther Johnson | WE LOST AHMAUD, 2020 Vallum Award for Poetry Honourable Mention
WE LOST AHMAUD we lost ahmaud i cried to my momma the night we lost ahmaud it’s unfair unjust uncivil it’s a modern day genocide the victims are my people why can’t we run in peace? we lost juice i cried to my daddy the night we lost juice when they made us feel lesser […]
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 […]
Spenser Smith | DREAM JOURNAL AND INTERPRETATION FROM A SOBER, HUNGRY ADDICT
DREAM JOURNAL AND INTERPRETATION FROM A SOBER, HUNGRY ADDICT 1. The golden arches fall. A barred owl lays eggs inside the “o” in “McDonalds.” I ate Big Macs so I can stop using drugs. I used drugs because I could not stomach shame. 2. My Facebook feed, free of fast-food ads, teaches me to make […]
Angela Rebrec | A SERIES OF OPPOSING REFLECTIONS IN A HOUSE OF MIRRORS
A SERIES OF OPPOSING REFLECTIONS IN A HOUSE OF MIRRORS Presumably, when something breaks you fix it. Garage door opens—the grinding of metal wheels on metal rails rattles the bedroom floor. All the records of our conduct: lost fortunes and shattered glass, the hole you put in the laundry room door. Tonight you’re back so […]
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 […]