HER FIRST FIRST NATIONS BOYFRIEND That summer she saddled a cabin of tank tops and shorts and rode them every day. But at night, the counsellors collected elsewhere. She spent her time speculating: which cigarette liked which scrunchie? The older blonds, coasting between semesters of limestone, got claimed pronto. The juniors breathed in almost any […]
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 […]
Sam Kaspar | EAU DE STRIPPER, 2019 Vallum Award for Poetry Honourable Mention
EAU DE STRIPPER darkness overcoming but don’t use that cliché hand down on the left, signal a turn, park here, not over there your headlights turning on automatically or with a bit of help from the knob, the computer in the hood, the concrete walled parking garage put your hand here, don’t touch that […]
Conor Mc Donnell | PARTICIPATION AND PASSIVE VIEWS, 2nd Place Winner of the 2019 Vallum Award for Poetry
PARTICIPATION AND PASSIVE VIEWS (Twin Peaks in under two minutes) When we were unmade we were scrutinized to death. Maybe we were supposed to be Marilyn but arrived pre-abused instead star-crossed addicted and a little bit nympho we transformed into robins over circular-saws overlooking waterfalls Washed ashore by current-flow and lonely foghorns we were there […]
Ellen Chang-Richardson | GROTTO, 1st Place Winner of the 2019 Vallum Award for Poetry
GROTTO Pain of release, is worth a thousand haters mothballs, humidity hang in heat fill; broken generator. Whizz-whirr of insects, at worst tilted by staccato pops. We scratch surface until wounds burst, her touch is cold against my socks. Sap weeps from tall serrated sheaths aromatherapy, in disguise; our hands, stained red with grease […]
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 […]
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 […]
Mary Trafford | BORDER CROSSINGS, 2nd Place Winner of the 2020 Vallum Award for Poetry
BORDER CROSSINGS Crossing the border used to be fun, sort of, hide & seek, little white lies, us trying not to laugh, Mum swatting us from the front seat, crossing from rural Maine back to rural New Brunswick, the Presque Isle River barely a creek alongside the one-hut customs office: it was all small-potatoes. […]