Two motions with the knife, across the throat below the gills and along the bare length of the belly, like a Catholic crossing himself before a meal.

A sleepwalking old man brings a community together in the waves of the sea.

Again we found ourselves at the shoreline,among shards of shell and plastic,scrim of seaweed trapping my feet like a net.

Kawishhhh! Kaaaawishhhh!

Bert scuttled through the intervals in a microscopic world of his own creation.

Rambunctious children bother Comrade Gas Jockey, Crazy Sea Foam and a man named 3.14 in Granma Nineteen and the Soviet's Secret by Ondjaki.

A young boy gets his first pair of tweezers after overhearing locker room conversations about body hair in this excerpt from God Loves Hair by Vivek Shraya.

Three poems by Sue Goyette, excerpted from her book Penelope.

In this excerpt from Steven Heighton's new book, The Dead Are More Visible, a firefighter must decide what lives are worth saving in the heat of a four-alarm fire. The official line is that firefighters save people—but what about reptiles?

 The vines were biding their time, full of life force that did not care about her or how sorry she was

‍

I am wholly unimportant—just a witness to her shapeshifting, possessed of a voice that can be compelled into song by the land’s unfolding

Insane, adieu. It's summer; there are letters every week. Soft petitions, loud refusals, the usual prayers and prophecies, weather reports, prose in several styles.

I watch the lights slip and slur on the headpond and think down, toward the dam, the embankment and the long drop of the spillway where the water rests, whirled and stunned

‍

In the line (three abreast) that stretchedfrom the dock into the Baggage Roomup the steep flight of stairsto the hall of the Registry Room

‍

i know hate, its line-mates. believe me. you kids have, i’m sure, wasted—all early morning anxious and weak-ankled—their first impatient shuffle-kicks and curses on me.

i sd lovinglee can yu  not yell at me  n call me

Limericks written at The Great Canadian Limerick Caper at Word on the Street, 2008.

From Lemon Hound, a poetry collection published by Coach House Books in 2006.

"We stood back and watched. In the glare of the headlights it looked like a wolverine dancing on a carcass."

I met Ryan at the smok

1. a quitté l’urgence de l’hopital vers six heures hier matin : Yesterday morning I was not thinking about You, only, faltered

"I now know that every omelette, every angel cake, every soufflé, and every bucket of Colonel Sanders’ fried chicken brings us closer to a better, more intelligent world, where cruelty and pettiness do not exist."

They felt comfortable in their resemblances, too comfortable to note that the resemblances contained differences like tripwires cunningly laid and hidden.

"He had white hair at every angle, a paunch, and he didn’t bathe much. Colleagues joked about the Leonard Condensate, one whiff of which reduced matter into muck."