"In her dream, my wife said I abandoned her in the middle of a strange city forcing her out of our car."
CARLA NAPPI
Poetry
Sappho Questions Medusa
"Desire, he said, wants what is not in reach. So reach for me and dance me out of death."
EVELYN LAU
Poetry
Burnt
There was a fire in your former home, it was on the news. You brought me here, once, in my youth when nothing impressed me.
Geoff Inverarity
Poetry
Grief
Grief’s a bastard.
MARILYN DUMONT
Poetry
October 1869: to smoke their pipes and sing their songs
"lug like trunks,/ steer like plows/ pile like lumber..."
HENRY DOYLE
Poetry
Harm Reduction
"It’s 6 a.m. when the lights turn on / in a white-washed drugstore, / as if it were a little theatre / shining out onto the sidewalk."
VANESSA STAUFFER
Poetry
1827 Sul Ross #1
"Had hardwoods and crown moulding / I thought I could afford. I signed the lease, / sick of driving everything I owned"
JENNIFER ZILM
Poetry
Stanza Is The Italian Word for Room
"On benedick’s retirement, or how I learned to stop worrying and love the catholic church"
LUCAS CRAWFORD
Poetry
Failed Seances for Rita MacNeil
"Rita, we are both members / of the fat neo-Scottish diaspora. / Don’t tell me it doesn’t exist, sweet darlin’"
PHIL HALL
Poetry
Festivities
"anything you wanted to keep had to be taken off your balcony / then on that day, Balcony Day / whatever items were still left out there disappeared"
Christopher Gudgeon
Poetry
Canadian Tourister
"Canada has no history books, they are being written as we speak by navvies and temporary foreign workers, by strippers and hitchhikers."
ROBIN DURNFORD
Poetry
Death of a Fisherman
"he’s rowing with bed rails on sheets / sail-taut where the sea should be."
C.R. GILPIN
Poetry
Hinterland Who’s Who
Listen to C.R. Gilpin read "The Pump Jack," "The Tall Poppy" and "The NFB Documentary."
Steven Heighton
The Waking Comes Late
"Of course, looking back, you would like to reboot and start over, but there is no over." An excerpt from The Waking Comes Late, winner of the 2016 Governor General’s Literary Award for poetry.
GEORGE MURRAY
Poetry
#CivilDisconvenience
"I’d take the calm before the storm if it meant having any calm whatsofuckingever."
HENRY DOYLE
Poetry
Drunken Laundry Day with Charles Bukowski (Video)
An animated short featuring "Drunken Laundry Day with Charles Bukowski" by Henry Doyle, winner of the Downtown Eastside Writers' Jamboree Writing Contest.
JUSTIN MCGRAIL
Poetry
Publishing
Dear still unpublished writer: Thank you for your submission to generic unprofitable lower-case canadian poetry magazine.
JANE EATON HAMILTON
Poetry
Virgin #479
"If I conceive God's child my father will get $500,000 / My father instructs me to pray for this fortune / he could open a second restaurant / a walk-in fridge"
SUZANNE BUFFAM
Poetry
First World Problems A to Z
Existential philosophy, gap year blues, retro-modern décor ennui and other problems faced by the upper class.
Gillian Wigmore
Poetry
Vanderhoof Girls
"And then you think of her with her eyes brimming, the both of you standing dumb in the foyer of the friendship centre, holding eyes, not hands."
JOHN K. SAMSON
Poetry
Longitudinal Centre
"This spring made winter an insulting opening offer, now the passing lane is getting harder to negotiate, thawing out and icing up again."
DAVID MCGIMPSEY
Poetry
Catnip for Canadians
"Life in Canada is just bear attack after bear attack. It always happens, as incalculable as the number of times Irving Layton used the word 'loins.'"
Poetry
Drunk Uncle
Pull his finger. Braid his chest hair. Top of the odd-job totem pole. King of the all-you-can-eat.
Poetry
Goodnight Skirt
"I’ve been wanting to write about the black skirt we’ve been using to cover the lovebird’s cage. The goodnight skirt."