Two poems, by Stan Rogal

 

Au Naturel

 

I worry about the trees, their furry existence
the smell of rain, the heavy drag of wind
across the concrete, the creeping fog 

& what about the smell of light? what about
the moss, listening in the damp shadows?
wildlife clothed in fur, feathers & flowers? 

how romantic : unbothered by conventional
notions of good taste : in the subway, walls
display young girls in brassieres & panties 

seeking jazz or sex or soup or the yakkity-yak
buzz : those who blew or were blown : poetry
strange as money beneath this cloudy firmament 

posters that read “my son’s father is missing”
living in Chicago, homesick for London,
blinked too much & was afraid of snakes 

how naked am I? my thighs are amphibian
where rats go, go I, accustomed to the night
I am a pal of the earth : I come from wilderness 

piece by battered piece I appear to re-enter
the world (we all gain from alien phenomena)
creature absorbs creator in this bent light 

it is the sky, it is the ground, there is nothing
between, save, a thin line : tree names, flower
names, deliberate as hard squares of teeth

 

  

Knee Deck Her Daisies
          Lorine Niedecker

 

rainy day w/yellow warblers & wild canaries
in this place, geese make a wilderness in the ears
a text composed of locks of black & red hair
& horizontal strips of cut white paper 

the line flat as a lake is flat, as a corpse is flat
(I’m really in a vein if I can direct it better)
quite lavish w/their ripe expletives
news of the weave, mud of the bleep 

look — a bit of mottled blue
behind a skin of fog after days of grey
the way that big trees somehow seem
to just rush out of a landscape 

… because everything is connected …
(after all, we do have sex & other appetites)
I — if s/he did exist — wld know how to spell,
just by looking, at the “jonquils,” or whatever 

the handcuffs of words are on us for good
poetry is a dead loss; & this is true, Bataille argues
come up (then) to the dandelions & say goodbye
to April [which] wasn’t much favourable, anyway

 

Stan Rogal: I live and write in Toronto. Work has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies in Canada, the US, Europe, and Asia. The author of 27 books, including 12 poetry and several chapbooks. A 13th poetry collection to be published in March 2025 with ecw press. A produced playwright and former coordinator of the popular Idler Pub Reading Series, now defunct. The series, not me.

Two poems, by Claudia Coutu Radmore

 

and for which self

inconsistent self, consenting self, blithering self, withering self, stone self, stoned self, moaning self, groaning self, exploding self, ice-coated self, public self, pubic self, crow self, crone self, crescent self, cul-de-sac self, deadly self, hesitant self, pleasant self, slipper self, zipper self, nipple self loose self, goose self, chatterbox self, ludicrous self, luscious self, fusion self, confusion self, Confucius self, hybrid self, two-spirit self, cushy self, tushy self, glory self, horrified self, deified self, mortified self, haughty self, naughty self, oh my lovely self, oh get over your self

a long path from desire to decision:

sturdy spirit, urgent spirit, surgent spirit, resurgent spirit, innocent spirit, birdsong spirit, tell-all spirit, mycorrhizal spirit, fractious spirit giddy spirit, soft spirit, cleft spirit, sleety spirit, dream spirit, shadow spirit, arrow spirit, clinging spirit, singing spirit, calm spirit, abandoned garden spirit, blossom spirit, sepal spirit sun-laced spirit, sun-graced spirit, sun faced spirit, sun shower spirit, scared spirit, tractor sound spirit, wild rose spirit, moonglow spirit, colour spirit, owl hoot spirit, moot spirit, root spirit, mute spirit, rebuked

 

 

 

Claudia Coutu Radmore’s a moment or two/ without remembering and Your Hands Discover Me/ Tes mains me découvrent, were followed by Accidentals, which won Canada’s bpNichol Chapbook Award in 2011.  Often working in Japanese forms, the business of isness, a haiku collection, and fish spine picked clean, a tanka collection, were published by Ottawa’s Éditions des petits nuages in March, 2018. Her work has been published often in Canadian poetry journals. The chapbook, On Fogo was published by Alfred Gustav Press, Vancouver, summer 2018. She is Past President of Haiku Canada.

Recent publications: Pink Hibiscus: Poems of the South Pacific (2022. Ottawa, Éditions des petits nuages), rabbit (2020. Toronto, Aeolus House Press), Park Ex Girl: Life with Gasometer (2020. Montreal, Shoreline Press), camera obscura (2019. Above Ground Press), On Fogo (2018, The Alfred Gustav Press). Shoreline Press published Sweet Vinegars in October 2024.

Pillows Stabbed on Ladders [three poems], by Benjamin Niespodziany

 

Ask Your Doctor if GodBog is Right for You

 

Ask your doctor if GodBog is right for you! From the disruptive and presumptive pharmaceutical company who brought you DogBog comes GodBog, a mildew infused womb tune-up that will have your bod looking like a bog in no time. Lily pads are add-ons, but the moss will gather naturally. As will the lichen. As will the witch and the wish. Throw some God into the sauce and become something more than human. A bog sedan, lapped in vines and twine and turtles. A world of frogs. A bog for gods.

 

//

 

Waxing Luxury

 

 

The lemon

is sliced
in half
by

a doll heel.

It stains

the sedan.

We clap

like

nothing else.

 

//

 

Minced Meat Instincts

 

 

Betty forgets the phone. Debby asks for painkillers. They deliver, by accident, a graph. They deliver, they're sorry, a nun. Dark shark bites turn to blue bruises. The perfume is accused of smelling too much like a spy. The titan forgets its weather map in the car. The lot is on the other side of the kite store. Dear cerebral beekeeper: eat more corn.

 

//

 

Benjamin Niespodziany is a Chicago-based writer whose work has appeared in Indiana Review, BOOTH, Fence, Bennington Review, Conduit, and elsewhere. His debut poetry collection was released in 2022 through Okay Donkey and his novella of connected microfictions is out now with X-R-A-Y. You can find more at neonpajamas.com.

Handed, by Monty Reid

 

1

What holds the narrative
in its cold fingers 

as one might hold
a hot cup 

and drop it

 

 

 

My right arm failed, and I dropped a bowl of hot tomato soup, taking it out of the microwave.  After cleaning up the mess, and bandaging my fingers, I went out and bought a couple of bowls with big handles, easy to hold onto.  They work, even for one hand.

 

 

2

The left-right organizer
gave me 

an off-center stomach
right-handedness 

a tilted heart

 

 

 

In utero, a set of specialized cells organize the distribution of organs in the human body.  Generally, humans have bilateral symmetry, but inside, not quite so much.  After surgery my elbow had swollen up bigger than a grapefruit, filled with fluid, and as soon as she saw it the doctor said let’s drain that.  I sat in a large chair in the examination room and she got on her knees in front of me, lifted my bad arm onto her shoulder, inserted the cannula and gently squeezed the elbow joint. I held the bowl in place, with my only good hand.

 

 

3 

Tingle
In some fingers 

Numb in the others

How does one
hold the world

 

 

 

We were dancing to Panhandle Rag, that great old western swing tune, and trying not to trip over each other. I had my bad hand on her shoulder and wanted to keep it there but slowly it slipped
down her back. I tried to explain that I had a problem arm, with dead nerves and atrophied muscles while my hand slid down to her waist and stopped only when it hooked into a beltloop on her jeans.                                              Maybe she couldn’t hear me, but that’s it, she said, and shrugged off my good arm and walked away.

 

 

4 

On the other hand

there is always
another hand 

to hold on
to let go

 

    

 

My mom was a piano teacher - I took lessons for many years.  I learned how to play guitar as a teenager, and later on, picked up a few licks on mandolin, all of it dependent on a functional right hand.  I tried double bass for a while, unsuccessfully. My hand would go numb after a couple of notes, and I couldn’t carry the damn thing.  Various piano pieces have been written for the left hand, most notably by Maurice Ravel, commissioned by Paul Wittgenstein, who lost his right arm in the First World War. But I was never any good on piano. Now I can’t listen to music at all.

 

 

5 

Right hand dominant
all my life 

Now left hand only

How is it
you still feel the same?

 

 

When my daughter was a toddler we played a game we called ‘bad hand’.  I would tickle her with my left hand, very gently. She would grab the hand and hold it away from her tummy.  ‘But where’s the bad hand’ she’d giggle and I’d slowly bring my other hand, fingers wiggling, from behind my back and begin to tickle her more vigorously. She would wrestle the bad hand into submission and we’d both collapse, laughing, onto the floor.  She claims not to remember this at all.

 

Monty Reid is an Ottawa poet. His books include The Luskville Reductions (Brick), Garden (Chaudiere) and Crawlspace (Anansi), and his most recent chapbooks are Vertebrata (Turret House) and Where There's Smoke (above/ground). Magazine publications include Juniper, talking about strawberries all the time, Train, The Goose, The Dodge, Pinhole Poetry, The Malahat Review and many others.  He is the former Managing Editor of Arc Poetry Magazine and, for many years, was the Director of VerseFest, Ottawa's international poetry festival.

 

Hold for a Count, by Jessi MacEachern

 

I am down on all fours
and nuzzling the matted fur
of my enemy. It is my drooling
self. An obscene picture
last night’s drunken moon. 

I have been thinking
of my circumstances
the six bookcases weighed down
intermittent sadness, intermittent happiness,
and (newly)
fatness. 

To move slightly to the left
where the light creates the staggering shadow
a giant woman like I aspire to be
pull the woman by the breasts
seven gusts of wind. To move slightly to the right
where the blood pour gives way to the worm body
release the pelvic floor
seven gusts of wind. 

I have been met
by the striking white dog
who eventually growls at all of us.
We are not unique.

 

 

 

Jessi MacEachern, born in Epekwitk/Prince Edward Island, currently lives in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal, where she teaches English literature. She is a poet, professor, and scholar of contemporary feminist poetics. Her second poetry collection Cut Side Down will be released by Invisible in April 2025.

 

Slim Truths and Tiny Lies, by Kyla Houbolt

 

1.

When I think of you I'm empty inside.
That is a false gift, but not to blame
the delivery drivers who work
all day and all night. 
I want to thank every one of them! 

2. 

The polite thing to do
would have been to say
Thank you, and not
My eyes are not blue. 

3.

This space
for your favorite lies.
No, not that one. 

4. 

Let the flowers
speak! They will not.

 

 

 

Kyla Houbolt's fifth chapbook, The Ghost Of It, is available from CCCP Chapbooks/Subpress Collective. All five of her chapbooks are available via her website, and she is on Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/luaz.bsky.social

in verso, by Jeremy Stewart

 

 

the sea as a desert
longs to cover land
in drownland
make no land but sea
the rain is the sea over the land
aerial sea on
sea      overland
& overleaf
land would forget the touch of sea
mind of land on edge knows a sea
that sea unmakes land into sea
rising sea makes itself known to land
land breathes underwater
over land over
in verso
what moods arise from sea
will be none
but what mood has, you can know
reflected in or on water
to speak of that of which
we cannot speak without
speaking of it
set our words in spirals
pretty as pinwheels
around a round O or square
narrower at the neck
tapered to pieces
a papered concert
m(o)ist // dew/y
consider lightning
step down immensities of rain
into house power
invoices singing
ink to stepwise soak a sheet
of paper to blue edges
I don’t live here
by night the flat black sea

 

Jeremy Stewart's book In Singing, He Composed a Song (U Calgary Press) was shortlisted for the 2022 ReLit Award. Stewart won the 2014 Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry for Hidden City (Invisible). He is also the author of (flood basement (Caitlin). His next book, I, Daniel: An Illegitimate Reading of Jacques Derrida's "Envois," is forthcoming in 2025 (Peter Lang Oxford). Stewart lives in Vancouver with his partner and children. He once dropped a piano off a building.