Jennifer HoseinA Map of Rain Days (Guernica Editions, 2020)ISBN 978-1-771834-41-4 | 128 pp | $20 CAD #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY “My mother’s toes are / crooked and curled / in a misguided, arthritic map / of rain days,” writes Jennifer Hosein in the eponymous poem of her debut collection, A Map of Rain Days. In these lines there is a conflation of body and world, but also of space and time. Time becomes an entity that is spatially
Claire CaldwellGold Rush (Invisible Publishing, 2020)ISBN 978-1-988784-46-5 | 80 pp | $17.95 CAD #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY Writing about pioneers and summer camp risks a confrontation with banal, or even dangerous, sentimentalism. However, in her sophomore poetry collection, Gold Rush, Claire Caldwell is circumspect, scrutinizing and assessing her subjects with the critical eye they deserve — and she never mistakes pyrite for gold. See, for instance, her poem ‘After the Gold Rush,’ in which the speaker declares, “We
FAN WU from Songs Heard on The River Styx Charon Before Breakfast Charon moves along his sloop, fern-heavy with morning sleep.He rubs his eyes then his wrists together.Standing sexless, two words — pistil, stamen — flash across his mind, illustrated like in the Grade 9 Biology textbook he once read for proof of nature’s perfect design, lovewise.An anchor tethers him to the limitless sea.Anther and pollen.Something Lacan once said occurs to him:“Love is giving something
There was supposed to be a review of Jeremy Colangelo’s debut short fiction collection Beneath the Statue (Now Or Never Publishing, 2020), but due to unforeseen circumstances, there will be none. To find out what led to this utter catastrophe, please read on. ISBN 978-1-98968-910-3 | 184 pp | $19.95 CAD #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY Dear Jade Wallace, Reviews Editor for CAROUSEL, Thank you for sending me a review copy of Jeremy Colangelo’s debut short fiction collection, Beneath
PAIGE COOPER The Man from Atlantis Ingrid is my mother’s name. The only reason I’d ever have a daughter would be to name her Ingrid and let her cry herself to sleep. I’m sorry, I’m a sulker. I was warned. When her boyfriend wouldn’t marry her, Ingrid took his last name anyway and became Ingrid Vivian. When she was twenty, Vivian gave Ingrid an ultimatum: change in six months, or it’s over. They were driving
MICHAEL E. CASTEELS 4 Poems The Cattle Business I was rousting some steers that had taken up residence in the house. I gathered a coil of rope and slung it over the pommel of my saddle. Some of these old mossyhorns had grown up here and had no wish to leave. A brindle steer lurched through the breezeway, scraping the walls with his horns. A twisty creek trickled down the front steps and pooled among
REBECCA ROHER Four Hands Four Handsappeared in CAROUSEL 38 (2017) — buy it here
JOHN NYMAN For My African Violet Between oscillation and explosion,an iris undone, your graceful fall a flick so swift unhingedand floating: sinkable, the thrust of piling upand the flutter of a tip of a feeler frenzied wanting.Let’s sally down my list: the measurable handshakes,a close furrow (grin to a parasite), chores,a strong caress sent to a friend like you, so in a bright timeI’ll blow further on. • • • Always look at me like
Taking a Line for a Walk — 2: Matt Davey Taking a Line for a Walk: Matt Daveyappeared in CAROUSEL 37 (2016) — buy it here
Taking a Line for a Walk — 1: Jon Vaughn Taking a Line for a Walk: Jon Vaughnappeared in CAROUSEL 37 (2016) — buy it here
MALLORY TATER The Last Nickel Geraldine’s black bather sticks to her chapped skin. Her thighs burn rogue with saltwater rashes. The water isn’t good to her but she loves it anyway. She walks her path to the seawall, one-at-a-times each stone step down to the shore. She feels a shifting in the land, but she isn’t afraid of it. Kelp and purple claw-weed accumulate in bundles, thick and dirty like doll’s hair. Geraldine wades until
Paul Dutton is a poet, novelist, essayist & oral sound artist, who, over the course of 5 decades, has uncompromisingly challenged the borders of literature & music. Internationally renowned for his solo sound performances, Dutton’s otherworldly voice works have helped redefine the potential of human utterance. CAROUSEL is pleased to present the first appearance in print of a selection of works from this innovative explorer of language in the following profile section — which includes
BEN LADOUCEUR 461 Margueretta Street There’s the house there’s the way into the house.Hot head blood a difficult decision being responded to.We are hurting men we house and cause great woe.The moss growing by one millimetre every warm year.Harder to tell when you’re away plus I care less too.Inert things proceed no regard for human assent.God will not fail to take such a martyrdom into account.You create a fluid place it inside me leave it
CHAD CAMPBELL At the Surabaya Zoo The last eyes retreat. A shiftworkof waiting for food until morning starts, when she’s led from the brickhutch to the pens. Nearby, a bear stares brokenly at some apples.She stretches out again. Day opens. White tigers are especially rare. Lookhow white she is, how fine her tail, how black the stripes that leapbrail for violent majestic force — the titillation of a hungry shadowloping for you through a field
DANIEL SCOTT TYSDAL Inside Job – Composed on the occasion of the release of the 9/11 conspiracy theory documentary Tight Resistance The doc shocks; its evidenceis as disturbing as its claim: 9/11was not an inside job. Bush could nothave known X. The CIA could nothave orchestrated Y. The “terrorists” were notactors working from a script by Z (a rumouredOscar winner) and doctored by otherHollywood A-listers. Tight Resistance mounts a new founding alphabetto articulate the tragedy,
LEAH JANE ESAU Letters to Your Brother Hour One: we aren’t sure what happens in the first hour he goes missing, because we aren’t there. Does it happen because we aren’t there? • Hour One for you: a phone call. You don’t answer because your shirt is on the floor of your boyfriend’s apartment. You let it ring three times and go to voicemail. A few seconds later, it rings again. Your boyfriend says, “Maybe you should see who
CARA EVANS Fractal i.nothing disappearsevery action fracturesinto a million splinters of the sameaction happening over andover there is no erasureonly variation ii.the word or is nestledin word and eachword is a thresholdthe breath or the storythe sound or the sign the word more is truncatedand trapped withinmemory memorycannot exceed or replicatetwists vainly towarddoubling redoubling redoing all wholes are completed by lack Fractalappeared in CAROUSEL 35 (2015) — buy it here
EDUARDO C. CORRAL + JIM JOHNSTONE Alternating Landscapes (Sonoran Desert / High Park) I roll into a high shoulder stand, allknees and elbows —saguaro. • Forget the beautifulmoments: the theatre drenched with rain a fox swinging its cutlass between the sunand sun- glassed eyes • Dust devil, tattered sail. Stray tenderness stay. • My gaze is directedby counterweights that mount like a bruise: birch, hickory,basewood. • To escape the rain I leap into a book. Terra-cotta warriors, gunpowder, a buck: its antlers the Chinese character for deer. •
LUKE RAMSEY Pretty Problems Pretty Problems appeared in CAROUSEL 35 (2015) — buy it here
ROBIN RICHARDSON We’re Just Beasts with Big Brains Tipsy on the stoop beside a stone dog, faithful as the hurricane that claimed his face. It’s okay. The sidewalk’s arching orangetowards a chanting patch of shrubbery; it chants your name. Or does it state the ways of gods, or god, or something worse?I have misread myself for years: open as an infant crow below the worm. At my feet some German Shepherd, older than his owner, begsto