Certainly one of Canada’s most recognized artists, Michael Morris first came to prominence in the 1960s as a leading member of Vancouver’s burgeoning avant-garde. Inspired in part by the ideals of Fluxus and Pop Art, he became associated with a generation of artists who consciously rejected the national lyrical landscape tradition that had dominated the region’s art making, opting instead to work in a fully international idiom. As a creator, Morris has worked in a
MATT RADER Lunar New Year’s Day, Year of the Snake – for Eduardo C. Corral The cross steepling St. George’s is so empty.Meanwhile, vultures cycloneTheir shadows motherfucking slowly.Meanwhile, five bisonSkulls on the barn wall sport oneOr two small black annuitiesTerminating where their brainsWould be.Meanwhile, fingerprints, Charybdis, drains. Again,All good fortune is wealth,All ill fortune the ouroboros of luck feedingItself itself.St. George’s is so lonely eveningsAfter the Narcotics Anonymous meetings. Lunar New Year’s Day, Year of
RUTH MARTEN 3 Works 3 Worksappeared in CAROUSEL 34 (2015) — buy it here
KIM FU Lifecycle of the Mole-Woman: Infancy as a Human I’ve seen this waist-high grassand weeping tree before, in a drugstore frameand a Bollywood movie, the trunk a pivot pointfor coquettish hide and seek. On the coverof Vanity Fair it had a swing,just two ropes and a plank, a girl levitatingon the tip of her coccyx. Poofy virginalwhite dress, elegant lipstick slash, Cubist chin,she had it all. Someone proposed here,votive candles in a heart, a
JP RODRIGUEZ The Heavens “Can’t believe you can stand a basement apartment,” I say to Rob, growing damn tired of waiting for Scott to make his word. Rob just murmurs away to his iEyes, either not hearing me, or hearing me but ignoring me. No. I’m sorry. I’m misrepresenting. I guess I didn’t say it at speaking volume. I must have murmured it, out of habit, and that’s why my iEyes have picked it up
BESS WINTER Daguerreotypes 1/ Hidden Mother A slight mother could be disguised as a swaddling blanket or a bassinet. A larger mother was an overstuffed chair, a settee, an imposing piece of furniture. Careless practitioners might toss a rug over the mother, barely cloaking her shape. Ill-disguised mothers looked like bodies smuggled in the night. But such mistakes were for amateurs. Sargent was an expert at hiding mothers. For instance, once he was commissioned to photograph
MIGUEL LEAL Mad Faces Mad Facesappeared in CAROUSEL 33 (2014) — buy it here
MATTHEW WALSH Scenes of a Sunday Dinner on Musquodobit Road They got the meat and pataytas, so all’s right wit the world.Even them cans a vegetables are smilin’. Father’s comin’ upfrom the harbour, he was wit the boys steamin’ them laubsters in the microwave on the backa Reed’s truck. Salt water sweetens em just fine.That rural rum went to his eyes, right red they were,just beamin’, but he’s temptin purgatory, comin’ through her doorlike that,
W.A. DAVISON Untitled Calcollages Untitled Calcollagesappeared in CAROUSEL 33 (2014) — buy it here
NYLA MATUK On Distance and Heartbreak Gift of grey from Man Ray,my heart was the shape of Australia.If p, then q. Incalculably wide marginalia.Plain, upside, down under, safe as houses. I didn’t trust the data accounts,the ville fourmillante’s thousand mounts.And that old dissonant airbus in the distance.It smarted like a barrier reef of a wound. On Distance and Heartbreakappeared in CAROUSEL 33 (2014) — buy it here
MICHAEL PRIOR Everything looking different, the night’s time took me so I wandered a twisting a dive, the bends transforming me,embolisms like diamonds hanging in darkness,tissue turning grey, then clear, then fracturedwith streams of white — the wings of a fly,six legs perched upon warm skinlistening to the decompressionof meaning, unfurling iridescentin my hand. Everything looking different, the night’s time took meappeared in CAROUSEL 32 (2014) — buy it here
WILLIAM JOEL DAVENPORT 5 Graphic Artifacts 5 Graphic Artifactsappeared in CAROUSEL 32 (2014) — buy it here
NATALIE MORRILL Mrs. Fannie Winthrop, upon discovering that her husband is an octopus But she decides she mustn’t let him thinkit puts her off. She won’t throw the coversoff the thing, won’t draw undue attention, she,to his way of slithering gellish out their front doorMonday to Friday, radio twittering, him wavinghis hat — “Nice day, Fannie”: his gripslicked rope, the hat a Knox. She bought it for him, she remembers: his birthday, three years ago.Reservations
NADINE MAHER ∞ in Orange and Blue (2011) ∞ in Orange and Blueappeared in CAROUSEL 32 (2014) — buy it here
CASSIDY MCFADZEAN The Living Skies Struck Us Dead Most of this is coffee and metaphors,and mornings waking up in the dark.When lightning hit the gable,it shook our bed, made the radioshort out, left our fingers tingling,and when I asked you to touch my skinI almost thought I’d see sparks,almost thought we’d both be singed. But others felt it too, the dark cloudabove our houses. We were not alonein thinking light had left its tracesof ozone
STUDIO BERTJAN POT Rope Masks Rope Masksappeared in CAROUSEL 31 (2013) — buy it here
Catriona Wright My Roommate is in love and can’t disguise it.Cara loitering on his lips,a tickle at the back of his throatbegging to be coughed out. When I pour milk into cerealI learn that Cara is lactose intolerant.When the radio begins to blare Wagner,he tells me Cara studied Germanat University. The strawberries he eatsare the colour of Cara’s favourite dress.The birds sing in Cara’s soprano rangeand Cara’s skin is soft as the butterhe spreads on
DANI CROSBY 3 Drawings 3 Drawingsappeared in CAROUSEL 31 (2013) — buy it here
TERRY TROWBRIDGE Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen Puberty is the moment a man becomes beautiful.He wakes up stronger than he was when he fell asleepif he bothered to sleep at all.With a lightning-fast attention to detailsand muscles that never tire or fail to promise victory,when every setback is temporary, every thought is assuredby a galvanized body that conforms to the shape of growing, hardening manhood.Except for Jimmy Olsen. If he had a psychoanalyst, the verdict would
PHIL WOOLLAM 4 Drawings from ‘Object Desire’ 4 Drawings from ‘Object Desire’appeared in CAROUSEL 30 (2013) — buy it here