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
Viennese photographer Klaus Pichler’s intimate photo series, Just the Two of Us, aims to reveal the people beneath a variety of costumes without unmasking them. For adults, the act of dressing up in costume is most often associated with some form of social activity. It’s a spectacle, a transformative activity that grants us permission to temporarily play out a fantasy role in the everyday world. Costumes and disguises permit people to act in ways that
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
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
From generating performances with choreographer and media artist Jonah Bokaer, to designing sets for Merce Cunningham, to having your work curated by pop-star Pharrell Williams, collaborations are a major element of Daniel Arsham’s practice — one of the many facets of a career that has swiftly rose to international attention. He’s also part of Snarkitecture, a collaborative effort with Alex Mustonen, which blends art and architecture to create installations that attempt to “make architecture perform
Cartoon minimalist Pablo Holmberg — better known in Argentina under his pen name Kioskerman — makes four-panel comics that elude easy description. His darkly romantic strip series Edén appears in Spanish every week on his website, offering readers an ideal mix of weight & whimsy. Interview conducted October, 2014 You’ve been publishing strips on the Internet since 2004; why did you decide to start a web-comic?I was reading Tony Millionaire’s Maakies and Kaz’s Underworld online
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
Chip Kidd is a man of many talents, with an insider’s perspective on pop culture. Universally recognized as an American master of contemporary book design — USA Today once described him as “the closest thing to a rock star” in the graphic design world — his iconic covers offer an inventive marriage of type and found images. In addition, Kidd’s work as an editor of books of comics for the mass market have helped to
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,