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
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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
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,
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
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
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
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
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
With a career spanning nearly two decades, Norwegian cartoonist Jason is undoubtedly one of world’s finest storytellers. Known for his sparse drawing style and anthropomorphic characters, he is the creator of a series of acclaimed, award-winning graphic novels that always deliver the perfect blend of humour and heartache. Interview conducted May, 2012 Jason, can you give us an idea how you create a new work? I’m interested in how you break down the tasks, how
JANET HEPBURN Somei-Yushino Sakura (flowering cherry tree) I sit beneath a canopy of lace — exquisite, delicate veil of tissue paper circles Translucent white like the faces of porcelain dolls, faintest blush on cheek A warming wind plucks petals loose to float — confetti dots tickle spring-bare arms before frosting the lawn in cherry blossom fondant Somei-Yushino Sakura (flowering cherry tree)appeared in CAROUSEL 30 (2013) — buy it here
LOUISA HOWEROW Jigsaw Puzzle The kitchen smells of cabbage and quiet.On the table a jigsaw puzzle,the Basilica di San Marcowhose four hundred pieces my mother sortsinto straight edges, corners, colours,greys, blues, blue-greens. I tell her I’ve seen the holy relics,bones of saints, a vial with the blood of Christ “I should have saved mine,” she saysreferring to her left kidney, the cancerous oneshe’s convinced is living healthyin somebody else’s body. I imagine her bringing the
CLAIRE CALDWELL The Summer of Dead Birds 1It was the summer of cold hands.We played bingo in the afternoons,sipping cups of warm beer. It kept the birds out. The bartender slipped us sunflower seedsin packets. They’ll grow in August, she said,fingers flapping. Our mouths too fullto reply. 2The bird didn’t know it was being rescued,the girl said. She hadn’t counted on the hotstruggle between cupped hands,the bird twisting through its brokenness,forgetting it at the sight
LAURIE D. GRAHAM The Window Blind Factory Hardshipis the endurance of atrophy. On break outside Derwent High School,now a blind factory cultivating jobs, in the bookless classrooms of industry,gymnasium lifebreath enterprise, entrepreneurial smoke-breaks or not — the women in front of the school have the same devout braids,the same homemade blouses under company windbreakers, the same empty hands. Maybe they’re made to wear uniforms. Blind into blind-slot, factory vinyl,promise of supper and a walk to
YI-MEI TSIANG We Take Our Children Tobogganing after wrestling with boots and mittsafter packing hot chocolate, teddy grahams, extra socks,after waiting out the held-breath tantrum over zippers. We stand at the top, an impasse, clouds of breathforming a storm over their little woolen-wrapped heads. Their voices needle us, sharp and small — I don’t wanna — enough to draw blood. I hear the whir of a distant bird, air plunging through its struggling wings. Some
JAIME FORSYTHE Lavender Pulse He was in a home, had soft bones, pausedfor days between thoughts, but knew whenevery one of us was born. All those phone calls,triple ring of a rural party line as the entire blockeavesdropped. Never knew privacy. Wallsthinned to curtains; his skin became transparent.Blow-ups of his organs; amplified tune of his heart.The nurse was a man. The nurse was his son, and hisgrandson, and his best friend from high school.The nurse
JULIE CAMERON GRAY Widow Fantasies I want my husband to disappear, dissolvelike a spoonful of sugar in a cup of coffee. I want him to fall asleep at the wheelfor a distracted driver to make a mistakefor snow to conceal a slippery surface. I want it quick and painless and over in a flash.Twist of metal, bone, the shatteredwindshield a constellation across black ice.Traffic backed up for miles. I’d get a call in the night,
AHIMSA TIMOTEO BODHRÁN Vergüenza He didn’t realize the shame of being Native was the same as the shame in being queer. The shame of wanting to touch something, someone, his hands reaching towards trees butlooking around before touching, or touching so brief it might be brusk, might bruise the branches, tear a leaf, rip acorn from what was once tender grasp. Soon he wondered the ways in which, during the years he has closeted, was
LEIGH NASH Day Trip This day beetles forward careening red eyelid on a two-lane Yucatan road110 km/h glass eyeballs unblinkchew up scenery, plowpast the tinted windows of white tourist vans The most earth with no earth, almond trees burstfrom lime rock, low bushesbear pink avocados; dogs spill sidewaysin the sun, feral ribs thin inlets Corrugated towns chatter Rusty graveyards swallowpastel crosses row, rowcrumbling plaster tombs thousand year-old stoneovergrown with lilies, bougainvillea Waist-high girls and boys
KATHRYN MOCKLER Murder It’s not a good idea to bein the same room as someone who is just about to murder you. I wonder what it feels like to be murdered.I’m sure it hurts your feelings, and then I’m sure you feelreally mad but aren’t able to express your anger in a productive way. Some murderers are nicer than other murderers.Some murderers let you eatyour favourite food before you get murdered — like popcorn or