FRED GAYSEK Figuring 16 — for Jesse Harris and liquid corescoring image surfacerace matter in matterhatter madder than ever beforeit is in saying one aliveone fossilone fool fuel Figuring 16appeared in CAROUSEL 24 (2009) — buy it here
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
ADRIENNE GRUBER This Is a Book You Shouldn’t Open In moments like these it’s important to rememberthe angry cry of geese, their shrieking voices,the way they circle the bridge at night.Not to dwell on a more recent lossthe ominous kind, a warning. Instead,think of the mouse that died in the compost pitits body half in half out of the wooden binflies buzzing over the tiny carcass.Days later it was still there, a skeleton,crushed under foot.
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
TALIA ZAJAC Bebelplatz 1933 and 2005 i Smouldering and cracking open, the pages furling into black ash, tossed by the thousands, the books perish as words crinkle, blacken, turn to dust, putting Wells and Marx and Mann in the same circle of the inferno as young men hold torches and offer hemlock to Socrates: nobody wants to hear about death in Venice. ii The ash blows away the words, as I stand in Bebelplatz, where
IAN WILLIAMS The Commute Nobody ever survives. — Margaret Atwood Ikemefuna certainly didn’tmake it through the forest, pot of palm wine on his head, with an entourage of slammer mouthed men who led him to believe he was going home. A lie, but they meant well. Machete to the neck. Then the unnecessary announcementMy father they have killed me, past perfect, as if he were already dead. And good weather, maps, company, trusty ship,
MONO BROWN Creak Make my bed and lie in it, bone-pile,you get to be the blanket lumps. Half a year or so ago your weightwould make this mattress creak, creak. Stay a bit and let me hear your teethtap dance, bone-pile. Knead an everlastingmeal from these pale sheets of flesh. My bathroom light stays on when you comeback to me in dreams that hold your jointstogether for the first time since they brokeand I see
ANTRANIK TCHALEKIAN Dream of Flying lush and raw, the night descends on you so quiet, hands raisedto catch any stray signals thrown down from spacetrying to chart systems,maps, divine movements I remember the momentwhen all the words left my headpoured out and were buried in mudas I ran over the soaked earth,was taken, joined the air and soaredthe moment time cleaved us in half a blackbird now,I spend days flying and nights trying to reach
MOEZ SURANI Guy de Maupassant “What, then, did Flaubert understand by beauty, in the art he perused with so much fervour, with so much self-command? Let us hear a sympathetic commentator.” — Walter Pater I become Boswell around him. I see him Sundayswhen bark closes his face. He is an unhappy planet disregard thegarrulity of his letters he is somethingfrom Ovid becoming woman or lionon whim becoming delusionor child as the bark slams over his stomachand
JEN CURRIN A Bat Unveiled In the museum of land mines,my acquaintance fans her wings.Outside the sparrows catch fire.A tree falls to its knees.I become the sudden murderer,unable to recognize the radishesof my hands. The dictionary shudders. Again I cannot bealone. What is left of beautyI sop up with a napkin, believingit a limited supply. My only reading materialgives in to the blaze. And now I burn the legsof the chair, lest they touchthe ground.
MICHAEL AIRD For Seamus stem entrancemeshed to the cold hollowwhere your words vicareda clock heatawhile, saturated forward like I tinkered victim mechanicsthe resemblance of kept recordsbricks through glass paneimprints soft tissue so much knotted truthhoisted as black flagsabove the antechamber, antiravelour impulse bundle exhaledwithout bloodshed silence hardens over unlooked forthe proof drive stood hinge to our previous alsoits graft welcome waitsto wave us in For Seamusappeared in CAROUSEL 19 (2006) — buy it here
ROBIN PATTERSON The Woods Behind my Father’s House I have been lost in these woods before.I have seen this tree, scarred and twisted,and not recognized it.My feet have paced this unfamiliar pathtripping over roots that were never there. The spaces between the trees are dark and forbidding.The ferns at my feet fill the unfamiliar forest floorand grow as high as my waist,hiding a whole other world under their fronds.I keep my hands close to my
ANNE BALDO Like Money Everyone Will Use You & It Won’t Even Matter Stuck on the tongue,sour,like the pillyou cannot swallow your wordsare meaningless asfragmented hieroglyphicsyou talk in the calligraphyof valentines — beautiful but wasted. So don’t apologizefor your absenceas you walk awaydon’t say remembering people is so hard. Reduce usto a mere glitch of the heart. I will wait for youbut in the arms of other men. Like Money Everyone Will Use You …appeared
BILL BISSETT ther was a strangr cum 2 town that longpurpul nite all th kiyots gone 2 sleepevreewun was krashd yu cudint see a thingth fog was sew cum in th smothring blankit th knarlee perls inth sky promising whatyu cud nevr get heer sum say ther was abarn door creek in th aweful moon lite sumherd a roostr crow way b4 dawn ther was astrangr cum 2
ALLISON CHOW Some Three Hours in the Evening of August Sixteenth When I Am Nineteen One of my grandfathers looks like a Chinese Dustin Hoffman. He has gotten more handsome with age. When we go out to restaurantson SaturdaysI open doors for himbecause he is decades olderthan I ambut morebecause my reverencefor him cannot be containedsilentlyor only within me. Really it is my honourto open doors for him. Some Three Hours in the Evening…appeared in
DUNJA LUKIC December 1992 I. It was in the shadows of a dark first winterwhen the stars were frozen in the night domeand even with our spinningwe couldn’t shake them from the skyheld our hungry mouths openwaiting for those falling universes to explode on our tongues expectant hoping our bellies would be swollen with stars. II. With wide seven year old eyes that same winter the sky was colorless it was snowing I saw stars
JOHN B. Lee Drugging the Fishes It seemsthe things we flushare drugging the fishesin New York City, for instancethere’s enough Prozacin the East Riverto keepthe herring happy as housewivesin sitcoms all seasonproblem is — they’ve lost theirinterest in spawning, soif and when the males come-a-milting(though they mostly come-a-tilting)they keep their eggsto themselves, their roe in sacks like bobblesthey’re so swim-dizzy they’ve lost all desireeven the words ‘oviparous,spontaneous myosis, external fertilization,egg vent’leave them cold-blooded …even the
BRIAN BURKE Hibiscus iguanas hide in the drain pipesof a twenty-foot walloutside our studio doorfeed on the hibiscuscamouflaged from gamekeepersintent on banishing themto the lush green golf coursebeside the ocean the iguana journey back hang on overhead palm branches bury themselves in small rock crevices dig out shaded caves near the shore & finally stretch their necks out of the drain-piped wall of rock cautious but dreaming also of rain of gamekeepers & of dinosaurs
D.N. SIMMERS Letting an Umbrella Open Into the Wind I let an umbrella