Category: Issue 1

Blotch             My body makes of this country a flagrant museum of pain / endless shelves bowed with incessant shivers of glass / the ways in which I fail myself everyday / field- dressed & floating / face down in white corridors / mouth torn wide / I live with the   privilege to swallow… Continue reading Adam Fell

Testimony of the Alpha Please rise. Please sit. Yes I loved these dogs. The second was better than the first, who is a busted hag-dog. The first bared her hag teeth and her saliva fell over everything. I carried the hag-dog by the neck until she could not speak. I filed these papers because despite… Continue reading Jenny Molberg

Transportation Distance to a camel is but one form of memory like the weight of aviaries dead lakes cities without roads—. Distance to the mule is work; for the horse it’s a kind of detachment. Bulls use distance to careen and lash. For a gun it is an instant; for the spider, crude conversion. To… Continue reading Chris Santiago

In Sorrow Thou Shalt Bring Forth Children but still we called you forth                         Alicia Jo Rabins, “Babies in the Apocalypse”   i.   It was like this: an unearthly wind overtook me, knocked down a stand of trees, broke open a bright blue space in the woods of myself. Or call the wideness violet,… Continue reading Claire Wahmanholm

House Hunters International      They’d wanted the two-story two-bath above the creperie in De Pijp,   though they’d been willing to reconsider   the budget for old-world charm and sleek, modern finishes in Zagreb,   a quintessential hacienda in the hills   flanking Quito, or a lanai shading the Russian district of Phnom Penh,… Continue reading Jaswinder Bolina

Laying   the thief          the pockets the unfound    the looking the seen           and unseen the bent           the fluent the misplaced the measured the wreathed   the mirrored the buried       and planted the vining       the drying the hung         in the shed the tethered    the strung the thinning    and… Continue reading Melissa Ginsburg

From the Author: In the past year, as everything around us spins out of control, I’ve grown fascinated by the unit of the sentence, particularly the choreography of syntax. Using digital erasure and collage to explore source materials in this way invites closer attention to language, and affords a nice distance from a unified “I,”… Continue reading Avni Vyas

The Sunlight A man climbed to the top of a palm tree. It was the beginning of summer. He looked out into the ocean when he got to the top of the tree. Waves and surfers. Seagulls and sunshine. He was inspired by the view; so much so, that he wrote a song. The song… Continue reading Jose Hernandez Diaz

The Spaces Between Them From City of Toronto press releases about housed people in the time of Covid-19   the weather is nice in our great city   quiet streets are neighbourhood streets   creating more safe space   the volume of park-goers that were publicly intoxicated were a challenge   compliance through education and… Continue reading H. E. Casson

Poet Wrestling with  ::   What Happens Now ::                                      Healing is not those who made me  keep peace who. Said I must. Death. Often & squander. To convalesce, to reach  a number. Called. Night. Slept. Bitter. Sweat. Swagger. Embedded. To be de. -tained  in. Flash. Backs. Calm. Catch. Muzzle. Ranged. & unspoiled. Match. Point. Wet.  Ash, no longer just. Miss. Another. Bullet. Artful. Dodge when. No more crumbs,  no… Continue reading Rosebud Ben-Oni