To me the poems this month all have that feeling when you wake up to a gray sky, everything is wet, and it’s raining. It’s the start of a day of inconsistencies; since the sun is hidden, morning lasts all day. Maybe it’s in their rhythms that pattern like drops. Gorgeous sunshine March has passed, and spring slows in April. These poems reflect that: mud and worms and pools on asphalt, and finding a lost earring or two.
Peace and Love,
Mayan Godmaire
Creative Writing Editor
Ode to Opportunity
By Beth Fecteau
Contributor
You died when you were only fifteen. I remember
My science teacher projected it on the SmartBoard
And I excused myself to the bathroom.
I myself was barely sixteen. How sad it was
That I was allowed to continue while you powered down.
My battery is low and it’s getting dark.
Achingly human last words,
Even though you were a robot, a mechanical insect
Skittering across the surface of the Red Planet
The way an ant skitters across my knee when I sit on the pavement too long.
So small. I am so small.
I was sixteen, knowing that it was you
Who would make a bigger mark on the world
Even though you lived and died
Two hundred and sixty-four million kilometres away.
I read that you sang happy birthday to yourself every year.
I wonder if the sound echoed.
Chaos
By Kiara Colombo
Contributor
walk through the forest’s path
where the spiders unleash their wrath.
filthy webs of bugs and guts,
knee-deep cause i’m such a klutz!
fall into mossy swamp water
then take a nap on the lily pads and slaughter
slimy green frogs.
they never could beat the odds!
run between the trees and avoid the wrapping vines,
on your right! don’t you ever read the signs?
the radioactive river is still so blue
it’s a deja fucking vu!
humankind made the river radioactive,
untouchable but it’s still so attractive.
if you eat the poisonous berries,
you’ll get to play with fairies!
but don’t trust the fae and their murderous ways
it hasn’t always been Tinkerbell since the beginning of days
just another dream story by the hands of humankind
that will leave you blind!
anyway, i’m talking out of line.
grab a squirrel off a tree by his fuzzy tail
now, fire up the grill and sip on homemade pale ale
i haven’t been making any sense
and i think i need to learn self-defense!
the truth is, the forest and the frogs and the bugs were here first.
and now they’re cursed.
my hands are bloody, and yours are too;
the world will never be brand-new.
Genie
By Fab Pilon
Contributor
Back where we started again
Lost, words parched
You look at me;
Hear the desert.
We left for the desert together years ago
Are they months are they days,
The sky crumbles like bread too dry
Rocks and things and dreams of something better
We left for the desert lives ago
Our throats dry from the sound thrown away
The horse collapsed, named at last
We shall be named as well if the graves deliver
Until then we stand faceless
Sexless
Salt statues in the great empty
The desert is hot and our skins grow rigid
Grow moist like a fever
We leak like monsters
We shiver like ghouls
I would sell all I have to be back in the morning bed
I would sell
All I have
Not much
But the thought counts, it counts, it counts
To be back in our morning bed
Your hand full of dunes,
Of cracked valleys
I give you water, give you water, give you water
From my lips to your lips I give you water
O my lips are so dry now
And your hand freezes away
There is water no more, and no one to give it to
We stare at the sand as the silence screeches
The desert has a mouth full of hunger in the morning
We wake and find ourselves swallowed up
I think we thank him, or perhaps we scream
For what else can you tell the desert
And our names fall upon us like metal on the anvil
And we lose consciousness with a flash of understanding.
I wake up in the morning bed
I wake up in the evening bed
My lips are dry; I can feel you nowhere
Tomorrow the desert.
Glittering Generalities
By Vanessa Mia Lozza
Contributor
A gold palace
A yellow brick road
A familiar land that is unknown
If one stands too close beware and be warned not to be blinded by the gold
Untitled
By Bastien MacLean
Contributor
There’s a pretty pale blonde girl crying in St-Laurent
In a house on a street on an island on a rock she shares with a million strangers
A city of hollow souls mournfully sings her silent symphony
Charcoal embers and soot drift past black tar hobos
Clad in paper brown coats riddled with holes
Misty vapor, translucent like a poisoned diamond
Blowing bits of broken glass and gravel along empty streets
Under a dark starless sky bleeding synthetic red
Burning metal towers smoke grey storm clouds
Carcinogenic and clinging to the aluminum corpse
Carmine acid tears rain down, toxic to the touch
Looming high in the chemical atmosphere is a faceless bourgeoise
Blindly drinking brandy and battery acid as celebration for
Chamomile green paper etched with the faces of dead white men
Gorging on greasy profits slimy with black sweat and blood
She’s still crying in St-Laurent
And now I’m crying too