Nicholas Papaxanthos

SONNET TO A CHAMBERMAID AT THE PARAISO INTEMPORAL

You're gone again, into the elevator
and sinking towards a different future,
one without me. I imagine the sea.
The doors open into a coral reef
and you live amid colourful fish and
softly swaying tentacles like you've always dreamed.
I barely know you and I can't swim
so we don't see each other. At night
I read or look out over the balcony
at the moon. It is like my heart, a shell
that houses the silence of a great wayward crab,
one day to be washed out
among stellar billows of soft foam
into a sea of eternal laundry.


Nicholas Papaxanthos is currently living in Montreal, pursuing an MA with a focus in creative writing at Concordia University. He recently put together the chapbook Teeth, Untucked with Proper Tales Press, and has been published in the anthologies Lake Effect 5 and 529, as well as in The New Chief Tongue 10, Sandwich Review, and This Magazine.

Gary Barwin

TIME MACHINE

after a line by Natalee Caple

dear friend
I have invented

a new kind of footwear
a third eye

also a time machine
I will save

the one you love
place hands

from the future
on his body

I open my eye
he opens his

each word
seen from inside
knows you


Gary Barwin is a writer, composer, multimedia artist, educator and performer. His five poetry collections include The Franzlations: The Imaginary Kafka Parables (with Hugh Thomas and Craig Conley; New Star), The Obvious Flap (with Gregory Betts; BookThug) and The Porcupinity of the Stars (Coach House). He is also the author of two fiction collections, a collaborative novel, and several books for children. Barwin lives in Hamilton, Ontario. Visit him at his blog.

Alice Burdick

THE BIRDS OF N. DELLVIEW DRIVE

The silence and light
of Dellview on the morning
of a memorial. A memory
into memories. The birds
all watch memory, and break
its hull to crumbs. The crumbs
dive down the gullets of the many
marching ants. Gentle love
and sweetness without plan.


Alice Burdick lives in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia. She was raised in Toronto, and has been involved in the small press community since 1990. She is the author of the full-length poetry collections Simple Master (Pedlar Press), Flutter (Mansfield Press) and Holler (Mansfield Press), as well as many chapbooks. Her work has appeared in the anthology Surreal Estate: 13 Canadian Poets Under the Influence (The Mercury Press) and in a few other anthologies and magazines.

Richard Huttel

PITCHERS AT AN EXPOSITION

Her subway tokens are adorable
As Baby Toonies. Crackpot inventor
Me hereby commissions genetically
Enhanced spuds to meet up with cushions
And upholsterers for the dawning of
The Age of Potato Couch. Memories
Are made of red & white mailbox, Willie
Nile’s “Vagabond Moon,” arugula, her
Wind song plays on my mind, flat on my back,
Legs dangling over the southern edge of
The Avenue of the Islands’ pier, heaven scents.

Her wind song turns out to be not quite so
Memorable after all when I see the news
That day about Natasha Richardson
On my way back to Chicago. Have yet
To be persuaded by the quantum kids
To a string theory better than the one
Connected to paper cups. I can’t help it if
Bob Dylan still doesn’t have a Nobel
Prize for literature. In my haste the
Transit transfer flies out of my pocket
So I pluck it right out of the air and
Subway agent says, “Baby, you magic!”

Urgent billboards herald ONLY A FEW
LEFT! in Memory Lanes subdivision,
Leaving me nostalgic for the history
Of my future. Pass the bongo drums and
Call me Babalu! I heart alignment.
And I’m humming it: her wind song passing
Over me again like hawk shadow.


Richard Huttel is a Chicago poet. His chapbooks include The Evolution of the Rutherfords to Lumpie (ep press), Rainy Day Cliffhanger (Proper Tales Press) and The Be Seeing You Variations (Surrealist Poets' Gardening Assoc.) He has read in Chicago, Toronto, Ottawa, and elsewhere.