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.

Paul Dutton

DOOR

The door avoids me, keeping to itself on the side I avoid what the door is keeping to this side of me beside the door beside myself behind a door avoiding me on the side that’s back before a door closed on a void inside an opening in or shut out door in front of more an opening out or shutting in a side before, behind, below a wall or floor a door is in a version of a room a door’s avoiding what’s behind it, keeping to itself the void that is avoided by a door’s averted opening on a corridor of doors closed upon a multitude of rooms enclosing multitudes of who or what avoids a door I’m on the other side of looking in or out upon a room a door has closed on who I am or was avoiding, closing in upon a void I am enclosing doors avoiding opening doors avoiding closing me into a void I am averse to opening closing doors, avoiding voids inside or out, disclosing nothing doors enclose so much as more than lies upon a floor a body’s pressed to in an attitude of listening or looking through a crack an open door creates in wishing more to be revealed to eyes that lie in wait beside a crack a door is opened by to view a room across a corridor a door across is open to eyes waiting where a room’s a void avoided and the one across the way is where desire awaits fulfillment in a void averted by a crack in time to catch a glimpse of just in time a wish fulfilled by an open door, desiring what or who is lying on the floor or on the bed upon the floor beside the open door desire rests on in an attitude of looking or listening to desire delayed or obviated by a door closing on an open wish fulfilled in rooms that lie open to what lies on the other side of lies on this side of that side is hidden where a hand upon a doorknob’s set to push or pull a door shut or open on a room where secrets lie in waiting for desire to be fulfilled or delayed within a multitude of rooms where multitudes lie, turning their backs on doors closing on secrets lying under layers of desire.


Paul Dutton is a poet, novelist, essayist, and oral sound artist living in Toronto. During his four-decade writing career he has performed, solo and ensemble, throughout Europe and the Americas, at international literary and music festivals, in concert halls, clubs, and schools, on radio, TV, film, and the Web. He was a member of the poetry performance group the Four Horsemen, and is in the free-improvisation band CCMC, among other music groups. The latest of his six books is the novel Several Women Dancing, and of his five solo recordings the CD Oralizations.

Leigh Nash

BUT FOR

the bayonet, the blue grass at dawn, the sunset
sent like a dart. The crisp sheets, chipped shutters,
worn trails between house and barn, the porch light
left burning, the braying. The crying. The sound
of bees drinking honey. The sound of money.
The sound of being pushed up against the wall.

The barrel over the falls, cramped coal
chute dark as winter, the cur’s bone. The tannins,
the whitening irises. The whiskey-stained teeth,
the clattering teeth, china teacup atop a loose knee.
Paper curling like toenail, like horse tail. Swish.

Morning a bright, white picket fence: the rocket.
The red. But for the wall pushed up against.


Leigh Nash is a partner in the editing firm Re:word Communications, a publishing assistant with Coach House Books and a co-founder of The Emergency Response Unit, a chapbook press. Her first book of poetry, Goodbye, Ukulele, was published by Mansfield Press in 2010. She lives in Toronto.

Laura Farina

I WENT TO FLORIDA

It was hot.
Much of the food was deep fried.

I got sunburned
while taking an architectural walking tour
of South Beach.

My toes in the sand
felt like stunted American worms
yearning to be free.
A man in a toll booth told me to have a blessed holiday.
A coconut fell from a coconut tree.

The sun turned the sky the colour of a mixed drink.
I watched a Montessori teacher smoke pot.

The thought occurred to me —
we are all dangling above the open mouth
of the ocean.
It was terrifying for a moment.

A cat jumped through a hoop that was on fire.
Shadows began to look like mouse ears.

When the radio came on,
someone had replaced the songs
with the sound of fish breathing.

I drank sea water until I felt ill.
I lost sunglasses in three historic buildings.
I ate key lime pie in moving vehicles.

In the darkness,
I thought I saw an alligator wink.

When the wind came up, the sand beat a hasty departure.

Floridians like loud shirts
and hair products that combat frizz.
They are an inventive people
when it comes to sorbet.
It’s amazing what they can do with animatronics.

The highway was a line between two oceans
and what was washed up on those beaches
was mine to keep.

All the diners were shiny
and inside them, people called me ma’am.
I became programmed to salivate
at the sound of ketchup bottles
hitting formica tables.

A cruise ship pulling out of port
seemed too large to float,
an island severed from its umbilical chord.

I never once thought about soup.


Laura Farina is the author of This Woman Alphabetical (Pedlar Press, 2005), winner of the 2006 Archibald Lampman Award. Her work has also appeared in This Magazine, Arc, and elsewhere. She lives in Vancouver, where she teaches creative writing to young people.