3. Laurie Macfayden White Shirt.............................................................. 40
Sid Marty Sky Humour............................................................. 41
The Rider With Good Hands..................................... 42
S. McDonald Confessions of an Empty Purse................................... 43
Edited by Ken Mitchell Rhyming Wranglers.................................................. 45
Catherine Moss Swallowing My Mother............................................. 46
Jim Nason Narcissus Unfolding................................................. 47
William Nichols Fallacies of Motion................................................... 48
Lisa Pasold Weave.................................................................... 49
A Bad Year for Journalists.......................................... 50
Any Bright Horse...................................................... 53
Sharron Proulx-Turner she is reading her blanket with her hands................... 54
Kirk Ramdath Love in a Handful of Dust.......................................... 55
Nikki Reimer [sic]........................................................................ 57
Pierrette Requier details from the edge of the village............................. 58
Ali Riley Wayward................................................................ 59
Tear Down............................................................... 61
33 Million Solitudes................................................. 63
Patria Rivera Puti/White.............................................................. 64
The Bride Anthology................................................. 65
Anna Marie Sewell Fifth World Drum...................................................... 66
Zaid Shlah Taqsim.................................................................... 67
Bob Stallworthy From a Call Box....................................................... 68
Optics.................................................................... 69
Things that Matter Now............................................ 70
Richard Stevenson Wiser Pills............................................................... 71
Rosalee van Stelten Pattern of Genes...................................................... 72
Pavlov’s Elephant..................................................... 73
Yvonne Trainer Tom Three Persons.................................................... 74
Joanna M. Weston A Summer Father..................................................... 75
Sheri-D Wilson Autopsy of a Turvy World.......................................... 76
Re:Zoom................................................................. 78
Goddess Gone Fishing for a Map of the Universe........ 79
Other titles from Frontenac .............................................................................. 81
4. For Orpheus
Late summer and the red death of leaves.
He walks as if asleep and whispers to himself
a poem. About loss, of course, about death
and love. A typical poet? Yes,
and the first.
He fingers a scar on his chest
from love-making. He hasn’t noticed
the birds, the trees, the rocks that have rolled
behind him. The insects humming
in time with him. Seven black bears
following like paparazzi. He hasn’t
shielded his eyes from the sun
that hasn’t moved. A Gloss on Our Painted Gods
Then he sits. by Eric Barstad
Looking around at the same clouds and trees
978-0-9732380-1-3, $14.95
and birds as this morning, the seven black bears
and the flies that won’t bite him, he imagines he’s walked Eric Barstad currently lives with his partner Erin and their two cats
in a circle, or worse, not at all. He believes this — Finnegan and Pickles — in Brooks, Alberta. Eric completed his
is his new tragedy, dementia from loss and death, MA in English and Creative Writing at the University of New Bruns-
and love. wick in 2001 and now runs Shadow Box Creative Media, a web
development company that builds websites for non-profit organiza-
So caught up in his next sorrow, he doesn’t hear tions. Eric published A Gloss on Our Painted Gods with Frontenac
the footfalls of women in the forest, the blood House in 2003.
sounding in their ears like a song.
5. D twentytwo
the condensation of these ice cubes
in a glass
squat blunt drunken penile objects
bobbing labial petals
on a damp spent towel
H twentythree
Wait Until Late Afternoon
condescension by David Bateman & Hiromi Goto
glassy eyed wetness
978-189718-130-0, $18.00
slops over the lip David Bateman is a spoken word poet and performance artist
licking the skin based in Toronto. His most recent performances, A Brief History of
a sticky hand White Virgins or The Night Freddy Kissed Me, and What’s It Like?
were presented in Vancouver, Peterborough, Ottawa, Montreal,
and Toronto during the winter of 2009. He teaches drama, litera-
ture, and creative writing at a variety of Canadian post-secondary
institutions.
Hiromi Goto is the award-winning author of Chorus of Mushrooms,
and The Kappa Child. She has also written a children’s novel,
The Water of Possibility, and a collection of short stories, Hopeful
Monsters. Her most recent publication is a young adult novel, Half
World, published by Penguin Canada. She and David Bateman
collaborated on and showcased a performance piece entitled The
Cowboy and the Geisha.
6. Watching Grown Men Cry
1
over cappuccino with a warm shot of whiskey beside a thin young woman on a barstool in a lounge
named “East of Never” under pressure in a late night board meeting when his son will be the east-
ern star by nine in a first grade play named “Heaven” after stand-up sex with his golfing buddy in a
fully equipped RV while the wives are at the spa when the flirtatious lesbian economy of the straight
women he works under excludes and excites him before undressing for dinner in full frontal perusal
of twenty-five years of living he will never get back beside the pane-fused light of a sun razed moon
on a surreal jigsaw on a commode in his den regardless of pomegranate salad sun dried children sent
to camp she asks him to go down on her again with his shallow feet awakening in a sudden stream
of light and some fragility in shadows
Invisible Foreground
2 David Bateman
inside a posh holding bin for new psychiatric patients interrogating $2000 red leather Barcelona 978-1-897181-78-2, $15.95
knock-offs below a wreath of holiday wealth imagining belief in small paternalistic doses without
“A glorious chameleon on page or stage, Bateman tries on as
regard for nothing less than fine wine praise for middle aged women sunglasses and scarves beyond
many styles and forms of poetry in his new Quartet collection as he
question the faint vivacious tremor of her lower lips inside identity defined by birth certificates
does costumes. Invisible Foreground is as balanced as a practiced
driver’s licences genital configurations and undotted sin above reproach for moody playoff seasons
set of gams in high heels …. A poetry of extreme originality, it
male menopausal breath beneath cribbage boards plastic pegs hedge clippings and the news of the will linger on the skin of all your senses until it sinks in for good.”
world unless heaven allows foundational bliss and flood insurance —Laurie Fuhr, Fast Forward
Shortlisted:
Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry
7. Destiny (to have), Nicosia, 2006
to have met for those five fabulous seconds
it may have been more but it felt like five knuckled
pummelled minutiae of time
to have made that wrong turn
away from the Lydras Palace
and into this racialized gaze
to have lost one’s self
in the zirconian glow
of your right lobe
to have, at five foot seven
towered over your immense Impersonating Flowers
dwarfish masculine beauty by David Bateman
978-1-897181-11-9, $15.95
you short exquisite man you!
you lightly bearded angel! Rated PG, these poems loosely chart an adolescence – moving
swiftly into middle age – experienced without parental guidance.
to have spent those last few hours As the poet morphs from poodle to petal, finding solace in Haiku
in the Turkish Republic of Cyprus (and other profound decorative forms) he considers a timeless re-
hunting for the blue and black of those manageable evil eyes visionist anecdote – When he was just a little girl he said to his
to wrap in socks to pack and carry home to envious comrades mother, “What will I be?”
to have been lost among window shades and torn curtains Impersonating Flowers answers some of the questions his mother
was afraid to ask.
for a quarter of an hour
assimilating death zones negotiating alluring tourism
8. remembering how we rode to empty reservoirs
lay down on soiled sleeveless tank tops in deserted asphalt rivers
thrusting hips and buttocks into sand and gravel
to have sung of arid shorelines
to have been blown by vacant rivers
toward an orange sky
fucking into night
to have been rendered empty dreamers
to have spoken of the placemats
you had sewn from the flat backs of his designer shirts
requiem cuffs turned into napkin rings
to have howled in adobe homes and patio houses
from Limasol to Phoenix
to have seen the Nicosian youth
on motorbikes crossing checkpoints
for same sex love
to have travelled without your aunt
and made such faint relations
9. pleasure
he does not see the sky as more beautiful and bright
in the dying light
he has always known that blue is blue
and radiant
and that clouds are soft
and tantamount to the pillows of a goddess
roughly pushing luck and privilege
in and out of lives
he does not stare more keenly at the moon and stars
he has always known that precious celestial cars
have driven him to worlds he craved and cherished
he does not regret the solid diving into pleasure ’tis pity
to have arrived here with so much sensation thrill and leisure by David Bateman
and then to perish
978-1-897181-67-6, $17.95
there is something perfect Currently based in Toronto, David Bateman is a visual artist, per-
in the deconstructed pose of willows formance poet, and playwright whose most recent performance
meant to weep and droop and plummet to the ground piece, Does this Giacometti Make Me Look Fat? or Art Immuno
Deficiency Syndrome, was presented in New Orleans in the spring
like fonts of leaves rooted in the earth of 2010. A Brief History of White Virgins or The Night Freddy
with trunks that smile and frown Mercury Kissed Me was presented across Canada in 2009, and
groaning merrily sheathed by blades of grass his spoken word monologue What’s It Like? has been presented
on mounds of dirt in Montreal, Toronto, Peterborough, and Cyprus (2010). He has
taught literature and creative writing at a variety of Canadian
post-secondary institutions. His two collections of poetry, Invisible
tall proud flowers desolate and happily bound by inches
Foreground and Impersonating Flowers, have been published by
ashes dust and earth
Frontenac House (Calgary). Frontenac has also published his col-
laborative long poem entitled Wait Until Late Afternoon, written
with poet/novelist Hiromi Goto.
10. Tafelmusik Performs the “Other”
Brandenburg Concertos
That white winter I turned thirteen, I saw my first
string quartet. The Vaghy Quartet. Four men so brave
they faced down five hundred pairs of pupils
more used to skits on that stage than strings. Don’t ask me
what they played. All I would ever remember
was the cellist. He was black. A lot of my heroes were black
back then – Sidney Poitier, Arthur Ashe – but an Indian kid
had to find heroes where he could. And better than serving ace
after ace, Ashe wore glasses. Now Poitier tries to act wise
in the shadows of less gentle men. Ashe is dead.
My heroes have names like Kingsley, Te Kanawa.
Jon Kimura Parker – a Japanese Canadian I met calls him a Halfer. The Lightness Which Is Our World,
Seen from Afar
Turning thirty-seven today, I find myself far from home by Ven Begamudré
as usual, in a church of all things, 978-1-897181-02-7, $15.95
while a bearded giant in a cummerbund plays an oboe,
bent over it as if over a straw. Washington McClain: Ven Begamudré was born in South India and moved to Canada
good name for a man who might’ve been a linebacker once. when he was six. He has also lived in Mauritius and the United
I love it when he lifts his eyes from the music. Not to me; States. He lives in Regina, Saskatchewan.
to the first violin, those belled cheeks asking, Allegro?
Molto? Later, taking his bows with the rest, he seems He has an MFA in creative writing from Warren Wilson College
in Asheville, North Carolina. He has been writer-in-residence for
unaware of the stir his trousers cause, the dye more indigo
the University of Calgary’s Markin-Flanagan Distinguished Writ-
than black. Outside, blizzards pound the seaboard
ers Programme, the University of Alberta’s Department of English,
from Labrador to Alabama. The power is out in Tennessee.
the Canada-Scotland Exchange, Regina Public Library, McMaster
University’s Department of English, and the Yukon Public Libraries.
Back in our mixed neighbourhood, as in white collar and blue,
Robert Holmes the ex-Roughrider renovates his house. Shortlisted:
He grins. I grin. He says, Howza goin’. I say, Howza goin’. City of Regina Writing Award
Other times, near the corner store, I see other
black men. They can tell I’m not one of them.
11. And though they ignore the whites hurrying past the cathedral,
they often stop and say hello. Sometimes we shake hands.
Brothers passing in the street? I don’t think so.
But they take me back to the summer I looked up from a book
and what should I see but a black man
carrying his cello down our lane? It was late afternoon
and it was perfect: that a man should carry a cello home
at quitting time; that such men live and work and play among us,
and always have. So tell me something, J.B.:
When you were trying to score that job
from the Margrave of Brandenburg,
did you ever guess how many savage breasts
your music would one day soothe?
12. Scoping
The terrain is to be assessed in terms of distance, difficulty or
ease of travel, dimension, and safety. — Sun Tzu
Her perimeters seem easily mapped,
Standard grid – though the usual squares
Bulge from her curves. But try to breech
Her fears, surmount her inhibitions
And I’m caught in a nervous barbed wire smile.
If I look long enough at her eyes
The pupils become Rorschach blots.
One day her face sags, the next it is
Impenetrable. She is the floor of a lake, Standoff Terrain
The deepest parts seeming close enough by Jocko Benoit
To touch. Her moods are an open book
978-1-897181-39-3, $15.95
Rifled by crosswinds.
Jocko Benoit was born in Montreal and raised in Cape Breton,
Perspective is difficult in this heat. and explored the rest of Canada one university at a time until ar-
One minute she seems to be miles away, riving in Edmonton, where he lived as a poetic marauder with the
Back to me, a concentrated point of disinterest, Stroll of Poets. He has written one previous collection of poetry,
And then I find I’m surrounded, in the centre An Anarchist Dream, and his poems have appeared in magazines
Where she camps. She shuts and locks the door in Canada, the U.S., England and Australia. His stories have ap-
The way she might a telescope. peared in On Spec and Tesseracts. His screenplays have been
shortlisted in competitions in Canada and the U.S. He divides his
time between Calgary and Washington, DC.
13. The Hitch
There’s no crease in his baggy jeans, All he did was steal some food
though the crotch reaches his knees because he was hungry. All he did
and his pant legs drag was run away from an abusive home.
over unlaced running shoes. All he did was get born
A grungy elbow pokes through to a woman who didn’t want
his sweatshirt as he stuffs thin hands his kind of reminder around. How
into back pockets and rocks can he possibly understand:
side to side taking a wide stance Keep the peace and be of good behaviour.
in front of the judge who begins
to read his probation orders: It’s a teasing echo in this courtroom.
Keep the peace and be of good behaviour. If only it came with a recipe. If only
it could be bottled, could nourish
He’s fourteen, just pleaded guilty – hungry youths like this one here
again to shoplifting. As he drops his head waiting for the judge’s recitation to cease Between the Silences
dark clumps of hair fall forward before he’s released, free to leave by Diane Buchanan
to cover pimples and a scowl with a hitch of those jeans, a scratch,
978-0973238-08-2, $15.95
exposing scabby skin at the back a timid grin and these words, which,
of his neck while shoulder wings jut hopefully, he’ll carry beyond these courtroom Diane Buchanan is a poet and essayist who has lived in and
and flex, bony, featherless, grounded: doors: around Edmonton, Alberta all her life. The last thirty years have
Keep the peace and be of good behaviour. Keep the peace and be of good behaviour. been spent on a thoroughbred horse farm where she and her hus-
band of forty-three years raised four daughters. She began to write
A familiar phrase heard over after retiring from nursing and returning to University at the age
and over in youth court, but not of fifty. Her first book of poetry, Ask Her Anything was published
on the TV he watches, not in the music in 2001. Her next book Unruly Angels will be released in July of
he listens to, not in the movies he sees, this year.
not on the streets where he’s trying
Shortlisted:
to exist. Does this young man know
The Acorn-Plantos People’s Poetry Award
what that phrase means or,
are they just empty words to him:
Keep the peace and be of good behaviour.
14. Cowboy Courage
It’s Thursday morning in Calgary’s flashy new steel and glass
courthouse. The Stampede’s over but here there’s still reason
to celebrate. It’s graduation day in Courtroom 505. This
man’s no cowboy but he’s shown he’s got the guts to ride a
bucking bronco through the agony of withdrawal and win.
It hasn’t been easy. It’s hard enough to last eight seconds, let
alone fourteen months. But he’d already had a fifteen year
struggle with the rankest of stock. And though there’s no
silver buckle at the end of this ride, his prize is the rest of his
life. He’s got his health, a home, and a job. He’s going to use
what he learned while hooked on the horns of crystal meth,
heroin and Listerine to help those who are still trying to
survive the spurs and burrs of an addict’s life on the streets.
This man doesn’t want to forget that ride, the many falls, the unruly angels
pain of landing, of being trod upon again and again. But to- by Diane Buchanan
day he’s in the winners’ circle with his family, his friends and
978-1-897181-54-6, $15.95
his colleagues. Today, it’s white Stetsons off for his cowboy
courage. Diane Buchanan is a poet and essayist who has lived in and
around Edmonton, Alberta all her life. The last thirty years have
sobriety been spent on a thoroughbred horse farm where she and her
off the horse husband of forty-three years raised four daughters. She began to
the pinch of new boots write after retiring from nursing and returning to University at the
age of fifty. Her book of poetry, Unruly Angels, about the drug
court in Edmonton, Alberta, was published in 2011.
15. Closure in the Contemporary
Italian Novel
A little after midnight
in an un-named piazza
where disappointment over anonymity
trickles out of the fountain
and the heat of the day
leaks from old stones.
Steady bus-drone, a siren
competing with a car-alarm.
Learning to Count
Then, a tone higher, a canine cry turns by Douglas Burnet Smith
every head on a café’s terrace 978-1-897181-37-9, $15.95
inside toward the bar: it’s an old man – Douglas Burnet Smith is the author of over a dozen books of po-
black suit and black hat, bare feet, jaundiced etry. His work has won the Malahat Review’s Long Poem Prize,
and has been nominated for a Governor General’s Award and
white shirt, mouth frozen the Atlantic Poetry Prize. He has been Writer in Residence at a
open in a toothless howl number of universities in Canada and the U. S., and has served
as President of the League of Canadian Poets, as well as Chair
of the Public Lending Right Commission of Canada. He teaches
that crescendos into a shrieking laugh.
at St. Francis Xavier University, in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, and
His fist shakes
at the American University of Paris. He divides his time between
Canada, France, and Argentina.
a battered blue paperback
at everyone, and he shouts One of three poetry books listed on the Globe &
Mail’s Globe 100 Best Books selection for 2010
So come finisce! So come finisce!
I know how it ends! I know how it ends! Shortlisted:
The Atlantic Poetry Prize
16. Excerpts from the Dictionary of Winds
—found poem from essay of same name by Ivetta Gerasimchuk
A D
Anemophile (phobe) Dictionary of Winds (Degree of Certainty)
I admit I never thought about this: Sooner or later, a person assigns
ventivacts—traces, figures of wind erosion characteristics of infinity to the things most
the work of wind and time—allow for finding dear.
one’s bearings in the future. The dictionary Depending on what you want to see—a point,
of winds insists that when you look, there a straight line, time.
on the smooth surface of the lake This rushing movement is inclined
a hard body oscillates under to reduce the essence of a thing to its origin.
the impulse of applied force. Then follows the story connected to inaccu-
racy. Attenuations of Force
B An optical effect often caused by wind by Lori Cayer
Bachelor Wind (Crazy Wind, Dark Wind, The absence of calm.
978-1-897181-31-7, $15.95
Married Wind) This series of simplifications, a crown of
clouds. Lori Cayer’s first book Stealing Mercury (The Muses’ Company)
Let’s assume that the little person has measured What remains is only to console ourselves. won the Eileen McTavish Sykes Award and was a finalist for the
everything—the number of constructions McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award. She is a past winner
equal H of the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer.
to the number of phenomena. Hall of Winds (Cave of Winds)
Abstract words, lists, appear and disappear not Shortlisted:
in Precisely then, there exists merely Aqua Books Lansdowne Prize for Poetry/
an entirely clear way; one single movement of air, a single wind prix Lansdowne de poésie.
in the first place, they can be interpreted arranged in compass points. Absolute
any way you like; such mystification sewn time on behalf of the convenience of man.
with white threads. Constellation located. It is required that a point of reference
Something familiar relative to which be constant and noticeable
you can determine your position. at scholarly symposia and in grocery stores.
The hall a creation
not of man, but of the winds themselves
It is an excellent landmark.
17. M W
Measurement (Hypertime, Infinity) Wind Rose (Wind City, Wind Mill,
Wind of the Seven Mountains)
Nothing other than dots.
Under the figures of the winds Resurrect the picture that has just departed into
a year flies by unnoticed. the past.
Given the required observation of the To say that I was interested in history is merely
conditions because of the cliffs. We were warned,
of similarity, you can measure anything at all waited for it, when all kinds of junk
by anything at all. perceived by us as events
A similar equality of a part and its whole are crammed into it.
is also inherent in zero. Notions of a better life have been reflected
Science begins from the moment measurement in various risky expeditions.
begins. It is worth noting, in some strange dictionary,
part of I is equal
T to I itself.
Tower of Winds (Grammatical Time)
It is not obligatory to conduct an inventory
at the Tower of Winds.
(E)ventus (e)ventus est.
An event is wind. Wind is an event.
You need to come here, to the sand
where it seems nothing has changed,
but each grain of sand lies in a new place.
In an infinite number of cycles
the common denominator is also equal to
infinity.
18. Ludochka
Not for you the pleated skirts, you
who dazzled us in the coat closet
at the back of the class, butt slinking out
of the elastic-waisted jeans
you called “suicides”.
Not for you the comfort of only being imagined,
as you slowly peeled yourself before
the rapt attention of our blessed eyes.
Just minutes ago our minds were a haze
of the strangest form of boredom, and awash
with those black-and-white films of
naked bodies in heaps at Birkenau
that Mrs Lesnitsky forced into our gaze. Forgetting the Holocaust
by Ron Charach
Decades later, you and I would meet again.
978-1-897181-46-1, $15.95
Under pancake make-up
you played the vamp so well Winnipeg-born Ron Charach is the author of eight books of poetry,
no one would have pegged you among them Dungenessque, winner of the Canadian Jewish Book
as offspring of a single mother with broken English, Award for Poetry in 2003. His work is widely published in national
you, who flashed your tomboy body for the boys and international journals and anthologies of writing by doctors about
in a dark room of damp winter coats, their craft. Now residing in Toronto, Charach combines a physician’s
dripping scarves and limp mittens. candid eye for the foibles and betrayals of the body with a psychia-
trist’s compassion for the suffering of the mind. He creates poems
It took you a while to remember me. around the memorable image, the anecdote that initially seems to
say little, yet opens to reveal a great deal about the human condition.
But once, when you slowed the spinning
of your pelvis, you cast me a longing look
In Forgetting the Holocaust, Charach reflects on his life as a Jew
not as if you wanted me to want you more
raised in post-Holocaust Canada. His poems look back on a life of
than anyone else in that little room did, accomplishment and reflect, sometimes with broad comedy, some-
but as if, in a way I only understood years later, times with great confessional power, on what it means, coming
I might become an ally in your counter- from such a beginning, to be a good Jew, a good son, a good man.
offensive to take back the flesh.
19. Snow poem
I want to write a poem about snow
and the naming of snow
in the word our Step Mom re-trained us to say
in Chinese –
thloot meaning snow –
as she held a piece of beef jerky out for us
to say each word of our mother tongue
in 1968 we were reclaiming
like daylight savings the tongue that would repatriate
our love for anyone who dared to marry our father
to save his four kids from the foster homes.
Dad and Step Mom talked about Heng Ha, the homeland: Before a Blue Sky Moon
Sah Vun, Thlum Gup, Bahk Sah by Weyman Chan
jeweled villages on a shepherd’s path
978-0968490-35-8, $14.95
to stone-hedged grave markers,
each one in the shape of an inverted omega, Weyman Chan, who lives and works in Calgary, is married with
carved into rainy hillsides. two daughters. His poems and short stories have been published in
many journals and anthologies. His poetry also appears in Many
They never saw snow until they came to Canada Mouthed Birds: Contemporary Writing by Chinese Canadians.
if your eyes move with it Before a Blue Sky Moon is his first book, and deals with themes of
the snow will hold still childhood, displacement, loss and redemption both spiritual and
while the earth meets up with it secular, the meaning of personal love, and at the same time gives
us stunning and magical insights into a Chinese Canadian family.
never to own or to be owned
His second book, Noise From the Laundry (Talonbooks), was nomi-
Step Mom warned us about heaven, when we were bad.
nated for the 2008 Governor General’s Award for Poetry.
There’s a heaven, she’d tell us. “Yu-ga hin.”
She had eyelashes that seemed Winner:
the perfect altar of warmth The National Magazine Awards Silver Medal for Poetry;
to die on Stephan G. Stephansson Award, Best Alberta Poetry Book, 2002
20. snow is the one thing this body taken by storms and dart frogs,
that holds still while we float free excoriations that bend leaves at night
between lattice and rivulet with our children’s voices crying for us
snow is the anchor of our moderation
this body
but snow kept her alone in the house caught in the middle distance
constantly sweeping out the grey air where life stops freezing or burning
yelling at us to step back and begins to know itself.
when we walked in dusted with snowflakes
I skated on the river today
and years later on the morning amazed that this distance could be mother to water
my mother-in-law died and that water could have made me
her last eyes looking out
followed that gentle whiteout to remember a word like thloot
it hushed her breathing and I wondered on a day like today where the sun spoke to me
how anybody could stand open-mouthed like an old friend –
looking upward
hoping to cradle-catch that illusion of falling Yes I remember you when you left me yesterday
into its own vowel – its no, and I’ve slept without you in the world
negation, have-not of heaven anticipating nothing until now.
following the s
and if snow could be a poem about the body
when in other seasons a fish
could dream air out of water
or a tree could bend sugar out of light,
then snow would talk about disbelief,
its six-sided dissolution
in the millions
proving that the smallest touch lasts
why her, why this falcon-like fall
from recovery, only to believe with
all the science of your heart that all we have
is this body
21. Santa Maria
Oh Mother of Jesus
This world is still at war
The beautiful girl down the street has been murdered
And we are empty as prayer
If we are made up of our losses
Then we are as thin as Kleenex
Living in hope for the dead
Our breath unable to rest in
Our lungs search for solace in the new suburbia
We shovel; we sow
Our lawns so expertly mowed
We are the post-modern somnambulists
Shopping for God and the perfect diet Untitled Child
by Nancy Jo Cullen
And you souls in Purgatory 978-1-897181-27-0, $15.95
Have you any insight for us sinners
Who have the sons and daughters to prove it? In 2006 Nancy Jo Cullen’s life partner died after a long struggle
with mental illness and addiction. Untitled Child examines the tra-
Oh Mother of Jesus you crazy so-and-so jectory of the end of the marriage between the two women and
Is this what you imagined it would come to the author tries to understand her role in a series of painful events.
When you slapped your insubordinate son
Nancy Jo Cullen is the author of two previous collections of poetry,
Science Fiction Saint and Pearl. Nancy Jo Cullen lives in Toronto
What does resurrection matter
where she is at work on an MFA in Creative Writing at the Univer-
when the dead lie in our arms
sity of Guelph–Humber.
All beyond the presence of our fingertips
22. facing west
everything in panorama
there are things that seem like silence; cars passing on
an always somewhere highway, voices of boys calling out across
the afternoon and Evelyn’s chickadees chattering in the blue
spruce. how terrifying, that blue spruce, when you imagine it
crumpling – no, crashing – onto your roof. it would spell the
end of you all, your grisly demise featured on the six o’clock
news. families around their kitchen tables would click their
tongues in horror. after that no one who’d ever loved you could
sit under a blue spruce without feeling a pang. at your funeral
all your ex-lovers would sit in a row. humbled by your sudden
death, and a little bit destroyed. because there is was no one like
you. they realize that now. and good, you think, they figured Science Fiction Saint
that out. except you won’t be thinking. you won’t be. you will be by Nancy Jo Cullen
ashes for the compost heap. and that makes you not fearless, but
978-0968490-37-2, $14.95
dizzy. it makes you want to scream or puke or have intercourse.
because of the force with which you can be pushed against a Science Fiction Saint, by playwright and poet Nancy Jo Cullen,
bed. because of friction. investigates the space between a more traditional lyric line and the
experimental use of form and language. A provocative work that
this is a moment that can not be controlled shimmers with risk and offbeat humour.
everything inside you is a weed Nancy Jo Cullen was the 4th recipient of the Dayne Ogilvie Grant.
The grant is given annually to an emerging gay or lesbian writer
washed in the panic of nothingness you understand. not who demonstrates great promise through a body of work of ex-
yourself, but what it is that takes strangers to public washrooms ceptional quality.
their hands stroking their genitals. not love, just that instant of
Shortlisted:
being perfectly alive with no attachment to another. and no idea
The Gerald Lampert Award;
of the consequences of a blue spruce ringing with chickadees
The Stephan G. Stephansson Award;
Alberta Book Awards Trade Fiction Book Award
23. The Future of Scent
Before the everyday use of plastic:
Mud, horse shit and burning coal
A damp wool blanket
Diesel, spat from the train
Fungal sheets, jism
Rye splashed against a windowsill
A brisk westerly delivering dust
and the promise of spring, or winter depending on which corner you stood
The odor of a pipe, sweet until after the Spanish flu then sorrowful
Vinegar on the morning floors
The ears of an unwashed man (always too close to the nose)
The piss of a tomcat on an inside wall
A new deck of cards Pearl
Rosewater and glycerin rubbed lightly on tired skin, by Nancy Jo Cullen
Funereal in retrospect
978-1897181-03-4, $15.95
Cloves inside a tooth Pearl is a poetic exploration of the life of the legendary Pearl
Baked apples Miller, early Calgary’s most famous, and successful madam. Cul-
The tight smell of ten days of thirty below zero len fuses traditional lyric lines and experimental uses of form and
Fresh cut lilacs in a bowl (again, in retrospect, funereal) language to fabricate a biography of Calgary’s mythical brothel
Toast and saskatoon jelly keeper.
Regret unmitigated by capital assets Nancy Jo Cullen was the 4th recipient of the Dayne Ogilvie Grant.
The grant is given annually to an emerging gay or lesbian writer
who demonstrates great promise through a body of work of ex-
ceptional quality.
Winner:
Alberta Book Awards Trade Fiction Book Award
Shortlisted:
The City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize
24. English Literature
Why,
Because chiaroscuro
is where I belong.
That and I was once Pushkin’s wife.
O, my darling octoroon
your Russia is doing alive and well,
but your Ethiopia is still squinting into the sun,
blind and full of light
trying to find empire in uptown Harlem
but all we get is
gentrification petrification talk
about holy war, race war, war on war
while the Church of Nazareth on 144th stands
a burned-out shell, waiting. ex nihilo
by Adebe D.A.
978-1897181-34-8, $15.95
Adebe D.A. is a writer whose words travel between Toronto and
New York City. She recently completed her MA at York University,
where she also served as Assistant Editor for the arts and literary
journal, Existere. Her work has been published in various North
American sources, including Canadian Woman Studies Journal,
The Claremont Review, Canadian Literature, CV2 and the Toronto
Star. She won the Toronto Poetry Competition in 2005 to become
Toronto’s first Junior Poet Laureate. Ex Nihilo is her debut collection.
Adebe D.A. was one of 16 writers longlisted for the Dylan Thomas
Prize for her book ex nihilo. Global in scope, the £30,000 University
of Wales Dylan Thomas Prize is awarded to the best published
or produced literary work in the English language, written by an
author under 30.
25. Soldier, Sailor
Make love to me like a soldier.
Your new uniform hangs starched
and tough on the closet door.
Leaning against the rocker, your gun
gleams maliciously in the moonlight.
Afterwards, I will hold you, troubled
and spent, your desperate arms too tight
around my neck.
In sleep, macho dreams stumble from your mouth,
like men in midnight trenches.
You leave me nothing to believe in.
It is absurd to put that much faith in fate.
In the morning the rattle of your belt buckle wakes me.
Your bus leaves at noon. Contrary Infatuations
August heat will stick you to your seat. by Dymphny Dronyk
You don’t know it yet, but
978-1-897181-10-2, $15.95
all your generals are insane.
Dymphny Dronyk is a writer, artist, mediator and mother. She is
Make love to me like a sailor, passionate about the magic of story and has woven words for
it is a course we have travelled many times. money (journalism, corporate writing) and for love (poetry, fiction,
Your thick sweater lies curled on the rug. drama, mystery novels) for about 30 years. She lives in Calgary,
Gumboots trip over themselves in the doorway, has three almost grown children and works in the “oilpatch”, in
brass pea coat buttons are polished, happy. stakeholder relations.
The concertina plays a slow waltz to itself.
Afterwards, I fall into the deepest slumber, Shortlisted:
Gerald Lampert Award;
drowning in a cove of your warmth and scent.
Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry
At least I can dream of this madness –
your absence is finite and planned,
your infidelity something I can trust.
At dawn we rise from well-charted sheets,
and I make coffee, French and black.
You shave, singing a sea shanty,
and swagger over the floor
like it’s a pitching deck.
26. Grand Canyon
At the rim, she wings it.
A twitch of big bang dust, hounded
through the gouged, high noon cathedral, seething.
Darkness swallows light from the bottom up.
Ego, love child of desert rat and turkey vulture,
orphaned in the Great Unknowing,
scritches and circles, sniffing
through the carrion alphabet
for some sounds to speak
to this hugeness.
Awk, says Raven, disappearing. Falling Blues
by Jannie Edwards
978-1-897181-36-2, $15.95
Jannie Edwards was born in South Africa and now lives and writes in
Edmonton, Alberta. Her second book of poetry, Blood Opera: The
Raven Tango Poems, was a collaboration with visual artist Paul
Saturley and was adapted for the stage by Edmonton’s Theatre
Prospero. Jannie Edwards’ website is www.jannieedwards.ca.
Shortlisted:
Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry
27. “Write lots of shit” he advised. We walked to myself in a bus shelter with the girl and an arm-
the library as he spoke. The lie prayery, where I load of damp books about cats and dogs and
promised eternal devotion in exchange for the heterologicality. Grelling and the one about the
chance to get laid before I graduated. Or else I thunderstorm and the pet loving girl from out
didn’t. And in this I lie as in a bed with two pil- of town. They had a whole lotta books about
lows and a woman I push away because it’s too pets and a few of them can be most lovable
damn hot for a snuggle or maybe I’m just not companions.
dead enough for damnation in return for ly-
ing directly to the Almighty. But enough about “Is this the library?” Her eye winked
God all right let’s focus on the matter at hand, and I saw she wanted directions, but I don’t Static Mantis
usually the right but the left now ‘cause it’s like know shit about pets and I’d rather sleep in by Arran Fisher
someone else came towards me and said “Is this comfort than swelter in her arms. I prefer a
978-0-9684903-4-1, $13.95
the library?” good sci-fi before I lie. The drop in her eye,
but her arms were full and the ground wet, so Arran Fisher was born in Brisbane, Australia, and raised in Saska-
She was unfamiliar with the buildings instead I offered to hold her pets so she could toon, Vancouver, and Calgary. He has a philosophy degree from
but had something in her eye. A glint or dust wipe. That wet patch which is always left over the University of Calgary, where he studied writing under Nicole
or just a drop of water. She wanted to find the between us reminded me of the downpour from Markotic and Fred Wah. Since then he has travelled to Europe,
library or was unfamiliar with the language and the heavens like an open book full of locusts the United States, and Japan, where he took part in the All-Japan
wanted to know the time. It was 4:27 and the or tadpoles. It was cold, but the sun was com- Aikido Demonstration. He is cofounder of the rock band, The Sum-
library was in front of us and I knew she’d find ing out and the businessmen were folding their merlad.
it if only I told her, but I lied and said “Move umbrella-like wings or solar panels.
Shortlisted:
over a bit, I’m too hot” and left it at that inter-
Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry
section, kitty-corner from the cathedral. God
saw my misdeed and the sky opened up and
either rain or locusts fell upon the city. Like a
good book with many insects among its pages,
but like a bad book because it closed soon after
as it tends to do in the prairies, and I found
28. God’s animals
must Late nites
to stay away from telephones heavy-intake
must hefty bills
there’s no love there too much smoke
strong enough no sleeping
wet enough or eating properly
on the other end or at all,
to corral the lust swapping spit
the sucking chest wound with fat.
that come about
after a couple cocktails. Ugly people
in bad taverns
Bathroom mirrors junkies help you sleep
are the nitemare alone Death Day Erection
especially always refused. by J. Fisher
flourescent-lit men’s rooms It’ll have to do
978-0973238-05-1, $15.95
in dive-bars this incessant need
after three days spent for fuelling J. Fisher was born in Edson, has lived and worked in Victoria’s down-
sucking floor gives meaning town core and is now in Calgary. His first short story “for what it’s
you can see right back to exhaustion worth” was published when he was 19. He spent his early 20s as
to the real problem and carnal musings. a wildly unsuccessful blues singer and lyricist. His love of the word
just under the lunatic dermis Playing part propelled him thru his failings until, in 2004, he managed to bring
pores tell the tale. in phony revolution together the pieces which would make up his first collection, Death
causes a great thirst. Day Erection. His poems continue to appear in e-zines, reviews and
publications all over North America and Europe.
Shortlisted:
Alberta Book Awards: Book Illustration of the Year
29. into the arms of God
Tue 2 May 2006 11:32 am
Eden works the Government strip simply release the fingered grip
but she’s not really there at all and it’s into the water, back into the arms of God
she blows her mind out in the alleys but no, not today
before the johns come calling she’ll stick it out as her spike heels click
flashing cash and cock, against the worn asphalt
promising to do their worst she shakes her thoughts like water from
stuffing it in, taking it all out her curly brown locks
one trick at a time catches the first car door
Eden smokes a steady blue stream for another short ride
perched outside the diner all day to nowhere
see, she can’t sleep in the daylight
’cause she knows bulletin from the low light
when the sun goes down it’s back to work by J. Fisher
down on her knees, down to business
978-1-897181-07-2, $15.95
screaming without speaking
spreading the disease J. Fisher is the Quintessential counter-culture archetype, a James
and her own loneliness Dean incarnate… Fisher’s strongest work blends base abstractions
Eden takes a moment to lean over the rail with complex allusions. Nevertheless he achieves some dexterous
on that famed Blue Bridge sleights of hand (it’s all in the wrist) and a sense of alienation only
time between the poisonings to reflect the young can cherish.
on how it all came to this —Anne Burke, Prairie Journal
memories like a slow-fisted drag
pull up upon her past
30. Istanbul in Darkness, Grieving
Houses, streets, ghettoes of childhood. Darkness is a cover for the eye
The world almost forgetting these existed. peering at ghosts and shadows. Darkness
Your city has always hidden its ruins, makes
its black bile, its melancholy. a moral point. This darkness
a grieving for what has fallen into ruin.
Cities, like families, expect love and luck
the way lovers do
in the acceptance of bodies, in their imperfections.
We live in different fantasies of the same museum:
bric-à-brac, photographs, locked glass cabinets,
silent pianos, beaded curtains, large heavy carpets,
and an old nanny who can no longer read love letters
from a dead suitor. Children of Ararat
by Keith Garebian
Outside the semi-darkness of these relics,
978-1-897181-32-4, $15.95
the streets are weary, light declining
on the surfaces of fallen down mansions, Keith Garebian is a widely published, award-winning freelance
crowds huddled in winter’s thick coat, literary and theatre critic, biographer, and poet. Among his many
night rubbing its cold into streets and lives. awards are the Canadian Authors Association (Niagara Branch)
Battered streetlamps, old wooden houses, Poetry Award (2009), the Mississauga Arts Award (2000 and
concrete apartments, chiaroscuro of decay. 2008), a Dan Sullivan Memorial Poetry Award (2006), and the
Lakeshore Arts & Scarborough Arts Council Award for Poetry
Age, neglect, dirt, and humidity (2003 & 2010). This is his fourth book of poetry.
confuse the tourist’s eye,
misinterpreting the value of the colour black.
Dark haze on smoky mornings
settles on rooftops or in eaves and gardens
left untended – not the pretty tints of etchings
painted by foreign hands.
31. guys named Bill
Rian and I step off the plane the bartender at our hotel
breathing yellow hibiscus is Bill – Bill the Bartender
tossing alohas to smiling swarthy men he loves us it’s nice to meet a
they drape us with leis Bill who does
kiss us on the cheek he puts extra rum in our Mai-tais
we laugh at his jokes
I’m here to recover from Bill
shake myself clean at last and then there’s the night
two weeks in which to re-enter the world we join a table of singing Australians
prepare myself for the man the dark-haired one with freckles
who waits to buy me dinner is Bill of the Australian Navy
on our return I haven’t kissed a man
in almost a year but
I did send Bill a postcard I’m used to kissing Bills guys named Bill
from San Francisco airport – by Leslie Greentree
something about a man in a dress I’ve put away a lot of beer
978-0968490-36-5, $14.95
I don’t know – with guys named Bill
it was a layover we were Leslie Greentree was born in Grande Prairie, Alberta, and has lived
sleep deprived and a little drunk in various parts of BC and Alberta, including Salmon Arm, Mc-
Bride, Dawson Creek, Crowsnest Pass, Calgary, and Lethbridge.
everyone in Hawaii is named Bill Her first book, guys named Bill, was published by Frontenac House
as part of their poetry series Quartet 2002.
we have our pictures taken
in Honolulu Leslie Greentree was the winner of the Howard O’Hagan Award
glorious parrots astride each shoulder for Short Fiction.
the tousled man who chats us up
is Bill, the Parrot Guy
32. black go-go boots
it’s stylized sixties the black boots are to her knees
but the tank top with the silver spaghetti straps and her tiny
skirt only nod to the originals the colours are
carefully psychedelic
the first photograph shows her and Elvis laughing
her go-go boot draped lightly over his satin thigh
hair pulled high on her head ponytail cascading over her
shoulders slapping her in the face as she gyrates
the second is of her in the classic pose arms pumping
clenched fists hair flying boots planted firmly
two feet apart her head is down eyes closed
I can feel the music here something like Jailhouse Rock or go-go dancing for Elvis
his bastardized version of Hound Dog by Leslie Greentree
978-0973238-02-0, $14.95
she’s having the time of her life
when she wore her boots to supper she felt wild and mod go-go dancing for Elvis by Leslie Greentree is the story of two
getting such a kick out of this outfit sisters: the beautiful sister, who travels the States as a dancer for
like the kid who used to put on the old clothes an Elvis impersonator, and her more conventional sister, who stays
from Mom’s dress-up box home and renovates her house. It’s a story of love, jealousy, be-
trayal, and the people who used to have our phone numbers. Most
Elvis told her to go back to the room and change
of all it’s a story about Hawkeye Pierce and power tools.
he’s had enough of looking at that crap every night
does he really have to take his work with him to supper?
Shortlisted:
The Griffin Poetry Prize
part of me is glad to see that even a go-go dancer for Elvis
can be made to feel like an idiot be spoken to in that way
but I still want to drive to their hotel in Reno
and kick his ass
33. INSOMNIA
You may have heard this before – an ancient Egyptian
meditation called quiet ears can cure insomnia.
You plug the ear canals with your thumbs
and listen for a high pitched singing in your head.
If you give yourself over to it, the sound will carry you
into sleep.
Outside, the moon is yawning over the city –
and the neighbour has arrived home. He opens a square of light
to the night.
My husband moves in his sleep,
pulls the blanket to his shoulders. He is curled up,
his ear pressed toward dreams. Now I understand how lovers Yes.
fly around each other night and day – how close and secret by Rosemary Griebel
are the passages of love.
978-1-897181-77-5, $15.95
Apparently that melodic sound Born in the farming community of Castor, Alberta, Rosemary
is always in the head – we just need to listen. Griebel grew up on the prairies. There she experienced nature as
The way birds hear a choir of light, and in darkness both immense and intimate. It’s common to say that there is little
start to sing. room to romanticize nature when the lives and deaths of animals
are commonplace and all around you. Yet Rosemary, currently
Across the river, wolves in the zoo are howling. Special Projects Manager with the Calgary Public Library, where
You may have heard this too – she has worked for 20 years, always knew experience as both
imprisoned animals cry out for their kind, knowing something to be felt and something to be spoken of. Rosemary’s
poems have been published on CBC’s radio program Anthology,
they are out there somewhere. All creatures
in national journals, in the Calgary Transit’s “Poetry in Motion”
have an instinctive geography that goes beyond fences and cities.
series of in-vehicle posters, and in chapbooks by Leaf Press.
It is a map of belonging.
Yes. is Rosemary Griebel’s long-awaited first book, an intimate
journey through love and loss, an affirmation of the importance of
curiosity, passion and vision.
34. Even my own father would call out to my mother in the night.
He could hear her walking above him in heaven,
opening doors, looking for him.
Right now the wolves are hearing things their keepers can not –
the sound of jazz bars closing, the clock-tick
and night noises of humans: distressed crying, love making,
and someone at a small window writing the world
while a distant keening in her head will not lead her back
to sleep.
It is 3 a.m. I would like to wake my love so we could talk,
or lay our heads together like heavy hymn books, and listen.
35. Long Beach
I am mesmerized by the young man analogous to something –
zipping his girlfriend’s wetsuit, not loss, but something like
jealous of the way he braces his feet the pattern of sand ripples, or
and yanks, as if her skin I have been here before, or
were familiar to him as his own watch face. the cogs and gears that work the tides.
I envy them as I envy the otters The young in their neoprene sleekness
anchored in kelp knots, rocked return to the water I climbed out of.
and static in the moving sea, their eyes The seam where the ocean opens
sealed tighter than abalone, their pelts is sewn
shiny as inner tubes, as harpoon steel. and opens again.
Here on the beach I have been sandcastling
with my children, constructing
a simulacrum of well-being. Water Strider
We are sticky with flotsam, by Karen Hofmann
glitter with mica, salt, fish scales;
978-1-897181-19-5, $15.95
everything is gritty, ridged, creased. Karen Hofmann grew up in the Okanagan Valley, completed a BA
The sun slips a notch in its slow curl and MA at the University of Victoria, and now teaches English and
and I wade in, cast for my lost skins creative writing at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, British
but bring in the usual old boot Columbia. She lives at the edge of a former pine forest with her
of cartoons, and each frame husband, many children and small animals, and the constant fear
that she has forgotten to do something important.
Shortlisted:
The Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize
36. Entering Venice
She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean,
Rising with her tiara of proud towers
At airy distance …
–Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
Spanning Here, words are vines
the breadth, of an invasive species
the back of Venice: borne by aerosol winds;
graffiti scribbled across bare walls,
a gorgon’s coil signature set as its own gaudy subject,
writhing against the water, cheap paint
slick tentacled creatures as netting, Dinner at Madonna’s
caught in low tide. lattice. Scar. by Kevin Irie
978-0973238-00-6, $14.95
Sprayed ropes Not beauty
scale Castello, Cannaregio; but what defines it. Kevin Irie was born and lives in Toronto. His poetry has been pub-
green, pus yellow, lished in periodicals and anthologies in Canada and the United
to tow the sight past walls Venice: States, Australia and England, and has been translated into Spanish
where a gangrenous a catch lashed in painted nets. and Japanese. He won first prize in the 2000 poetry competition in
Rice Paper for his poem “Tashme” which appears in Dinner at Ma-
cut in a portal
donna’s. He was a finalist in the prestigious CBC Literary awards for
marks a gash as welt and whip. Each launch,
his poem “Viewing Tom Thomson (A Minority Report)”. Kevin is also
a finned creature
the author of two previous books, Burning the Dead, and The Colour
Hearts become serpents moving in of Eden, which was a finalist for the City of Toronto Book Award. An-
swallowing their tails; closer … gel Blood: The Tess Poems was also published by Frontenac House..
their purple, not royal, but bruised.
Damp worms, eels,
plucked from the ocean
that wrings them out
till they seep faint blood.
37. Higher Education
School taught me
I wasn’t my parents.
School gave me a way to grow
against them. My education
a distance they couldn’t cross
as I wandered further into myself.
Each page was a new place they couldn’t find me,
chalk across slate
like a trail escaping.
You’re too smart for us now,
my mother once told me Angel Blood: The Tess Poems
by Kevin Irie
though I said nothing
978-0973238-04-4, $15.95
to prove I was.
Adopting the posthumous voice of a wronged girl from 19th-cen-
tury fiction makes for a bold imaginative leap on Irie’s part. Yet
he enters into Tess’s situation so thoughtfully, and his diction is so
exact, that he ends up making a success of it.
—Harry Vandervlist, Alberta Views
Longlisted:
2005 ReLit Awards
38. chinese café
i want to eat chinese all the time
ivory chopsticks between my fingers,
porcelain bowls in my palms.
i want to sit on the red vinyl seats,
crack cookies between my canines,
floss my teeth with fortunes.
i love those old chinese cafés,
jasmine, chrysanthemum, or green tea.
i want to savour pork dumplings,
dribble hoisin, garlic and black bean sauce over rice,
want to twist and drip noodles into my mouth, She Dreams in Red
lick my lips. by Alexis Kienlen
978-1-897181-12-6, $15.95
i crave those wontons,
thrust my tongue deep in the custard tarts. She Dreams in Red is the story of journeys – from China to Cana-
da, to Indonesia, to Mongolia into the mysteries of the human heart
this chinese café stays open all night. and romantic relationships.
Exploring the author’s unique cultural background and history,
travels and encounters with love and loss, these poems attempt
to make sense of the world with simple images painted in clean
brushstrokes.
Alexis’s new book 13 will appear in September.
39. the one who slipped
we have all heard anything to suck out the loneliness,
about the little monster the dullness of endless wanting.
who stepped out of the shadows,
showed her face to a child. the child would take time
to remember memories of fear.
in the quiet stillness of the night
the child’s scream summoned children have to learn
bleary-eyed parents. how to be afraid,
to recognize the difference
the little monster, terrified, between awake and dreaming.
could not get away fast enough.
she had snarled her fingernails a child has to learn
in the child’s hair, how to scream.
mesmerized by soft curls, 13
the perfume of newness, by Alexis Kienlen
perfect apple softness of the child’s cheeks.
978-1-897181-53-9, $15.95
we were all familiar with the scene. Alexis Kienlen is originally from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. She is
in a moment of silence of mixed ethnic heritage: Chinese, French, German, and English/
we imagined the child’s sleepy, trusting gaze, Scottish. She holds an International Studies degree from the Univer-
the holy moments between them. sity of Saskatchewan, and a Graduate Diploma in Journalism from
Concordia University. Alexis has lived in Montreal, Wainwright
awe as the monster Alberta, Grande Prairie Alberta, Vancouver, Indonesia and Mon-
touched the soft skin of the other. golia. Her poetry, fiction and journalism pieces have appeared in
numerous publications throughout Canada. She has written two
she would have held poetry books, She Dreams in Red and 13.
the small one close to her,
to absorb the warmth,
the feeling of life,
40. hobo
you would call me a nobody
i myself prefer the term
emotional vagabond
i am a nobody
and my mother’s given up on me
because i’m hopping boxcars
in search of language for the unseen
for another thousand ways
to say the things i was forbidden to say
shut up shut up shut up
my mother would call the train tracks dangerous
but i take comfort in their stretch White Shirt
their long steel hum, by Laurie Macfayden
the way they just go off
978-1-897181-40-9, $15.95
towards an ending you cannot see
you know that ultimately Laurie MacFayden grew up in southern Ontario and has lived in
they must come to a halt out there Edmonton since 1984. She spent 30 years as a sports journalist,
somewhere on the other side of trestles and tunnels most recently at the Edmonton Journal. She left the news media in
and the dangers of unmarked crossings June 2007 to focus on her own writing and visual arts projects.
This is her debut collection of poetry. She blogs at spatherdab.
you would call me a drifter wordpress.com and her art lives at www.lauriemacfayden.com.
i myself prefer
not to be called Shortlisted:
23rd annual Lambda Literary Awards, lesbian poetry category.
Co-Winner:
Golden Crown Literary Society Award, lesbian poetry category.
41. Sky Humour
At last the ranger quits A humming bird comes hopefully to fan
his dusty circuit through the firs a yellow helmet flowering on the steps
Doped on light he seeks the cool The sleeper would have fed this visitor
of a roof, paper work. But a single sheet But now his mouth yawns, stupid with defeat
falls on his wrist like a hot towel
He dreams into the heat of Mexico
Deer flies, horse flies, house flies
moths and bees, thud as heavily as sparrows He’s there at the volcano’s rim
against the screen. They make a kind of music when the molten climax seeds
a year of rain
His head drops on his arms, glued with sweat
to the clammy desktop
Sky Humour
Outside the clouds roll in by Sid Marty
but they are thunderheads of smoke
978-1-897181-43-0, $15.95
Ash falls softly on the cabin roof Now a singer-songwriter, author and poet, for 12 years Sid Marty
a parody of winter was a park warden, spending hours patrolling the mountain back-
All promise of rain is just sky humour country with saddle and pack horses; he wrote many of his early
Clouds “Just empties goin’ back” poems literally in the saddle, composing them in his head while on
as farmers say patrol far from home.
Sky Humour, originally published in 1999 by Black Moss Press,
is now available in this revised edition with a new cover from
Frontenac House.
42. Packing Dynamite
“The thing to remember”
he said
Bull Durham bag suspended
archly from one pinky
“is to keep your dynamite
and your blasting caps
in two separate places”
Caps were in my saddlebags
dynamite packed on the mare
And back and forth my horses
battled for the lead
banging pack-box and saddle
roughly together The Rider With Good Hands
eight miles up the river by Sid Marty
to the camp above Twin Falls
978-1-897181-45-4, $15.95
My sun tan flaked off A selection of horseback verses from three earlier books, Head-
and I was a white and shining angel waters, Nobody Danced With Miss Rodeo and Sky Humour to
ready to take wing illustrate the various rites of passage of a life lived close to the
All in white pieces earth in the mountains and foothills of British Columbia and Al-
of a horse shit bomb berta, in the late decades of the last century. The book concludes
with newer material that smacks of an even earlier time, since it is
written in the rhyming tradition that never went out of style on the
western ranges.
Sid Marty is the author of five books of non-fiction and three poetry
collections. His recent prose work, The Black Grizzly of Whiskey
Creek, was short-listed for the Governor General’s Award in Non-
Fiction and shared the Grand Prize at the Banff Mountain Book
Festival. In 2008, he was awarded the Grant MacEwan Literary
Arts Award for his contribution to the literatre of Alberta.
43. regent park will be there forever
I’ve got to tell you this: This is what I would do
riding the subway every day where
It’s 1974 and between Bloor and Summerhill
I’m 14 years old. subway stations it was above ground.
I’m in Grade 9,
my first year of Outside. Lots of trees and green.
high school. In the winter it would be covered
in snow in a very soft, pretty way.
De La Salle, an all-boys Sitting in the subway car,
Catholic high school. looking out the window
I would think of the scene
I took the streetcar from
and subway back and
forth to school everyday. Valley of the Dolls Confessions of an Empty Purse
where Barbara Parkins by S. McDonald
I was fat with flat, oily hair and pimples galore. was taking the train back from
978-1-897181-33-1, $15.95
New York City to Lawrenceville.
wouldn’t that be a great drag name? S. McDonald was born, raised and continues to live in Toronto.
Ladies and Gentlemen put your hands She’s looking longingly Ze grew up in pre-gentrification Cabbagetown and Regent Park.
together and give it up for out the window of the train: Ze has performed zir alternative spoken word performance pieces
Pimples Galore! at various venues including Buddies in Bad Times Theatre’s annual
Her hair is in a sophisticated upsweep. Rhubarb! Festival and Paddy’s Playhouse. Ze is the love child of
Anyway: Her make-up is perfection. Christine Jorgensen & John Rechy & the spiritual godchild of Jac-
I had no friends. None. Her black leather gloved hands queline Susann.
clutch her mink coat about her throat.
I lived a life so insular,
so deeply, so profoundly Her perfect, perfect face aching
inside my head with a sweet, serene melancholy
it felt both physically … at life.
and psychically painful
to even be outside in the world.
44. Every day as I rode understand:
the subway between
Bloor and Summerhill: I didn’t see myself “as” Barbara Parkins
looking out that subway window.
as I looked out the train window
I saw myself, I saw myself looking out that window.
Marsha:
with sophisticated upswept hair, It was my perfectly made-up face.
perfect make-up, my black leather gloved hands
clutching my mink coat to my aching throat It was my hair in that sophisticated upsweep.
to keep the screaming inside
and most importantly:.
my perfectly made-up eyes, It. Was. My. Mink. Coat.
so catlike and desperate,
looking longingly out I knew it then and I know it now:
that subway window
into my future. Regent Park will be there forever
for that few minutes every day And I will always, always be me; Marsha …
I was myself on that subway.
I was Marsha riding into my future,
riding away from everybody and everything
that still clung to my skin and stained my
heart,
that cut my soul to the core at every turn
45. On the Missouri Coteau
Sure good to see ole Henk again ridin with our crew
along the trail on the big coteau. Bin years since he was through.
He left here for the rodeo, then took up tendin bar
and livin the life of a vagabond with a banjo and guitar.
But there’s heavy lines across his face and his eyes seem kinda dull
as if them years he spent down South been etched inside his skull.
“Boys,” sez he, “I’m tickled green to be sitting by your fire
cause all the fancy bars I’ve seen can’t set a tone no higher.
“Way out here on the high plateau your spirit gets a shake
like the smell of coffee on the boil, a thing you don’t mistake.
That grub we ate was what I craved, each night in every town.
Your venison and biscuit pie in taverns can’t be found.
Rhyming Wranglers
“Oh, I’ve sampled horses’ doovers in the bistros of Orleans Edited by Ken Mitchell
and all the bins on the Broadway – but they can’t match Donny’s beans. 978-1-897181-13-3, $18.95
And smart talk? Well, I heard lots, in some courtrooms here and there
but I tell you men, my learning began when I heared ol’ Wally swear. Ken Mitchell is a well-known Canadian playwright, actor and nov-
elist, with over 25 books to his credit, including the legendary
“As for music, I took in a few big concerts in my days, “country opera” Cruel Tears. His drama about Norman Bethune,
but I still prefer the steady purr of a crackling pinewood blaze. Gone the Burning Sun, toured the world in the 90s. Mitchell grew
Or the plaintive howl of a coyote prowling through yon aspen wood up on a family ranch near Moose Jaw, and went on to become a
is gonna affect the hair on your neck, like no soprano could. professor of English at the University of Regina. He lives in Regina
with his wife, the scholar Jeanne Shami.
“‘I’ve wandered the world, looked at great art, your Leonardos and Vince Van Go,
but if you wanta study a masterpiece, take a sunset on the coteau. Rhyming Wranglers includes not only poets from pioneer times,
Look at it there, all purple and gold, ’gainst a blue like a robin’s egg. and the current stars of the cowboy poetry festival circuit, but such
major outlaw poets as Sheri-D Wilson, Sid Marty, Doris Daley and
No painter I know can capture the flow of those shapes on heaven’s lake.
Corb Lund. You will find they all speak the authentic lingo of the
“So pour me out another cup of Slim’s black-as-hades brew; cowboy. Especially in the poem “On the Missouri Coteau” written
by Ken himself.
the coffees I been sippin late are thin as Moose Jaw stew.
I’ll just sit and reflect a bit on the loneliness of bars,
and the music of the Big Coteau, and the distances of stars.”
46. Writing Above Timberline
above eight thousand feet
the energy of emptiness
pushes back larch
lifts up
stone valleys
alpine tundra
rejects formal script
it splashes lichen graffiti
orange yellow grey/green
on rock
cut to the core
by snow wind
the wildness Swallowing My Mother
of an open page Catherine Moss
0-9684903-3-6, $13.95
Catherine Moss lives in Calgary and has often spent summer and
fall hiking in the high country. Her favourite destinations involve
the transition from forest to alpine tundra.
