Capitalism
That strange flower, the sun,
Is just what you say.
Have it your way.
—Wallace Stevens, “Gubbinal”
Three hundred times as heavy as our sun.
The Bubble Observer scientists report
buzzing and whizzing and gesturing in a ball
of swollen crimson gas burning standingl
ike a braintrust of firebrands and cake batter.
See the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
for updates, they say. [...]
Poetry
Three Poems
Nyla MatukSix Poems
Laura LushSMALL STORY
So the tree. And the wrongful
way the wind de-leaved it.
Down to bare bark and skid-wracked
branches. But I’m exaggerating of course.
This is the law of all taking. Savour the small moments—
apples with their red out, skins glossed to luster.
SAMARITAN
I found a leaf the other day,
red and tattered on the sidewalk.
The wind kept lifting its
papery [...]
The Selected Sonnets of John Smith
John SmithThese sonnets originally appeared in Midnight Found You Dancing (1986), Strands the Length of the Wind (1993), and Fireflies in the Magnolia’s Grove (2004). Smith’s essay is an abridged version of the introduction to Island Voices: John Smith (UPEI Integrated Promotions, DVD format, 2006).
Poems can be complicated critters. It’s hard, perhaps impossible, to say enough [...]
Are you serious?
Robyn SarahWhat is that little grating chink
in college girls’ voices, like the chirp
of glass marbles rubbed together
in a child’s palm?
Brush
Robyn SarahAlways a wild openness
to the left and right of our path,
a humming in the high grasses.
Four Poems
Zachariah WellsPRESS
I once preferred a keen and perfect
cutting edge, a right-angled sheet trimmed neat
with borders that might snick an errant
The Stone
Patrick Warnergrey blue stone bifurcated
by a band of sparkling quartz,
glad eye from the Pleistocene,
it sits on my mind’s table.
Like sadness, it has the quality
of being wholly passive.
Dark to its core, it glows at dusk
like a dying bulb. Dry but shaped
by water, flung up by streams
and tides it exerts a force
against all expectation.
Seems to be saying anything
may happen: has and will.
One day, you may pick up
that stone and pitch it, leaving
behind a small depression.
The Old Neighbourhood
Patrick WarnerIt was never great, even back in the day.
Here Kumquat May had her episode:
Jack Hughes! Jack Hughes! she wailed
at a white-haired man, Der WeiBe Engel!
whose eyes behind tinted lenses flicked
like an analog needle. Then he was gone.
Some say she was his other woman.
Some say her beef was with Guinness
(that black door marked with a toucan)
more [...]
The Scientist
Patrick WarnerWhere did the seal heads come from?
They were a present from a fisherman
who wished to woo the scientist.
Not an answer. A queer posy these,
a devalued currency, almost contraband.