by Daniela Olszewska
Image: Caitlin Sacks
I’ve got trees. Tiny trees. I wear them in a bracelet.
Everyone comments on how clever I am.
I am not clean. Nuclear energy disgusts me.
My intestines glow in the dark. It’s embarrassing. Continue Reading
by Riley Vainionpaa
Image: Riley Vainionpaa
I needed them to exist. I set the table for the ritual, spread a yellow sheet filched from the hall closet over it and placed an element in each quadrant. Fire was a tea light, plucked from the bag in the cabinet where my moms kept the bone china platter with the painted lilacs and their collection of limited edition Peter Pan plates. I always chose Tinker Bell. Water was the conch shell from that time we went to Mexico and the whole trip all I did was search for aluxes in the gardens outside our hotel, convinced the knee-high tricksters could get me out of the dance contest that night. Air was a feather I’d found at school, probably dropped from one of the Canada geese that liked to shit all over the soccer field. Randy Ayzer said it was dirty and said I was dirty for touching it. I told him everything in Sudbury is dirty, even if you can’t see it, because of the refinery fumes. Earth was a pebble from the driveway. Continue Reading
by Chelsea Margaret Bodnar
Image: Devon Christman and Chelsea Margaret Bodnar
After the flood, white caskets poked out from the ground like strange impacted teeth; your face and hands are real, your thoughts placed in your head meticulous by ancient aliens or ghosts. That must be it; the only way that anything makes sense. This one they gave you only ties you down, makes you recite the dictionary backwards. Good witch insists you’re capable of much more than you know, kills you with kindness, tearstained and stuck at the x’s, your hair held back in vines, an old house with tinted windows. An old window, the panes held back in lead, curved out to the street below. Continue Reading
by Haran Sivapalan
Image: Haran Sivapalan
“Life will get better”
Lenny the Lemming always hated this phrase. It was a phrase laden with hubris, as if the person who uttered it could confidently predict the trajectory of one’s life. Life could get better, perhaps. But it could also get worse. The trajectory of life was as capricious and unpredictable as that of the best-made North Korean missiles. Continue Reading
by Kaitlin Ruether
Meg Braem is a Canadian playwright hailing from the West Coast who now calls Alberta her home. A champion of her characters and a firm believer in the importance of fore-fronting women’s voices, Meg has been awarded the Gwen Pharis Ringwood Award for Drama and her play Blood: A Scientific Romance was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama in Canada. She is also a badass beekeeper, parent, and the current Lee Playwright in Residence at the University of Alberta. Continue Reading
by MiKA MiLK
She prayed for some light for the photographs that would become his internet presence.
Her skirt caught burdock as she kneeled down in the deep soaked snow to frame a right angle. The sun came out and smiled down on her. Each burr needle entangled in the fabric felt like the one found in some haystack. How many barns must a man walk down..
To what rarity shall one go—when coming from afar, all this way to see you. Continue Reading
by Rose Cullis
Image: Kate Dembski
It was one of those cases where the neighbourhood recluse had died – and when they cracked open the door of the little row house on Robinson Street where he’d lived, they discovered that he’d been creating magnificent works of art that would likely prove to be of great importance.
by Jennifer Skelton
Image: Mistral Celeste Khan-Becerra
Edie Sedgwick’s ghost is crying alone in a corner and all I can do is offer her cigarettes. They aren’t even my cigarettes, but I offer her a few nonetheless. She blows smoke rings and digs her hand into a candy bowl full of powder. We are still. Continue Reading
by Sophie Blais
Mange ma fille, mange salope !
Le porno c’est comme les films de super-héros, et __
j’ai mis mes tétons dans l’agrafeuse en écoutant
cette pépite, mais puisque tu ne bandes pas
j’me débine. Continue Reading
by Terry Doyle
Image: Mario Campos Castellano
When the fires stopped burning I pretty quickly realized there was no reason for me to stay in Fort Mac. The job was toast, my company truck had burned, and my ex seemed committed to remaining my ex. Her new man owned his own Ram. Owned it. Outright. Continue Reading