all begin mid-sentence with a cool edge
tumbling inward to a vermillion core

they possess images                they make images

& many of them are quite striking
due to disavowal of standard punctuation
with the exception of instances of extreme
emphasis or necessity.

your grandmother’s pain lives inside
them along her mahogany shelves
next to a framed photograph of a dead soldier
& the window is open because the poem must
have a question but in place of an answer

there is the wind                                 you hear

angry fathers in the lines
& see vast expanses of ice on january lakes
off the backroads leading to a city of great joy
& a love which someone you know has left
buried beneath the big oak in the park

all the poems you like feature a sunflower

all the poems you like are flapping
like maple leaves and in them your old pets
have come back to life & so has miles davis

please don’t forget the burnished sun
& the russet fields                  

that steamy vermillion core

please don’t forget that all the poems you like
end with

this & this
or this

---

MIKE BOVE‘s poems have appeared recently in Rattle, The Cafe Review, and others. His first book, Big Little City, was published by Moon Pie Press in 2018. He lives in Portland, Maine with his family and teaches in the English Department at Southern Maine Community College. 

terraced rice fields
sheltering in a wooden hut
leaking thatched roof
my yukata gets wet
with black rain 

a freezing winter day
charcoal-burning stove
smell of roasted sesame
organic sweet miso soup
dosimeter clicking sound

I take photographs
with my father’s muddy lens
dark, blurry images
similar to my memories
which I am slowly losing

a spit of fields and sand 
where a pine forest grows 
after the tsunami 
what I really want is to
once again live in my home

---

ILONA MARTONFI is the author of four poetry books, Blue Poppy, Black Grass, The Snow Kimono and Salt Bride. Her work has published in numerous journals across North America and abroad. Six chapbooks, Visiting the Ridge, Charivari, Magda, Adagio, Mud and Moth. Her poem “Dachau on a Rainy Day” was nominated for the 2018 Pushcart Prize. Artistic director of Visual Arts Centre Reading Series and Argo Bookshop Reading Series. QWF 2010 Community Award.

The grey beast of Cambie,
with all its angular teeth,
eats up the old homesteads
and spits out 3D ink creations
for the bright things to move into.
Some kind of feet move
along the pavement
toward the mysterious fog
that crossed the harbour
during the storm last night
and whispered things to
teams of developers
who have since been laid off.
Some of them wrote memoirs
detailing the incident,
and these have sold well.
I had meant to include more
concrete information
in this report, but the noise
from the street below
is too oppressive,
and my dog
has just been spayed and neutered.
Please send more money:
the project will be completed
and sent homewards
as soon as the ocean thaws.

Yours truly,
Juan de Fuca

Appendix:
this poem is about
the somewhat embarrassing
redevelopment
of Cambie St in Vancouver,
or, at least,
how I imagine it,
for I am in Montreal
and have never seen it.
Lola wrote me a letter
describing it
in fearful syllables
and my jailor
passed it to me
through a crack in the wall.
I read it again now,
feverishly, and with great sorrow,
as the vermin
gnaw at each other
around my feet.
My naked body,
clutched tight around itself,
withers like a grape on the vine.
Lola, please burn this letter.

 

---

TAYLOR GAY MOORE was born in Vancouver, BC, in 1992 and has lived there for most of his life. He attended McGill University in Montreal, where he obtained a B.A. in English Literature. His work has previously appeared in Graphite Publications, Pulp Magazine and the Spadina Literary Review.