8/18/2020 POETRY: MADELINE BASSNETTCOLONY COLLAPSE Survivors crawl across withered black comb, invisible apocalypse, sisters wandering lost in the corn fields, seduced by filaments of silk, the toxic pollen. Scooping up death-- no distinction between friend and foe, all obliterated in service of unblemished fields, poisoned bees littering the ground. The low hum of welcome washed into air, torn apart by a breeze. Sent down streams like the limbs of Orpheus; the queen perched on her throne, wondering who will come to feed her. Regal head tilting patiently, big eyes surveying the decay. Where is her long train, her cloak of swarming bodies, tight as tapestry? Gone, all gone. Her own body meaningless without them. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS “Colony Collapse” has been published in a previous version in Hamilton Arts and Letters and in Under the Gamma Camera (Gaspereau, 2019). Madeline Bassnett is the author of the poetry collection Under the Gamma Camera (Gaspereau 2019), and two chapbooks, Pilgrimage and Elegies. Her poems have appeared in journals including long con magazine, Prairie Fire, Hamilton Arts and Letters, The New Quarterly, and in the anthology, In Fine Form, 2nd Edition: A Contemporary Look at Canadian Form Poetry. She is currently on the board of Poetry London and teaches in the Department of English and Writing Studies at Western University. She lives in London, Ontario.
8/18/2020 POETRY: KHASHAYAR MOHAMMADIWHERE WERE YOU WHEN I LAID THE EARTH'S FOUNDATION? at the heart of garbage the -away of the throw-away circling us in: The desert of the real a mouse click away crack turn schism salt to melt all winters away where were you when I laid the Earth’s foundation? you ask and I build Arks for when Noah comes back Khashayar Mohammadi is a queer, Iranian born, Toronto-based Poet, Writer, Translator and Photographer. He is the author of poetry Chapbooks Moe’s Skin by ZED press 2018, Dear Kestrel by knife | fork | book 2019 and Solitude is an Acrobatic Act by above/ground press 2020. His debut poetry collection Me, You, Then Snow is forthcoming with Gordon Hill Press.
8/18/2020 POETRY: JODY CHANVANCOUVER SEAWALL, THIRD BENCH FROM THE WATER let there be a word for how it feels to stand waist-deep in your tide let it be queer as in landfall as in the constellation of sand on a lover’s elbow or the lie that this land could be owned or queer as in the way time arranges the earth into wrinkles the mountain knows no monument can stand longer than the mountain already has let there be language for the unceded shore yielding pieces of itself to the outbound ocean call it love without ownership call it the skin between my hands and your sand and her collarbone unpinned call it queer as in grace comes from letting go of what was never ours to keep in the first place Previously published in haunt, Damaged Goods Press (2018). Jody Chan is a writer, drummer, organizer, and politicized healer based in Toronto. They are the author of haunt (Damaged Goods Press), all our futures (PANK), and sick, winner of the 2018 St. Lawrence Book Award. They can be found online at https://www.jodychan.com/ and offline in bookstores or dog parks.
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