8/18/2020 POETRY: TANIS MACDONALDCLIMATE CASCADE When a crow chases an eagle, she’s no crisis but confidence. Game. Only thirty years left for chinook salmon. How many for us? Same river each time you step in and soak. Hear that long high note on a passing car stereo. Prime a pump with your own water. Skunk cabbage is strong enough to wake bears. The labyrinth pulls grief's long impacted tooth. Inland rainforest. These gigantic trees have birds I know. And won’t ever. Tanis MacDonald is the author of six books of poetry and essays, and a co-editor of GUSH: menstrual manifestos for our times. She lives on the Haldimand Tract, on traditional territories of the Attawandaron, Anishnaabe, and Haudenosaunee peoples. Recent work has appeared in Understorey, Minola Review, and Prairie Fire.
Statement: It takes guts to be here, right here, in the violence of the 21st century, dealing with the legacy of the violence of the 20th century. It takes guts to feel toxicity splash up against you and to say, I will name it as I will walk into the teeming world that teems a little less every day. It's not easy but it is right in front of us if we look. 8/17/2020 PHOTOGRAPHY: AMANDA EARLAT THE END OF DAYS “At the End of Days” is a series of photos which documents evidence of a forthcoming apocalypse. In each photo something prized by humans has been thrown away. In some cases, nature intervenes by trying to reclaim its territory, vines covering an old car, rust on metal gears left in The snow, a leaf on an old chair. Lastly, there are sunflowers picked and placed in an LCBO bag, then left in the compost heap. All of these images show a disregard for nature, a prioritizing of humans over nature instead of seeing that humans are part of nature, and our treatment of nature has consequences on the life of the planet and the continued existence of humanity. Amanda Earl is a Canadian poet, publisher, editor, prose writer, visual poet, occasional doodler who snaps pics of broken glass and dying
flowers. She has a #chairsofOttawa series on Instagram in which she takes photos of chairs that have been thrown away. Her books are “A World of Yes” (DevilHouse, 2015), “Kiki” (Chaudiere Books, 2014) and “Coming Together Presents Amanda Earl” (Coming Together, 2014). Amanda is the managing editor of Bywords.ca and the fallen angel of AngelHousePress. 8/17/2020 POETRY: CORY LAVENDERLAWSON ROY’S PINION ON SYN-THETIC POLYMERS Pity the bottom feeders! Lobster might look mighty but their numbers’ll drop faster than lead cod jigs. The clams n mussels lap up that nasty plastic crap drifts cross bottom. Nothin lobster likes more than a big feed of clams n mussels. I don’t differ—’d rather clams than lobster any day of the week. Was just up the Dairy Treat laid into a fine mess all fried up with French fries. Tasted the finest kind, if bites were a tad rubbery. Looked out cross the lot, saw a feathered ruckus floatin on the garbage barrel’s overflow —stupid gull, plastic fork stuck bent in its beak an onion ring ringin its neck. I would’ve pulled that fork outta there so ol greedy-guts crazy-head could enjoy its fried treat but you think that damned bird would sit still? * * * A damn sin, the trash the tide heaps on the beach. Out walkin, you come cross banged-up buoys or bits mangled traps, trap tags n bands, cartons n tainers pop cans n enough bottles for every last blasted soul chunks of Sty-ro-foam, Zip-loc bags, what we call penny whistles. Birthday balloons lookin like run-over jellyfish. In all colours! Bait bags, shell casins, their rubber gloves. All colours! When I was fishin Millie always made me my mitts. Weren’t nothin syn-theticful—nothin but sheep’s wool. They’d tighten from dunkin em in the salt ocean each trip. Waterproofin. Some warm. With the finger in em for firin the .22 on board in case we run up on any seals. * * * You ever seen that bit on the television? They’re out in the boat and the young fella’s wonderin what to do with his chip bag or gum wrapper or somethin or other, and the old fella he says to just toss er overboard. But where does it go, Dad? Away, son; away. Well, well now. Where the heck’s away to? Some hazy Atlantic nowhere? That fog’s comin in fast though. Can feel it fillin my chest, layin on a few extra oil-based coats. Water molly-cules and an-ti-thetic syn-thetics fillin my cavities sure as I’m breathin tumbled round, broke-down poly-sty-rene. Nothin much you buy lasts anymore, credibly quick to break. Then it’s broke it lasts and lasts and lasts and won’t ever rot! Oh, you know people—don’t they love that ol beach glass. Started makin necklaces outta the stuff, like it’s pearls! That busted glass is a bunch of trash—way I see it, the start of a terrible habit. Pieces can be pretty, sure—so! No need. Pretty as a Coke can. Go get yourself wed with a lobster band. Har-huh-hargh! They tell me it’s all the tobacco I smoked but I know it’s this fake plastic fog the ocean’s pushin. Dig up my lungs 50 years from now, you’ll find a pair of bags fit for carryin your poisoned groceries home in. Cory Lavender is a white privileged poet of Black Loyalist descent living in Nova Scotia, which is in Mi’kma’ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq People. His work has appeared in journals such as Riddle Fence, The New Quarterly, and The Dalhousie Review. His chapbook Lawson Roy’s Revelation came out with Gaspereau Press in 2018. A second chapbook, Ballad of Bernie “Bear” Roy, is forthcoming with knife | fork | book.
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