Poetry
-
A Review of Georgia San Li’s “Wandering”
by LIT poetry editors, Rebecca Endres and Richard Berwind
Wherever you look in Georgia San Li’s “Wandering,” you are bound to find people in that restless stage of anticipation, traveling and on the cusp of arriving at their next destination. The voices of her poems are so often “alone and surrounded/waiting, to enter somewhere else.” It’s the yearning, the tightness in the chest before crossing that threshold to somewhere else that makes her poems so powerful.
As the title of the book suggests, “Wandering” tackles movement—between past and present, between different generations of family,
-
Two Poems by Chloé Savoie-Bernard from “Royaume Scotch Tape” Translated from the Québécois French by April Yee
image curtesy of The Public Domain Review
weather forecast
saturday night all over again
girls smoked down to the filter
bloomed girls craving pollen
dropping petal by petal
girls will fall from windows
shower in villeray mile end hochelaga
pretty girls with conditioned hair
wafting clinique happy
discounted at the department store
bring your umbrellas
girls will rain to the ground
dust ash from their dresses
to get to their lovers’ homes
legs twisted from the fall
elbows knees
palms bloodied
gravel-
bedded wounds
they’ll get up anyway
and all those boys
will cover their injured limbs
in mickey mouse band aids
prévision météorologique
samedi soir une fois encore
des filles fumées jusqu’au filtre
des filles fleurs en manque de pollen
qui s’étiolent pétale après pétale
des filles tomberont des fenêtres
crachin dans villeray mile end hochelaga
de jolies filles aux cheveux hydratés
sentant le clinique happy
en solde chez la baie
sortez vos parapluies
elles s’écraseront lourdement au sol
épousseteront la cendre de leurs robes
pour remonter chez leurs amants
les jambes tordues par l’impact
les coudes les genoux
les paumes en sang
de la garnotte
plein leurs blessures
elles remonteront quand même
et les garçons qu’elles rejoignent
mettront sur leurs corps accidentés
des band aids mickey mouse
*
third date
looking at the ceiling of your room it’s time for confessions the post-coital chalice
you confess all your exes are screamers the rest of your phrase slipping a sigh I
want to take back the echo ask what kind of screams gah you reply crazy screams
i fling on my clothes won’t see you ever again definitely don’t walk me out that’s
too proper i’d rather take back everything i left behind slamming the door of your
flat repatriate my residues my shedded cells where you’ll sleep tonight and
tomorrow and the day after till you decide to dissolve me and wash from your
sheets the remaining tatters of my skin let them longlive me let them hug you
sweetly and shush don’t talk about girls like that let my sebum and scent sing you
to sleep and watch your slumber while exhaling in your ear that all the nutcases
the psychos the wack jobs that all the crazies are all my sisters
troisième date
on regarde le plafond de ta chambre c’est le moment des confessions I guess
calice de post-coït cave tu m’avoues qu toutes tes ex sont des crisses dans un
soupir sille le reste de ta phrase je veux récupérer l’echo te demande des crisse de
quoi han tu me réponds des crisse de folles je me rhabille rapidement ne te
reverrai jamais ne me reconduis surtout pas ça va être correct mais j’aurais préféré
reprendre tout ce que j’ai laissé de moi en fermant la porte de ton appartement
dans de grands mouvement de bras rapatrier mes résidus mes cellules mortes dans
lesquelles tu te coucheras ce soir et demain et après-demain jusqu’à ce que tu
décides de me dissoudre en mettant tes draps au lavage puisqu’ils doivent rester la
les lambeaux de ma peau qu’ils me prolongent qu’ils t’étreignent doucement et te
chuchotent qu’on ne dit pas ça des filles qu’elles sont folles que mon sébum et les
restes de mon parfum te bercent et veillent ton sommeil en te soufflant sur la
nuque que toutes les bâtardes les démentes les étrangères que toutes le folles sont
mes soeurs
"Royaume Scotch Tape" is published by L'Hexagone and is available here
Dr.
-
After the Renaissance
by Stuart Sheppard
We have lost the ability to see what the ancients saw,
as we no longer look at the world in candlelight.Things are seen too clearly now,
the way we have washed the dirty gaze of Michelangelo
from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.When God holds out his hand to us
we like to count the fingers,
instead of leaning forward into the warmth of his palm,like a cat seeking the heat of our flesh at night,
remembering its birth in darkness. -
Third Shift
by Elizabeth Pope
painting by the author
You took a night class, 3D design with the intent to get out of the house
to meet people and make something, to move your mind off the ceiling
watermarks baring the maps of escape, fissures leaking
the silhouette of Alaska.
Left your husband
and daughter, bottled breastmilk in the deep freeze.Your hair was longer then, and you always worried it might catch fire
as you solder-ironed a book out of steel strips
the size of toothpicks, -
Jam
photo by Vasily Kleymenov on pexels
by Samn Stockwell
A cockroach takes a sip of night, stirs
by the highway where a mouse
prods bits of chips in a red wrapper.I’m hanging on the guardrails
of the overpass, on a thin crumble
of sidewalk – belowthe turn of the streetcar waddling back,
a guitar player rumbling his hand up the frets,
and the moon over the amplitude
of a horn blowing the last note.
Samn Stockwell has published in Agni,
-
Folktale #333
by Jaye Nasir
photo by Ricardo Lima on pexels
In the dark woods. In the dark
woods at night. It was
a dark and stormy night. There
was a girl. There she was, among
the willows. Among the open mouths
of the trillium flowers.
It was a girl, the woods. A dark
and stormy girl. This girl she was
a woods. The tallest tree: her mother.To make an index of every folktale
defeats the purpose. The point
of a story is: you cannot catch it.
