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Contemporary Verse 2
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Poetry Only

Spring 2013. Vol. 35 No.4

CV2’s annual issue dedicated to poetry – and poetry only. Barry Dempster, Alice Major, Phoebe Wang, Onjana Yawnghwe and 32 others bring you new poetry this spring. This issue also has the winners from the 2012 2-Day Poem Contest.

Online content from this issue

  • Kill Site

    by Barry Dempster
    The tufts of grey fur lie on the spruce-lined path like a taxidermist’s slough, an afterlife in the works. Look...

  • Camp 4

    by Autumn Richardson
    No sign of life, not a bird, not a plant. Only lichens clothing the sharp stones with grey.   A...

  • Mourning Doves

    by Phoebe Wang
    They are wintering over. In the mornings I’m an eavesdropper to their aubade, low, woeful murmurings gurgling into my inner...

  • The Knowing Animals

    by Emily Skov-Nielsen
    In a wood stirring with elk blood and rorid air, the invisibles were all ears: all lays and hoofprints.  ...

  • ode to ee

    by Dan MacIsaac
    i dream of ee   pygmy stylist   lord of small holdings   he with swift feet   lilliputian linesman...

  • Kelly Block Fire

    by Jesse Matas
    A man is cuffed to a wooden ladder. His body transfixed as if the old hag is sitting on his...

  • Grief, oranges

    by Alice Major
    Never again will you do this: peel an orange, its rind coming away in ragged, cloth-lined cups. The globe beneath...

  • fugitive

    by Chelsea Comeau
    spring: the river swells unabashedly and takes what it doesn’t own, pulling the soft earth into it, taking, taking. soon...

  • Post-Surgery

    by Leslie Casey
    My right arm casted, this poem has little choice but to wend, flesh-bare and wan through Percocet dreams where bones...

  • The Tribble

    by Jes Battis
    I approach the panel.  Your blazer makes my eyes wend.  Are you there, Catullus? I need to borrow the spindles...

  • Instructions for Peer Evaluation, with Examples

    by Kathy Mac
    Slide 1: You must give a spread of grades.   Slide 2: You must explain on the reverse the salient...

  • To the Woman I Left at the World’s Fair, 1974.

    by Ann Ward
    There you were, an Eastman Kodak girl in a yellow dress, Orange-lipped and garrulous, offering to take my picture.  ...

  • How the Starling Came to America: a glosa for P.K. Page

    by Medrie Purdham
    It was that teen who made our sky inscribable. Juliet.  I would I were thy bird, she said.  The tickle...

  • Flammable Rabbits of Stockholm

    by Katia Grubisic
    What this party needs is the twentieth century: remember me? This is not a story. A Reuters scoop and grim...