Poetry

Contest Winner

Catalogue of What We Want and Cannot Hold

By Sarah Wolfson
“This is what language is: a habitable grief.” — Eavan Boland I. Minor lunar triumph: small-fry celestial event gone digital. On Earth, Longhorns doze in the shadows of retired rockets, conspicuous mammalian...
Contest Winner

At the Stroke of Midnight

By Kerry Rawlinson
/
Contest Winner

Group Chat Finds Love

By Sarah Ens
There’s been a breakup so we’ve assembled in the Kootenays, each monitoring a different app, the zip & fizz of new likes, & the day’s agglomerate of nearby men: mediocre, milquetoast, many,...
Contest Winner

Winnipeg, July 2024

By Jackie Lea Sommers
Chad Allan has died, and Robbie Bachman has died, and Ray St. Germain has just died, and Winnipeg is fifteen decades (c)old. Holy conjunction, agglomerate of rivers, where tangerine sunset injects heartache...
Contest Winner

In a past life we were queer women convalescing at the seaside

By Dessa Bayrock
The sea grey and unyielding, as though it’d been taking lessons from your eyes. Nevertheless: your hands pressing a shell into my palm, gritty with sand on one side, blushing unexpected tangerine...

Poem by Way of Example

By Josiah Nelson
For instance shoes. For instance feet in shoes on tiptoes to kiss. For instance fingers interlocking. For instance a thin layer of sweat between hands. For instance atoms never quite touching other...

Sonnet for a Tropical Snake

By Lindsay Bird
It took six whole children to hold the snake aloft, its skin like a bean of August swelled by buckets of squealing guinea pigs, or whatever an anaconda might need to keep...
Contest Winner

Scar Tissue

By Andrea Scott
First Place, 2024 Foster Poetry Prize For ten days I hung around on all fours, crafted a “tunes for birthing” mixtape of feminist singer-songwriters, then choked down a cocktail of castor oil...
Contest Winner

STARVING AND MOON-SOAKED

By Chelsea Comeau
You knew something was wrong when the wedding invitation never arrived, but you didn’t ask when you called, just told me you were buying my bus ticket to the town up north...