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DeborahTEMPLETON |
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Deborah Templeton lives on the north coast of Ireland, and works across page, stage and audio. Her work includes an audio installation for a lighthouse, a contemplative poetry trail for woodlands, and a forest performance written in the Panamanian jungle. She is the author of Water's Edge, published by Confingo as an illustrated edition with radiophonic download in 2023.
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Dustboy
Scrub and pale and rough my garden. I am out now, soft-soled on the sift of it. Away and get some air, there's a good boy. Our yard all scrubble and dust. Bone dry, dries a bone, a wee bit breeze. We could use some weather. Bright my eyes. Sun hot on my top. Scaldy now. I put my hand, I feel the buzz of it. Scruffed and shorn, no curls. I dig a little hole with my toe in the scuff dirt. Stubble head. Stubble ground. I make dust clouds in the sunshout, in the summer still. All hush and shush. I am a slow swirl, a dust whirl, wee tatterscrap. Here is someone now. Wide foot, black jacket, peak face beaking in the gravel sand, in the sand soil, in the dust scuff. He is a little man in a big coat. He sees me with his swirly bead eye. He is a man what come in a black car that time and that was when. That was then. He is gone little but I know him by his long black, his swagger back, how here he comes web-foot, claw toe, to scratch in my soil. I watch, I whisper, I squint my eyes at the little man pulling a worm in his peaky beck. In the before, he was the crow flown into the now of that day, and his wings, his beak, his craw call all - that's what made the before and made the after and made me the tatterscrap left dust scuffing. Here comes my Pa, my Da. All tall, long, long. Come see me. His face up high in the sky brights. Spindle legs. He comes down on his hunkers, folds up like a paper man. Brings me in, wraps me up in him. I smell his warm, his tobacco sharps. I itch my nose. Big hand heavy on my head, pulls me in. He puts out the sun and we are a dark hug, and I stand stockstill in my stocking feet. I am a stickboy, shoulderbones. Poor Pappy makes a snivel sound, a shudder shake. Then he is up and I am up and out and into fresh and bright and sun spinning on stones. He wipes his eyes. He cleans my face with his fingers. Wet cheeks and smudgy. And that is when. What see we on the lane. A mangly dog, all skin bones. Would you look, Pappy say, Who come get you? And he makes a whistle in his teeth and she come lollop. Flop ear, sticky fur, cry eyes. My black crow, he gone high in the hawthorn tree. |
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These texts are published with the kind authorization of the author.
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image 180 x .... |
JoanneHARRIS
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My sour cherry liqueur is especially popular, though I feel a little guilty that I cannot remember the cherry’s name. The secret is to leave the stones in. Layer cherries and sugar one on the other in a widemouthed glass jar, covering each layer gradually with clear spirit (kirsch is best, but you can use vodka or even Armagnac) up to half the jar’s capacity. Top up with spirit and wait. Every month, turn the jar carefully to release any accumulated sugar. In three years’ time, the spirit has bled the cherries white, itself stained deep red now, penetrating even to the stone and the tiny almond inside it, becoming pungent, evocative, a scent of autumn past. Serve in tiny liqueur glasses, with a spoon to scoop out the cherry, and leave it in the mouth until the macerated fruit dissolves under the tongue. Pierce the stone with the point of a tooth to release the liqueur trapped inside and leave it for a long time in the mouth, playing with it with the tip of the tongue, rolling it under, over, like a single prayer bead. Try to remember the time of this ripening, that summer, that hot autumn, the time the well ran dry, the time we had the wasp’s nest, time past, lost, found again in the hard place at the heart of the fruit ... From Five Quarters Of The Orange William Morrow, 2021
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OttoSELLES |
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Otto Selles is a professor of French at Calvin University (Grand Rapids, MI), where he chairs the departments of World Languages and Art and Design. He studied at McMaster University in Hamilton, ON (BA, MA) and at the University of Paris-IV Sorbonne (PhD). His academic research focuses on eighteenth-century French literature and the fate of the Huguenots in France before the French Revolution. He is also a photographer and poet. The poem published here (which was originally published in the Reformed Journal in April 2012) opens his upcoming collection Matins, to be released by Pandora Press (Hamilton, ON). It is worth noting that the characteristics of this poem include both poetic and narrative elements, allowing it to be interpreted as a One-Page story.
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Matins
Before the alarm, before the reminders about lunches, band, the dentist, and soccer, I slip out of bed and watch the kettle boil to life. I greet the toast tenderly, and the jam, once again, surprises, so sweet, so sticky. Through the kitchen window I sense the sullen pine tree fenced between the garage and the power lines. I sip, chew, and cast a thought into the dark, or rather a question about the day, about what might or might not happen.
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These texts are published with the kind authorization of the author.
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TimBOWLING |
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Tim Bowling was born and raised near Vancouver, British Columbia and has lived in Edmonton, Alberta for many years. He is the author of twenty-five books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, and the recipient of numerous honours, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, five Alberta Book Awards, two nominations for the Writers Trust of Canada Awards, and two nominations for the Governor General's Award. His latest books are a collection of short stories, Graveyard Shift at the Lemonade Stand (Freehand Press, 2025) and a poetry collection, In the Capital City of Autumn (Wolsak and Wynn, 2024).
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A boarder coughs in an attic room, a child’s fever breaks, dark branches gull the glass of an upstairs window, and someone reaches for the Seneca on the shelf.
Old houses.
Something is happening at the end of their long hallways: the heart of the past is foreclosing on itself.
From Selected Poems (Nightwood Editions, 2013)
This is the only letter God will ever send you. And if, opening it, you expect answers, advice, condolences, you will find a signature of bone. Otherwise, a great hunched watchfulness will leave your body, and perch on the black branch between stars.
From Selected Poems (Nightwood Editions, 2013)
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