Lessons taught between breaths Our lazy voices thick with sleep. Tones that roll like grassy hills, Fields where I am determined to till familiarity Though I am burdened by my tripping tongue. A corner of your mind reserved for dreaming, Though your reaching arms still seem to find me Mumbling in the...
Who brushed horizons open, Spilled dawn into river’s mouth, Draped blue ’cross mountain’s shoulders? Who folded hush into thunder’s pause, Wove hoarfrost across the ribs of stone, Taught roots to listen ‘neath loam’s dark pulse? I step barefoot into its breath, No stranger and no intruder— I’m only the wind stitched to my...
so you leave home and hope it makes you better. you don’t say goodbye and you don’t keep in touch. there is a simmer amidst your sinew and an itch behind your eyes and you are always climbing out of yourself. you can scratch the...
Are you a sinner? Cain and Abel pass plates at dinner. Stepping onto the bus with that blue knapsack, Mom’s back, smashed, from the pressure of trying to keep you upright. Dad yelled ‘cause you ran up the phone bill again. On the bus after school, A girl told me that you...
INTERROGATION OF MRS. JOHN GRAVES AS TO THE DEATH OF ANGELA TIMONY OCTOBER 29, 1644 “Mrs. Graves,” Moncton said. “Three nights ago, you turned yourself in to my fellow investigator, Mr. Clarkson, claiming yourself to be a werewolf. Do you deny this?” “I do not.” “You then confessed...
Memorandum To: All Staff From: Dog Subject: Stay To Whom it May Concern: Please see me as an emaciated hound, taken off the streets, abandoned at the shelter, lips peeling back to the shine of my bared teeth. A reminder that I am: Ready to bite a hand that dares to...
It’s silly, really, how I cling, nails piercing palms, to that postcard dream of Switzerland. You said it once, just offhand, that you’d love to wake up there one Christmas to the hush of snow, in a silence too perfect to take for granted. And each year I promise myself: Go. Book...
[audio mp3="https://www.queensquilt.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Ocalenie-Salvation.mp3"][/audio] And so we go back: Back to where ancient spruce stand sentinel over the place where you were born. Where all that’s left is a horseshoe and a brick in a muddy field, quietly making their way back to dust. This is my inheritance you say, an arm sweeping...
Whispering songs will sing back a story of the ever-changing, ever-watchful moon, If there is another so vigilant, let us sing it. The light beams down, a spotlight on her crumpling, hunching form. She awakens like this; under moonlight; shivering, crying, and seeping. Her soft inner thighs stain a...
MARTIN, L.—Died publicly on March 9, 2021, in the same way a caterpillar must die to become a moth. MARTIN, L.—Died quietly on July 16, 2020. All of her organs began to dissolve, with only the important ones remaining. For instance, the letter P. She will...