View Issue vol. 7, no. 3
ISSN 2369-6516 (Print)
ISSN 2369-6524 (Online)
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Ali Calladine – Stories to Tell
Marilyn Challis – Pining for Pines
Zoe Dickinson – April in Halifax
Brian Dockal – Between The Lines
Brad Donaldson – Songs at Midnight
Jim Hoyle – On seeing Chabas’ “September Morn”
Thibault Jacquot-Paratte – I Stepped Away
Scott Lynch – In the time of rhododendron
Ayesha Mushtaq – The Fundamental Orient
Chris Smith – Fractional Reserve Lending
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Fractional Reserve Lending
Poem by Chris Smith
What would you say
If I told you a story
About all that is pay
Is another man’s glory
A bar on your prison
You’ve never been told
A point never arisen
Yet frequently sold
To create its existence
Of nothing it’s made
Computing persistence
And lost into trade
Now this bubble is big
More than ever before
Exposing the rig
It’s too much to ignore
Time now to awake
Beg, steal or borrow
The money is fake
Save our kids from the sorrow.
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Not Welcome
Poem by Janet Brush
Through the open glass doors
A small patio table
Two chairs
A pot of flowers –
No one sits there
The furniture longs
For those who are gone
The chairs call out
“Sit on me
Lean on my table
Smell my flowers”
When I gaze at the photo
I hear the table speak
“We’d like to ask you in
But we regret that
There is no welcome here
For you”.
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April in Halifax
Poem by Zoe Dickinson
Snowbanks shrivel
like jellyfish washed up on the sand:
towering white waves shrunk to hunched heaps,
gritty and twisted.
Melting ice distils the city’s many hearts,
each one different:
complex alien coral,
rearing many-toothed maws,
proud turrets and cupolas,
serrated lizard spines,
soiled lattice and lace.
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Would he ever laugh or sing?
Would he ever spill out words?
Would he hold a book and look?
Would he ever catch my eye
Or throw me his?
Cyclonic child, he stormed the world
Cast all loose tack and gear adrift
Tantrum-ed like a challenged god
Unleashed his force till all was spent.
Lapsed into tears.
Now twelve, he’s agile, apt, acute.
He’s given up Olympian ways
And joined mere mortals of our race
Who learn by watching how to go.
Lad of my heart.
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Songs at Midnight
Poem by Brad Donaldson
hell bent on hillsides, alcohol seeping
from my skin come Monday Morning
alarm clock joy. young, and up all night,
drunk, more so than not and only in love
with myself, always wanting what I don’t
have and horny; drugged in translucent self
reflection methamphetamine at sunrise,
six AM jazz. I’m a mess, the trumpet says,
I hate myself, sings the saxophone riff,
my head pounds as the drums are hit,
symbols wailing, clashing, altogether
in beautiful narcissistic harmony.
but no one listens to jazz anymore,
except at times like this; except in cars
alone in darkness, trees forever passing
along the roadside of thought, low hum of
distant trains, hazy moon hanging above
two empty bridges– the choice of only one
is troubling. the starlight glows, swaying
through meters of time while the reliable
people are going to work, dreaming of
offices and pay checks. and so I begin to
finally hum along, up past my bedtime.
hide and go seek I hope I’m never found.
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Stories to Tell
Poem by Ali Calladine
Through glass, through nights, and paper it fell-
fell through spring, through doubts, this belle.
Perhaps fell to another as well.
She fell through poems with poem readers,
fell through dreams with not-quite dreamers,
read the wonder’d as he could read her.
So fell me further o root who’s tripped me.
I wish to see you seeing with me.
Please tell me when you’ll come to be,
You see? Let’s wonder free.
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Losing Passions
Poem by Ryan Taylor
lost and
forgotten friends
oh where am I?
wasted and drunk
hammered
only attending the boxing day
dances and rituals
of friends in need
where I am
we wonder
the scent of bacon
morning pierogis
boxes and bags of
that young pup
dog
who chewed laces
confessing her heart to hearts
men of all people
growing hearts apart
dying
not worlds away
but short distanced
lost at lakes
with friends forgotten
and wives on way
that distant night
long lost sway
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The Fundamental Orient
Poem by Ayesha Mushtaq
Nitpicking on smidgens of detail
The argument blew up the sky
This and that became me and mine
And fled to the proverbial “I”
He spoke a different language then
In plaintive syllables of East,
The gliding Earth and the heaving sea
Shut down and froze to death
There’s nothing beyond the cultural view
To a she-traveller from the East
The life that’s spun on railway tracks
Is, in truth, tied back by a stifling thread
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Her Promise
Poem by Shawn Myra
You slowly walk toward me,
dark silhouette smiling,
shaped by soft light warming,
from a vast celestial sea.
The distance between us shrinking,
the nearest starlight shimmering,
the corona of beauty hiding
what my heart can only see.
My eyes were straining to behold
what the September sun was hiding,
my lovely bride was walking,
bringing her promise to me.
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Tears
Cold feet
Dripping mascara
Train tickets
Break ups
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Between The Lines
Poem by Brian Dockal
Chockablock at the discotheque tonight,
whips of fan dancers past tense,
flutter and slice the light,
unclipped wings of vehemence,
cultural histoire’s erased flight,
gay boys on the cusp,
whelped by vindictive’s delight,
fierce to plenitude’s thrust,
eyes click to the throngs,
fanning peacock’s of lust,
assaults on the airs strong,
the strut begins circa 1980,
glittered AIDS bomb premature, maybe,
weapons of destruction,
deep in the kill,
sweat glistens seduction,
skin tight clones having their fill,
soldiers on the margins,
in arenas they step,
voodoo’s children,
lone wolves, fangs bare, tongues swept,
drowning seas of legacies,
toreadors, daylight’s eunuchs, now slay,
cutthroat deans and doyennes,
while twilight splays,
incinerating generations of forgotten fends.
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I Stepped Away
Poem by Thibault Jacquot-Paratte
I stepped away to the middle of the night
out of the closet or out the door
to meet with the hobo crying in the street
on a bed of his money and his booze
there could always be number two
there could always be the
unspoken, unwritten connection,
unanswered messages
Flagpoles left unbannered,
bare simplicity of grey matter,
Aluminum, the gaps of the earth, rock particles,
the sobbing on the concrete, splat,
the resting bet and when the clouds calm to fog,
we will be resuming our journey,
and your hands dry my tears.
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Satan’s Granny was God’s old lady
And they built the stars somehow
By copulating.
And the shoes by the bed were being chewed
As the waves rolled by lustfully lapping
And around it all
I mean all encompassing
Was a cunning hound
Though it was just a puppy
Standing on a surf-board
Dreaming us all
Measuring us up against the wavy wall.
Surf Puppy!
“OM”
The beginning and the end
Let your hair down
And lick your friend.
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Casually jousting
with an articulate flare
Paper moon’s rising
floating on air
Down to the grotto
Alone without care
Acting on impulse, accepting the dare
Shall I follow this route
where there are no city lights
Just silky silhouettes
reaching up to sky heights
Perhaps let it pass
via suave apathy
Sultry sweet turmoil
Taunting me
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On seeing Chabas’ “September Morn”
Sonnet by Jim Hoyle
Ah, Sweet Gamine, the chill of Autumn air
surprised you, nipped you, caught you unaware.
You cringe and hug yourself. You crouch and wish
for warmth in rising sunshine’s early kiss.
Pure, nubile nymph, your beauty was maligned
by shallow, self-important philistine,
who arrogated false morality;
the fool intruded on your privacy.
He drank no drop, but passed the Pierian spring
and raised a scolding voice. His clamouring
aroused a Puritanical complaint
which vilified the art; imposed restraint.
What thought he then of Rembrandt, Raphael ?
How innocent you are, chaste demoiselle.
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In the time of rhododendron
Poem by Scott Lynch
this redolent realm of passions
dandelion massing like Serengeti gnu
colour drawn from a numinous well
poured in a torrent with birdsong
inexorably spring peepers herald the budding
bemused abandon excites
each second in sunshine
beguiled blossoming is begun
cherry & dogwood eclipsed by magnolia
tulip and daffodil arouse the coming
leaf upon leaf
dervish I dally
enthralled
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Gone, too long.
Gone, too soon.
Gone, and never coming back.
Gone, not for getting.
Gone, into the wild.
Gone, just plain ole gone.
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Darkness really creeps me out,
But I don’t want to scream or shout,
If I leave it behind me,
It will come and find me!
And I don’t have a doubt…
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In you,
in your new light
I have found you
beautiful and truant.
You give me
shiny black stones
worthless enough
to be gifts.
Your hands,
soft and strong,
easing me through
these fits and gurgles.
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Pining for Pines
Poem by Marilyn Challis
I have a tree
That does love me.
Green needles encircle my heart.
Every day,
It passes my way.
I hope we never part.
Open Heart Forgery 