January 2014 | back-issues, poetry
That road through the country
Unspooling under a dark mountain
Massages my shins like wine.
Rose-colored cliffs protest
My black-and-white ideas.
The day in the city is over.
Old trees on the hillsides crack
Their knuckles into the air,
Pulling at lyres of light.
Birds glide on updrafts
Of the wound I released.
The day in the city is over.
Grasses bend in stress,
Winds unknot muscles,
Leaning hard as a masseuse.
Wheat, a promise panting
Through the throat of the valley,
Nods. The day in the city is over.
We wait under the sun,
Enduring impossible delays
Of this growth. If
The thresher holds
Our heads up to the sickle,
The day in the city is over.
But all is well.
Still on the way, believing
Earthbeats know their sway.
Brentwood
by Ryan Gregg
January 2014 | back-issues, poetry
but beauty is a living room
in a warehouse.
It lies in glass houses
measured in square footage.
Beauty is but a bird
Silk screened,
“only ninety-nine,
ninety-nine.”
My art is the pain in touch,
sanctity
Sucked from the pope
Screaming.
It feels like
raw chicken,
eats like my lovers
ate me,
so feed it.
by Brittney Blystone
Brittney Blystone studied creative writing in the United States at Northern Kentucky University and in England at University of East London.
January 2014 | back-issues, poetry
Farm land, house land,
Town land, mall land
3 hectares of box-store monolith land
Land of the soccer-centre and recreational utility building
Of thirteen civic centre’s and four public libraries with faded magazines and instructional videos
Occupying two thirds of a floor
Of catholic-school kids hogging the computers and Russian literature, faking excessively long shits in the single bathroom stall, to stalking the only people who actually filled out the requisitional form for a library card.
“can I have your number?”
Of one memorial centre/ prison and four banks on separate corners.
“This was once the most fertile land in all of Canada”
Red-eyed in Denny’s after church
“This was all field all corn and field”
I once grew a pumpkin
It took eight weeks and fourteen seeds and
Ballooned to the size of a lemon
And spat out only three seeds when my dad stepped on it
With size fourteen steel-toe workmans.
Of white flights that keep darkening
And a checkerboard layout that keeps filling in all the
Blank spaces
And two schools built in the middle of factory zones
“what’s wrong with this picture students”
And the laser-tag looks out onto the refinery by the Toys R Us
Next to the ten-lane highway with seven interchanges
Where we still see the occasional coyote.
“but where are the good neighbourhoods anymore”
one bar per hundred thousand
And sixteen home reno stores
“just outside of town”
And the movie theatre blasts opera on Fridays to scare off the teens
But don’t tell me there’s religious tension, the grandmother’s won’t allow it
Of cities that still think they’re towns
and town-lines that change every month
and immigrant towns that change the words for immigrant every month
“but don’t tell me we’re full there’s corn everywhere,
don’t worry we’re made for flight”
by Connor Mellegers
Connor Mellegers is originally from Brampton, Ontario and currently resides in Montreal Quebec where he is pursuing an English Literature degree at Concordia University. His work has previously appeared in The Fat City Review.
