Michael e. Casteels

MULTIPLE CHOICE

a) you avert your eyes, look down at the sidewalk

b) you smile and say hello

c) you run screaming into the night

d) you both run screaming into the night



Michael e. Casteels has self-published over a dozen chapbooks of poetry and artwork. His poetry has also appeared in 529 (Proper Tales Press), Sterling Magazine, The Undergraduate Review, Incongruous Quarterly, In/Words, and That Not Forgotten (Hidden Brook Press). He was nominated for the emerging artist award in the 2012 Premier's Awards for Excellence in the Arts. He lives in Kingston, Ontario where he runs Puddles of Sky Press (www.puddlesofskypress.com).

Carol A. Stephen

SCENES IN A YELLOW CAB

after Joe Brainard’s Imaginary Still Lifes


I climb into a taxi
          on the other seat is a man
          with an old grey monkey

I climb into a taxi
          on the other seat is a bird cage
          with a large egg inside

I climb into a taxi
          on the other seat is a dead body
          in a flowery hat

I climb into a taxi
          on the other seat are five cold plums
          I eat them

I climb into a taxi
          on the other seat is William Carlos Williams
          he is looking for some plums

I climb into a taxi
                    There is a picture of me on the back of the seat
                    Old grey monkey clutching an egg



Carol A. Stephen is a Carleton Place poet who typed her first poems in Toronto on a green Olivetti typewriter, complete with whiteouts. Her work sometimes shows up in Ottawa journals, Tree Press chapbooks, and Ontario Poetry Society’s Verse Afire. She took third place in the 2012 Canadian Authors National Capital Writing Contest. In 2012, she also wrote a finalist poem for VERSeFest for the End of the World Contest. Carol co-directs Ottawa’s Tree Reading Series and has written two chapbooks, Above the Hum of Yellow Jackets, 2011, and Architectural Variations, 2012. Carol blogs about stuff on Quillfyre.

Jessica Hiemstra

LOVE CHANGES US. WHEN WHAT YOU HAD

destroys you, you go to the park
and kick pigeons. You scream
into anything that has a mouth,
you drop dishes
and look at the floor
and see your life in shards
that do not rise
from ashes
or tiles. Imagine
you took a bird apart

to understand it. You would
understand nothing.



Jessica Hiemstra is a visual artist and writer living in Toronto. She's is the winner of two Malahat Review Open Season Awards (2011) and the Room Magazine Annual Poetry Contest (2009). She's published two full-length collections, Apologetic for Joy (Goose Lane Editions, 2011) and Self-Portrait Without a Bicycle (Biblioasis, 2012). Visit her at jessicahiemstra.ca.