the dream world - alison pick

Shake up envy. Shake up
the impulse toward acquisition --
it batters you nightly, a moth at a bulb.
Shake up the trope of the moth at a bulb:

words take shape in fresh combination,
cheerleaders on court at halftime. A girl tossed
skyward, bent at the waist, a check mark
against a ballot's blank box. Vote for the moment,

vote for atonement, for taking a long walk alone
through the forest. Morning is raising
its snapping white flag. You exit the alders, hands
in the air, and wake: your final surrender.

Pick, Alison. "The Dream World" The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2008. Bolster, Stephanie, ed. Toronto: Tightrope Books, 2008. 89.

from the meadow - peter everwine

It isn't that you were ignorant:
star thistle, bloodroot, cruciform...
beautiful words, then as now,
unlike pain with its wooden alphabet,
its many illustrations, which are redundant.

You had imagined vistas, an open meadow:
on the far side, water trembles its lights;
cattle come down to their shadow lives
beneath the trees;
the language of childhood is invented anew.

But now you know, right? what lies ahead
is nothing to the view behind?
How breathtaking these nostalgias rising
like hazy constellations overhead!--

little to go by, surely,
though from the meadow where you stand looking
over your shoulder, that tiny figure you see
seems to be calling someone,
you perhaps.

Everwine, Peter. "From the Meadow" The Pushcart Book of Poetry. Murray, Joan, ed. New York: Pushcart Press, 2006. 355.

(from) zero gravity - gwyneth lewis

XII

Only your eyesight can be used in space.
Now you've captured the telescope, nebulae
are birthmarks on your new-born face.
The sun's flare makes a Cyclops eye
on your visor. The new spectrograph
you've installed in the Hubble to replace the old
makes black holes leap closer, allows us to grasp
back in time through distance, to see stars unfold
in nuclear gardens, galaxies like sperm
swirled in water, rashes of young hot stars,
blood-clot catastrophes, febrile swarms
of stinging explosions. But what's far
doesn't stop hurting. Give me a gaze
that sees deep into systems through clouds of debris
to the heart's lone pulsar, let me be amazed
by the red shifts, the sheer luminosity
that plays all around us as we talk on the beach,
thinking there's nothing between us but speech.

Lewis, Gwyneth. from "Zero Gravity" Scanning the Century: The Penguin Book of the Twentieth Century in Poetry. Peter Forbes, Ed. London: Penguin Books, 1999. 500.

bounty - robyn sarah

Make much of something small.
The pouring-out of tea,
a drying flower's shadow on the wall
from last week's sad bouquet.
A fact: it isn't summer anymore.

Say that December sun
is pitiless, but crystalline
and strikes it like a bell.
Say it plays colours like a glockenspiel.
It shows the dust as well,

the elemental sediment
your broom has missed,
and lights each grain of sugar spilled
upon a tabletop, beside
pistachio shells, peel of a clementine.

Slippers and morning papers on the floor,
and wafts of iron heat from rumbling rads,
can this be all? No, look -- here comes the cat,
with one ear inside out.
Make much of something small.

Sarah, Robyn. "Bounty" Modern Canadian Poets. Jones, Evan and Todd Swift, eds. Manchester: Carcanet Press Limited, 2010. 181.

submit to Bridge Songs: Heartbreak

some friends of mine are putting on a great community arts event. details:

Bridge Songs is an annual two day community arts event blending original music (a recorded album and live performances) with visual art, poetry and short films around a central theme. 

This year's event, Bridge Songs: Heartbreak, runs June 14 and 15, 2013, at The Anglican Parishes of St.Faith's and St.Stephen the Martyr (11725 93st, Edmonton, Alberta).

"You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up.” ― Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum

From lost loves to lost hopes, let downs to letting go, we've all housed broken hearts. Sometimes we're all alone, and sometimes communities break together, all at once. Every heartbreak holds a choice - retreat or restart? Seal off, or open up? Contain, or continue? 

We invite artists in all media to submit original works about heartbreak. We want to hear the deep and abiding stories of hearts at risk, hearts betrayed, and hearts made whole again.

you can submit songs, art, poetry and/ or short films here.