ottawater edited by: rob mclennan | January 2015 design by: tanya sprowl I I

STEVEN ARTELLEThree poems ............................ 3

JENNIFER BAKERPhantom Limb .......................... 4

SELINA BOANExhale ....................................... 6

FRANCES BOYLEPursuit ...................................... 7The Music Holds You ............... 8Cringe ....................................... 8Land line ................................... 8

JAMIE BRADLEYMunicipal Song ........................ 9

RONNIE R. BROWNDREAM #7 ................................ 12

CATHERINE BRUNETRequiem for the Train ............... 13

JASON CHRISTIELa Morte d’Artur ...................... 14

FAIZAL DEENMOM & BOB: Matinees ........... 16

DALTON DERKSONbissett onna bus ....................... 18

AMANDA EARLThree from Saint. Ursula’s

Commonplace Book ............... 19

PHIL HALLCarnivale .................................. 20Little Fiddle .............................. 20

CHRIS JOHNSONEchoes and Other Repetitions . 21This poem as your dream ........ 21

MATT JONESCaptain ..................................... 22Burn a Koran Day ..................... 22

A.M. KOZAKSPINOZA’S RACECAR ............... 23

BRENDA LIEFSOIn the small hours .................... 24Anniversary Poem .................... 24Clay Bowl ................................. 24Unexplained Phenomena ......... 24words on the birth of a

daughter ................................. 25What It All Comes Down To,

Part I ....................................... 25Calgary Father Kills Tenant,

Three Children, Wife, Before Killing Self .............................. 25

On Worship............................... 25The Hard Facts Are .................. 25

ROB MCLENNANCorporation of snow: ............... 26

CATH MORRISDrawn ....................................... 29

COLIN MORTONLast Rites ................................. 30

ALCOFRIBAS NASIER II(32)............................................ 31

PEARL PIRIEhow to express a different

point of view ......................... 32tied ........................................... 32

NICHOLAS POWERExcerpts from a series called

Tin Dittoes .............................. 33[the following are edited

centos] .................................... 34[excerpts from wild

uncertainties] ......................... 36

RYAN PRATTMontreal express, 6:40 ........... 38

MONTY REIDfrom INTELLIGENCE ................. 39

SONIA SAIKALEYBasho’s Haiku Goes to

the Frogs ................................ 40The Red Bridge ......................... 40

DEAN STEADMANMorning at the Museum

with Mr. Rux ........................... 41

ROB THOMASdon’t get cute with me ............. 42

DENNIS TOURBINCanoe Lake ............................... 43What do I know about

the landscape ......................... 44

LAUREN TURNERFaulty introductions ................. 45

VIVIAN VAVASSISidentity, era and echo .............. 46

WAR POET: An Interview with Matt Jones ............................... 47

GOING BACK INTO THE TANGLE: An interview with Brecken Hancock, by Lesley Strutt ............................. 50

CONFESSION & FETISHES: Jennifer Baker in conversation with Phil Hall ........................... 53

Cover Art by DIANE LEMIREDoll. felted with wool and fond objectsWWW.TOURCW.COWWW.PAF-FAS.ORGL. A. PAI GALLERY

Contents

ottawater: 10 - 3

one rabbit imagined an inverted historyin which the permanent gods delivered a tributeof weeping disease to all the kings of doomed Europein the holds of their plundered ships, in the enslaved bloodof the Defeatadors who staggered back onto theirreceding shores, nameless and unchronicled, with wordof an invulnerable multitude that armouredthe earth like volcanic glass, lacerating the solesof every alien who dared to press the pure soilwhere the Triple Alliance Empire ruled in glory

and with their own language between their teeth, the righteousAztec nations pursued them over the jade oceanwith Quetzalcoatl’s devout armada, bringingshields and axes and cane arrows, and dreaming of spoilin return: amber and turquoise and the skins of birdsbut who beheld without wonder and without mercythe meagre cities of the new world—then four hundrednights of sorrows began, as sickness and warriorsoverwhelmed the courts of Lisbon, of Madrid, of Romeand in their holy wake crashed the blasphemous idols from every dome and installed Ometeotland the Hummingbird and the Lord of the Place of Deathand the great inebriated rabbit pantheon

then for centuries on the pyramids of Parisand forever in the glyphs of London’s great temple another modernity called the Pax Aztecacarved the trajectory of culture through sacrifice

then suddenly her boarding call, and the reverievanished in the frantic search for her buried passport

Steven ArtelleThree poems

when the salt rabbit melted in the mouth of the rainthey say that’s when the war of the wallflowers began

for sugar, a bottle of bridesmaids came licking, shamedin seafoam, and went away thirsty with stinging hands

into an ambush of trophy wives, their blackjacks aimedat last to tie the precious metal grudge in ribbons and turn the world wateryeyed in the meangirl wind who knows what the rabbit did all the while, maybe yawnedor maybe mercuried all the way to the oceanwith winter shitsoup and rivulets of gasoline

under manila sunsets and nostalgic kitchenspill light, into the pitchblack of childhood terrain

the untalkedabout downhill, between the nonstop stemsof mazegrass, disappeared, never to be seen again

the last of the desiccated men finally stoodface to face beyond alkali civilizationwhere homesteader Death staked its claim with petrified treesand the loose end of the railroad and unrequitedcruelty, where nothing moved except prehistoricmemory with a harmonica fixed in its teethand a rabbit shaped like a tumbleweed, who cartwheeledpast the archetypes—black hat of evil incarnatebleached hat of righteous vengeance—immobilized in theirextinction speed until the gunslinger end of time

ottawater: 10 - 4

Jennifer BakerPhantom Limb in his review of Reaney’sA Suit of Nettles Northrop Frye declaressouthern Ontario surely one of the most inarticulate communitiesin human culture

*

speak/cannibalize

practicality: click/lock engine spits & shuffles

its parietal praxis convention understanding need

in the amygdalalanguage branches arbourtrary:

body of evidence/post-traumatic/letting go

corpus/brains/sepulchre

*

he grins a PTO amputation

our rotationseems static/but a hum

one unbuttoned cuff & tendons recoila cautionary nub offered to a semicircleof seven-year-olds

you can feel it

he says

I can still feel itsometimes it aches

grasp the ghost hand

*

field bindweed

morning glory running rootstocks

every portion will produce new plantsif broken

hydra-like/gorgon-hairedsome days an oathto go completely

feral

noticeable localities: Usborne Hay Stephen Tuckersmith Montreal Ottawa

produces few seedsthere

no need

multiplesthrough injury impostor

has everywhere a most persistent habitof growth

each wound trumpets invitation: expand

ottawater: 10 - 5

*I want my lexicon to rip organic through concrete

branch new grief tributaries

echo hymns sung to barn catssheltered under a pine tree in the snow

litanies to the abandoned lilting in the scrawlache alwaysa barren landscape

familiar & banal & tender

gut-punch *

shout openings sever the homeplace

nerves reach out & clutch—inarticulate

snap & tether

a snare I / un / knot

Gayle Kellsuntitled, Meandering seriesink on paper

ottawater: 10 - 6

Selina BoanExhale

we arrive blinking lullabies, breathing toothbrush stories, sinking yarn bodies to pews. hesitate chatter.

patter of hands to backs, we can’t help but fragment. trace ephemeral bone towards amnesia. what we want is your button holes and sandpaper fingers, thirteen backyard fences of youth and impersonation of oscar wilde, bending cartwheels and lexicons. we gulp up clattered amalgamation, clutter diction against inhale of lavender oatmeal, marmalade raspberry patch. self to ghost-hum. make into you allegory breath.

Allen EganThe Declaration 36X48 oil on canvaswww.eganacci.wix.com/allen-egan-paintings

ottawater: 10 - 7

kneeling beside the prayer bench with holy hush betweenits rising notes, the song sidesteps the crushing engine,the forward movement. The song evades, the song evokes, the song shades in variations of rainbow grey. How the song squeaks itself outhigh and – what’s that sound? – cricket creak, frog croak, peal of tinny tiny electric bell. Spoke on a wheel, flap of playing card, engine can’t catch the high pitched song. How so song? Where is the reckoning? What a wayto move, shadow sideways on top of the motionthe force, the hum.

Frances BoylePursuit

How song evades the engines Pearl Pirie “Mammals of Hoarfrost”

Engine hums since it doesn’t know the words, rhythm up and downand rhythm fast and slow. Thrum hum, beedlepop and ping, the song skirts the turning internalcombustion piston pumping, spark plug arcingacross the leads, the song dancing, bip bippinga sprite teasing out of the way, engine hard and greasywith its effort, puts its head down and runs,runs into the future. And the song half-envious

hangs behind, skirls over and around, evading the rhythm but losing its yowl, its impetus. Worst news ever, cat and mouse empty coconut shells, ball beneath rattling choice.Instinctive shuffle and bounce, nothingup your sleeve, show the forearms. It’s allabout the evasive song and the engine’s relentlessone-sided pursuit, how the song bounces effortlesslyon the surface away from the churning pig-headedengine, the containment, the compression,invades the momentum, gives voice to the rhythm

ottawater: 10 - 8

Land line

Sub(vocal) texts, cassis flavoured cocktailsare zipped sotto voce, new afflictionsabound: tendonitis of the thumb, ringing in the ear. On the bus, choruses of he said I said she went. Dinner partnerspalm their own jaws, carry onseparate discussions at restaurant tableswhile the food cools. Drivers sproutblue teeth the better to speak to you, my dear.24/7 now. Connected.

What does it do to plot linestrite and true? Long evenings crazy-waiting by the phone. The stranded motoriston the dark highway in the rain, taillightssmears of red as she makes for the isolated booth where water blurs its glass wallsdrops stand dark in shadow.A heavy breather or kidnapper on the line, notpinpointable. Line stretched taut through treetopsbetween tin cans held to children’s ears.The unanswered call, and chidingor frantic voice recording I know you’re there, pick uppick up!

The Music Holds You The music holds you in its thin white arms,emptying silence of its false alarms.Caught by the intricate leitmotif, you won’t hear the rustle of a brittle leafor the sound of a cry from the shore, from the farms.

A deep chord promises to fend off all harms.The counterpoint undertone soon disarmsguards who would keep you from its sweet relief.The music holds you.

The beguiling theme with its sinuous charmswraps around you. It soothes and it warmsCan you ever quite trust it, can you hold to belief?Or will you always fret about the jagged reefyou could fall upon in the height of storms?The music holds you.

Cringe

The windows conspirewith the dying light,make themselves intowraparound riot shields,send back glare

as silver-edged bruises.The neighbourhood knowsjust enough to be afraid,to hide behind the bristling backsof the sentinel firs.

The crescents close in,ever tighter loops,and the windows unblinkinglink arms againstwhat the air wafts in.

ottawater: 10 - 9

Jamie BradleyMunicipal Song

The city pulls buildings down,puts others up, worries.

To wake up beside you & think orangesin another poem.

The intimate world can be mistakenfor fading.

If you took oil to my shouldersthey would still be my shoulders.

I am trying to do something without harm:to count hours without a watch.

***

Whiskey-struck talk: urgent newsof foreign minds.

I am grown too impossible for children,as a category.

The whole foments:a hot kiln, appreciable.

Ice distends from nude branches, formsa hanged man. A brassiere of noise.

***

silt-pale, depth is conjecture rock bass drunk as hummingbirds plunge, a theory if you understood

to anchor disturbance, devotion to blood a shade darker, a bruise is a broken advance the city: a shape you pour

***

it motion detectors

hums with appearance

photographs undo your old blond road your own part of the problem where do you think of when you think of your

the debt of your activation

the appeal against brute force

***

a child remembers inside a Chinese restaurant:

the beansprouts dark & woody dis-immediate space

whiskey-kiss voices another room

invisible cares distance

the way we talkabout power

***

where does refractionstake its quill

if you were the other nightas if conducting with your palmscould make it so

the television assumptionof ex-wifery

a spirit of dislocation

the ocean far from land lightening daily the ply of

ottawater: 10 - 10

something to do withcool pyrite

an unscheduled distresswhere income goes

***

ghost boxes drown lifelike: the city underpins its own form

where old record shops go austere sandy-mottle print

a poltergeist is a live happening:

you are still here your awful body a frequency

embedded in a room

it’s time for us to talk aboutwhere the stars go

***

a steaming mare in her stall& you call her river

each mouth un-coinsagain

to refuse in sound to measureto narrow expansive:

the cutlery hum–our fingers

why say naturalwhen we mean dying?

***

An anonymous consensualgrope. Seasonal activity.

I have designs on the finerhouses. I design the alphabet.

Having to discover difficultventricles. Ghost box habits.

How to keep outsides inside.Constitutional tactics. Love.

***

As if wandering midnightthrough town, throat-sore.

The night’s final oriental arc.Shadows cast across.

The city heaps its ordinarydisquiet.

The expectorate value. My.Hand. This dumb lyric boat.

***

I.distances you refuse to cross

:to canvas for a spellrecede & take order

where does the city enter into it?

the human material piggy rotundcurvature

to transpireto develop ephemeral needs

the kinky access: the interlocutor

luck of being

I develop the concept of dispossessionfirmly

***

II.go into order your city’s mouthmy body

is at least conceptual & thereforegenerated by a process

I have my life I can draw cold sweatsthe mechanics of shopping in many storesunder fewer roofs, something to saythis thing happened;

***

III.the tune embroidersdraws up mal-factions

moderate rocks:

I would like to own a summer homegreen with the river

but not a regular home, rentis not really local,

but it is immediate

the city is usually speaking

***

ottawater: 10 - 11

IV.the providential generationof metaphysical actionablerelease

this one replete, that one generativethe paradox of restraint

the transgendered necessity of an augur:

strange bright winsome news:we are still local & okay

***

cadence & slow coronas of siltthe steam-soaped petrol in the weed’s rug

the geological wrist of most demarcationsthe secret life of tents & errant storms

points of tenure & recessionthe bright head of limestone polices

the eye notes a scar a scar notes

the imperial rivergoes down by low & impassable degrees

***

here, serpentine:

a need for rain & a capacity for dust

a regular hold this citybarnacles meteoric

the city is the spirethe spire is

***

the up-turned clay escapes: we studycommitment, paste

shop for romantic mealsat all-night grocers

our fingers determine uswhen we have fingers

as ice turns to tap-water, whiskey:the word, bees

***

The partitions are full: a historyunfolds like a congress.

Your will gets steered awhileto immediate griefs.

You can do odd things involving angles& the sun.

A thick beard of frost.The collapsing of slow doors.

How far would you like to go?

ottawater: 10 - 12

Ronnie R. BrownDREAM #7

Geographically challenged,even in dreams, she’s trying to find his street, his housewhen the down pourhits. Jumpcut and sheis with him, soaked tothe skin. Another jump--she’s in his bed. Thunder booms(in her mind, in reality) and shewakens with a gasp; closesthe window; tries to dismissthe tingling, the possibilities.

Guillermo TrejoUntitledwww.trejoguillermo.com

ottawater: 10 - 13

Catherine BrunetRequiem for the Train

A small-townevening strollthese daysincludesthe smell ofrail bedsand ballastdisturbedfrom itsrhythm

creosoterecalls the train museumswe played in as kidsmuseums are becomingour only homes for trains

sixty kilometres of standard gaugeripped up this summer alonethe reversal of birth

the timber sleepers piled upslumberous and whiskeredtaller than us both

and we pick up the pandrol clipstrack joints and spikesthat paint rust on our fingers andon the lines of our palms

not because we want thembut because we cannot bear to losecorroding scraps of motion

Herman Ruhland'Modernism' Found Objectswww.lapetitemortgallery.com/herman-ruhland/

ottawater: 10 - 14

Jason ChristieLa Morte d’Artur

“On second thought, let’s not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.”– Monty Python

Crumbling from disuse or the blue balls of Uther

when Uther last look’d ‘ponmicrowaves and VCRs andthe piles of digital devicesheaped around fields of vict’ryweep did he to thinkpon leaving the realmunheired plastic of spirithe sought parley with Tintagilwho’d harried him o’ermany a day and beseech’dthe man to bring his wifefor in the manner of allshiny objects andsubjectivity esp. concerningan individual’s idea of a wholly complete andpowerful self, sayin this case, sovereignty,well, he wanted to bone her as all teens can relate

Uther was so wrothonly one remedy suffic’dhe gathered a great hostand laid siege to Terrabil castleall so he could lay Tintagil’s lady

for her part, she says:it’s my honour he wantsto besmirch more than my loins anyway, Uther got allbuthurt and one of his knightstexted him and was like:y u :( brah? so Uther told himhis nuts were bluerthan a dove frozenall winter and thenpainted bluehis knight said:i got this such importanceas getting laid demandedthe knight undertakemany adventures to findthe one man to remedyUther’s blue ball sitch the knightfinally found the manhe sought in a ragtagband of homeless peopleoutside of a Cronut’sin Toronto

Merlinthe knight shoutedwhy didn’t you replyto my texts and emailsfor his part, the magiciansimply declaredhe would assist Utherin his noble questof getting laid, ifUther would grantMerlin the smallreasonable matterof his every desire the knightsaid, should those desiresbe reasonable, thenwe have a deal, yoand so Merlin the magusrode to aid Uther andend the epic warknown throughoutthe land and historyas the war to get the king laid

ottawater: 10 - 15

erlin’s every desire

morals and values beinglinked as they are to socialcircumstances and specifictimes and places it makessense that everyonewould want the kingto sleep with a married woman Merlinrode with great hastesince the personal stakeswere great and also the sexthe lack of which kept Utherso vexed the knight was likeUther, chillMerlin is on his wayto which Uther replied:great! where the fuck is he?for devastating was Uther’s dismaythe knight reiterated:Uther, chill for Merlin is at your door portents filled the skyravens and clouds and thunderas the magus swept off his riding hoodshook out his grey hair and declaimed:Uther, I know your heart’s desire andhow awful it is to have blue balls, soI will get you laid pending you followmy guidance and grant me all my desiresUther immediately said yessuch was his distress and badeMerlin to speak his desires plainly Sir, said Merlin, this is my desire:the first night that ye shall lie by Igraineye shall get a child on her, and whenthat is born, that it shall be deliveredto me for to nourish there as I will have it;for it shall be your worship, and the child’s avail,as mickle as the child is worth Uther thought about Merlin’s requestand muttered to his knight:

always the fine print with these wizards, eh?I will well and all that other stuff, the king said. the deal was struck like a bell set to ringthroughout the land and history, let all knowthe empire shall be founded uponsecrecy, sorcery, conceit, deception, adulteryand all for the blue balls of a king, hear ye, hear ye

Classic capers ensue

so Merlin’s plan was simple:Step 1: disguise ourselves as two of the enemy’s knights and the king as the enemy himselfStep 2: don’t talk to anyone, say you are diseased and go to bedStep 3: have all of the sex you can with IgraineStep 4: get a good restStep 5: Merlin will saunter in to wake you in the morningall of this was mademuch easier forthe king’s rival espiedhim leaving his siegeand rode out to meethim and somehow died a tidy conceitthe king, in disguise, laidIgraine who didn’t muchmind that he wouldn’tspeak to her and hadsome disease later when she learned that her hubbywas dead, privatelyshe wondered with whomshe had gotten all hotbut kept it to herselfbecause she respectedthe marvel of the ruse

In the vein of such rulers, and with the good grace of karma, Uther kicks it

But two years passedduring which timeUther mainly playedvideo games anddrank beer, enjoyingbeing king-like, livingin ignorance and sloth despite his debilitated stateUther sought to meethis own people on the field of battle fromhis La-z-boy and usinghis new gamepad andwith the counsel of Merlinhe won every Call of Dutygame that week, historicallydespite his success, Uthercontinued to waste awayas a result of his churlishnessand after consulting withhis guild made it clearto all and sundry thathe had bequeathedhis login and passwordto Arthur, his perfectlylegit son who was notsired under duress orduring an act of deceit

ottawater: 10 - 16

when the Liberty opens in Old Spice, Mom & Bob in balcony all alone no chaperone & no Asha Boshle

flickers let’s misbehave

Brando & pit erupts “scunt!” bottles flung

at the screen: poomb!

Mom & Bob eyes shut in this derniere tango Paris derriere

wish they could throw the Parigi story at the screen get married move to Ottawa

but dead Brando hurts the eyes to read this English in Anchor butter

bend the pirouettes at the end

this right wrong show that flickers, hold on!

fellatio fedoras the film because!

*

Faizal DeenMOM & BOB: Matinees

*

Pink man turkey neck & Mom never brings home doggie bags.

that’s Demico chicken in a basket, take away twinkle eyes, Mom don’t forget

no negro Indian whiteman in the veins. or how Funk Wagnalls

does Caucasian cha cha cha. So: Mom brings Bob home in the dark.

*

Bob from Manitoba, somewhere near Brandon; he’n Bartica made snake eyes together.

“73, 732 sq. m. in W. Canada,” the Assiniboine speaks & when Mom comes back she doesn’t bring

scraps; but she has plenty of left-over bones from the mooneye she kill.

*

“Manitoba,” Funk Wagnalls says, “not Magyar. Aryan Anglo-Saxon. not Breton race-stocks.”

& when Bob asks, “who is she?” who is Mom? Uncle Sultan says,

“my sister will never any whiteman capital Winnipeg touch. she fancy Mr. Rochester country

where the animals have faces so many damn right!”

*

ottawater: 10 - 17

a high-noon, bug-out unhappy endings kids we don’t know,

Guyana izzan island Gary Cooper must win? no?

listen kids Uncle Sultan yells, “& does piss & white rum coming up on you?”

cutaway Sacred Heart me behind Sister Brian nodding off at 11am.

Mom at Palm Court Main Street with Uncle Sultan.

Georgetown to Timehri to Madiwini trucking shots & no anaconda passing traffic.

*

Cheddi Jagan next door squeezing a post-stroke rubber ball on the terrace is a boom shot &

The Merrymen in from Barbados & the rule of nouns I’ve learned from Mom & Bob

& Bob smells Lucky Luke-like.

*

Mom: “I don’t want another white rum coolieman, ‘Another one, bhai! Another one!’ pissing his pants.”

of course, this is only a matinee.

no late shows, pictures without sound. “How do they go? The songs?” I ask.

*

a kiss made the red man red, I think Mom has jugs like all the men will one day look at me.

I sing “Chaiyya Re Chaiyya Re” through recess, through lunch room

scholar me

too much world cinema, that radio there, a ceiling fan, hooves running in the yard

next door, hear?

when 20,000 leagues dissolves into the flickers.

Manon LabrosseLes billots dispersés V48" x 48" Acrylic on round wood panel 2014Gallery : Galerie St-Laurent + Hillwww.manon-labrosse.com

ottawater: 10 - 18

he was not allright with that

nd tes yeuxtold me yuwudn’t beeither later

grey shalloe shale th colour uv warn warm seement uv luv s t r e c h d hiway wyde thinnr than thin

Dalton Derksonbissett onna bus

eye saw yucryingat th bus depoin fred-rick-ton but by monkton

yu were allright

tu parlay fransay avek ton homme

he was not allright

jy prl fransay he sd tu compran? fraaaaaaaan saaaaaaaaay sti kuh sey con

too f a r easttoo f a r west nd its like anothr world ( or contry at least )

ottawater: 10 - 19

Amanda EarlThree from Saint. Ursula’s Commonplace Bookbeevian (n)She prefers products made from the labour of bees

Drinks mead. Lights up her abode with beeswax candles

When she is not waxing poetic, she sits alone in a room watching

the shadows dip in & out of her honeycombed walls

She is fragrant, sweetly scented, made of murmur of innumerable bees

her words can sting or seduce, depending on whether

her mood is black or yellowor the red nagging aura slips

over her eyes after the locusts,her enemies, owing to their penchant

for pilfering pollen,have crawled out of the miasma

of a summer’s hot morningto scrape across brutal-husked

terrain to leap onto delicate petalsgorging themselves on rich floral powders

the dolcevistwears a pearl grey morning suitdrags a bow

over a cow bellin the frost of a winter dawn

enjoys the thud of snow against ashvelvet windows

covers the gramophone in blankets before playingDebussy’s Nocturnes

prefers colours that are neutral and mutedexcept for dots of pale

rose on accent pillowshas made a recording of the sound of silk

uses a fog machine with regularityavoids jalapenos

has a penchant for patternless fabricscuts well done meat

with sharp matte steelin a basket keeps a skein of undyed wool

on sunday dons a worsted waistcoat snores beneath a swan white and carbon black duvet

Recipe for a Shard Garden

the vessel is willfulit tumbles

in its fallthere is something of the light

shatteringtiny glinting electric fish

slivers of pain for a gatheringhand

ottawater: 10 - 20

Little Fiddle

Phil HallCarnivale

ottawater: 10 - 21

This poem as your dream ends with a slow realization of what is sleep and what is reality at the exact instant when you hope to see how this finishes, like, when the sexual tension is at its highest, but you still have your clothes on, or when the burning house in front of you is seconds from collapse. Those two moments are the same moment for you and the me-who-is-not-me, the two figures in your dream.

Your dream-me might sit voicelessly, but I would never idle as you undressed; I would never throw dream-you off the dream-bridge; real-me would notice a new tattoo that shifts from a lotus flower to a cloud-formed dragon to a symbol you can’t quite explain or recreate.

Just picture it as the letter grade that you received on your last high school essay and your subconscious can take the fall for the vague opening paragraph, the tendency to use run-on sentences, the underlined thesis you imagined, at the time, to be so clear.

Chris JohnsonEchoes and Other Repetitions

Speak again and again and again and again and againlike the chatterbox explaining the origin of the term chatterbox.

You lost soul, you searching soul, you narcissist, do what is best for you and let the world know.

What weight do those words wear?Could you carry them around with you? A whole load? Are you weary?

Speak words that give wide breadth to your short breath,of the space between rock wall and rock wall.

Hello? Sounds low? Sounds, oh,like you were certain that no one was there all along.

Repeat something until the repetition no longer sounds like the original.When the echo comes back to you, know that it was heard by no one.

When air fills up between your cheeks, expel it; wordy wind will hear the echoing again and again.

ottawater: 10 - 22

Burn a Koran Day

I watch it all through my rifle scope:thousands of Afghans spill to the streetshurl bricks through the windows of shabby shops trample a child in the hard-packed dustblood bubbles burst from his mouth like streams of mothsthe fire kindles in squalid tents, crackling fingers ram the throats of chimneysvirus-spreads to the bookstores and mosquesentire shelves of goldgilt Korans crack and charthe smoke lifts like burkhas on wedding nightspools at the base of my guard towerhaunts the edges of the rifle’s sights

The Afghan police arrive and form in rankstheir AK muzzles bark rounds into the crowd:split a man’s face so his cheek hangs over his beardcatch a woman in her belly so it spat gutsnakesinto a pool where the scrambling rioters slipglance off cars and lampposts, ricochet back into the crowd,a man shrieks, kneecap blasted inside-outhe crawls to an alley where he rocks and rocksbuildings collapse in great groans, the fire tentaclesgrope a young woman who burns slow like a witch

but she’s too far for my bullet

Matt JonesCaptainI knew Jack before he turned into a ship;first met him eight years ago when my fist rasped on his barrack’s doora year after my Dad passed.

He saw my bag of withered limes,grew glassy-eyed with me over plastic cupsspilled over with gin.We got so plastered our muscles meltedheads lolled like sea-tossed scarecrows.I wondered if he was there with mefor my grief or his thirst?

Either way I paid him back in St Johnswhere we stopped to fuel en route to the Arctic.Got so tequila-drunk that when I asked if he wanted another shotI took his “twist my arm” literallybent his forearm and wrist togethertill the bones cracked like melting icebergs.Jack even lied to the doc to protect me,claimed he slammed his hand in a hatch.

Eight years later and Jack is chained to the Halifax dock by four strong nooses.He says the transformation from man to ship started subtle as his skin gave way to a metal hullsnout stretched into a grey bowvoice deepened to a fog horn.

The crew never see the kindness I glimpsed;he works them so hard they’ve grown leanlike galley slaves. Jack delightsin tongue-lashing one junior officerwho shakes with sobs in the rack above.

Now when I hear Jack proclaimhe needs to get his sides painted before the next sailor, he wants to drop anchor in Mortier Bayyou’d never guess he’d been flesh.

ottawater: 10 - 23

a.m. kozakSPINOZA’S RACECAR

racecar chases itself round a track in primordial left turns. a button pressed, but where’s the kid who found it under a christmas tree one early 90s morning? heat builds a mix of metal scraps and cement, a smash of quarks and orbits explode. ocean drifts to oblivion on clearest of mornings. where are manufacturers and what do they mean? birthed in driver’s seat, instinctively manoeuvre obstacles, compete with other cars. plan mundane activities to obsess over, the position of a leg, the angle of a mirror. develop favourite songs and remember all the words, an imitation of an imitation of an. but where are the start gates and chequered flags—how does the racecar originate?

Meaghan HaughianPathwayhttp://www.lapetitemortgallery.com/meaghan-haughian/

ottawater: 10 - 24

Clay Bowl

How absentmindedly we lift it from the shelfday after day from its curved earthbring spoonsto our mouths

Unexplained Phenomena

Why is peeing on a stick the stepthat cracks the ice, causes unasked for advice,birth stories avalanching down, knockingall breathable air from around you?

Why do childbirth shelves in bookstores exhibita new gravitational lure, promise moon rocks of fact,white weightlessness you can’t stop devouringthough what you really crave is grittier, dirtier,grub-filled earth beneath an alpine rock?

You want someone who’ll really tell you whyor how the quickening elbows and knees inside youare filling your pockets with stones. Why your heartis grief-thick and cold. Why no one will speak with youbeyond sentimental memory.

You want someone to pull your body – blue with loneliness – out from the snow, the glacier-fed river,sit with you for a while.

Brenda LiefsoIn the small hours

While it’s true I tendto inspect chicken for pinknessavoid buffets,turn door handles with my sleeve,Anja, it’s also true when you are sick,my grinchy heart is blessed, allowedtenderness, at last, unreservedas I hold your tiny body over the toiletcarry you back to fresh pajamas, clean sheets.Gather you up so as to ferry youthrough the small hoursuntil your fever breaks and the dark river of sky becomes light.

Anniversary Poem

In your garden at night,green gathers up darknessand cools itself. Unwatched, the cucumber vine tendrilsthrough the lattice. Our many ritualsgrow shoots. In the morning, we will not failto argue over who gets the red coffee mug, butlet’s be quietjust for now. Our children are dreaming,climbing the bean stalks, harvesting eggplants,the tomato’s yellow flowers.

ottawater: 10 - 25

words on the birth of a daughter

Ammonite.

Fierce river.

Source.

What It All Comes Down To, Part I

Placenta capsules.

Freeze-dried.

Calgary Father Kills Tenant, Three Children, Wife, Before Killing Self

not the extra weight on my hipsthe achy breasts sleepless nights day cares halloween costumes the mini-vanoh god the mini-vannot the how did I get herethe vomit in my hairthe lost art of peeing alone hot cup of coffeegood job short skirt visibility sex – but the way they say rainins for raisinsbanamana for bananathe way they run across a field,naked, their big bellies and little bums,the good night moon’s,small arms that wrap around me unreservedly the mummy I love you this much’s –and this the knife in his hand whose blood on his shirtbelly dark rising to throat familiar stranger familiar whose bloodalways knew it could come to this all of usalways know it could come to this nightmare’s just the training groundkicking clawing gougingfighting tooth and nail for them I will kill I will kill I will kill you if you touch one hair on their heads

On Worship

What’s missing is liveablemyth, plain old Gaia squatting. A responseto your shout at the blue-fisted sky. A motheryou love. Round arms full of fruit baskets, sheaves of grain. Cool lemon pressedto your lips.

The Hard Facts Are

Women in Congo walk for daysto the only doctor that will treat them,bleeding and shitting out of vaginasripped through to their rectums by gang rapesand sodomies with shovel handles.

While my children sleep upstairsin a warm room, their bellies fed, I don’t knowif I write to shelter them, or to show them suffering can or cannot fit inside a poem. Is injustice a word I have a right to?Is poetry meant only to be beautiful?

Through Sudan’s mine and slaughter field,women walk for days, weeks,babies strapped to their backs, pulling older children by the hand,in uncertain hope they will reach a refugee camp,in uncertain hope there will be enough food,enough medicine,for each one of them.

ottawater: 10 - 26

or unstuck, gather sticks.

A loose informant, drifts. Excavate, thick flakes,

a restless discourse. Black Peter, Santa’s elves,largesse of dwarfish minions.

Needlessly mapped. Consider, subject.

Thirty-second word for snow: perceptic.

Primary, for these times. Thin, creature noise.

Force swallow, heat. Restraint: a fortune. Storethe winter pledges. Speak.

Eighty-fourth word for snow: elastic.

Absolute, a park. On any given day, the dogsembrace the stuff of ground.

Empty, full of speech. Double-sided blush,a resonance. Malls, decorate November.

Inflammatory. Desire, further explicated.Origin: the sock-drawer. Something suitable.

Air, a texture. Slushy-thick.

It howls, like a hammer. Freezing rain. Paratactic.Will not be held responsible.

Constituted from a search. Wetness, gentrifies,the atmospheric layer. Shopping.

Statistic, of the sentence-length. Glazed,a mist that forms, a freezing-shape.

rob mclennanCorporation of snow:

The snowstorm begins at five past the hour,always late always late,like some huge harried white rabbitclutching at its cuffs and moaning softlyinto the wind. Méira Cook, A Walker in the City

The “Eskimo words for snow” claim is a widespread, though disputed, idea that Eskimos have an unusually large number of words for snow. In fact, the Eskimo–Aleut languages have about the same number of distinct word roots referring to snow as English does, but the structure of these languages tends to allow more variety as to how those roots can be modified in forming a single word. Wikipedia

Particles, we designate. A show of hands. More sentimentthan sediment. Christmas, once at mid-point. Burns.

Scans indicate. Introductory. These sparkle, shelves.

A surplus meaning is performed. We aim to climbToy Mountain.

I wasn’t ready for critique. This nature. Messy liquid,jargon-class.

Fifty-seventh word for snow: asphodel. Livesin a linguistic cube.

Claims, pastoral. Bullshit. We live in houses.

Spellbound, nested. Show of hands. Know notwhere the boundaries.

Archive, of a task. This falling snow. We stuck

ottawater: 10 - 27

Broken rarely bounces. Informal gesture, wave of the hand. Parse, a pause.

Full speech, starvation text. We squirrel.

Sixteenth word for snow: buttery.

Held in terror, words. Permission: too largefor the barn. First blizzard, pads.

These airy dispositions. Pick up, navigate

the proper, means. Frightened, and, perpetual.

I understand: I don’t exist, and neither,wet percentage. Rooftops sparkle, peak.

Heard, without a doubt. White owls, mistookfor namesake, batter.

Forty-ninth word for snow: irrationality. Somesmall nation. Rhetoric, deploys. We all, are citizens.

Sheila’s blush, or brush. A hoofprint, guiding snoutto sweetgrass, savoured. This crystal palace, shines

as close to naked, writing. Restless, jag. Citations.

Looped, a bodice-ripper. Speech of same, reflectingon this marvel. Spools, of thus unwinding: clouds.

I hardly speak. A show of hands.

One hundred and ninety-eighth word for snow: agenda.Satisfaction, damp and crowded. Stead.

An ontological commonplace. The first fall, drifts

and banks. Wet, noisy punch. A light dust, sugar.

Show, of hands. The question is, abated. Flurries,chance astonished wings. Undone, we weather.

Ditched, the city buses. Some assembly. Knowledge,citing technocrats. These portraits, drift.

One hundred and forty-first word for snow: capacious.

Precisely, jolts. Sky mottles, cloud. Engrays. Fades,emblematic-dark. Let’s pretend. The sorrow,

shallows-deep. Disappeared, a child’s boot.

We would sound like Alice, through the snowy brambles.

White linen, screen noise. Frame, a later character. Disgorged, this gap. Desire, useless

on exposed tongue. Undressed. The sun, reflected tarnish.Silver, in relation. The coming weeks.

One hundred and fiftieth word for snow: unprintable.

Silence, sentence, swarms: stands in for the whole.

Cabin fever, trapped. Meringue peaks of shopping mallshost parking, underground. We save,

we stay. A slang, citation. Fiberglass. Clay-shapedlike a question mark.

Made suitable, for men. An ally, pivot. Walletsand a human face. Rich, coal for eyes.

One hundred and eleventh word for snow: fetish.Another blind example. How do they, sleek, provide

such fur. Saddle-stitch or staple, default.

Submerged: a broom, a batch, a violent snap. What air melts solid, heavy. Follow. One step would no longer. Repetition. Disavows, a phrase.

Tenderness: a row of plows, attached to tractors. They thicken, turn. Ice-pellets, pelt. Tsunami.

Eiderfalls, a blizzard. Forecast: all this nature. Sloganof disjunction, glassware. Energy, a restless credit.

Fundament: a material archive of soft displacement,flight, the rational sense of sticky powder.

Wendigo, mid-flesh. We retail, solidarities.

Authority, ephemeral air. The luxury of analysis,extracting sense like spring sap, syrup-thick. Boiled,

sweet, illusion. Late, in the dream.

First word for snow: snow. The complicated namingof such simple matter.

ottawater: 10 - 28

Charlene Lau AhierIf the Wind Were Coloured IIwww.lau-ahier.com

Charlene Lau AhierIf the Wind Were Coloured Iwww.lau-ahier.com

ottawater: 10 - 29

Cath MorrisDrawn

I have always been drawn to the oldor the very youngmore than those in between;I’m not quite sure why this should beexcept that they seem more swiftly ableto let their imaginationsleap into the cosmosat the drop of a peato imagine anything you ask them to(and some you haven’t)and run with itlike a child-kite or balloon-blossom,give it wings,explore with ittake journeys to other worldsfall in and out of lovetalk to the animals, birds, trees, as I do,imagine the bestof all worlds with you

take your ideas, eat them, chew on them, like dreams, transform them into delicious mental mealsyou can share together

most middle peopleor certain Milwaukean typesseem to find this difficultor unappetizing

Allen EganThe Decision 30 X 48 Oil On Canvaswww.eganacci.wix.com/allen-egan-paintings

ottawater: 10 - 30

and someone has to rummage for the coffee makerdiscarded in haste, for now her last apartment is barewe can’t just lock the door and go the way shedeparted, too suddenly. So we stand, door open,for last goodbyes, one more story. We have been too hasty, impatient to finish the unwanted job.The coffee is stale; she long ago lost the taste for it. But we linger at the kitchen counter, nowhere left to sit,and wonder which one of us will be next to imposethis burden on the others. A story that always made us laugh has a hollow echo now. We look into one another’s eyesa bit longer than is our custom, hesitating over whoshould take her keys and lock the door.

Colin MortonLast Rites

With the albums of snapshots pretty as a postcardgo the half-spent rolls of wrapping paper, old Timeand People magazines, half jars of relish, the dried pensshe meant to buy refills for, and my mother’s button jarI used to sort – coloured and clear ones, navy buttonswith anchor insignia – beach pebbles picked up on travels,jars of sand from three continents, all the memoriesthat once adhered to these things like coral to stone.All go because our own memories weigh on us alreadyand we want to travel light when we too go.The snaps we once made fun of, these we keep,if only to bury later in closets of our own: Mom in front of a mountain or cathedral, smilingwith friends none of us ever knew, or knew she knew,on field trips we were no part of, with X and Y,without Z, who must have been behind the lens.Furniture went first, to family or friends in town,the Sally Ann, or just as far as the curb; hazardouslamps with hanging heads and scruffy cords;the toaster that either scorched or left the bread limp;unreadable diskettes with copies of letterswe discarded soon after they arrived at our doors.The walker and oxygen tanks go back to the clinicwhere someone has been desperately waiting for them.Garbage bags of unsorted debris pile up at the door,

ottawater: 10 - 31

Alcofibras Nasier II(32)

I, I, I, I, I, I, I, am fucking sick of all yr eyes

watching me so full of yrself what do you think about

I the guy you avoid on the street me with my mewly mouthed snarls

some mangy dog but you have your eyes I’m the crow who’ll pluck ‘em for ya

not that I have the wings to fly no more not without the booze

& the powder my nose itches still from the need ya see

but you have yr ayes you kiss your own ass

bobbing on your knees to agree with yourself yr memories

so precious stitched & folded into yr fine wool suits

a forget me not hankie where you’ve wiped all yr tears away

Herman Ruhland'Untitled' Found Objectswww.lapetitemortgallery.com/herman-ruhland/

ottawater: 10 - 32

Pearl Piriehow to express a different point of view

start cold. make sure never to expose the pov to rapid temperature shifts. never put a distinct pov in a hot oven, as it can shatter due to thermal shock.placing a frozen point on a pov is almost as likely to result in a shattered view as placing a cold view in a hot spot.

it can take a little finesse to get used to, but a point paddle is a useful instrument, especially for transferring the raw point onto the view. leave the pov in the hot spot — at least until it is entirely cool. you do not have to ever remove it. put other thinkingright on top. it won’t do any harm.

never use dish soap on your pov. your pov can be cleaned and rinsed entirely with water. don’t let your pov soak for too long. you don’t need to drown it. a simple once-over is probably more than enough. if your pov happens to absorb too much it may crack the next time it is exposed to heat.

with a clean sponge, wipe away any grime. do not try to remove any residue that that builds up in use— it is fully unnecessary. leaving that to accumulate will help season your pov, turning it into a slicker, more easy-to-use item.

don’t worry about your views getting stained. stains are normal, almost unavoidable. moreover, they’re a badge of honor, or experience points — you can point to them as vindicationsof your skills.

tied

to a rope to a car in the driveway is my hiccup.parked, and parked and parked in the diagonalsnow. hiccuping and hip downing, it sits, hics.

Manon LabrosseLes billots se regroupent60" x 60" Acrylic on wood panel 2014www.manon-labrosse.com

ottawater: 10 - 33

Nicholas PowerExcerpts from a series called Tin Dittoes

a sort of lattice

she tries to be the best of priestessesthe concentration of a subjunctive acttries to shine without a shadowthe silent actress who knows how to singthough she’s not a birdnor her father’s dreamhe’s left her an epithet‘I’m at the extremities of your voice’

she’s reading in a separate cornerblind at her peripheryBasho’s blues lightly helddescribing a bird in such detailit almost lands on her bookshadows gather outsidelike curious strangersdeveloping a taste for light

Allen EganThe Architects Journey 24 X 36 oil on canvaswww.eganacci.wix.com/allen-egan-paintings

ottawater: 10 - 34

[the following are edited centos]

Yoshino’s Treetops

proffering songs from her kayakshe pulled up, with her right hand, to the oceanic shorealike, in some ways, to places where she can see Yoshino’s treetopsthe river is not confined to the townthe holy hush of ancient sacrificeruptured, monstrous, barbeda sort of totem pole, native in natureancient bird noise, here, therea machine in motionof the air

No More Second Hand Art

they have the advantage of beingnumerous selves in the femininea well-spoken choralepermitting themselves simplicitycarrying everything with themresting only occasionallypouring their broken existenceinto versethe juxtaposition of silk curtainsand utensilsa tolerance for being lostontologicallyfinding themselves on the frontiermaking a lean-to

ottawater: 10 - 35

ordinary space

stars constellate abovesomewhere between good and evilyesterday was the year of the cloudwhen my marriage faileda place where nothing was madenot even a Duchamp readymadethe cold water pipes quickly let me knowhow to remember this place of distressI strike the glasstry to remember the patternassigned to the placewhere she left itwe knew very little about the weatherwe knew it controlled usthe snow all down so stillwe couldn’t figure out which jokes workedneither ant nor grasshopperI await an auspicious signplucked from a feather duster

above a lake district

an egret flies over placid lakesas fine as a paper craneplacid lake mirroring the beginningcatching the wind absentlyno longer flatnothing like a mirrordividing infinity into fragmentswearing the woods like an accessorytrees crumbling into paperthin and hollow and wordsmaking imperfect sensethreads of motionbroken syllables

ottawater: 10 - 36

[excerpts from wild uncertainties]

the whole ephemeral poem takes place in an instant while photons light up red bricks on the wall above a bar on Bathurst street electrons jump to higher energy states wave pattern interference becomes tangent to widening spirals and defines particular moments points in time that haven’t happened yet not even noticed in dreams history changes in sudden glimpses of the future real events as memory traces a straight line of linked events broken by a concentrated awareness not a paradigm simply a pattern sharply seen written down gone

the metaphorical man now humbled to the state of a hologram knowing he’s no longer her lover not able to find her says her name over and over like an atomic number or a crystal he knows nothing of song or supplication* of literature or history of pilgrimage or hermitage of meditation or exercise or friendships of reason or patience or plans of alcohol sedation sex or sleep when she entered that room carrying flowers he forgot everything now there’s no yesterday or today or even a some day

*Robert Boates He’s down in the hole shovelling smoke that’s what they say about great-grandfather in Irish Montreal if we have only our fathers then there’s no ancient voice only rules of the game beside the Ottawa River we find a rock with the explorer’s mark what they teach of Champlain we explore on our own no give to the cement we walk on to school I want the smell of rotting trees and the pull of the swamp on my feet a country is something no one is expert in

The Weatherman

despite the rain that has fallen for days over the mountainsdisappearing the roadsthis is about you, slaking your thirst in a dry desertthe rich laughter of your imagined voiceattempting to yield to a blue scattering of lightin that country where your last thought sankamid a volcanic 4th of Julyhere the sun is costumed in cloudstraces of the garden recalledin a grainy quality of light

ottawater: 10 - 37

she walks the diagonal path down the steep hill along the edge of the park followed by swallows swooping into the wind in the vast

open field where everyone’s a solitary her slow meander languid syllables not in search of any subject not a performance but

a generosity not a tattoo or a trademark or a style or a soliloquy simply a woman walking in the late afternoon sunlight making

everything grander hand-written prismatic a registry of marvels in a public place immediate material pictorial

all her clothes on and nothing else inscribed on her body no frame at the periphery no shadowy corners no manufactured tropes no trace elements no evidence no apocrypha the breath line determined by the slope of the hill written down to slow down time

to make a grace note as she disappears beyond the trees by the river

Meaghan HaughianJulia's constellation, 2014http://www.lapetitemortgallery.com/meaghan-haughian/

ottawater: 10 - 38

Ryan PrattMontreal express, 6:40

Raise dawn in a turquoise slip.Dorchester Park is reeling.

Brittle beside the traffic pitchseagulls barter trash,

junkies rent unclipped curbs, u-turning at red lights.

Both sides argue the arrangement.“I don’t speak French,” greetings

confess, get pecked to the carcass “I have no change,”

but nonetheless pace delirious for one of fifty closed cafes

to light up! God-bless! My travel case girdles St Denis’ grayscale

barren with salt in its wheels, tongue-tickingseismic.

Guillermo TrejoUntitledwww.trejoguillermo.com

ottawater: 10 - 39

Monty Reidfrom INTELLIGENCE

Note: The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) has recently moved into new quarters in east-end Ottawa. Next door, an even larger and more striking facility for the Communications Security Establishment of Canada (CSEC) is nearing completion. My less intelligent home is nearby.

Pray thou with a loving heart, and let thy words be hidden.- Maxims of Ani

A philosophy is never a house, it is a construction site.- George Bataille

I want to be with those who know secret things, or else alone.- Rilke

I don’t know how to live in this transparency. The lies have been taken from me and all that’s left runs through the ribs in the clear. The machineis made of glass. The more people seethe less people care.

I don’t know what to do with the tunnel, the one that runsfrom my garage right under the CSIS building. I bricked up the entry, but I can still hear them talking down there. Bang the wall with a shovel. Even when I want toI can’t understand a word. Honest.

I don’t know why we would include the tellers of secretsthe lovers, the password keepers, all those who want to beheard beneath the din. Now that the din is gone.I am watching them remove the bricks at the exitand there has never been a silence like it.I don’t know for sure, but they’re probablyonto me by now. Not that I mind. I’ve been using all the code words and the acronyms. I like the alphabet.Here, under this roof of last translations

all languages track you.

I don’t know what that hooks up to. I don’t want to knoweither. Forgetting makes the fragments coherent.They come in and they need to see.They come in and connect me to the files.They come in and I go out.

I don’t know when I became a suspect. The algorithmssuspect me. The scope creep suspects me. I am regenerated and no longer need to be careful. It’s about time is all I can say.You can’t accomplish anything until you’re a suspect.

I don’t know yet. Just watch.Just watch me. In the waggleJust watch me. Til the screens go blank.And I’m not here.

I don’t know if there’s enough sheet metalin the entire world to carry all the air where you want itto go. I like the way it shines and bangsI like the unequal pressures. The way it closesdoors. On the way out.

I don’t know what they did with the Cyrville overpassbut some people say they broke it into chunks and buried itaround the perimeter as an anti-tunneling feature.Ruins always end up as a kind of protection.Everything you know, you owe to destruction.

ottawater: 10 - 40

The Red Bridge

On the lacquered archof the long red bridgein Matsushima, he thought about his mother, tracinghis fingers over the miniscule kokeshi doll in his pocket.Her limbless body made himstop and pray, while he weptthe colour of cherry and plumtrees bent from deepwithin the fields.

Sonia SaikaleyBasho’s Haiku Goes to the Frogs

Basho roams through Matsushima in a time when Samurai disembowel themselves in the name of honour.

Hot springs carry Basho’s haiku over lush rice fields, and the frogs receive these words.

They sing praise to the travelling poet who accepts rice and green tea from a villager who cannot read.

He prefers the song of frogs over Basho’s haiku.Basho does not mind, sipping the frothy green tea.

Bidding farewell, he walks through the field,careful not to crush his singing admirers.

ottawater: 10 - 41

Dean SteadmanMorning at the Museum with Mr. Rux(for Rose)

1.If a train is travelling at the speed of weather, and the weather is inclement,

how long will it take to reach the manwho broke the bank at Monte Carlo?

2.The abacus beads at the Science Museumare in coloured sets of ten. Red plus blue

plus green is. Green minus blue minus red is. Or, possibly, is not.

3. We are Mr. Rux’s “Daycare of Demi-Einsteins” or, as he proudly pronounces this morning,

“A Plethora of Pythagoreans!” preparing to depart the Museum after our morning visit.

Walking back, “peripatetic, à la Aristotle,” we cross a set of RR tracks in single file,

the tracks for the morning train from Paris to Lyon, en route to Monte Carlo.

4. While crossing the tracks, we hold tight to a knotted length of rope and, once across,

our line divides — “Toddlers toggle, if you please” requests Mr. Rux. Now we walk parallel, in pairs —

“A Coupling of Callippuses!” — our rope forming a happy-face U.

5.Xing at traffic intersections is red, yellow, green. Or red, orange, green.

Never cross on red because the word “cross”also means angry.

Walk on red and Mr. Rux will come across (!) very angry, because he cares for us :-)

6.We have dressed ourselves and only a few of us have matching rain boots.

“Conformity is the ruin of genius!” Mr. Rux exhorts, marvelling at us, his protégés.

7.Back at the daycare, Mr. Rux and his wife kiss“Hello!” — a convergence of parallel lines.

While we nap, Mrs. Rux prepares un petit repas, and Mr. Rux, on the telephone, listens attentively

to the Museum custodian’s recitation of articleslost but newly found: four yellow rain hats,

three woollen scarves, two odd mittens —rouge et noir — and one pocket calculator, kaput.

ottawater: 10 - 42

Rob Thomasdon’t get cute with me

at the coffee shopmy 4YO’s headcrests the countertoplevel with impulsedisplay of cookies

I order coffee

the gaping toiletcould swallow him wholeas he is aware – gulp – but he climbs up

at the liquor storehe pukes going inand I say we used to callguys like him champs

no one overhearsno one snickersno one judges

expectations are low yet elusive

I’ll cherish this timesomeday, I joke

daddy, you peed medaddy, she pushed medaddy, he says when he’s two he’ll be bigger but he’s three and he’ll be smallermake him stop

daddy, rememberwhat it’s like to be tired, hungry and powerless

this isn’t workingI tell my wifethe kids run wild

this isn’t workingI tell the playgroup momI’m so lucky to havethis time with my kids

this isn’t workingthis isn’t workingthis isn’t working

my joys consume me

Hulk on one sock is at warwith Hulk on the other

middle of the bathroom flooris where this happensneither titan budgesor requires pants

Ring of Fire drowns the screaming more, more, more

kids in the idling car

ottawater: 10 - 43

Dennis TourbinCanoe Lake

The north west shore, east of Huntsville,20 miles to the Parkgate, another 10miles to the turnand Canoe Lake.

Tom ThomsonTownship of PeckDistrict of NipissingAlgonguin Park.

West Lakespeckled trout.

The west shoreof Canoe Lake1917, a bodyrises to the surface, facedown, ripples gently brush theshore…

Two men in acanoe approachthe body thinkingit is a deadloon or animal.

Tom Thomson.

The body is secured witha rope andtaken to a coolresting place.

Tom Thomson.

The body is coveredby a blanket in the water.

All night thesound of a gentle wash.

Tom Thomson.

Copper fishing linearound his leg,a bruise on hishead and a trickle ofblood from this ear…

Tom Thomson.

He loved a storm,the wild skyas a backgroundto everythingthat was familiar…With a brushhe delivered where he was,the atmosphere chargedwith colour…

I know that it has beena long timesince you’ve walked thesestreets Tom…Visiting that young Trainor girlup the waymaybe 61, 62 yearsago…

Things have changed.

Music plays overthe loudspeakeron the main street now.

And the distant roar of transporttrucks silence throughthe trees. You haveto listen closely for the birds now Tom…

I try to break through thatmembrane ofpast experience,

imagine youface to facewith a mooseor a deer, paintbrushin your hand…

shattering the silencewith colour acrossa painted birchboard, like a slowmotion camera.

I try to imagine youTom, walkingthese streetsa half a centuryago… a fewpainted boards foryour intendedin your knapsack.

She remained quietall those yearsTom… holdingon that memoryand that mysterycontained deepwithin herheart,became bitter some say, with silencemoved flowers from your grave.

I wanted to drive allthe wayup to highway 60today, to lookat Canoe Lake.

I didn’t…

At Dorset I stopped,made up my mindthere that it wouldtake too long.

I only wanted to seethe lake,imagine yourcanoe slippingacross the deep water.

See where you fished, catchglimpses of what you painted years ago, seethose trees and tangled forests,the dense swampyou inhabited.

I guess it wasthe rain, theway that sportscar spun outof control onthe sharp corner,came flying sideways at meand almost rolled.

It scared meand the fogthrough the hills.

I wanted a clearlook at the lake, the lakethat held your bodyfor thoselast few days took the spiritfrom your soul.

Yesterday while atthe liquor storeI heard two meanmention that a a young manhad drowned in Kashagawigamog Lake just down the road,a canoeing accident. I thought of you…How did it happenTom? Is there truth to the rumorof murder?

And the welt onyour head?How did it happen Tom?

There were reportsin the paperabout a youngartist missingin Algonquin Park.

Tom Thomson missing;It couln’t be true.

And graduallyyour body appeared.

And your brothermade arrangementfor a grave…

And there were lettersback and forthamong the artists.

Thomson’s gone…Thomson’s gone…

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What do I know about the landscape

When I fish, the landscape Is always there…Circular and oblongand permanent. Thelandscape is always there.

I once thought. I rememberthis morning I had a thought,a thought about the landscape.But now I can’t remember the thought. The landscape disappeared.And the landscape is always there.

The trees.The earth.

Once, when the astronautstravelled on the dark sideof the moon the earthdisappeared…

A small capsule in orbit,a pressurised container formen all of suddenthe earth disappeared. The earth could not be seen.

And the landscape becamea memory. And the landscape became a memory again…

Whitney Lewis-SmithWhat Came In With The Flowers, Photographhttp://www.lapetitemortgallery.com/whitney-lewis-smith/

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Lauren TurnerFaulty introductions

On the 6 o’clock train she overhears one man say to another, I used to have the same dream. I was the strongest person on Earth until a woman cut off all my hair. It’s a good voice. The kind of voice she’d want to read her Hemingway over a tumbler of Still Waters. If she cared for whiskey or for restraint. Turning in her seat, Delilah asks: Do you fear female barbers?

* Samson can’t decide if she’s cold or trying to make herself look bigger like some perpetually affronted mongrel: all skinny legs, padded army jacket and boots that long to lay tread to kneecaps. Where did you come from? he asks, loud over the clattering metro car. You look like a space flamingo. If they were green.

She sets aside her dog-eared Ondaatje: You’ve been watching me since Jean Talon [recrosses her ankles] and that’s the best you’ve got? * Want a do-over? Delilah asks. One of the regulars has deviated from his usual allongé with foamed milk and is looking despairingly at a soy cappuccino. Please, Samson hands it back. My girlfriend thinks we should go off dairy. I feel like I’m cheating on her whenever I come here.

*

Are you seeing anyone? You don’t get to ask me that she replies, kissing him to keep their lips away from banality and sun exposure.

* Which ballerina is your girlfriend? she asks the man sitting alone with the pile of fur-collared coats. A gold clutch on his knees. He gestures, bourbon-handed, at a lanky prima blonde fawning over another. Her pas-de-deux partner he offers, sans prompting: Do you think they’re sleeping together? Delilah says: Maybe that’s a question you can only ask strangers. *I don’t dance. They’re leaning up against the cool bars of the fire escape, sharing a turquoise cigarillo from his girlfriend’s purse. Delilah, who has perfected smoking without inhaling like a Hollywood starlet, offers a Me neither in apology. She’d heard jazz falling from the loft’s open window, taken it as an informal invitation. Samson grins: Ah, a pair of wolves amongst the ballet-dancing sheep?

* She wanted to be in love. He wouldn’t have guessed but the gin made her soft, ready to squeeze out confessions like juice from a lime wedge. Bar stools are as forsaken as pews. On certain Sundays, everyone looks like a sinner worth knowing. *

I can’t dance, her voice muffled by the cotton candy duvet. Samson rolls over onto his side, grins: You made that pretty clear last night. First mornings always feel like this. The trepidation sets in only once you’ve left the bedroom. Soon, she’ll be asking herself if there’s somewhere he’d rather be, if they’ve made a mistake. But this didn’t feel like a mistake, whispers Delilah. What are you doing under there? he asks. The mound of blankets shakes its head.

* Do you imagine yourself mysterious? –I imagine myself bored.

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Vivian Vavassisidentity, era and echo

what you set to drift self circa this era or thateventually cancers across waterpigeons back, carries your weight to crashin sandplay, levied against, mudwalledthe kids used to sing(muscledeep in the sleeplost ocean)whatever you do (a landlogged self-defence) don’t jump into the waves(your glasseyed questions)you’ll slice straight through(sheepheavy, atomic)and catch seven years of bad luck it all comes out in the wash

Whitney Lewis-SmithIndian Pipes, Photographhttp://www.lapetitemortgallery.com/whitney-lewis-smith/

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AE: I notice that many of your poems combine stark realism with supernatural elements. How do you think the supernatural fits in with the realism of your poems & where does the impetus to include such come from? And along the same lines, I’ve noticed that a lot of your writing is very visual & figurative. In “Intervention“(Arc Poetry Magazine’s North Issue) you talk about warships being “bearded with cloud wisps.” In another poem, “Gallow’s Humour” you write about a woman who has had her legs blown off by a bomb: “her blood turns the sand to mud/hangs in the air like a shroud.” Or in “Burn A Koran Day”: “blood bubbles burst from his mouth like streams of moths.” Why do you think such figurative language is useful or effective in discussing such gruesome subjects and what influences you to write so visually?

MJ: I think your observation is keen. The end of “Reading...” for example, is a scene of an IED emplacer’s severed body being reassembled in front of his grieving mother via a maelstrom of colourful butterflies. (Spoiler! Ha!). For that story, adding a fantastical element was a way of rewriting the experience into a less painful, more palatable version. It fails to comfort, ultimately, because the fantastical rewriting isn’t the truth. At the end of the day that woman who collected her son in a basket didn’t get her son back. In my more cynical moments I suspect art is, at its best, what Nabokov describes as a “local palliative,” incapable of providing true healing or true comfort.

Or to answer this question in another way, sometimes we need to lie to tell the truth. I find writing flourishes best when divorced from confines. That’s one edge that new poets have over more experienced ones, I think. As we get more experienced we start learning “the rules” of what will make a poem successful or worth publishing. It must have fresh, non-cliché language. It must be doing something interesting or thought-provoking with form. It will likely hinge on an image written from the senses. It will have a transformative moment in which a character, narrator, or even the reader sees something in a new light. Yet this little list is just a rulebook. And the better we learn the rules the more constrained we are as writers. Sometimes we need a fucking kraken bursting out of the bay with water streaming down its tentacles, the smell of seaweed stinging our nostrils, the clacking of his awful beak.

We write because we want people to feel something, no? For me that means staying with images and ideas that have power, or that speak to us on an unconscious level. I think to write evocatively is to write honestly; how can sincerity not wither when writing is so often posturing cleverness, or playing word association games? Writing from an ironical place is ultimately writing from a safe space. “But Matt!” I hear a skeptical voice, “how can you say writing about a mythic sea beast is honest?” Well, when I came home from my tour I went back to school for my MA. I was surrounded by soft-skinned and sensitive poets and scholars—there I was with my tentacles all bloody.I have more thoughts on this. I’m thinking of Rushdie and his images: snake-charmers, sister-fucking, giant-winged birds, murderous knees, paradisiacal brothels, cities of sand, a nude prophetess covered in butterflies, donkey-fucking, towns of immortals, systematic castrations, a disfigured old woman mid-coitus screaming “my hump! Grab my hump!” Why do we judge and condemn what titillates instead of embracing it? Rushdie has been accused by some critics of selling the West exoticised images of the East—a claim of irresponsibility, I suppose. As if a writer has signed up to champion a certain set of values or to be somehow above the market: as if writers subsist on ink alone. Perhaps a writer is better off standing on the earth with language streaming around, drenched in reclaimed clichés and colloquialisms and vernacular, writing for the world.

War Poet An Interview with Matt Jones by Amanda Earl

Matt Jones first came to my attention at VERSeFest a few years ago when he read as a feature as part of the In/Words Reading Series event. His poems were candid, brutally honest about his childhood and his work in the military while at the same time full of humour, and containing a demonstration of a creative imagination. I wanted to know more about his work and his life and I thought readers would too. From May to August, 2014, we engaged in the following e-mail interview.

Matt Jones grew up in Kingston, Ontario, where he studied English. As a serving member of the Canadian Navy, Matt’s travels have taken him to Greenland, Nunavut, Alaska, and Iceland. Freshly returned from a year of service in Afghanistan, Matt was a feature reader at VERSeFest; he currently works as an editor of in/words Magazine. His poems have been published in Scintilla and Arc where he also recently won the Readers’ Choice Award for their Poem of the Year Contest. He is currently finishing his MA at Carleton University.

Amanda Earl: Since many of your poems are about war & specifically about observations during your time in Afghanistan, would you please provide details about your role there & the time period you were there?

Matt Jones: The skinny on Afghanistan. I was in Kandahar from the summer of 2010 to 2011— eleven and a half months total. I lived in a barracks which consisted of a shitload of sea containers pushed together. There was a shower with a sagging floor and man-mess in the scuppers. I worked in an operation centre, which is like an Army’s brain stem. We received reports from the soldiers on the ground, and compiled that information into briefings and situational awareness for the higher levels. We controlled a lot of resources like tanks, jets, helicopters, bombers, artillery, wreckers, and drones.

Whenever a “significant incident” occurred in our area of operations my job was to deploy the right asset for the job. So we could have a drone strike going on at the same time as a medical evacuation via helicopter for a wounded local. I have two pseudo-polished prose pieces which could paint this picture better. The Fisherman was a story I wrote about watching a person die slowly from a stomach injury. Terrible memory. “Reading The Brothers Karamazov in Afghanistan” is a longer prose piece dealing with an assortment of grisly war memories and how art is/was pivotal to wrapping my head around them. “The truth is ugly,” as Nietzsche tells us, “we have art in order not to die of the truth.”

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One of the things my poetry is concerned with is showing that cost baldly, without subterfuge.

As for my Dad, I guess that’s not a communal wound at all, but a “private” one; I can’t ask anyone to take a share of it. He was beautiful in that way I talked about earlier. When I was going to school in Kingston I was living with my girlfriend and we were poor as balls. Dad took us both to the supermarket and pushed carts into our hands and told us to fill them up. Bought us 700$ of groceries and she was so touched she wept in the street. Dad was raucous and charming and dissolute and funny and cruel. (You would have loved him, Amanda!) He painted water colours, loved sunsets, sang in the car, and made bird noises at children. But he was a hard man—a proud man—and he never picked up the pieces after Mom left him. Never spoke to her again, just started drinking more and dying slow. For a long while it was like I was carrying that bar stool he died on around with me, slung over my shoulder, or nestled in the corner of the room just out of view.

Is there healing to be had from writing? I think so. I hope so? At the very least there’s a community where other people are in pain too, and willing to talk about it. Most writers and poets I’ve met were lonely people once who hid in books. Maybe even with the community many writers are lonely but at least they have the skill to turn their blood and tears into ink.

AE: While you are often writing about serious and traumatic experiences, you do include a lot of humour in your writing. How does humour help you as a writer to convey and articulate your experiences and how do readers/audience members react to the humour in your poetry?

MJ: When I first read at the in/words Reading Series open mic I read a poem called “My Junk is a Force for Good.” And so it is. But then I followed it with a gut-hammer about my experiences in Afghanistan and somehow the two emotions worked well together. The humour makes the rawness go down better. Plus, shocking or filthy writing is just incredibly fun to write. And then you have the pleasure of sharing it at a writers’ circle and watching the expressions on your friends’ faces and scandalizing a stranger so much she drops her coffee. Our lives are short, often meaningless, absurd, and trivial. What’s not to laugh about?

AE: Thanks for answering my questions so thoughtfully, Matt. The experience has been a moving one for me.

AE: Aside from contrasts between the real and the supernatural, your work also includes juxtapositions between stark reality and beauty, such as in a poem entitled “Bomb Lake” where you mention “white flowers and landmines.” In “Reading The Brothers Karamazov in Afghanistan,” you write about a woman who goes in search of her son’s body parts after he has been blown up: “They [the mother with her friends] spilled onto a field of blooming grasses and flowers, where an hour earlier we had fired missiles at Sahar; his blood burst in the sky like the afterimage of fireworks, then misted the field crimson.” Later on in the same piece, grief is juxtaposed with the beauty of the rainy season: “The rainy season in Afghanistan transformed a bleak wasteland into a temporary Eden.” What do you think is the role of beauty in such violent and bleak scenes/experiences?

MJ: Ah, here the answer is two-fold. On the one hand, I don’t think beauty and ugliness can necessarily be separated—our scars can be lovely; those who have lost greatly often have greater depth than those who’ve had an easy ride. And sometimes beautiful people can have the souls of snakes. As you can see, I am disillusioned by beauty and the way we’re all supposed to chase after it. I am disillusioned by beauty and the way it hides the landmines underneath. A pregnant woman with her legs blown off by an IED bleeding out in a marketplace while a huddle of men stop the paramedics from saving her is beautiful; think of the pathos. It was agony to see that woman suffer but agony can be so… exquisite. Beauty, when it is honest, is often cruel.

Cruelty might just be the answer. I write horrific scenes beautifully because I can imagine a reader enjoying the scene and feeling disgust at herself for having that pleasure. Our bodies and minds are always betraying our sensibilities like that. Frankly disgust is the emotion I’m going for with those violent scenes and beauty brings me there. There’s also something terribly self-flagellating about my war stories. I am proud of the things I endured, but I still carry a grief for being a part of, and a witness to, all that violence. So when I write about the experience and the description is lovely the hurt is just so.

AE: You mention in your prose piece, “Reading The Brothers Karamazov in Afghanistan” and elsewhere that the wounds of veterans “are not individual problems, but instead communal.” You say, “My wounds are your wounds too.” In addition, you’ve written and read aloud at VERSeFest, a series of poems about your childhood with an alcoholic and abusive father. You’ve written in your introductions to the poems that writing about the experiences has helped you come to terms with the past.

How does writing and sharing your work with others help in the healing process for you and how do you think it might help others to read about your experiences?

MJ: Veterans’ wounds I do think are communal. People vote for governments, right? These governments make the decision to deploy soldiers to war zones. Seems like we all enjoy the perks of living in our comfortable/wealthy society but want to wash our hands of the ugly bits pertaining to how we stay on top of the heap. Increasingly, now that the war is over, the veterans are the ones forgotten. The closure of veterans’ offices, the reduction of benefits for wounded soldiers, massive levels of alcoholism, suicide and mental illness: Our country has done veterans a disservice. In critical moments, I suspect that it is in the interest of governments and big business to neglect the needs of veterans because once we start properly supporting these people governments will have to admit that war is even more goddamn expensive than people thought.

http://magazine.scintillapress.com/bomb-lake.html

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Sharon VanStarkenburgVirtuewww.sharonvanstarkenburg.ca

Sharon VanStarkenburgCapitulatewww.sharonvanstarkenburg.ca

ottawater: 10 - 50

BH: I don’t really talk too much about what I do as a job, but I do think it’s important to acknowledge that most writers have to find work outside their main interest, the main focus of their creative lives. Right now I’m a policy analyst for a department in the federal government. I’ve been doing that for two years. Before that, I worked at a variety of paying jobs—everything from sessional lecturing at the University of New Brunswick to retail. My life before my job in government was exciting but full of instability. I travelled a lot, lived off grants and intermittent employment. I was perpetually underemployed. Then I met my husband and we travelled and lived cheaply together, both working on books. Eventually we wanted to… [laughs] I hate to use the word “settle” because we’re not “settling” kind of people, but we wanted a bit more stability. The home and family life we have now are possible because of the 9 to 5. At times I’m conflicted about my job, there are times when I really hate it and wish I could focus on writing full time, but overall I enjoy it. I guess there needs to be a balance. My aunt would say a balance between the “have to” and the “want to.”

LS: How do you still find time to write now that you’re working full-time?

BH: There’s such a small amount in my day, in my week, so I think I’ve learned to cherish it more. I find ways to carve out mornings or weekend hours. I also think that when I finish a piece it’s even more important to me now. I remember finishing a small essay on Japan recently—I felt such a thrill. I biked to work that day and found myself filled with some kind of giddiness and passion. Finding that time to write meant so much to me. I know that sounds cheesy…

LS: That doesn’t sound cheesy to me. May I ask what prompted you to describe that experience as cheesy? Do you mean clichéd?

BH: I mean sentimental. When you asked me to do an oral interview, I was excited about the possibility. I’m extroverted and love to talk. But I was terrified too—in my writing life, I’m an editor. I never let my first thought out into the world. My first thought is the embarrassing thing that I keep locked away in my journal. The polished poem or essay or interview that I put out into the world is something that has rigour, to my mind. I’m referring to the hours of thinking, editing, re-thinking, sending the piece out to friends and responding to their reactions. I have a fear of speaking impulsively and too superficially about complex and nuanced things.

LS: This is bringing me to the emotional dimension of your poetry. There’s a love of words and humour. You play with words and have a love of sound. But more than that, I find there’s an innocence that I would hate to see swamped by too much inner critic or other people’s input, because I think that is the magic in your poetry—it’s like the candidness of children, how they’ll blat out just anything. So if I were to ask you a question, then—are you sensitive to having sentiment or joy leading a poem?

Going back into the tangle: An interview with Brecken Hancock, by Lesley Strutt

This interview was conducted in person at Hancock’s home, transcribed, and edited for clarity.

When I first heard Brecken Hancock read at an ottawater event, her voice made me sit up in my seat. She delivered her poems sonorously and deliberately, as if she cared that I hear every word. I wanted to meet the woman behind the poems and so I jumped at the chance to interview her for Ottawater#11. Brecken agreed to an oral interview and we allowed a certain adventurousness to lead us rather than following a pre-planned script. I discovered a generous woman whose delight in life and living full-out anchors her awareness that humans are communicators. Our words are to be paid attention to and offered as honestly as possible. She calls them precious material and talking to her, I felt that she considers us, her readers/listeners, a sacred pool into which she drops her poems, knowing there will be ripples.

Brecken’s first book of poems, Broom Broom, has been recently published by Coach House.

Lesley Strutt: Well, here we are. [Laughter]. I wanted to ask you what it is you think we’re doing.

Brecken Hancock: I find it refreshing that we’re chatting rather than doing a written interview. I really appreciate talking, that we’re doing this orally. When you came at it from that angle I was quite energized.

LS: Do you mind my asking what kind of a job you do? And what jobs you’ve done to support yourself as a writer?

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BH: I think it can be valuable to imagine a future version of yourself—what that future self would think, looking back. It helps to contextualize the present in a fantastical kind of way that I find fruitful. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I don’t have regrets, but it’s a policy of mine to try everything I want to try. Which has made me somewhat impulsive, and which can be a flaw, for sure, but I’d rather er