Blue wears a leather-fringed tank while she dances, while she does the shimmy-shimmy-cocoa-bop in the living room. She closes her eyes and jumps up and down in time to the K-pop cranking from our tinny speakers. She swings her hips and tosses her hair. From across the room, I see her scars.
Pray that drowning is the mercy you are bestowed. Pray that your flesh is transposed into something worthy of redemption—a sea flower, the lush plump legs of a dungeness crab on a seafood buffet,
i haven’t been touched since
the cold came & the last time i was kissed
with any honesty, the crops on every lawn
& meadow were still tossing their pleasures
into the air
I am in the kitchen cutting my sister’s sandwiches
the way she likes them. I am on the staircase
making music with the steps that creak. I am in
the walls and in the air ducts and in the sewers.
100 WORD BOOK REVIEWS / Roots Grew Wild by Erica Hoffmeister
Erica Hoffmeister’s first collection of prose poetry, Roots Grew Wild, manages to achieve what most other themed chapbooks fail to do: tell a complete story arc with lucid imagery and unforced pathos. What is particularly effective is the rhythm of her phrases. While one can fault any poet for verbose language, Hoffmeister’s cadences flow off the page like unspooled ribbon. Thematically, the collection gracefully navigates “hid[ing] from the things we were afraid of” and “discover[ing] the beauty of [saying] goodbye” to painful aspects of upbringing, but also champions the act of becoming—an act that no axe can chop down.
If you want to know what I think, I think Santa Claus is a Black woman.
She takes on extra shifts before the holiday, puts her tips
away in a jar in her sock drawer, and ends up buying everything
on her kids’ list with a credit card.
“I can't think that way. I fight thinking that way,” Liz said. “I'd go crazy otherwise. I want someone to be with and get along with and have someone want to be with me and get along with me. It's supposed to be like that, Billy. It's not too much to ask that life should make some sense.”
FILM / Captain Canada's Movie Rodeo / June 2019 / Gabriel Ricard
Gabriel Ricard’s latest Captain Canad column reads as a love letter to the Criterion Channel.
some of us, had the good sense to call out to the warmth & beg
it to return to us in our sleep—when it was ready to sing the joy
back into our bones—humming the rhythms of our grandmothers’
deepest laughs.
100 WORD FILM REVIEWS / John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum
John Wick really knows how to kill people. He can use anything as a weapon: katanas, guns, knives, horses, belts, his bare hands, the immortalized pencil. But that’s only half the battle. The latest entry in the series goes deeper and reminds us that honor and integrity are not synonymous with morality and friendship. John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum delivers on the action, expands the mythology of the criminal underworld’s High Table, and introduces a character you’ll despise, the Adjudicator. Sorry, George Miller. John Wick unequivocally ousts Mad Max as the most consistent franchise in control of its original creators.
COMICS / Mr. Butterchips / May 2019 / Alex Schumacher
Mr. Butterchips takes on his greatest monster yet (and he’s taken on donald Trump) in the latest edition from Alex Schumacher.
I stood there, glaring at my mother, wanting to tell her I wished she were dead, but I could feel my stepfather's eyes burning into the back of my head. Instead, I calmly walked to the bathroom, closed and locked the door, then put my fingers down my throat as far as I could reach.
Her azure skin waning under a lunar gloom.
Just the bare hull of her, spread out like a water deer,
weighing her head down against a familiar cloud,
surrendering to shadow.
Sorry I didn’t respond.
I was going to, but your laugh sounded
too much like an insult.
I am not your parachute
I’m a trampoline left oscillating from your stay,
of the class of 1914
dismantled, stiff and agape
in cold French mud
punched by painful numbness.
FILM / Captain Canada's Movie Rodeo / May 2019 / Gabriel Ricard
Gabriel Ricard explains how fandom can ruin movies and reviews Avengers: Endgame and other films.
In one of the most brilliant and revealing moments in this exquisite use of the technique, the 13-year-old Jennifer tries to persuade her 48 years-old self that she was in control of that relationship the entire time. The 13-year old claims that breaking up with Billy, who continued to write her for years afterwards, proves that she was not a victim. She casts herself as master of her own fate.
My coworkers go crazy over the eagles. On my break I sit outside the building and people take photos and ask questions. It feels good to be noticed. I let a kid pet one of the eagles and it screeches at him. He jumps backwards. Gets a big laugh.
I am bad for you? So is smog and second hand
smoke and a good rare steak and what am I
to them if I am anything at all.