#collapse

by Jeffrey Paul Dore

The woman bent at the knees, crouched, fanned her hand on the cracked concrete for support, lied on her side on the sidewalk, rested her head in the crook of her elbow. The light yellow dress spread across the ground, the pink top already dirtying from the slimy grime trail left by the garbage bin she was dragging to the curb edge. The yellow and pink striking an unnatural colour balance against the surrounding crumbling eroding city.

Fragments

by Craig Farrell
In this nights diversion
     city inches forward like liquid light
Drifting from purpose to pulpit
     gathering discarded dignity from a scarred landscape
All these streets have names that sound like prostitutes
     you’ve seen it all
Seen all from the shattered windows etched in tattooed walls
From the side of a road littered with the colour of sex and revolution
And the shadows of contempt tapping on a melodrama
     Like a junkie in heat
you’ve seen it all


I cover the sky
In pastels and fire and sweat
     dripping one drop of virtue in each symmetrical gap
I cover the sky
With hands outstretched and passion diluted with salt of her fear
     taste lingering on a pallet of steel and disguise.
I cover the sky
In the midst of a victory
     stolen from the edge of every sadness felt in fleeting seconds.

We listen to silence
Exile the screams of an ancient voice beckoning its own satisfaction
     tearing at felicity with carnal purpose
We listen to silence
Shrouded in decadence and hunger and form
     soliciting cravings and brazen fever
We listen to silence
Delusion dissolves at day break igniting nostalgia and naked regret
     for moments we lost caressing a future.

Markale

by Sarah Snowdon
Helen's class had chosen baseball for their activity on a sunny afternoon last July. She was chosen third last for the red team and she felt this wasn't bad. Waiting in anticipation, she watched her team-members go up to bat, most of them flailing awkwardly at the ball.

They were losing, four to three, when it came to Helen's turn. Having no idea of how to bat, she approached home-plate, her second-hand running shoes kicking up dust from the sand and gravel. The pitcher eyed her bat as he set up. As the ball flew through the air, Helen did not think, she simply moved enough the right way to hit the ball at the right angle and off it went, flying into left field.

And the team shouted in unison: "Go!" So she ran past first, second, landing on third base. The dusty wind blew in conflicting directions, coating her throat as she breathed in.

When she stopped, she glanced around the diamond, her classmates were all cheering her on gleefully. She smiled.

Eight months later, the morning sun was shining and the air was crisp as she set out on foot for the marketplace located in the historical core of Sarajevo. She checked her mother's list: potatoes, a chicken, one bag of sugar and milk.

It took nearly 20 minutes to walk from the mountainside to the market. Alyna Kowall, Helen's best friend from school, was there that day. They met up at the corner where the strange man sold fruit and polished shoes at the same kiosk.

"Alyna, do you want to come with me? I have to get these things for mama."

"I was supposed to meet with Frankie, but he must have forgotten or just went home," replied Alyna, his sister. Two young boys made circles around them with their bicycles before they peddled faster and out of sight down an alleyway.

"Come with me, we'll go together," said Helen, and they took off around the corner.

They laughed and played while visiting each vendor. Once they had finished with Helen's list, they started heading back when a deafening noise echoed from 100 feet away and violently shook the ground beneath them. Helen's jaw went limp. She covered her ears and hit the ground. Muffled voices and soft cries were heard over the clamour of the explosion. Smoke and fear permeated the air, and everything went dark. She cried out, "Alyna!" but could not hear her reply.

The red-brick wall crumbled as young Helen inched her way towards the front of the building where the national flag hung torn and wilted. Her white slip dress was smeared with dirt; her flimsy shoes stepped on jagged, dime-sized rocks. I will not get caught, she thought to herself. Mama needs me.

Her heart raced, sweat dripped down her face. She breathed heavily as she made her way around the building. Once she could make out a clear path through the debris, she would run.

Disoriented, she thought back to that day at school, when the team said: "Go!" She dropped her groceries and ran. She did not stop until she got home. She ran through the smoke, the bodies, the debris, and the hills.

Excerpt 2: A Transit Diary, of Sorts

by Nate Simpson
[undated] – Does he ever know what he’s talking about?

19 July - My chest feels like it's on fire right along the sternum in line with my chin and I imagine the right half is light and free and full of the breath of the forest field and stream and the damp earth but at that midpoint the flail chest gives evidence to the life in the right side and illness and decay on the left it barely rising and rasping throughout its full cycle while within its dark cavity contains a lobe of undefined volume and smooth wet texture sticky to the touch and cold as though it inhales nothing from the external and respires nothing to the external and tenderly from the side of life and breath and that which is familiar I pass under that boundary of fire which forces a queer spirit upon my nature and a darkness further slips upon me and it’s funny that in this moment I have the paper the pen the want of writing but I am stuck here on the streetcar incapable of thought or idea worth inking I am stuck between poles of poetry’s minimal but strategic words or prose’s refined thoughts more developed notions and characters more whole and I wish I had my smaller scratch-book today as there are too many people looking over my shoulder on the 503 streetcar at Carroll Street where there is usually an exodus for the westbound Queen cars but not today as we angle off of from near the animal shelter where I picked up Duke those many years ago onto King Street we are bound to pick up more passengers more people that look at me and wonder what I’m doing more people that look over my shoulder at my writing which makes skin crawl just under the surface with wriggly black ant larvae and I don’t need this now as I’m on my way to the g.d. shrink.


10 Aug - All I want is for someone to relieve me relieve me relieve me from these fucking visions that make me want to gouge my own eyes with a spear a knife a stick a finger or with whatever I can lay my hands on and with that done cleave my nose from its mount render my ears deaf and dissolve my tongue oh my mind races with all such thoughts but I don’t want you to be disappointed with me when you find that I’ve taken this sweet sweet sugar yes let’s call it sugar.