Embedded Files
Bible Collage #1 by Holly Szabados
Triangle
I
At nighttime the wedding shroud
The sun and moon,
Occupy the empty spaces and flood the walls.
And yet the night will withdraw,
That we believe.
And yet he will finally return,
That we long for.
To delay it as much as possible, consequences of the terrible absences.
The stubborn belief and hope are misleading,
Still, I am for the shroud
A prayer embedded in each thread.
II
I can still hear
Ten years, their echo
Like the wave that crashes but never disappears.
Rumbling through the seashells,
It is the greatness of the wait
A story I first heard from you,
But which never belonged to anyone
The instant between seasons
It is yours too,
When migration is certain,
But the ducks still remain
To hide it, to escape it
How sweet is to pretend
That it satiates our unescapable hunger
III
And when the summer is over,
What remains?
The cruelty of the heat, those who survived it.
The pebbles on the shore,
And the salt that eroded them.
I think they have forgotten,
This is not the same place where we met.
The rotten harvest on the field,
And the insects that break down the shoots. I ask you, there where the wheat crumbles,
Place a reminder for us.
And when the sun ceases to warm our tired bodies,
Should we write our names on the clay?
Our land, you see, I don’t think we are welcome anymore
by Ana Victoria Jankowski
Homecoming by Julia Dolansky
Homecoming by Julia Dolansky
Back at my house from once upon a time,
I try the lock; my rusty key won’t fit,
I break in through a window caked with grime
And find no place unhazardous to sit.
I once blazed bright and burned like fire; alas
I flicker faintly, some old hologram,
A foggy afterimage through warped glass,
A wisp of choking smoke is what I am.
“You must be glad to have returned,” they say
“To safety.” Meaning well, they’re unaware
That here, I feel my hollow insides weigh
Me down. I was a lighter spectre there.
Though from this place and peers I feel estranged,
Perhaps it’s rather I, not they, who’s changed.
Sometimes it's just rabbits by Sophia Laporte
Transform Yourself by Holly Szabados
Daze and Awe and Wonder by Erika Rakowsky
So close to the beating heart,
The vile, sopping wet, pulse of the world.
Solemnly, we swipe to and fro the wicked and the evil,
Slothen, we lift our heads in fits of daze and awe and wonder.
So fast the ticker tape is running,
Non-stop, non normative, unnatural communications.
Impatiently, we expect nothing less than at once,
Impossibly, we desire to see nothing but pages of awe and wonder.
When the beat hits, the earth shakes
And desperately we sink into the rhythm;
Kicking, we beg not to see anything more than all of it at once.
Gutted, we scream to the ground and beg for only awe and wonder.
Take me with you,
O somber sun,
Illuminating the grey morning with dreary haze.
I beg for nothing then to be better
Then the wretched creature I’ve become.
Shine your light on my face, oh grand star
And fill my life with days of awe and wonder.
I Hear Them Calling My Name! by Erika Rakowsky
Soup diptych by Nico Charron-Groulx
Recipe for disaster
cold November creeping leaves us all wanting
something warm to hold
someone commented on the recipe website:
replaced the bay leaf with basil and it sucked
i’m inclined to say well duh but we’ve all
fucked something up cause we thought we knew better
cold November creeping leaves us all wanting
things we can’t have
luxurious Cordon Bleu soups our dorm kitchens can’t handle
joyous hearty potlucks we don’t have time for
another comment: double the recipe you’ll never have enough
pore through old family tomes
poor weather weasels its way through our windows
pour goulash through holes in my guts
we’re tired and hungry and nothing’s good enough and
cold November creeping leaves us all wanting
and anemones boiled in rosewater won’t last us the winter
Coire Ansic
an assembly of guests would not go unsatisfied
from our scratched up second-hand dining room table
and if our cups don’t exactly runneth over
then we’ll switch to shot glasses
because someone knows somebody who knows how to
make mulled wine and someone else’s mom left us cinnamon sticks
and my dad gave us too much lamb stew which means there’s
enough for you if you want to stay for dinner or forever
although the stupid plants i potted so we could have herbs
all winter keep dying i’ll keep working to bring them back
the chives held up the best and i read they ward off evil
so at least we can garnish instant noodles and banish our demons
one day i’ll get myself sorted and make a real 5-course meal for you
but in the meantime we’ll make do
in the meantime, how do we feel about some more soup?
Cosmic Cathedral by Holly Szabados
Bathroom Floor by Audrey Gunn
Bathroom Floor by Audrey Gunn
I sit on the flattest parts of the world, with nothing on my skin but a braid running down my back, out
from my mind and down along my spine. Naked on the ceramic floor, all that stands between me and the
eternal is artificiality. I balance on the pendulum of my own beauty, finite.
This Week in Twenty-something-hood
This week in twenty-something-hood I…
covered sixty kilometres on my skis
marvelled at one sunset
wondered why my roommate was pissed at me
and cooked dinner twice.
I watched eight World Championship ski races
and shouted at the TV screen for two of them.
I made cinnamon buns twice
and talked to my parents and my grandparents and my sister
once each.
The Bravery of Judith by Isabelle Beauchesne
Dios es amor by Bianca McKeown
I went to bed after midnight three times
and submitted three assignments.
I wondered if I’ve forever lost the whimsy
of romanticizing my education
and wished for double the time in the day
so I can do everything I want to and everything I need to.
I gained seventy minutes of daylight
and only lost half an hour of sleep.
I have a new address to send a postcard to.
I talked to my best friend for thirty minutes
and we marvelled at our lives
and it made me feel strangely, sadly grown up.
This week in twenty-something-hood I went grocery shopping,
mailed a letter,
read a three-hundred-year-old book,
and felt like spring was coming.
by Cara Gordon
The Soul by Holly Szabados
Guardian of the Sun by Madonna Garang
From the glowing embers of a white
smoky fire wings and a head emerged.
Amidst the smoke: Its true figure was cloaked — yet hardly extinguished — in the white noise.
Stars flickered bearing witness to its ascension; the sun attended too, its sweet smile shined from the glowing moon.
Up high beyond what little sky it could see gleamed hope — a straight way out of darkness.
Casting away hesitation the Wild bird: fluttered its red and mighty—yet tattered wings; lifted its feathered—yet heavy crown and rose above its ashes.
A final gust of wind howled beneath its wings bursting away the remnants of its
tamed past.
Freedom belonged to the Phoenix!
Rising from its slumber Dawn arrived, cracking Midnights icy hold over all living things.
A sea of gold began to reign and weary grey skies vanished like floating feathers.
Only the two suns remain afloat, swimming silently in the blazing stillness.
With its feet on the ground and head in the sky, the Phoenix glowed like a firefly:
New life set ablazed within its soul and out through its wings. Fire lit up the sky and the sun fanned its eternal flames.
Doodles by Kaitlyn Hughes
Jubilee Weekend at Blair Atholl, 2022 by Cara Gordon
Sad Canal by Isabelle Beauchesne
Ottawa October by Cara Gordon
A dark morning, like home.
The people in front of me at the café
are talking about Israel and Palestine and Charles the first.
Abi says why is it raining so much,
it isn’t spring.
At home Kate sees my father in the woods
and tendrils of mist wreathe Point Grey.
I haven’t been to the grocery shop in two weeks.
We battle fruit flies in our kitchen
and grill frozen chicken under the Manitoba maple tree.
A girl I knew in high school writes for the Concordian
and says she knew when she moved out east
that she would never truly be home again.
I pity her and I fear truth in her words but I know
my home
waits at the end of my meandering path.
A boy with beautiful eyes bikes around Victoria
and I wonder when I’ll hear from him.
My sister dances on Helliwell Point and revels
in the piercing musical silence of fall on our Coast.
The thought of October stillness hurts my heart.
My umbilical cord stretches across four provinces and two thousand miles,
contracting and slowly and inexorably drawing me home.
Odysseus and The Cyclops by Percy Hentschel
Community
Funny how you can spend your whole life
in one place
yet it’s not until years down the line
you figure out it’s home
When you pause and look around
and find yourself surrounded
by loved ones and loves to be
Community
Friendship, love, and safety
once an abstract, theoretical thing
it seeps up through the cracks
a slow rising tide
I find myself afloat in this community
a slow rising tide
but I am not adrift
for we are linked
hand in hand
This is your home
This is your community
Reach out, grasp my hand
and join us
by Holly Szabados
The Perfect Fall Day by Bianca McKeown
In Dreams, Sonnet #1 by Bianca McKeown
Like a light from the highest sun with rays
So bright and shining, Fortune placed her here
On earth but in true gleam of day she strays.
In daylight your face is my souvenir.
A chase through weeds, bushes, and leaves to find
A nymph concealed; this race the only thrill
That pumps the beating of my heart so blind.
Delight she fills me with a testament to skill.
The chase so sickly sweet, and icy hot,
I cannot tell right from the devil’s tongues.
The burning fire of agony forgot,
If I could be with her, my body’s lungs.
As now I go to rest in slumber bliss,
How true can love be if not an abyss?
Valentine's Day Sonnet by Nina Zajac
Movie Poem by Bianca McKeown
Walk Home by Isabelle Beauchesne
On March 12 by Sophia Laporte
I Wish This Was My Desk by Isabelle Beauchesne
Five relentless days by Nico Charron-Groulx
In honor of five relentless days and people; or, what I did Feb. 13-17 2025
In numbers
5 days, 104 or so hours, up to 7 people in the house, 64.2 centimeters of snow, 2 movies on my laptop in bed, 56.9 kilometers traveled, 3 ½ exhibits at the National Gallery, 17 vintage pinball machines, 4 classes (2 of them skipped), upwards of 500 words written one night, 3 medieval dances in a community center gym, and 69 photos - yes really, I counted
In images
s.310 hanging five-lobed continuous form within a form with spheres in the second third and bottom lobes
a pile of snow blocking the entire sidewalk
4 people yelling across the dome above the table-hockey game
a kitchen knife scraping over a whetstone
cocomelon videos
a red tie and a white button down too early in the morning
a dorm room bed
a tangle of people warming up on the couch
a hand-drawn dungeons & dragons battle map
2 women looking at Rothko’s No. 16
for as long as possible
In chronometaphorical order
500 mile military march against Boreas
Witchcraft
First confrontation with Art, forced
Extremely belated capitulation to Cupid
Dionysian film-watching technique deployed
Literally the middle ages
A discordant tenuto
Crash landing in a sewer fight
Absurd tangle of limbs
Some attempt to sort things out
Second confrontation with Art, dazzling
Boreas defeated in battle to access basement trove of untold richesses
Celebration of victory
Dastardly revenge attack from Septentrional troops, retreat to the heat of home and heart
Absurd tangle of limbs inadvisably fighting Hypnos
Mindless farewells
Attempting to sort things out again
In essence
my body is a machine that
mythologizes every day
for lack of a better word
i’ll try 293 of them
Wu Wei
I remember no beginning, no end,
metamorphosing forever, I am
mist of mountains,
kissing faces of travelers climbing
toward the sage’s hut.
I am the cloud, watching
the scholar, staff set aside,
eyes tracing my movement,
gaining enlightenment.
Now, I return—
a drop falling into a puddle,
looking into eyes sheltered
beneath faint brows—
a little girl, wrapped in the sound
of summer rain.
She reaches,
tiny hands pink with cold,
picking at her treasures:
flint stones,
milky pebbles, softened by time.
She takes one,
remembers sparks beneath
the dark cover of a blanket,
places it back,
as if it never left her hand.
She looks into me,
and I into her—suspended
in this moment,
shielded from eternity,
in the sparks of her wide eyes.
by Epphem Khorshidi
Paterson Hall by Ana Victoria Jankowski
Vāc
We left at dawn,
my sister and I,
without our father’s blessing.
The palace doors opened
as the axe came down,
severing the head
of last night’s bride.
When the king took his pleasure,
my sister sat
at the foot of the bed.
“Tell me a story, sister,” she says.
I breathe in.
The song of the mulberry tree
clings to me still.
Once, beneath its branches,
I saw strange fruit—
human heads, mouths shut, yet chanting:
Shahrzad, the eloquent one,
Goddess Anahita has chosen you.
They turned to my sister:
Dinazad, the soft one—
guide her words,
deliver the sons of her stories.
Outside, the city holds its breath—
and so I begin,
disturbing the silence of
one thousand and one nights.
by Epphem Khorshidi
May We Find Peace
God bless the rambled mind, the switched up mixed up scrambled mind,
The thousand miles a minute, hundreds of thoughts per second mind,
The anxious, the delirious, the drowsy kind.
Bless the take it all in and laugh kind of genius,
The quick flowing river,
Rushing over eroded rock, and crashing into dams, type genus.
God bless the better mothers,
The cozy bed,
The sweater-ed other,
the hand on head.
Bless the bus and the people on it, and the people off of it, and everyone in between.
God bless the hateful, and the angry, and the mean.
God bless my heart and soul and body and mind,
God bless the moments of good within days I find.
God bless my luck, God bless I never let it run out.
God bless my mouth, God bless my shout.
God bless food for thought, twice better than food once bought.
God bless I always stay full,
Of continual poetry, flowing endlessly like a flood the river once brought.
God bless humour and God bless laughter,
bless bright glowing joy and catching your breath after.
Bless the highest art form, the joke,
And may it reign forever more,
May we find time to chuckle amidst torrential downpour.
And, well I’m at it,
Bless the pen, bless the writer
Bless those who sing,
Bless the ring,
Bless the fighter.
Bless the newborn,
Bless the dying,
Bless the martyr,
Bless the dirt, and then the flower.
Bless the rain, and then the shower.
God bless the morning light upon the trees,
arousing the natural world from their peaceful sleeps,
the birds who greet the dawn with apprehensive cheeps.
Lord on high,
Bless what I can control, and what I cannot.
Bless the things I know and all the things I do not.
Don’t bless the beautiful,
they don’t need it
Bless the ugly,
bless my ego,
nourish it, feed it
God bless that which is tricky, not that which is hard
And bless the broken glass,
ach individual,
infinitely complex,
infinitesimally small shard.
God bless a lesson supposedly learnt, but only felt a moment too late,
Bless hindsight’s endlessly exposing, heartbreaking light,
God bless the empathy of a friend, bless trying to relate.
Bless the fact this poem may suck, and bless the fact that I tried.
Bless the world who asked to which I replied
that yes in fact “most times I am happy,” and didn’t have to lie.
Bless each line, each verse, each sentence, each word.
God bless the night, God bless the world, God bless sleep.
God bless you and I, and may we find peace.
by Erika Rakowsky
True Destruction by Erika Rakowsky
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