Category: Poetry

  • Battleground

    Battleground

    We are torn and ripped apart

    until all that’s left

    is husk and shell

    on the floor of existence

    the memories of what we endured

    our hands calloused

    from picket signs and shovels

    from wrestling alligator politicians 

    from fighting the price wars

    retail box store cage match

    bloody clean up on aisle seven

    enough to make you crazy

                    for gravy

                             on the side

    off your diet grease bucket

    advertising all organic plastic

    drilled into our heads

    by underwear models and the genius of editing

    we plug the holes

    with coupons

    and discount punch cards

    purchase ten and the eleventh

    gelatinous mound of goo is free   

    so much we have fought

    so much more to fight

    come to me let me hug you

    let me absorb some of this

    pain and hatred

    take a pause

    cry

           then

    when you’re ready

    grab your grenades of intellect

    put the saddle back on the beast

    prepare yourself

    because we are going back in

    armed to the teeth with empathy

    rocket launchers of understanding

    and bulldozers of compassion

    we have love on our side

    and that shit is napalm 

    and we will bomb the hell

    out of them all!

    Christian McPherson is a poet and novelist. He lives in Ottawa with his wife and their two kids. He has written a bunch of books including, The Cube People, Saving Her, and My Life in Pictures. If he isn’t out walking his dogs, he is usually sneaking off to the movies.

     

  • Spring

    Spring

    A tear trickles down a glacier,

    Growing the grass and my hope.

    I fell in love with spring

    When it melted bitterness and frost,

    Its raindrops sliding down windowpanes

    And mourning the earth below.

    Ally is a third-year English and history student at Carleton University. They are a queer, autistic writer and painter with a love of whimsy and melancholy alike. In the poems “Spring” and “The Time-Honoured Tradition of Moving Away and Losing Touch,” they express a mixture of these two opposing aesthetics. In “Roommate,” they explore a much more playful perspective while writing of something that could be seen as sinister. They have never had their work published but are grateful for the opportunity.

     

  • Roommate

    Roommate

    The ethereal tenant

    Is surprisingly friendly,

    Opening doors and windows

    When they find it too warm

    In the middle of January;

    Making sure I turn off the light

    Before I finish

    And on again just to be sure;

    Leaving me notes

    On the bathroom mirror

    And on the bedroom wall.

    They’re unemployed

    Only in the traditional sense,

    My incorporeal companion.

    Ally is a third-year English and history student at Carleton University. They are a queer, autistic writer and painter with a love of whimsy and melancholy alike. In the poems “Spring” and “The Time-Honoured Tradition of Moving Away and Losing Touch,” they express a mixture of these two opposing aesthetics. In “Roommate,” they explore a much more playful perspective while writing of something that could be seen as sinister. They have never had their work published but are grateful for the opportunity.