a rascally lab-shepherd and grumpy old cat didn’t much like each other

A poem from Randall Magg’s book about Terry Sawchuk, the legendary hockey goalie who got his start with the Detroit Red Wings.

"Naked men. At each other all the time, all day long. I can’t get it out of my head."

langwage binds us 2gethr separatelee n parts n sharing almost replikating nevr reelee xact wun uv th biggest communal spells we ar all bound n unbound in

“Thank god for you,” Polly said one day after work, as she and Ruth sat under the fluorescent lights of the town’s only bar. “You’re the only normal one here.”

Honourable mention in the 8th Annual Geist Literal Literary Postcard Story Contest.

No one explains things to dogs. The voice that’s missing has left its aroma everywhere,along with the faint stale smells of those who used to be here:

A paranoid office-worker relieves the alienation she feels in her job by writing experimental lyric prose.

She carries my chair,she carries my walker,she carries my commode,she drops my heart   so hard it breaks into a hundred pieces

Benito like the oaf he wasinvaded Greece and got defeated

Use your grandmother’s knitting needles if they are steel and sharp, her crochet hooks. Hell, you could even use the split edge of this table. Slide your inner arm against the jagged grain, watch the splinters scrape you raw.

Sadness has no reasons. Sadness is a luxury of spare time, a piece of pie leftover, the blueberry’s skin caught between your teeth, the black blear of happiness.

On th train, back from th Empressdining car, snowing woodlands,pulling thru Manitoba, recallhow sum yrs after th second centenaryof th founding of Halifax, whichdate i commemorated with signabove my father’s street door

louis riel liked back bacon & eggs easyover   nothing’s as easy as it seems tho   when the waitress cracked the eggs open louis came to his guns blazing   like dissolution like the fingers of his hand coming apart as he squeezed the trigger

Mousey is dead—but perhaps you saw that coming. I was told after the fact, by a friend who’d heard something.

The last interview of Crad Kilodney, as written by Crad Kilodney.

His wallet’s stuffed with currency from allmanner of countries not in business now;his camera aches for discontinued film.

...it seemed the scent of lemonswas rising off the river but it was just theSunlight dish soap on our hands fromdousing the fountain on the police stationlawn a couple hours before smoking herstepdad’s weed twisted tight inside ourreport cards cause

From Lemon Hound, a poetry collection published by Coach House Books in 2006.

Limericks written at The Great Canadian Limerick Caper at Word on the Street, 2008.

i sd lovinglee can yu  not yell at me  n call me