april ’26 issue

Hamilton Plays Itself

O city of steel! O titan of industry!
O flaming caustics of the dark harbour!
O buried toilets like a pharaoh’s tomb!
O dead malls! O lime ridge!
O limestone crag!
O trilobite burial ground!
O glacial retreat!
O skyway bridge over empty piers!
O Tim Hortons! O Hutchs!
O hate crime capital!
O waterfall capital!
O electric city! ambitious city!
O crumbling birth of GTA vassal!
O Sam Lawrence your sunset choked by smog!
O bayfront! O space boob! alas! Alas!

by Eleanor Abrahams
Hamilton, ON

do i create bizarre poems

with cardigan hearts and

lapel pins tickling corduroy navels

slipping yet sinking

within willow-o-wisp gumbo

of rot no better than mock

where stitches cover polyester hearts

rosemary roots tangling up cords

streaks and scrims fresh soil birth

no growth below upper payout

walking embarrass one cart ferris

im happy to com-happenstance-plain

like sinew from my singer 15

plunging head first swept felt

naughty naughty mr. baggins

lacking salt i’ll take your heart

may wise satin bless my dart

as i piece together my fabric art

by JdV
Hamilton, ON

slowpoke

mumblemouth softspoke hurriedly
naming the demons haunting her thoughts
and i gave her an hour

palmwashing my hands themselves did
i held my tongue behind my topteeth
and listened

a muskrat spoke on my behalf

breaking the silence as it broke the still water surface
i had nothing to say, so i sat tracing my incisors
weighing a response between truth and comfort

i found neither to be kind

the sun crept behind the clouded horizon
a breeze like a warning shot

“it’s getting cold out, we should go home”

by Carl Anthony
Hamilton, ON

screaming at medieval times restaurant

ATTENTION KNIGHTS AND PRINCESSES!
THE FUTURE IS COMING!
REVOLUTION IS COMING!
THE HISTORICALLY PROGRESSIVE BOURGEOISIE IS COMING!
GUILLOTINE! GUILLOTINE! NAPOLEON! NAPOLEON!
YOUR CASTLES WILL BE BURIED
THEN EXCAVATED
AND TURNED INTO MUSEUMS
WHERE FAT TODDLERS WILL WIPE THEIR BOOGERS
ON YOUR SACRED TAPESTRIES!

by Eleanor Abrahams
Hamilton, ON

Winter

the robins are looking very fat this time of year
and i think about how i’m bloated with potential
i watch a pregnant woman rub her belly absentmindedly
while she talks,
i think about how sometimes i want to crawl
back inside the warm red womb,
i think about how that used to be a joke
my mom made about me
how it was true because i carried
so much sadness in my tiny body that i just wanted
a warm place to sleep.

i watch a couple take engagement photos
she looks very beautiful and very cold in white satin
my dog follows behind me without a leash
and i sometimes want to get on my hands and knees
and dig myself up from the ground.

but i would find the coffin empty
and i never see robins in a flock
and the way that i love is a radical act,
i feel replete with it but terrified to share
like a squirrel storing away nuts
scared of loss
bracing a winter.

by McKenzie Cline
Hamilton, ON