“Hostage to Fate” was told live by Michael Hornburg at This Really Happened at WordFest in Calgary, AB on October 9, 2012.

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“Paper Person Gets Cheered Up” was created by Meg Ragauskas, a student at Westmount High School. This is the third in a series of three photo essays created by students in Miss Iulia Tripa’s art class at Westmount High.

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“We Don’t Want Bullies” was created by Anne Huang, Dristy Barua, Van Nhi Dang, and Rong Xie, all students at Westmount High School. This is the second in a series of three photo essays created by students in Miss Iulia Tripa’s art class at Westmount High.

It was a normal afternoon in Fridge

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“Fruit Zombie” was created by Kane Rodriguez-Tait, Jarad McFarlane, Justin Winikoff, and Evelyn Richardson-Haughey, all students at Westmount High School. This is the first in a series of three photo essays created by students in Miss Iulia Tripa’s art class at Westmount High.

Here is Sounds of Silence by Nanette Rayman Rivera from Issue 8.

Hello darkness my old friend,
I’ve come to talk to you again
– Simon and Garfunkel

I watch him smiling to himself as we eat our first married meal together. McDonald’s. He has some light in his eyes now, his hair is combed back into his ponytail, and when he looks at me, his face turns a pale shade of pink. I love that in a man.

I think I’ve made a mistake, I’m jittery and can’t eat except for the French fries. I married a schizophrenic with droopy brown eyes and incisor cheekbones a 5′7″ Puerto Rican man with butter lips and buttery under-biceps, a belly that I bounce on and a habit of grabbing my breasts, smiling and saying, perky boobies. Look at you, he says, taking my face into both his cracked-skin hands, where the knuckles are raw and red from sleeping in the castle. You are dewy. Your skin is even more beautiful. You’re glowing like a jack o lantern.

Don’t talk to me like that, Jose, that kind of talk won’t change what you did. What he did was not tell me. Not really or fully or what’s true. Wouldn’t tell me when he left his life behind.

He’s crying. Right there in McDonald’s, loud sobs blending in with the loud gangs of kids that should be in school, with the single mothers and their triple strollers.

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Here is Hush by Mara Sternberg from Issue 11.

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Here is Picnic by Sarah Gilbert from Issue 11.

The city was a marshmallow of sticky smog and I wanted out. I carried bags loaded with beach towels and sandwiches down the front steps while George checked the oil of the old car. I had to step around a couple of languid coffee drinkers who’d spilled out of the café on the corner and made themselves comfortable on our stairs. Everyone was in my way. In the night, I got up to get a drink of water and as I stood naked by the sink, the fridge in the kitchen next-door opened, illuminating our neighbour, François, pudgy in his underwear. I’d ducked away from the window but he’d looked up and waved. That made it hard to pretend I hadn’t seen him, but I tried. I seemed to be the only one around here who needed privacy.

“Shree-eeet!” Marcus rode up, tooting the whistle he kept on a cord around his neck. My mood worsened. He wore a stretchy cycling outfit, and when he unclipped his shoes from the pedals, he click-clacked when he walked. “Gonna be a cooker,” he said. “Where you kids off to?”

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Here is Nomad by Rachna Vora from Issue 8.

I am the daughter who left
Old parents planting seeds of
Stay
I partitioned their country
And placed a border between us
Like Hindus turning on Muslims turning on Hindus
We hope that our distance is not circular

Click here to read the whole poem.