I'm Like the Great Grandchild of Marx and Coca-Cola (But Non-Biney), By MLA Chernoff

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Chernoff’s I'M LIKE THE GREAT GRANDCHILD OF MARX & COCA-COLA (BUT NON-BINEY) pits the stock market, that chaotic and often esoteric meeting place for buyers and sellers, against the mixed blessing of consciousness, to ask which one is the better source of value over time. That there’s no definitive answer is precisely the point. Strewn with delectable lines and resonant moments of insight, the book captures the anxiety and oversaturation of existing in a world motivated by wealth in all its gluttonous, debased glory, without losing sight of the basic human needs underpinning its tireless pursuit.
            -Trevor Abes

Excerpt:

From "SHIT SHOW AT THE FUCK FACTORY"

                              January 28th, 2021
 
Don’t go downstairs
underneath the floorboards
where the greeds fist each other’s needs
like little fakeouts with a hundred here
and a billion or two there,
don’t go, don’t.
 
Spectate and inspect, 
respect and circumvent,
let it be, let it all come crumbling
let the let the let the roaming roam
and the stony stone
those billionaires 
to death. 
...

A Video Tape Swaddled in Purple Wool, By Kevin Spenst

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Excerpt​:

From "On the Origins of the Specious"

Our lungs were once wings which, under millions
of years of weighted words, took flight
from fancy and here I am, winded
and grounded, wondering
what we might
have been,
 
but you are
my guest here under
these gusts of wayward
blows and what I meant to say
under this evolution of blue is that I will make
up as much as I can in pleasure and honesty for you.

The Last Thing I Will See Before I Die, By Sydney Hegele

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Visceral and fearless. The Last Thing I Will See Before I Die unflinchingly dissects its own body. Hegele slices cross-sections of past and present, pulls the meat apart before the reader and asks what it means to be seen.
           -Fawn Parker
 
Tadpoles, minnows, foals, and chameleons. These are some of the creatures that appear in Sydney Hegele's debut poetry chapbook, The Last Thing I Will See Before I Die, a collection that sings of rebirth and change through language and the act of naming—of becoming. Full of startling images and rushes of music, they write of the repercussions of violence as  “rotting lunch / in a wet paper bag” while simultaneously inviting the reader into the closeness of bed, where love “lets us / rest.” Vibrant and unforgettable, these poems are a celebration of the act of (re)creation.
           -Jenny Berkel

​Excerpt:

From "5G Venus"
 
We are together alone in
King West, four floors above thin
sidewalks under
scaffold skies where
car horns blare like a
kid's first try of a
rental trumpet
 
waves of new and bold and the
spittle that rains
at the end
 
of an
exhale
 
bluejay songs that sound like sirens and streetcars screeching to stops
along Spadina tracks
 
the city is almost as loud as
my father.
 
​

Someday I Promise I'll Love You, By Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li

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"Vivian Li's chapbook is bursting with beauty and heartache. The poems are alert to history and to the present and what it means to want to "love the taste of the earth." Li contends with grief and loneliness but ultimately stands on the side of life. There is so much to be caressed by here—it's a miracle!"
               -Billy-Ray Belcourt


"Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li is the poet of the kissing touch, the bearhug breeze, the home that Love fashions from a house. Her poetry renders tenderness, humanity prodded to be humane, so that we can avoid the double-cross that can be border-crossings (as from China to Canada). She calls for community and unity and communion, knowing “we don’t have to be good / to be loved." Then, poignantly, she asks, “How many people have we lost / searching for this moment?" Oh yes, finding this announcement of Welcome, well, you are found."
               -George Elliott Clarke
                Author of Where Beauty Survived: An Africadian Memoir 
                (Knopf Canada)

"Someday I Promise, I’ll Love You is an intimate series of correspondences “rich with inherited characters,” a chorus of voices calling across time and distance. These poems trace the marks, signs, imprints, and scars of a personal and cultural history, illuminating points of connection: beauty shimmers up from the yolk of an egg; a woman seeks out ancestral traditions; songs wind their way back to joy. From story, dream, memory, and improvisational marks on paper, Vivian Li composes an elegant, capacious collection."
              -Sheryda Warrener​​

Excerpt:

From "Someday I Promise, I’ll Love You"

Xi, you are most beautiful when you forget

what beauty is. The dew is filled with sun

on days it remains still. Waterfalls, too,

carry with them the earth that must be moved.

Mother kings blue chrysanthemums with her fingers,

her nails tessellate stars into earthy loam

once called hope. Swanning into air, the night curls around her voice like a                             
                  circlet--

somehow she can only sing silver. Your father rusts into

ashes. Allow him to encircle

you because of his lost tenderness,

in his awareness that there is love.