A Big-Box Store at the Edge of the Laurentian Shield

By James Owens

As several customers are leaving
the grocery section with their purchases— 
the soup that is on sale for 97 cents a can,
 
heads of lettuce, chicken burgers,
chicken strips, chicken nuggets— 
they are stopped at the wide windows
 
to stare at the screaming gulls, a hundred,
flying toward them over the parking lot,
over the ranks of cars wet with sleet,
 
the ordinary birds backlit larger and grim
against the afternoon and seemingly filled
with purpose, intent on some annihilation
 
they have gathered for, until they pass over
and out of sight. The brief apocalypse
has ended, and the automatic doors
 
whisk the strangers out into the beginning
winter. A car alarm throbs like a nerve
in a tooth. A child starts to cry.

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Begin With the Sound of Eggshells When They Break Against the Side of the Bowl

By James Owens

​After being in the cold,
we eat eggs
 
together, just eggs,
as we stand by the stove,
 
soft, warm eggs
scrambled in butter,
 
not studying
the archetypes.

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Spring Arrives an Hour West of Sudbury, Ontario

By James Owens

Rain and sticks
and mud and
sticks and mud.
 
The rain stops.
A valve in my throat
 —closed—opening.
 
Among the dark furrows, a crow
stabs his own image in a puddle.
The sky in splinters, then still.

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​James Owens's newest book is Family Portrait with Scythe (Bottom Dog Press, 2020). His poems and translations appear widely in literary journals, including recent or upcoming publications in Channel, Poetry Ireland Review, Queen's Quarterly, Dalhousie Review, and Atlanta Review. He lives in a small town in northern Ontario.