Two poems
by Conyer Clayton
Chaudière Falls
I can never remember the difference between ligaments
and tendons. It all has to do with what you're attached to.
Liquid slipping
over rocks. The sound of water is the same
as silence. What oils surface when I settle
and sense nothing over the drone?
No crepitus, lubrication—things
only heard, not felt. I could almost
believe I'm brand new, in the making,
just emerging like a swell that fell far
below the white high-water mark
on the dam where splash survives.
The top ridge is already drying
even though the sun is weak today.
It's not even noon and already I can tell the day is over.
Signs spell out danger, but they only draw me nearer.
The older the staircase the looser the joint. I move
my knees in tiny circles every time the horizon
brightens. The moment I woke up,
I heard something.
The ropey fascia of my happiness connects to the bone of quiet.
Is that how these things work again?
My mood is aching.
Smol bird
Tiny birds swarm a crow, swallows
or swifts or a sense of surety.
They undulate, new
navy sheets on the bed, slicker than
the others. We unconsciously
steal from each other all night,
every night.
Who is the swallow and who is the crow?
I hate to say it, but I'm the large one
in this blue, sometimes I need
several of you to remind me that
those are not my eggs.
Afterwards, the swallows
return to the lawn and peck insects
among the bare dandelion stalks.
You make the bed, like
every morning, I leave
it and sip coffee, long winged
and looming. I pretend
I'm just a smol bird, a nice bird, the squawk
jammed in my throat like unchewed meat.
ABOUT THE CREATOR
Conyer Clayton's debut collection, We Shed Our Skin Like Dynamite (Guernica Editions, 2020), won an Ottawa Book Award. Her most recent chapbooks are: Sprawl (Collusion Books, 2020), written with Manahil Bandukwala and shortlisted for the bpNichol Award, and Towers (Collusion Books, 2021) by VII, of which she is a member. Her second book, But the sun, and the ships, and the fish, and the waves (A Feed Dog Book, Anvil Press) is forthcoming Spring 2022. @conyerclayton on Instagram and Twitter.
By Margo LaPierre
When I say Orion watches over me, I mean it was the name I’d chosen for the baby. I mean Orion my unborn, whose fate was sealed when my bestie and a male stripper and I were kidnapped from Pink Pony Atlanta’s parking lot.
By M-X Marin
Through the nascent storm, walk away from the river. It’s my first winter near my grandfather’s grave, on occupied territory first named Gespe’gewa’gi, seventh district of Mi’gma’gi, the ancestral and unceeded territory of the Mi’gmaq, later christened Sainte-Anne-Des-Monts by my ancestors. Seven-thousand inhabitants nestled along the south bank of the St-Lawrence 49° North.
By Vrnq Synnott
It's a familiar outline, life mouthing I want more.
She sat on the sofa, her hands on her knees—but for whom. There were days such as this one where she felt like someone had zoomed in on her. This impression was not new. As if the landscape disappeared and she now filled the entire frame.
By Sunshine Barbito
My knees sink into the mud and grass while I try and think of a prayer. It was just lying there in forever-sleep.
By Bára Hladík
I was just among the whales. I hang somewhere in water or mud listening to whales move through water until the snakes weave my muscles. They swim up the center of my spine and fill my Lymph with soft poison.
By Sue Murtagh
Theresa misplaces her phone every single day. Ditto her car keys. But after the regular panic and flurry, running around like an idiot upstairs and down, dialing the phone from the landline, checking yesterday's pockets, she always finds what she's looking for.
By Sara Sherr
Hannah’s family had a huge farm with something like thirteen acres. She reminded me about all the acres when she tied me to a tree so far away from her parents’ stone mansion that I could no longer see it over all the rolling hills in the distance.
By Steven Stowell
Sean’s bedroom door was open just a sliver; a thread of warm light peaked out, framed by the shadows of the upstairs hall. Nudging open the door, I found Sean sitting on the floor, leaning his bare shoulders against the side of his bed, facing away from me. He contemplated something held in his hands, blocked by the corner of the bed—a book or a magazine, perhaps. His room was filled with the sweetly sour smell of sleep.
By Béla Váradi
For decades Béla Váradi has been trying to integrate his two main interests; creating visual art and represent the life and interest of Roma people in Hungary. As a young adult, starting a career in journalism helped him to find an accommodating platform for his passion for visual and social representation.
By Conyer Clayton
I can never remember the difference between ligaments /
and tendons. It all has to do with what you're attached to.
By Rasha Abdulhadi
this body is a chest of seafaring gear and unused tablecloths /
times are i go years making passage without unpacking
By Khashayar Mohammadi
words walk me to myself
a gap
on the verb of psychosis
By Nnadi Samuel
giant pine of tall task deck the muscled prairie.
the cloud, fibre thick atop like a double-decker.
By Jake Byrne
Leaf matter passing into dust lil caterpillar mange-holes /
Mon cheri berry. Aprikorn
Greetings, dear readers! I’m writing this editorial right on the cusp of the winter solstice and we at carte blanche are so pleased to present our last issue of 2021, issue 42.
By Oreganillo.
Aodh Ó Riagáin is Oreganillo., an Irish, genderqueer, dyspraxic cartoonist working in the arcane tradition of slinging ink onto paper with a pen and a brush.