"Perfect Combustion"
by Meghan Harrison
“Perfect Combustion”
says the back of the van
waiting to turn left in front of
the deconsecrated church.
Does that mean everything consumed
or barely diminished? No waste or
everything wasted, waiting
for a phoenix to hatch.
A redhead on the hood
of a Pontiac Firebird,
the filaments on their bare legs
turning heat into light
faster than it can rise
from the metal underneath.
How strange to be bored
at the accelerating end of something,
like yawning the moment before
the car hits the wall. Today
no little accidents glitter
under my bike tires,
and at the street festival
everyone is rehearsing
for a season that’s running late.
Hammer-headed men
swim toward me in the wake
of smooth and burnished women,
their rippling underwater hair.
If perfect combustion is
seeing someone and knowing,
a biblical conflagration, then
what do you know? The last
line of the book? Iron
in a stranger’s mouth?
The brightness of your death
a second skin touching
someone else’s, beloved,
worth witnessing
the slow annihilations to come
with the grit of a forest fire
in your throat, carbon floating
heartless down the aisle
of its infinite weddings.
ABOUT THE CREATOR
Meghan Harrison is a writer and performer based in Toronto. She works in sports media. Her poetry has recently appeared in The Ex-Puritan and Contemporary Verse 2. You can find more of her writing at meghanharrison.net.
Instagram: @allsequinedeverything
Greetings! I am so pleased to present our milestone 50th issue of carte blanche magazine. This online literary journal of ours has been chugging along for a remarkable twenty years since 2004.
Andrew Field is a librarian and cartoonist who writes and draws mostly about mental health. He recently had a cartoon published by Bluestem Magazine, and reviews books for Graphic Medicine.
When we were young, we loved the Mulligan sisters. There were two of them and two of us. If we could have been a pop band we would have been the Supremes, except there were four of us and we were white and two of us were boys. The Mulligan Sisters wanted to marry us and were the same age. A joint wedding was secretly planned.
He gave her a library so she’d know he was the sensitive kind of Beast – not one of those monsters who’d kidnap a girl, blackmail her into staying, brutally ravish her then eat her for dinner without a second thought. This, clearly, was the romantic kind of hostage situation, the type of abduction that was a prelude to romance.
Freddie was hiding in the shower when I got home. Steam curled to the door, greeting me, damp and warm like a dog panting on my face. The train ride was long. Ice and snow smothered the tracks, strangling wheels intent on trudging through. And at every station, a strange parade of orange vests would receive us, lugging industrial sized shovels, fixed on digging us out.
I’m not saying Sarah wasn’t my friend, but she pissed me off. Always going on about things. Her parents. A man. There was always a man.
Leah sat behind the counter of the café looking at her phone while Melike rummaged through their work cubbies.
“Do you want all these flyers?” Melike called, all earnestness, as if Leah somehow didn’t know the tidying was a pretext and that Melike was hoping to find another of her sketchbooks.
This series of memories was mostly taken on an expired Fuji ETERNA 250D in Wuhan (2020), where and when the first case of Covid-19 took place.
A few Augusts ago, I became obsessed with a story I heard of a couple whose baby was attacked by a bat after the mother left her bedroom window open for the sea breeze. She kissed her baby goodnight, and returned to find them covered in bite marks.
“Perfect Combustion”
says the back of the van
waiting to turn left in front of
the deconsecrated church.
The body of a moth is velvet. The body of a moth
is light. The body of a woman fills with moths and light
They are the space between each beard stroke / these two—them in their love—how their bodies grow /
A long day ahead. A beautiful day!
Tonight they’d all see. They’d gouge their eyes out tonight.
On the asphalt of my street, the rain makes a black reflection that gathers a collection
of the evening, of the lights.
Roslyn and Max Margles Contest - First Place, Grades 5/6
When I dreamt about getting rich and famous, I never expected for it to happen like this… Truthfully, nothing about what happened went according to plan.
Roslyn and Max Margles Contest - Second Place, Grades 5/6
Once upon a time, there was a woman named Betty Rubin. Her story? You are going to have to read to find out.
Roslyn and Max Margles Contest - Honourable Mention, Grades 5/6
As a child
You were always told:
”My, you are so weird and bold!”
Roslyn and Max Margles Contest - Honourable Mention, Grades 5/6
My pink basketball pounding on the ground
When I'm running all around.
Roslyn and Max Margles Contest - First Place, Grades 3/4
There was once a kind unicorn named Bluebell. She was as soft and white as a cloud with a blue and pink mane which glowed and looked like cotton candy.
Roslyn and Max Margles Contest - Second Place, Grades 3/4
Par un beau jour ensoleillé, l’équipage du Navigator, le bateau sur lequel nos marins vont chasser la baleine, charge le matériel à bord. Ces marins sont robustes et surs d’eux.
Roslyn and Max Margles Contest - Honourable Mention, Grades 3/4
My alarm clock rang. I threw on the clothes that I had laid out the night before, then I rushed downstairs and ate breakfast, barely stopping to take a breath.
Roslyn and Max Margles Contest - Honourable Mention, Grades 3/4
Hi, my name is George. I’m the narrator of this story.
I am also the one who found Stuart’s diary so I can tell it to you. For anybody that will read this I shall warn you, you will laugh, and you will definitely, definitely, 100% pee a little in your pants.
The word Nankoweap is Paiute and the phrase carries differing meanings, such as “place where people were killed” and “place that echoes.”