Pride a cloud
by Calypso André
Icarus sends his last voice note
to his father, Daedalus,
on Whatsapp.
If you are falling it is not too late trust fall into these words the way I fall through these clouds because Father I am learning cloud is too distant a word for how clear the world is from up here don’t you know birds learn how to fly by falling Father father is too near a word for how my relief soars the farther I fall from you Father I never asked to know as much as you know the fragility of brass the use of volatile organic compounds the economy of ink I could only memorize the emerald fleck in your hazel eyes when you spoke about work this business of innovation was never for me you put a pen in my hand hoping I’d design mazes with you while all I could do was draw on its walls but hey my feet look more like my feet without the technology of wings to shadow their filth besides Father I don’t look clean enough to be up here here is for gods not the ungodly what can I say I only listened to the warmth on my cheek and that just so happened to lead me higher this forgery of flight reminds me of all the nights I fell asleep on your absence and the mornings I woke up extra early to tidy your office so it would be ready for your restlessness Father an island and a city face different tragedies and so does a father and his child Father I am not ending but becoming a pelican diving to fill its throat Father falling is just a preposition Father I could never know the meaning of exile like you do boogeymen in the sunlight in the streets in your home at night is that why you blinded your nights with obsession so your dreams could never drown you in their light Father if you fell I’d catch you Father only one of your inventions fails today Father I now know the only risk of falling is never falling again Father Father Father you were right the ocean is not blue but no colour at all
ABOUT THE CREATOR
Calypso André is a writer and organizer from Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. They hold an MFA from the University of Guelph. Their writing often deals with the hauntings we face after transitions. Her poetry has been recently published in ROOM and Riddle Fence.
Instagram: @soiamcalyso
Jade Palmer and Greg Santos
Bienvenue and welcome to carte blanche issue 55. After an eclectically international issue in summer 2026, we decided to bring it closer to home by featuring creators from Quebec and Canada only. Unsurprisingly, it was no less eclectic than any other issue of the magazine
Comic by Kate Lavut
Kate Lavut is an award-winning playwright, graphic novelist and film maker. Working within a variety of disciplines, she explores a different storytelling technique for every project.
Creative Nonfiction by Willy Blomme
The smoke is unsettling, but the worst part – more than the smell, more than the haze and more than the irritation at the back of my throat – is that I can’t see the mountain. I stand in the middle of Mont Royal – the street that shares its name with the mountain and with the city – and look towards where it should be, a wall shoring up the horizon.
Creative Nonfiction by Caroline Little
My dad belongs to raccoon alley. He belongs to streetcars and skyscrapers, to a rhododendron cloaked in winter canvas. He belongs to jazz standards on an upright piano, warbling their way up the stairs to almost-sleeping ears. My dad is ill-fitting in this domain of single-use plastics. Lately, the plastics seem to disagree.
Fiction by Anya Leibovitch
A large statue of a cassowary welcomes you to Wongaling, the midsection of Mission Beach, Queensland. It’s humid as hell and you’re sweating even before the sun is up. Most people who make it this far up the coast are motivated by exotic wildlife and white sand beaches, but you’re not here on holiday. Still, you couldn’t have imagined you’d be spending the majority of your time wearing a hair net and plastic apron, bent over metal troughs elbow-deep in water and rat shit.
Fiction by Sabrina Michael
She can see the man writhing on the streetcar tracks through the cracked screen of her iPhone, glinting in the bright sun of high noon. He’s screaming about damnation, in so much distress that it’s affecting his messaging, the specifics of the impending damnation muffled and unclear. Everyone’s damnation, she assumes, coming soon.
Photography by H.R. Link
Within the frame of a photograph, a window is a recursive frame, a sub-frame. In this series, I make use of these sub-frames in various ways.
Poetry by Calypso André
If you are falling it is not too late trust fall into these words the way I fall through these clouds because Father I am learning cloud is too distant a word for how clear the world is from up here don’t you know birds learn how to fly by falling
Poetry by Sarah Burgoyne
but where is my mother? ah, ah yes, by now she is the entire west
out the window, the milky way lets fall its milk from bright glass jars
the fish of the stream won’t stop dreaming
Poetry by Poonam Dhir
while pundits perform ganesh puja surfaces are wiped clean and envelopes slip into cotton kurtas. aunty pushes stories into tiny objects and finds herself missing the receipt.
Poetry by Alana Dunlop
This is the place from where I came:
born misshapen, at the women’s hospital, near a strip mall.
When I go back it feels like I am drinking water, rediscovering
a cold feeling in my throat.
Poetry by Chanel Sutherland
and the glasses sweat into the table and the forks scrape porcelain and the air swells with the smell of butter and basil and someone is laughing and someone is saying god, I needed this today
Translation by H Felix Chau Bradley and Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch, from Anya Nousri
Look out. When you’re invited to someone’s house, don’t eat what they offer you. S’hour can be visited on you through food. Avoid drinking; if you don’t have a choice, always wipe the rim of your glass so as not to leave any saliva. Don’t let people touch your hair. They could do gris-gris and drive you to your ruin. Don’t send or post any photos online. Learn these invocations and recite them whenever you feel someone staring at you.
Translation by Misha Solomon, from Jean-Paul Daoust
4AM Parc Lafontaine. Ambiance de jungle. The pond. Like a pasteurized swamp. Some fog to make the decor vampiric. The lights float above the paths. Annoying buoys that signal erotic rambles. And the police, watching. Because there are men roving around there. Only men. It's the law.
Photography by Maggie McPhee
Traveling to Barbados with my family for Christmas. A set of three diptychs. A string of Christmas lights. A rope that I pull at. I want to get there but I never can.