Window/Frames

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. Sometimes I shoot through them, narrowing the field of vision, directing it toward the outside world. At other times, the windows become mirrors, reflecting the outside world back at us, obscuring the interior. And in still others, the windows are ornaments on an ornate façade, forming a collection in an architectural gallery. In the final image, windows are at a remove, a point of arrival at the end of the image’s vanishing point.

2 - Victoria Hall, Cobourg, Ontario.jpeg

4 - Via Rail waiting room, Cobourg, Ontario.jpeg

ABOUT THE CREATOR

H. R. Link is based in Montréal/Tiohtià:ke. Her poems have appeared in The Malahat Review, Contemporary Verse 2, and elsewhere. In 2024, she received the Mona Adilman Prize in Poetry. She is a founding editor at Ekphrasis, an online magazine dedicated to the intersection of the literary and visual arts.

Featured

editorial

Editor's Note

editorial

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

editorial

photography

Maggie McPhee

I Can Never Get There

photography

Maggie McPhee

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.

photography

Maggie McPhee

comics

Kate Lavut

The Boob (Excerpt)

comics

Kate Lavut

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.

comics

Kate Lavut

creative nonfiction

Willy Blomme

The Mountain

creative nonfiction

Willy Blomme

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

Willy Blomme

Everything is About Cancer, Except Cancer, Which is About Me

creative nonfiction

Caroline Little

Everything is About Cancer, Except Cancer, Which is About Me

creative nonfiction

Caroline Little

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.

creative nonfiction

Caroline Little

fiction

anya leibovitch

Croc Country

fiction

anya leibovitch

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

anya leibovitch

fiction

sabrina michael

@skunkgrl69

fiction

sabrina michael

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.

fiction

sabrina michael

photography

H.R. Link

Window/Frames

photography

H.R. Link

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.

photography

H.R. Link

poetry

Calypso Andre

Pride a cloud

poetry

Calypso Andre

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

Calypso Andre

i do the dishes while the magpies build a bridge

poetry

Sarah Burgoyne

i do the dishes while the magpies build a bridge

poetry

Sarah Burgoyne

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

Sarah Burgoyne

poetry

Poonam Dhir

recitation

poetry

Poonam Dhir

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

Poonam Dhir

poetry

Alana Dunlop

How Quiet, How Quick

poetry

Alana Dunlop

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

Alana Dunlop

poetry

Chanel Sutherland

Over Lunch, She Tries to Tell Them

poetry

Chanel Sutherland

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

poetry

Chanel Sutherland

translation

H Felix Chau Bradley, Eli Tareq Bechelany-Lynch, Anya Nousri

The Evil Eye

translation

H Felix Chau Bradley, Eli Tareq Bechelany-Lynch, Anya Nousri

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

H Felix Chau Bradley, Eli Tareq Bechelany-Lynch, Anya Nousri

translation

Misha Solomon, Jean-Paul Daoust

NUMBERS; or, DES NUMÉROS

translation

Misha Solomon, Jean-Paul Daoust

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.

translation

Misha Solomon, Jean-Paul Daoust

photographycarte blanche magazineOctober 25, 2026H.R. LinkComment