Here at carte blanche, we like to say “there’s more than one way to tell a story” and rather than following a theme, we opened things up by having no theme for this issue. The cb team and I were curious what type of work we would receive. Would it be an eclectic free-for-all? Or would there be some threads from the creative ether connecting pieces to each other?
Read MoreBy Lucia Ceta
Lucia Ceta is an artist making comics and other stuff in Tiohtià:ke, also known as the island of Montreal. @luciaceta on Instagram.
Read MoreBy Caite McNeil
Caite McNeil is a writer and illustrator. Her work is place-based and often humorous, pulling inspiration from a childhood spent in rural Maine. Caite is a graduate of the Stonecoast MFA program and serves on the editorial team at The Stonecoast Review. She lives in Mid-Coast Maine with her husband, daughter, and little dog. Her work has been published in The Tahoma Review, Flyway Literary Magazine, The Dewdrop, Speculative Nonfiction, and the Stonecoast Review.
Read MoreBy Justin Ancheta
1. How do you define “disability”? a) An umbrella term covering impairments, activity limitations, and participation restrictions. None of which could ever apply to you. b) “Tell us more about your experience with asexuality and disability.” You imagine the question coming up in tomorrow’s news interview. You’ve worked with asexuality and queerness to cut out and hammer together a healthier
Read MoreBy Alycia Pirmohamed
I’m reading an essay in vol. 36, no. 4 of Textual Practice / about ‘flat style,’ a poetic style that Noreen Masud describes as “so overloaded— / with feeling, language and detail—that it turns counter-intuitively into something numb and detached, which seems to shut down further discussion, and create impasse.”
Read MoreBy Heather Rolland
I was looking for my grandparents’ wedding photos when I opened the box. In it lay a collection of my husband’s odds and ends, damp and filthy: a box of condoms; a tan leather handgun holster splotched with mildew; a white cotton baseball cap with a logo I didn’t recognize; an old Chronogram magazine; a new-looking Artie Traum CD; a lot of white cotton rope, piled, not wound into a hank
Read MoreBy James Callan
Hannah eyed the wooden saviour nailed up on His cross, up on her wall. She gazed at Him, there beside the pinned-up butterflies, and stuck out her tongue. In mockery, she placed a Cool Ranch Doritos triangle into her open mouth, crossed herself, and intoned “The body of Christ” before chewing like a savage, a pagan animal, to shed over-flavoured snack shrapnel upon the plush, white carpet.
Read MoreBy H Felix Chau Bradley
Snow falls from under my eyelids, interruptions produced by glare. If I blink hard and often enough, I can delude myself into believing I’ve gotten rid of the flecks. But try walking around the city, on and off of buses, in and out of doorways, up and down escalators, blinking so hard you can’t see what you’re walking through, or into.
Read MoreBy Kayla Kavanagh
Just when you think you’ve hit rock bottom you find yourself Googling how many calories are in Zoloft. Google informs you you have an eating disorder and you wonder what dose of which rescue medication will blunt the shame brought forth by this discovery. You opt against pills and in favour of online shopping, a coping mechanism that has fewer calories and produces the same dull affect.
Read MoreBy Max Paradise
Back when I lived with training wheels we spent nights drinking. I drank because of boredom and because it made my blood sing and because I was playing a game called the slowness of time, a game for children. Later on I learned to drink to the quick and play at a game called disappearance, or a game called perhaps I can be someone else for a little while.
Read MoreBy Liz Stewart
Bullet vibrators are not meant for assholes, but I liked the feeling, I wanted it, and Shanna always gave me what I wanted. By myself, it always worked great. I still stand by the sensation, the gluttony of pleasure that encapsulated that whole era of my life, the unabashed lesbian sex I was finally having that first winter of living alone.
Read MoreBy Lucy Zhang
I told my daughter she didn’t need to play piano or attend Chinese school or join the Math Olympiad because “We’re not like other Chinese families.” I wanted her to do whatever she wanted the way our white neighbours let their kids have free rein. Self-discipline would grow organically as she learned what worked or failed.
Read MoreBy Ana Brotas
Trees do not have eyes, at least, in a way that would be conventionally recognizable. Trees had certainly captivated the attention of my grandmother and she would often claim that they were some sort of monument, almost holding a monolith status. My mother, like her mother, embraced that exact same fascination, repeating these words once more down the tree lineage.
Read MoreBy Isadora Canela
What you were became suddenly a memory. You want a hug and it seems as faraway as your best future dream. You are dissolving and even on this form the walls still holding you. And then you look around. You breathe. You change. You die. You live. You, human, you are alive, not alone.
Read MoreThis being my last issue editing carte blanche, I thought I’d take a minute to wrap things up, emotionally speaking, and thank every poet I was lucky enough to publish, from issue 37 through issue 45. When I first interviewed for the position, Greg asked me
Read MoreBy Kinsey Cantrell
arrhythmia, apace. starkly apoplectic, rupture. coyote sightings on residential streets. let the hot soup air condense on my lenses. the structure of the day subdued, new spiders settle tunnel webs to strand and tether excess. knees locked. the burners on the stove were off off off off off off i twisted them each to be sure counted off
Read MoreBy T. Liem
Darkness held water or water went dark or ceased to be itself, resting transformed in darkness. Water was trapped and lost. Water in the details of the red rock clay. Water in the phrase quite a long time. Quite a long time three billion years a long time.
Read MoreBy Amanda Merpaw
I had a melancholy / so melancholy it / opened my letters, which were / answers.
Read MoreBy Tosh Sherkat
a ghazal is a box you place your hands inside to hide the holes (in you) / [ho-hesh me-ko-nam bozourk ha-neigh gorbonnet baram]
Read MoreBy Liselle Yorke
what if i was on fire / running out of ways to say / i am a light white wispy cloud like / i am no chance of rain, when in truth / i am laden with torrent
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