I will leave for the North
net hunting for my soul.

“with feet in cement and scalp raw the legends say you are the only continent that is still dry buried under the layers of your apparently millennial conscience overflowing with segments to drink in shooters and to love endlessly the bottom of the reflection you are getting ready to throw into the mirror like a rock into the façade of time”

you are as white as the night
scratched down to the bone
scraps of flesh under your fingernails
dusky joints

tints ashen as embers
in the tinsmith’s furnace

The world its collection of rare insects
they pin their own wings
arrange the carpets the curtains
everything in its proper place

on the unmade bed spasms
and sweat saliva and sperm
their striated skin no longer contoured
the beige walls of the bedroom
sing bellow curse the spring

on the nightstand
a meter
calculates the bruises

knowing nothing about flight

one by one they count
the petals of hemlock
kill the hours the minutes
and nip feelings in the bud.

Émilie Turmel

Émilie Turmel was born in Montréal in 1988 and grew up in Québec City. A poet, performer, and cultural worker, she was a finalist for the Émile-Nelligan prize and winner of the René-Leynaud prize for her first book, Casse-gueules (Poètes de brousse, 2018). She has a master’s degree in French literature and a post-graduate degree in the creation of artist’s books from Université Laval, and she has also studied and taught Philosophy. She now lives in Moncton, New Brunswick, where she is the Executive Director of the Frye Festival. At the same time, she is creating video poems and working on her next book.

"Histoires de vignes — Une feuille, un crocodile, non, un orignal"

25. At the fish market, the urge to cry out “Oh Nature”
among the virile accents crushing boredom for
good, a fragrant powder from the feet to the mouth,
boots up to the nose, the insidious scent of the sea
in winter, with its r dragging on in the lurking terror
of shipwreck, rolling around the tongue in waves,
in curves of desire, that will be $29 for your lobsters.

26. Observation. Listening. Euphoria. And memory
to deposit as soon as it becomes possible, between two
flights. Language, for our devotion, our enrichment, our
use and not abuse. He accepts wisdom when—finally! she
dares to knock. Welcomed. He looks around the room
without aspergillum nor stoup. He finds / logs
new constellations, prepared to lie. He would do
nothing but that in life, except. Theft, burglary,
pillage. Quite a story, for those who were
disturbed, and who remember.

27. Some did it. Remained silent. For half a century.
That’s 50 years. It is 20 times shorter than a millennium,
it cannot be shown on a clock face / a clock
with hands, half a century. On a digital device,
it can be. It’s like, without batteries, a power outage
that lasts the entire duration of existence of an
ancestor. Within a pixel or so.

Serge Patrice Thibodeau

Serge Patrice Thibodeau was born in Rivière-Verte, New Brunswick, on the borders of Quebec and Maine. He spent time in other countries on numerous occasions while living in Montréal where, for approximately twenty years, he was actively involved in the Quebec literary community as well as being a passionate advocate for human rights. He has received many awards and honours for his work. He settled to Moncton in January 2005.

A compulsive traveller and insatiable reader, a writer fascinated by history and archeology, he has been writing poetry for 40 years. Author of twenty books of poetry and prose — including the first complete French translation of the famous John Winslow’s Journal at Grand-Pré — he has been called a poet among scholars, and a scholar among poets. Thus, it is not surprising that his most recent poetry collection, published in 2017, is entitled L’isle Haute: en marge de Grand-Pré.

Serge Patrice Thibodeau is also the Executive and Literary Director of Éditions Perce-Neige, in Moncton.

The meeting is adjourned
rather than nibbling
rather than spinning on their wheel
the hamster council in my head is deliberating
its members have been in meetings for 4 years
stuck on a difficult item of miscellaneous business

sometimes one of them is tired of it, gets up
and goes to roll around
frolic in the soft shavings
and at that moment the others
fall silent and watch him
the meeting then switches off
like a lamp on a bedside table

soon after
the hamster comrades
get up one at a time themselves
carefree and fascinated
pranking each other with twigs and sprigs

this eventually evolves into
an excited and energetic choreography
as forty-two hamsters
move at forty-two distinct rhythms
in an impromptu impro rave
accompanied by a puff-pillow fight
my eyelids fight to stay open
and my councillors soften into stuffies
at an amusement park

blanketed in fog¹
my hamsters puff up during the day
and scatter like old regal dandelions
a cavalcade of limp hot air balloons
and soft plush and a parade
a marching band of immense fluff
in a Zemeckis film

my hamsters shake jazz hands
perform random dance moves stroking
the joyful mountains flora and fauna
of my being-in-the-moon
my hamsters dance in teams
but also disassembled
both are important
it takes forty-two to tango

usually
after millennia of exhaustion
the hamster council
in my head exhausts itself
and settles down
like a silly snow tiara
posed upon a sleeping village
    That’s how it ends.

---

¹ numbed by the kind of mellow-matinal fog
that only appears at the first flight
of a swarm of zeppelins

Baron Marc-André Lévesque

Baron Marc-André Lévesque was born in Ottawa in 1990 and has been writing in Montréal since 2011. He has published Chasse aux Licornes (2015) and Toutou Tango (2017) with Éditions de l'Écrou and has taken part in many readings. He is now working on two slightly calmer collections of poetry.

[untitled]

not enough
your presence
I want more
of what floods
everywhere
soon again
you’ll pass
through the holes
that you have
made in me

Jonathan Lamy

Multitasking poet, Jonathan Lamy has published four collection with Editions du Noroît, including La vie sauve (Émile-Nelligan Prize 2016) and Nous faisons l’amour (2019). With Bouc Productions, he published Tendresse tactique (2019). With Mémoire d’encrier, he co-edited Nous sommes des histoires : Réflexions sur la littérature autochtone (2018), and translated Tomson Highway’s Pour l’amour du multilinguisme : Une histoire d’une monstrueuse extravagance (2019). Poetry and art critic, host, performer, literary advisor and more, he set up La poésie partout, an organisation that promotes and disseminate poetry.

Your name extends one lip beyond

Your name extends one lip beyond
little girl do you remember
an arrow to your head
through a hairline cleft
moving around in such darkness
the greatest longest hours
of body and heart
buried bright

Annie Lafleur

Annie Lafleur was born in Montréal and lives and writes there. She has published Prolégomènes à mon géant (2007) and Handkerchief (2009) with the Lézard amoureux publishing house, and Rosebud (2013) and Bec-de-lièvre (2016) with Le Quartanier. In 2017, Bec-de-lièvre was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award in poetry and for the Prix des libraires du Québec poetry award. She was a member of the editorial board for Estuaire literary magazine from 2014 to 2018. She also writes on art for Spirale magazine. In 2018, a new edition of Rosebud followed by Bec-de-lièvre was published in Le Quartanier’s “Écho Poésie” collection.

How do you swallow the lake's beauty…

How do you swallow the lake's beauty with all these ghosts chewing through the aqua-lung. I’m in the underwater level of a video game just as the air runs out and that little tune begins to play.

Translated by Kristen Renee Miller

Marie-Andrée Gill

Originally from Mashteuiatsh, Marie-Andrée Gill plays happily at creating poems in the Lower Saguenay area. An icon of contemporary Quebec Indigenous poetry, she shares her vision of a reality released from unhealthy complexes. Chauffer le dehors, her third book, has just been published by Éditions La Peuplade.

Freedom

Like you’re a woman walking down the street passing through the world furniture and supplies and the most beautiful day when you feel not too bad but it was the first time you are a woman walking down the street with your head in the championship all in the here and now right now I am no longer into what are not the same things to say about the photo of the world the same source of safety and of a father who was the first time you are a man from my class the issues all in the here and now right now I am no longer into what are not the same things to say about the photo of the world the first time you have a problem with the president

David Cheramie

David Cheramie grew up in the Cadien village of Canal Yankee, also called Golden Meadow in English, on Bayou Lafourche. He has published three collections of poetry, Lait à mère (Éditions d’Acadie and Prise de Parole), Julie Choufleur (Éditions Tintamarre), and L’Allée du souvenir (Éditions Perce-Neige). He was the Executive Director of an organization which promotes French-language education and services in Louisiana, the Conseil pour le développement du français en Louisiane (CODOFIL), from 1998 to 2011. He has been awarded the prestigious title of Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres français in France and is a member of the Ordre des francophones d'Amérique québécois. Dr. Cheramie has a PhD in francophone studies from the Université de Louisiane in Lafayette. His column on the French language is published in the Acadiana Profile magazine. His writing can be found on his blogue, Un bougre du bayou, at davidcheramie.blogspot.com. Currently, he serves as the director of District Bayou Vermilion which, among its other activities, manages the Vermilionville Museum in Lafayette, Louisiana.

Aspirin

I am going to get ready and the weather for the grand prix of music to take pictures with pals who have been killed the world at a time when you are going to see that film is already in your private life but that doesn’t mean as much as I want it to do some good from time to time in real time on the way for me for tomorrow morning to go and get my loader my brother who is in the midst of awakening to face the facts

David Cheramie

David Cheramie grew up in the Cadien village of Canal Yankee, also called Golden Meadow in English, on Bayou Lafourche. He has published three collections of poetry, Lait à mère (Éditions d’Acadie and Prise de Parole), Julie Choufleur (Éditions Tintamarre), and L’Allée du souvenir (Éditions Perce-Neige). He was the Executive Director of an organization which promotes French-language education and services in Louisiana, the Conseil pour le développement du français en Louisiane (CODOFIL), from 1998 to 2011. He has been awarded the prestigious title of Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres français in France and is a member of the Ordre des francophones d'Amérique québécois. Dr. Cheramie has a PhD in francophone studies from the Université de Louisiane in Lafayette. His column on the French language is published in the Acadiana Profile magazine. His writing can be found on his blogue, Un bougre du bayou, at davidcheramie.blogspot.com. Currently, he serves as the director of District Bayou Vermilion which, among its other activities, manages the Vermilionville Museum in Lafayette, Louisiana.

Synectic

taste of sweet coffee breathing
contemplating the void
wavelengths
reasoning with absence
and staring down the gaze
of a poem inside
music stretching longer
and traffic choking the streets
an unhappy lady takes her pill
an unsatisfied gentleman hands over his pullover
to illusions proliferating
in search of a fixed anchor of truth
between calving and franking
No cars go where we know
Arcade Fire notifies us
Between the click of the light
and the start of a dream
at the edge of a city of words
the outskirts of wit
flaring up at reasons
that reason never knows
scorched senses
like paint
under a burning torch
under no one’s eyes
library walls bleeding
taste of coffee still on these lips
reaching to touch yours
you are beside me like these walls
to tell the story of how the wound came to be
and there is no word to describe it
scar tissue of time released into the breeze

Marc Arseneau

Originally from Moncton, New Brunswick, Marc Arseneau was born on April 6, 1971. From 1991 to 2002, he was, among other things, the editor of Éloizes, an Acadian literary mag, and instigator of several poetry events, including Nuit des Seth (1991), Tableaux de backyard (1993), and Fièvre de nos mains (1998). In poetry, he is the author of À l’antenne des oracles (1992), L’Éveil de Lodela (1998), Avec l’idée de l’écho (2002) and Turbo goéland (2018), all published by Perce-Neige. Marc Arseneau has also published work in the literary magazines and journals such as Callicriture, Éloizes, Marache, Feux-châlins, Vallium, Satellite, Ancrages, Gaz Moutarde, Le Sabord, Estuaire and Rivière. Under his avatar, Turbo goéland, he published often on AcadieUrbaine.net. In music, he has worked with Les Oranges bleues and Les Païens. He has also taken part in performance poetry events and readings in Canada, France, and the U.S. Marc Arseneau is a teacher and lives in Louisbourg, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia.

Émilie

At Karina’s in Casselman
Eyes showing my true colours
I was looking for a spot
She was checking out my boots
Calfskin leather or Indonesian raccoon that the girl in Transit, upset by my filthy badger face,
tried to insist that I buy with waterproof spray
I said: “Listen, Honey, I don’t go out when it’s raining or cold
I’m too scared my heart will break apart”
I don’t go out
Except maybe to Karina’s
Because my sisters dance there
Dressed in Ardène
Greasy fake chicken
They’re friggin’ gorgeous
Because they’re not helpless
Immunized against Satan
And names like Serge or Gaétan
Dirty hands, jackal hands
Chip hands, sharp metal
Black nails
Smoke
At Karina’s in Casselman
Pink tequila in the frying pan
No one on stage now for ages, except groups that make them money
The girls are there like Roman centurions
But they don’t even try to make a cent
They’ll skinny dip in your drink for you
Maybe to get another sip

Like Émilie, my chubby beauty
In your fairy leggings
A Grimm Brothers fairytale
Just looking at you feels like a sin
You had pool crack
I had fish eyes
You were in and all over my face
And after one shot, I decided I liked girls
A bit awkward to feel that kick
Émilie, please just flick my bic
I’m sure girls aren’t as much like freaks

It would just take some guts
For me to sit with you
You’d talk about the heater in your mother’s basement
And how you’d left your room in a mess
So no one would forget you were once a kid
You wouldn’t speak French to me
You don’t even remember how
You’d try to convince me you used to speak it
Then Diane-with-the-yellow-hair would serve us a sling
Life would be so easy Emilie, don’t you think?

If I weren’t the way I am
I’d dance there, too
I’m good at faking love
I’ve got the beat
I learn fast
I don’t even have to try, my aura’s always cheap
Cheap like when I thought your lilac negligee was touching
There was something poetic when your nip slipped out as if to say “I want a place
in your clownlike happiness, your Club Med dyke look”
The rest of the time, Émilie, I make kids and dads
I lay off the dads and keep the kids
And then I get ugly
Dreaming of being lesbian in Casselman in my thirties

The Caesars are brown
Worcestershire full blast
It was the boss’s thing
He’s been dead for two years
Stroke in the toilets out back
He held onto the side
Like I’d hold onto you, Émilie
Wouldn’t it do you good to save somebody?
A little mother, a wannabe poet
The kind of girl who doesn’t know where to stand in the group photo
But who would like to smash in the face of the bitch
Lying on the ground with her legs in the air
Thinking she’s great at posing everybody
With her teeth three shades less yellow than mine
I’m a smoker, Émilie
I even smoked in a balloon
Baloney Motherfriggin’ shit
I smoked so I wouldn’t die hurt and sick of seeing my black-eyed face in the bathroom mirror
at my cheap house in the sticks, full of wannabe hippies who put goat cheese
in their grilled cheese and pickle sandwiches
Émilie, I put wieners in my KD
And ketchup too
I could put a bib on you
To keep your breasts clean
For when you go to work at Karina’s in Casselman

Where you were already lost
Before we made it to the highway exit

Marjolaine Beauchamp

In 2010, Marjolaine won the Silver Medal at the World Slam Poetry contest in France. She has published her work with the Éditions de l’Écrou, Aux Plexus, and Fourrer le feu. Her plays, Taram and M.I.L.F, which she wrote and performed in, were produced by the Théâtre du Trillium, where she is an affiliated writer. Marjolaine performed the first set for Richard Desjardins’s Existoire tour. In 2018, her play MILF was published by Éditions Somme Toute, and she was the Outaouais Guest of Honour at the SLO book fair and literary festival. Gender relations, experimental pieces involving altering and modifying literary and visual work, contemporary writing practices, and community cultural engagement are at the heart of Marjolaine’s interests. In December 2018, she received two awards for her play MILF by CALQ, the Quebec arts and letters council: Literary Work of the Year and Creator of the Year.