PREFACES
Karen Mulhallen A Library of Memory, The Mind at Night

PROFILES
Christine Davis Drink Me
Kildare Dobbs Remembering Al Purdy
Marty Gervais Dance for the Curious
Mark Abley Anne Szumigalski
kevin macpherson eckhoff Typortraits
Desi DiNardo Leonard Cohen of Montreal

ANNALS OF TRAVEL
Larry Frolick Volva Pykush, Your Fixer in Ukraine
Donald Weber The Name Means Border

FICTION
Leon Rooke All True Stories Have Loose Ends
Brian Fawcett Rotarians
Goran Simic The Bridge

MEMOIR
Kim Chase Dirt
Pauline Carey Searching the Reverend

POETRY
Alison Pick Time
Ryan Van Cleave Dear Debora Gregor; Hercules in the Land of Cotton; My Brother’s Addiction
Christina McRae Shame; Crosswalk
Degan Davis The A.B.C.’s of Summer
K.V. Skene Unoriginal Sins, Seven Poems
Aileen Kelly Ant Afternoon with Mudshoes
Jacob Sheier Untitled; What Keeps Me Up at Night
Carmine Starnino Summons; Navigation; A Brief History of Lanterns
anne blonstein yellow games; lashing mauve
Stephanie Bolster California; Where You Live

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Sarah Ward with
Kordula Prentissimo
and Mary Newberry A Genre Index to 35 Years of Descant

BACK OF THE BOOK

CONTRIBUTORS’ NOTES

NEWS AND NOTES

I am afraid.
Afraid that art and love
are merely hobbies
and should only be consummated
on 15 minute coffee breaks,
or they are only the ornaments,
the holiday décor
of shopping malls.

I am afraid.
Afraid that Bukowski was wrong.
What matters most is not how well you walk through the fire,
but how well you walk around it
or find a way to sell it
to the wealthy and the bored.

I am afraid.
Afraid I don’t understand ‘the markets,’
any of them.
And this is the only fire left
people are willing
to walk through.

I am afraid.
Afraid books are more commodity
than prayer.

And I have the same fear
for prayers.

(NOTE: excerpt of full text)

Swan River’s up there. On the lake by the Bogs. I always wanted to find myself in a Swan River. A Swan River type habitat would be perfect. What could go wrong in a Swan River? A place’s name matters. You don’t want to get caught overnight in a place called Dead Dog Creek or Cranksville or Poison Fudge. Or I don’t. They’re up there too, don’t think they aren’t. God didn’t choose a Swan River for me to be born in. Don’t ask me why. He makes these decisions willy-nilly, no consulting with anyone. It’s like I saw on TV last week, the Canucks at Anaheim, the coach guy saying, It was God’s intention we should maul that team. Break bones. This week he loses, it’s his team crushed, you don’t hear any mention of God’s hand in the outcome. God’s hand has gone over to the other side. My losing all these jobs, is it His fault? Partly. I got to say partly. I got to say I couldn’t do all that, set world records among the World Federation of Losers, by myself. I had help. Not at my tender age. Seventeen, did I tell you seventeen?

Certainly He had a big hand in those mosquitos. He wasn’t the innocent party. And — I got to ask you this — does a mosquito do any good? The answer’s no. No, no, no! Forget it, you were thinking the contrary. Nourishment for bats, dragonflies, damselflies, a handful of insectivorous birds, is that reason enough? We gutted a fish for dinner, a large no-name thing with whiskers, a big mouth, slitted eyes; we sat on a blowsy ice jam to eat that fish. What’s this? Pardon me, what’s this? There are spoonfuls of aquatic larvae, wrigglers, in that fish. In other words, incubating mosquitos. The whole inside of that fish filled with undigested larvae. No way we are eating that fish. Throw that fish back. Eating that fish is like eating mosquitos.

I can resist everything except temptation.
– Oscar Wilde

She’s in the moment. She’s the reason
cowboys shoot it out, tough-guy detectives
run down alleyways and scientists
go mad. She’s only comfortable
if it’s her finger on the trigger. Offer
the moon on a silver salver –
she’ll swallow it all.