Stage 1: THE PROOF
Jeffrey Herrick Nexi; Logos to Go;The Old Song and Dance; Torquing the Air
Stan Persky New York Poems
Norbert Ruebsaat In Translation
Balint Zsako Love Stories [Portfolio]


Stage 2: LOVE AND THE TAX MAN
Myka Tucker-Abramson Poem for the Tax Man
Maleea Acker Calles de Mérida a las Tres de la Mañana; A las Tres de la Mañana; As Water is to Inlands
Jayant Kamicheril Shaap # 3




Stage 3: SOLSTICE
Charles Meanwell Solstice
Karen McPherson Saskatchewan 1969: Divorce
Cory Fuhr Arc Light [Portfolio]
Patricia Young Voyeur


Stage 4: A PAINTED DESERT
Ewan Whyte Odes of Horace: Horace, Book 1, Ode 11; Odes of Horace: Horace, Book 1, Ode 22; A Poem: From a Letter to Tibullus
Peter Norman Playground Incident
Jane Palmer Lucky
Bernadette Rule Canadian Annunciation; Carys


Stage 5: AFTER MASS
Christine Fischer Guy Wind in her Hair
Catherine Greenwood Invisible Toothpaste
John Goldbach Emperor ’Q

Stage 6: DRESSED AS A RABBIT
Barry Jay Kaplan Mme. LeVigne
Richard N. Bentley Hallowe’en Afternoon; A Mistake; Winter Flowers
Tyrone Jaeger Flesh Wounds
Julialicia Case The Fourth
Magda Trzaski Danse Macabre [Portfolio]


The Winston Collins / Descant Prize for Best
Canadian Poem '07 Award Winners
Karen Mulhallen The Moneyed Muse
Andrew Smith Endowment remarks
John B. Lee The Green Muse [Winner]
Jim Nason Chardin’s Rabbit [Honourary Mention]
Yvonne Blomer The Roll Call to the Ark [Honourary Mention]


Back of the Book
Contributors’ Notes
Co-Editor’s Diary Scott McIntyre
Production Editor’s Diary Marion Robb-Gardner
News and Notes
Advertisements

A small town, the store windows
Decorated with gravestones,
Witches, pumpkins,
ghosts
Paint
Streaking down
the glass
In the rain.
A little girl dressed as
A rabbit, led across the street
By her mother,
Under an umbrella.
Have you ever stopped
To listen to the rain
In the lapse of a quarrel?
It means the quarrel will end.
It means you can see
The pavement on which the rain falls, and
The complexity of wet leaves
On it, curved leaves,
Flattened leaves.
The girl dressed as a rabbit
And her mother
Stop in front of an old
House with red shutters.
A chicken opens the door.

(NOTE: excerpt of full text)

That’s when it strikes me that the whole thing, life itself, is a trompe l’oeil! A trick of the eye. Or rather, there is at least one perspective from which to see the possibility that most of one’s understanding of what it all means, what it’s about, might be a kind of optical illusion, that whatever I now think about my life, politics, art, the nature of the starry universe, time, death, is potentially revisable, as all writing is permanently revisable, in the light of subsequent experience. After all, didn’t I, at previous times in my life see the world primarily through some ideological framework or prism, from early childhood wonder/terror to midlife versions of Marxism, literature, and eros, prisms that I currently see as having been partial and/or distorting? Or I think of others who took it that their firm beliefs (about Victorian mores, say, or Greek glory) were indubitably true and not refractions of the ideological constructions of their era, went to their graves secure in their apprehension of reality. Not possible now. Not possible not to always be aware of the possibility that we have almost no idea of what it’s about, it’s not skepticism, and I’m a local realist myself, but the recognition that uncertainty is the medium in which the human condition floats.

(NOTE: excerpt of full text)

She didn’t find it when she was fixing her hair, but she nearly tore the room apart looking. It must have rolled away underneath something, good and hidden. My, how angry she is with me now, but I was right; her hair looks so soft and lovely, the curls turning fat and luxurious as they begin drooping around her face. It must feel lovely, too; I remember the silken brush of my own hair on my cheek when I’d unbraided it for the night.

She’s determined to feed me my breakfast as fast as she can, and I can’t keep up with the porridge she’s spooning in, faster and faster. I can feel the warm sticky ooze down my chin, my neck, my chest. She wipes me with the dishcloth, rough like she’s scrubbing the floor, and pushes my chair to the window without saying goodbye.

In the rush of air after the slammed door I can feel the warmth of the day starting early, moist on my skin. Viv’s shoes clatter on the pavement and she yanks the car door closed behind her real hard. Then her lips are moving and her hand beats the steering wheel. She rolls her car window all the way down and starts the engine. The car rolls down the drive, then stops, then begins to move forward down the street. As it does I watch a breath of wind through the open window move her hair, just a little.

Good, I say to the window. Good. Good. Good.