PREFACE
Karen Mulhallen

ESSAY
G.E. Bentley, Jr. — Pictora Ignota: Blake’s Most Seen, Least Known Painting           

MEMOIR
Baziju — The Bagel Paradise
Brian Fawcett — Human Happiness (excerpt)                                   
William Kaplan — Our Friend Lehigh

FICTION
Lyse Champagne — One Step at a time is Good Walking
Susan Shuter — Peripheral Vision

POETRY
Gerard Beirne — II-Class of Bones
Joan Crate — Christmas Cacti; Lost Moon                                   
David Day — Excerpt From Nevermore: A Book of Hours
E.C. Daley — Intersections
Elisabeth de Mariaffi — White Out Conditions; February: Pre-thaw
D.M. Ferguson — Physics of an Irregular Orbit; Pastorale, at 14
Dorothy Field — Fanny, Her Presence; Lost twin; My Brother, Dying Before Your Time; William Head Arms; William Head Hope
Sarah Gibbs — Blonde on Blonde                                                                       
Dennis H. Lee —Fortune Cookie                                                                       
Donna J. Gelagotis Lee — Lost; An pei kati, tha faei ksilo                                   
Julie Mahfood — How to write a poem that will get published
Christine McNair — my great-great-great-great grandfather; my great-great grandmother; named; my problem with machines; gymnastics; rakings
Giovanna Riccio — Snow Globe                                                                       
R. Brian Rigg — she makes a poor evening apparition                 
Kate Rogers — Why I Won’t Worship at Your Feet                 
Jan Weiss — Winter visit                                                                       
Linda Woolven — Night                                                                                         
György Faludy, tr. by Paul Sohar — Morocco IX; One More Conversation; Shadows Grow Longer

PORTFOLIOS
Luke Painter
Tomoaki Ishihara

Back of the Book
Contributing Editor’s Column — Alberto Manguel
Contributing Editor’s Column — Rosemary Sullivan
Contributors’ Notes
Production Editor’s Diary — Kathleen Painter
News and Notes
Advertisements

(NOTE: excerpt of full text)

We assembled for a wake for our friend at the Pilot Tavern in late 1998 and tried that night to answer some questions about him. Many years have now passed since the wake, and even more since we first met David Leigh MacLeod. It has taken a long time to process the Freedom of Information Act requests in the United States and the Access to Information Act requests in Canada. But it has been worth the wait as some of the holes in the story can now be filled in. This is a tale that continues to intrigue us: a group of men now in their fifties who have turned out quite well working in law, business, social work and advertising. It begins in the fall of 1969.

I was hitchhiking with two friends up Yonge Street, Toronto’s main drag, when MacLeod slowed down and offered us a ride. We were twelve years old, had long hair, thought we were pretty cool, just starting grade eight, and on our way to a party near our school, Deer Park. He was twenty-five, tall and lean, charming and charismatic, and drove some kind of dark green sports car. It might have been a Mustang or a Camaro — a coupe, not a convertible. “Call me Lehigh,” he said, emphasizing two syllables, Lee-high. That first day he gave us a joint, which we promptly smoked. He also asked us for our phone numbers.

(NOTE: excerpt of full text)

Not far from where I live there’s a little restaurant called The Bagel Paradise. It’s one of those local places that’s “just-the-basics,” where people go for breakfast or, maybe later on, one turning to the other says “why don’t we pop over to the BP and get a bite to eat?” Along that stretch of Eglinton there’s been a lot of commercial renewal the last few years. Various mid- to high-end restaurants that rise and fade with something oddly akin to the life cycle of the dandelion, full of life and vigour in the spring, but by fall, already barren, the decor dispersed to the four winds and the rigors of the repossessor. Also small speciality shops — shops representing someone’s life savings, someone who’s probably always wanted to be “their own boss,” but with such a painful sense of what might constitute a marketable range of stock, I wonder what evil banker lurks in the background of that story.

You decline the past like a transitive verb —
what is nominative, accusative — and lay waste to old stories,

capsized and ransacked as a set of bright-smocked dolls.
It’s been a slow drive. Home again from another, bigger city,

drifts closed and cold as limbs, knuckles split
halfway. You’d think now of all times it would be easy

to stay awake. Slap yourself and drive on. Snow lines up,
ridged along the road edge, glue-sweet

and inconsolable. The fact that you can’t see
more than a car-length into the future

doesn’t stop you looking.