Winner: The Lyrebird’s Bell
The sky was deliriously blue, and mint and honey livened the air. I was surprised at the freshness of the body.
Issue 51: Fall 2020
Fiction Prize
Runner Up: To Disappear Around Here
The donkey was blind—of that, there was no longer any doubt—and a pink and black tumour swung from its underside like the pendulum of the family’s grandfather clock.
Poetry Prize
Winner: RITE OF PASSAGE
When we talk about horses, we talk/ about things too beautiful to forget/ & too slippery to remember.
Runner Up: Look Alive
The amber mosquito in Jurassic Park/ saw this coming.
Fiction
Vanitas
Time is of your own making; Its clock ticks in your head. The moment you stop thought Time too stops dead. —Angelus Silesius
This Man
The others and I gather in the room of This Man. We watch people file in. They weep.
Burning River
It was a stifling summer day, and I strolled into a park seeking a cool, flowing breeze.
Poetry
Conditionally Acceptable Damage
Let the partially damaged homes provide shelter/ Let the pre-war memories
Essays
Investigation Ongoing
A Review of Joseph Martino’s Director’s Reports for Cases Reported to Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit (SIU) from January 1st, 2020 to June 30th, 2020.
The Pugilist in Lilac
In this rundown Chicago neighbourhood—that city boosters regularly proclaimed was on the verge of a spectacular comeback—she was very like a saint, at rest in a tiny studio apartment on a high floor of an art deco building, two blocks from a northside firehouse, within view of the lakeshore.
Stolen: A Bachelor’s in Commerce, a Master’s in Code Switching
On July 3, an account named Stolen by Smith appeared on Instagram. On the royal blue branded profile, one by one bit-sized anecdotes took centre stage, each outlining the personal experience of a different anonymous student at the Smith School of Business.
Interviews
On Poetry, Truth, and History: An Interview with Nisha Patel
In the summer of 2020 I was researching South Asian poetry in the Canadian diaspora. Nisha Patel was one of the poets I selected to study and interview.
Reviews
Making Food, Making Fury: Francesca Ekwuyasi’s Butter Honey Pig Bread
“This is how you make a salted caramel chocolate cake for your twin sister who you haven’t seen in… God a long time.”
Miscommunicated Love: Sheung-King’s You Are Eating an Orange. You Are Naked.
Early in Toronto-based writer Sheung-King’s debut novel You Are Eating an Orange. You Are Naked., the protagonist, an unnamed apathetic translator, starts to tell his lover the story of a Buddhist priest who wanted to enter the Western Paradise.
