American
Allegheny, BC
In this unsettling collection, Vancouver singer/songwriter Rodney DeCroo delivers raw footage of a childhood marred by violence, sudden uprootings, and abuse. Allegheny, BC is a candid, gritty tour through DeCroo's troubled past in a small coal town outside of Pittsburgh, PA, the bush of northern BC, and his young adult years in Vancouver. Scenes o …
Ashland
In the dusty main streets of an unnamed West, this collection of stories features little European villages, a sanitarium in the mountains, Mounties, madwomen, long-dead gunslingers, thieves, lost children, and wolves.
Vigil
The train was unable to stop until after the man named Verken was struck. Humming on its track of snow stars, it burst open the unhappy man, scraped up a new nightfall for us all.
Mrs. Dumont has slashed herself across her withered thigh. Two young people recently married are now indifferent to one another. The oldest trees on our main street are dying, all five together. Half the mines are closing due to extreme cold. The men cry over their starved
children, bludgeon their wives out of sheer pity, bury them in barrels and pillow cases.
No man or woman is so dear that Ashland will suffer for long or that the townspeople will be convinced to think as one. Vigil as you like, old age takes care of itself. Violence does the rest.
On Easter of last year, Mr. Verken’s mother died, followed by his
entire herd of cattle and a wife. He is survived by no one.
Brother and Me
It’s a mad day to run away from home, brother. Trees fall drunk in the orchard, heads swarming with bees. Finally, the river has slapped the fields away, so no harvest, no singing, the roads all gobbled up.
Down in the city, women shoot darts, fed up with their lives, or so we’re told. They drown men in the river, sleep in movie theatres, sing the same song over and over until someone gets murderous.
Today wind rushes the empty house, licks the dinner bell inside and out. We settle down to wait.
Our lives are not what we expected.
We eat little crisp buns under the awning and peep out at the sun, the big white fury booming around in heaven.
Burning Field
We’re waiting, eating bread and beer by the gate while, inside, he tears at her clothes, demands reckless things.
All day ash floats in the air, coming from the brushfire.
He’s broken down the barn door, waved the horse out into the burning field. He’s cut his arm open, shouting, “Look at it!” and we shuffle away, leave them to their drifting ship, pass a dry bit of meat from hand to hand.
Soon, he has exhausted himself, fallen asleep, and she comes out.
Her hands search our bodies, shaking with urgency. She moans, and
we hold ourselves still, hold our breath, look away.
Bliss Pig
Bliss Pig and Other Poems represents the formidable writing talents of two members of the popular trio of poets known as Uncritical Mass. Toronto's Linda Stitt has published five volumes of poetry. Charlene Jones, a professor of English, has been published in several Canadian and American journals. Together they read to enthusiastic audiences acros …
Copper Woman
Copper Woman and Other Poems is a collection of poems that announces a humanistic vision, dealing with such themes as rebirth (physical and symbolic), mythology, memory, bondage, blood, family, identities in flux, migration, politics and flights of fancy. The contents move back and forth between the past and the present, and project into the future …
Evangeline, Illustrated (French)
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is one of American's best known writers. Sally Ross and Barbara LeBlanc are both Acadian scholars, translators, and authors living and working in Nova Scotia.