Writings

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Poetry

weak cloth

Renée M. Sgroi

we are made of weak cloth and barely woven fabric sewed, having chosen a design because of texture, jute or silk having chosen a colour, violet brown or red, for the breadth of cotton held against light for the depth of denim that soaks up all stains weak cloth never woven for the strength of weft for the sounds it makes when flapped against laundry lines in wind, for threads that stray and those that remain after so many washings we, these ties we say we’re cut from are paper…

Poetry

Unfoundland

Diane Pacitti

When they were old men they couldn’t recall if they had strode that mystery, or if another sailor had bragged of walking on the broad backs of cod all the way to the shore of the new found land; though even Caboto himself might have baulked at that word ‘found’: his tensed eyes saw nothing you could pin down, only landfall receding into mist, and a wild grey sea shape-shifting into translucent islands, learning to crackle and splinter; learning to soften to slob ice, and then be washed ashore…