I went to an all boys Catholic high school. Boys from many different backgrounds. Rich and poor. In uniforms. Controlled by a series of rules on conduct and appearance. Our English teacher introduced us to many fine poems. And then there were lively discussions. Some points of view came from left field. Others were well beyond that. But it all came to a cacophony of voices. The conflicts of the school yard focused on a class discussion. A poem in itself.

The Exhibition is a story written like an Brueghel painting. Time turns on itself. Events are repeated and altered. Characters both dead and imaginary appear. At the core of the story is an exhibition of paintings. The paintings tell the story of the moments before, after, and surrounding the events in Dealey Plaza, on November 11, 1963. The assassination of John Kennedy. And amongst the crowd that packs the exhibition at the Zig |Zag bar is a serial murderer."I think you should ha...

The Trans-Canada Highway was approved by the Trans-Canada Highway Act of 1949. Construction was begun in 1950 and finished in 1971. Upon completion it was the longest highway in the world. It runs from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean. And that's when the adventures began. Stories about what happens to folks along the great highway. Small towns, villages, folks traveling, folks trying to get away from something. Or someone.

I don't know if I said something wrong. But Paul changed. He wasn't the Paul in the club. He started to act rough. He reached for the empty bottle of wine and smacked me on the head. I laid there for a while. Out of it. As I began to come to, I could feel his hands on my neck. And I passed out again. Slipping into a deep dark hole. The next time my head started to clear, I could hear him off to one side, near the bushes. He was crying. Like a baby."Why did you make me do it?" he moa...

The moon slept in its garden. Clouds as thin as lace were tangled in the treetops. Bats flickered in and out of the high branches. Down below in the long grass the crickets were too loud. Two teeth shone like nuggets in the dirt. The headlights from the Jaguar crawled across a young woman who lay naked except for the bra around her neck. Blood ran out of each corner of her mouth giving the impression of a smile. A clown's smile. A tear running over her cheek. Her eyes were closed. Her hand...

There was a white van. Inside were four bank robbers. Next door to the bank was a restaurant. A pregnant woman worked in the restaurant. She was the wife of a detective. Outside the window she could see the snow continuing to fall. There were two thugs. Who had been engaged to collect a debt. From one of the bank robbers. The two thugs were being watched by two detectives. There was a loving couple. Who worked together for the gas company. Who were working on the weekend. In the middle of ...

Thoughts on a life well attended. I may have been tardy but I was awake.'I wish I was handsomer. I wish I was taller. I wish my bank account would grow. I wish I didn'tsmoke. I wish I didn't forget so many things. That's right, I don't smoke. I wish I was smarter. (Isthat even possible?) I wish I'd met Trudeau. (Pierre) I wish I'd been more successful. And my parentscould have seen it. I wish a lot of things that I don't really care about it. Someday I'm going t...

Across the hydro field butterflies, rags of yellow, white, orange, were tossed by the breeze from milkwood to milkwood. Dogs ran free, tearing through the long grass after unseen prey sometimes leaping into the air out of sheer joy. Birds, garter snakes, toads, and clouds of grasshoppers made their home in the grass. Sometimes a fox or skunk would wander out of Echo Valley and down the fields. At night families of raccoons waddled leisurely across the open spaces. On hot summer afternoons ...

A series of poems investigating the other and how we reach it. The self is a prison. Out there may be a phantasm. Outside the hive are nightmares. And darkness. We are the round stones on the shore who have eyes."pontius prophets playing plastic prayers as yndala zam exhumes a hole in her lap 'out damn's spot, out' for those of you whose profession it is to browse over this world tongue in cheek jotting your thoughts on parchment singing aquarius waiting for jesus to come out of the...

"I was afraid of everything. My mother was always warning me about the world out there. I had to stay close to home. Sandra was also warned but her reaction was different. There are men out there who will do terrible things to a little girl, my mother would say. Sandra would smile. Will we have fun? she would reply. I wanted to ask. What terrible things. Because I had quite an imagination and could imagine being pushed into an oven and made into a nice pie."Born in the city. Back la...

"Trust me, Father, God hates me. He tried to kill me when I was born. My head was too big and my mother almost died. They had to use clamps on my head but the clamps broke so they cut into my mother's bones. It was a real mess. The doctors figured I would have brain damage. I was tested. They didn't find any damage but what does that mean? The way I figure it, I was brain damaged. I mean, I should have been a genius but I'm just average intelligence. It's been a real disappointment to my p...

I was born in Reykjavik. When I was four, we emigrated to Manitoba. We moved to a farm near Gimli Manitoba. Home of the three Viking graves. No one is sure how they got there but I'm confident they didn't take Air Canada, as we did. We lived on Sixth Street. There was a ditch in front of our house. It seemed like everyone had a truck. A lot of the houses sat on cinder blocks. Almost no one had a basement. Flooding. Highway 9 went in and out of town in a flash. If you sneezed, you missed it...