the paper mate is salaried
unlike dogwalking on sunset
though sparkly as tea bags
still warm after all these days
sopping up clouds for our benefit
leaving a powder at the bottom rung
while the bottom rug of my living room
breaks up our need to wait for tomorrow
the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan
on my grandmother’s sofa
while foraging for words rare
as a Ghost orchid I thought wait: let words
find each other alert as a Rottweiler
at watch on the front
balcony and, the first word is¾
it could be a phrase
caught
and the second [word]
oh, a game show!
come
third word
heart
like what?
then what?
we
used to watch TV in the basement
it
had a linoleum floor
and?
humming
was it the white-throated?
sparrow.
yes, the same.
and did it sing its full
song including?
the
final four notes? yes, yes, and held
it held onto the last,
didn’t it?
how
I flew into, between
and
around, it was as if
my
heart flew, filled
the
space inside, if you could see,
the
notes, quarter some
waiting,
eighth notes too
this is not working, all
posing
and answering, all this
posturing forget:
the walnut, the sparrow,
smooth
basement floor, I’ll sit
and scowl, I’ll sink
into this old couch, my
hands with joints wide-
around-the-waist in the back-
ground a TV like an ocean wash swells
sharp-edged the operculum
seals
its mollusc’s tender nacre
once I heard my mother sigh
& pressed my child-ear
to
their bedroom door
again
& again nightly
I thought if I held
my breath but her sigh had
found its wings So: what is a sigh to do?
What you’re saying is?
A sigh is a fledgling. Did
you know I once had a yellow budgie?
One day I left the cage door open we were summering
in the Laurentians and the living room window was half
open, the neighbours
searched & whistled after all,
the budgie was cadmium
yellow but there’s something alluring
about the Laurentians in
the summer, its mirrored lake
& forest filled with
blueberries
you could live for days
Janice Colman is a Toronto-based neurodivergent poet and interdisciplinary writer. Her chapbook playing cello for a dead bird was published by Turret House Press (2025). Janice’s writing has appeared in filling Station, The New Quarterly, FreeFall, Arc Poetry Magazine, The /tƐmz/ Review, and The Ekphrastic Review. She has received fellowships from AIM Higher and Brooklyn Poets, and her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize (2022, 2025) and Best of the Net (2022).
Janice is the mother of two powerful daughters and a service-dog-in-training named Emily.
the Tuesday poem is curated by
rob mclennan
Ghazal, with
Rabble-Rousing Leftist Minke Whales
Twenty yards out
minke whales whisper in the sound
and we eavesdrop,
camping mugs of cowboy coffee in hand.
I heard orcas train
their calves to attack billionaires’ yachts.
We’re disconnected,
tough and free, no phones in hand,
so we can’t confirm
this beautiful new fact: we imagine a movement
like Alice’s Restaurant where all the sea creatures raise a hand
in solidarity and
sing in four-part harmony, and there are meetings
to attend and
potlachs with four-cheese dips. This is getting out of hand.
The driftwood fire
licks fog off the Northumberland Strait
while we wash our
mugs at the shore, licking sea salt off our hands.
How many chatbots
would it take to empty this sound,
minkes and all,
you ask. I could
count them on one hand.
How many poems would
it take to build back the ocean?
Power is a whale
that’s born when you squeeze my hand.
Ghazal, with
Common Terns
Black-capped terns
lampshade the shore,
common as salt and
stone and the grey waistcoat of light.
They search for
stitches in the break,
the shimmer of
herring, the quick bloat of light.
A lumberjack’s boot
drops from the sky—gunmetal spikes
driving through the
surface, rooting out the light.
I don’t want to
suggest the need to bear witness:
the terns will dive
without this mote of light.
The shore will
shore after all, and the herring
always scatter. A
throat full of light
is common. Scales
that slip the ocean into silver
are common. The
trawler’s floating lights
are common. I want
my life to be the sound of water
sloughing off a
wing in the low evening light.
Alexander Hollenberg, a Pushcart-nominated poet and professor of storytelling, is the author of Human Story will not Consume the Cosmos (Gaspereau 2025). Some of his recent poems have appeared in Best Canadian Poetry 2025, CV2, Arc Poetry, Grain, and The New Quarterly. He is a past winner of CV2’s Two-Day Poem Contest and has been longlisted for several other awards, including the CBC Poetry Prize, the Nick Blatchford Occasional Verse Contest, and the Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize. He is from Hamilton, Ontario.
the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan
