“Walking into August is East-End Toronto 2020” by Judy Tate Barlow, 1st Place Winner of Vallum’s Annual Poetry Award 2020

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1st Place, Annual Award, Judy Tate Barlow, Poetry Award, Walking into August in East-End Toronto 2020, Winner

Walking into August in East-End Toronto 2020

Is it how spruce don’t think, just do—arrange
their boughs for things withwings to dip andglide
on through? Or how the yellowcrane looms—strange

arabesque-sur-bleu, distraction-dance, wide
arcs boom-swung and slow—dwarfing all thatgrows

nearby? Stow yourthrone in a box on high

look down waydown to read what’s spelled below
soonfading from the sidewalk-page two words
spare chage—
consonance flown from the get-go.

Robins sequestering in spruce afford
a sortof feathered life and often thrive.
Is it city-clamour, or birdsong heard

(returning to my solitary hive)
calls me to sift the fallen notes, and write?

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J Tate Barlow lives uphill from a Great Lake, moves to the music, and loves the heft of a good pen. 2020 Vallum Award for Poetry – First Place. Poems in Vallum Contemporary Poetry, Grain Magazine, The Quarantine Review, The New Quarterly, The Dalhousie Review, Eastern Iowa Review, The Fieldstone Review.

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This poem was published in Vallum issue 18:1, Invisibility. Available to purchase through our website. 

The Vallum Award for Poetry 2021 is now open for submissions! Check out the entry requirements on our website and submit your work to be one of our next winners! 

“As Unnoticed As Possible” by Michael Trussler, Honourable Mention Winner of Vallum’s Annual Poetry Award 2020

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18:1, 2020, Annual Award, As Unnoticed As Possible, honourable mention, Michael Trussler

As Unnoticed As Possible

— for Lucy, our original mother

 

There’s almost always
two of them: mother

and (or mother with)
her child up against             

a tilting shoulder, a breast
about to tire     and four
separate
                        hands
                  each gathering
                    its own task
                    each finger
                an annunciation
                      of trust. Care. And this particular pair, an almost

young Australopithecus looking faraway down
into the distance yet beneath and between us, her

offspring, a toddler mesmerized by something
looming behind what’s already here,
this ancestral pair—the colour
of sun-tape over shadow—is
factory-made from plastic, is
                                     conjured
from the gasoline haze
from the gasoline haze
the toy city, an unforeseen cosmopolis done in
by polymers, some in the neonatal
intensive care unit, and others inside
our luminous and ever-improving tooth paste. River run, an infinite

regress of bodies ↔ these Instagram islands:
a floating montage from me    across to you     from
that jet trail passing instantly    to itinerant sea star to

whatever gods hummingbirds once knew, the telepathic and invisible
ones, she’s anxious       for me to learn      panic being
something     we both know.

 

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Michael Trussler has published poetry, short stories, and creative non-fiction. His short story collection, Encounters, won the Book of the Year Award from the Saskatchewan Book Awards in 2006. His collection of poetry, Accidental Animals, was short-listed for the same award in 2007. JackPine Press published A Homemade Life, an experimental chapbook blending photographs and text in 2009. The Alfred Gustav Press published the chapbook, Melancholy Girls with Sitar, in 2020. He teaches English at the University of Regina.

 

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This poem was published in the digital edition of Vallum issue 18:1, Invisibility. Available to purchase through our website. 

The Vallum Award for Poetry 2021 is now open for submissions! Check out the entry requirements on our website and submit your work to be one of our next winners! 

 

“Linger Factor” by Josh Feit, Honourable Mention Winner of Vallum’s Annual Poetry Award 2020

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18:1, 2020, Annual Award, honourable mention, Josh Feit, Linger Factor, Poetry Award

Linger Factor

The Department of Transportation sidewalk study ranked my neighborhood

15 points above average. A 24% linger factor.

My neighborhood would score even higher

if the DOT surveyed at night

when youth appear in clinamen lines.

The study found this: People who linger are

       talking to other people,  or buying         sandwiches,

                                                                                  

 using electronics,

                   browsing heirloom tomatoes,  playing cello,

              waiting for the bus,   watching an opera

singer,    giving directions to other people,   exercising,

  brushing someone’s hair out of their eyes,

stretching in the warm 21st century weather,    
 

showing signs of intoxication such as slurred speech or unfocused eyes,

        doing street upkeep like                          gardening or sweeping,

asking               for money or food,

            stopping, to take a cellphone picture of jets descending.

If you believe the local columnist, neighborhoods like mine,                         

where there’s evidence of Dvorak’s cello harmonics,

ruin everything.

39% of people who linger are reclining,

sitting on benches, for example, or leaning against a wall.

That’s what we were doing.

11% of people lingering are reclining on infrastructure not intended for reclining, which

indicates need for more infrastructure.

I was leaning on a wall talking to you. Waiting for the bus. Eyes unfocused.

Brushing your hair away from your face.

The linger factor was high.

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Josh Feit’s poems have been published in Spillway, CircleShow, Bee House, and The Halcyone Literary Review, among other journals. Feit was a finalist for the 2019 Lily Poetry Prize. He is the speechwriter for the Puget Sound’s regional transit agency.

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This poem was published in Vallum issue 18:1, Invisibility. Available to purchase through our website.

TheVallum Award for Poetry 2021 is now open for submissions! Check out the entry requirements on our website and submit your work to be one of our next winners!