Scott Bryson

This dispatch on the intersection of longing and holiness carves a palindromic path from church, to heaven, to bodies, to desire, back to bodies, to holiness and back to church again. These concepts are thoroughly entwined, at least for writer Despy Boutris.

Nicholas Teixeira is like a hyper Max Headroom, be-bopping his way through an explosion of pop culture and its intersection with the self.

Reading these poems feels like running laps in the author’s head. The external world has fallen away and we’re along for a destructive ride through the stages of breakup.

Ryan Downum’s chapbook is a weird and wonderful treatise. It resists full comprehension and manages to do so with both elegance and gruesomeness.

The stories in Kym Cunningham’s poems literally grow from women’s bodies. It takes time to connect, to unpack the rearranged speech and to try and find meaning that goes beyond the surface stories.

No need to flag down a server — your bill has arrived. This zine’s six poems come stuffed inside an authentic leather restaurant bill holder. They’re typed on thin strips of paper that mimic receipts, and all end with “CUSTOMER COPY.”

This water-themed issue of MANIFEST (zine) makes way for text and art contributions from a number of “friends and fellow creative spirits” who all lived near the Connecticut shoreline.

Bent by the crystal ball we’re peering into as much as by the off-kilter discourse of the person who’s speaking, MLA Chernoff’s SCRIED FUNDAMENTS is is attention-grabbing, clever and regularly baffling.

Thick as a car manual, band interviews, record reviews, shorter prose and poetry make up the bulk of this Montreal fanzine.