True Identity by Wet Ink Books

True Identity April Bulmer, Editor Pablo Manuel Velázquez Pérez, Photographer

Firs t Edition

Hidden Brook Press www.HiddenBrookPress.com HiddenBrookPress@gmail.com EST. 1994

Copyright © 2021 Hidden Brook Press Copyright © 2021 Authors and Photographer All rights for poems revert to the authors and photographer. All rights for book, layout and design remain with Hidden Brook Press. No part of this book may be reproduced except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopied, recorded or otherwise stored in a retrieval system without prior permission in writing from the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit: www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free: 1.8008935777.

True Identity: An Anthology of Writing, Poetry and Photography Editor – April Bulmer Photographer – Pablo Manuel Velázquez Pérez Curator – Richard M. Grove Cover Design – Richard M. Grove Layout and Design – Richard M. Grove

Typeset in Garamond

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Title: True identity / April Bulmer, editor ; Pablo Manuel Velázquez Pérez, photographer. Other titles: True identity (2021) Names: Bulmer, April, 1963- editor. | Velázquez Pérez, Pablo Manuel, photographer. Description: First edition. Identifiers: Canadiana 2021028708X | ISBN 9781989786536 (ebook) Subjects: LCGFT: Poetry. Classification: LCC PN6101 .T78 2021 | DDC 821/.9208—dc23

T h i s b o o k i s d e d icated to t h e c r e a t ive s p i r i t of iden tity. L e t i t w h i sp er, L e t i t r o a r, L e t n o o n e h o l d i t un der.

Table of Contents Richard M. Grove / Tai A Project on Identity Introduction by the Publisher – p. xv

Dr. Norman King Introduction – Our True Story – p. 2 Don Gutteridge Plots and Perils – p. 8

April Bulmer Ocular Eye Clinic – p. 9 Breath – p. 10 Body of Christ – p. 11

Maria Caltabiano My Two Pietà – p. 12

Kate Marshall Flaherty Son as Tree – p. 13

Karen Massey Winter Moon, Mercury Retrograde – p. 16

John B. Lee That Isn’t You – p. 18 The Dry Bed of Silver Lake Imagines Itself as Me – p. 19

Kathy Robertson Rippled Reflections – p. 20

Antony Di Nardo A State of Being – p. 21

Joey Rae My Name is Sensitivity – p. 24

Jenna Kalinsky What’s In a Name – p. 27

I.B. Iskov In Front of the Arc – p. 32

Ellen S. Jaffe Identity Papers – p. 33

Marsha Barber Suicide Bomber – p. 35 My Friend And I Argue About Whether I’m “White” – p. 37

John Di Leonardo What I Will Miss When Gone – p. 38

Lee-Ann Taras Commemorating Heather – p. 39

Marn Norwich Face at 40 – p. 44

Eva Kolacz In the Maze of Lines – p. 46

Shireen Huq The Cry – p. 47

Becky Alexander Anna – p. 49

Stan White Birks Painting – p. 52

Alan MacLeod Is That Right, Siggy? – p. 53

Katherine L. Gordon Attic Archaeology – p. 54

Blaine Marchand Aftertaste – p. 55 Catchphrases – p. 57

Deb Mowatt Unravelling – p. 60

Elizabeth McCallister A Fall From Grace – p. 61

Glen Sorestad Shopping for an Identity – p. 62

James Deahl Becoming Norma’s – p. 63

John Tyndall Golden Joining, Golden Repair – p. 65

Patrycja Williams The Crone – p. 70

Basudhara Roy Venusian – p. 71

Stan White On Opening an Encyclopedia – p. 73

About the Editor – p. 78 Queen of Wands – p. 79 The Rock – p. 80 Frames – p. 81

Richard M. Grove A Bit about the Photographer, Pablo Manuel Velázquez Pérez – p. 86

Biographies – p. 91 MSc Miguel Ángel Olivé Iglesias An Essay of True Identities – p. 98

Laurence Hutchman A Review of True Identity Anthology – p. 104 Stan White Review of Pablo Manuel’s Photography – p. 106

A Project on Identity Introduction by the Publisher Richard M. Grove / Tai Pablo Manuel Velázquez Pérez, the photographer of this book, is my Cuban godson, and I love him very much. He calls me Unc, his loving short form for Uncle. My gosh he is now 17. I knew him before he was even born. He was the kicking mountain carried by my sweet Cuban sister Adonay. Just now I am reminded that Pablo was born in 2004, the year that I started the CCLA – the Canada Cuba Literary Alliance. For a long time he was the adorable mascot that came to poetry readings with his mother and father. I have pics of him at every stage of his life including one of him on my shoulders gripping the brim of my straw hat, pulling it down over my smiling eyes. I have not seen him in a couple of years because he is living in China teaching English with his dad, my Cuban brother Manuel, one of my dearest friends. Pablo’s mother, Adonay, is scheduled to join them in China soon. I mention my intimate relationship with Pablo to explain my keen interest in him and his photography. I have been viewing his photographs for a long time now. In a small way can I say that I have helped nudge his interest in photography? On more than one occasion he and I have ventured out from his Holguin, Cuba front door with our phone cameras to take pictures. I was always astounded, when we got back from our walk that he had more than a few photographs that I wish I had taken. I became the jealous godfather as I admired his passionate eye.

I have a few books of my photography published and have my photographs on more book covers than any other Canadian photographer, so it is just natural that I would nudge Pablo in the direction of taking his photography seriously enough that he might have his own book one day. I have no idea what his profession will be when he finally finds his leaning but there is no doubt that he will be as respected as both his brilliant PhD parents. After poring over hundreds of his photographs I made a commitment to the theme of “identity”. I approached friend and fellow poet April Bulmer to see if she would like to collect poems on this theme. Hence this collection was born. For this book I am wearing at least four different hats. The hat of the publisher is a fun and interesting hat to wear. I get to conceive of and manifest books out of thin air from start to finish, motivated by a variety of personal, economic and artistic incentives and enthusiasms. The hat of godfather is one of loving pride and is the most stress-free to wear. The hat of the layout and cover designer is stimulating considering my art education and background but by far the most inspiring and thought-provoking is the hat of curator of this collection. It was such a joy to pore over hundreds of Pablo’s photographs and hone them down to the few that might best represent the theme of identity. On some level it was a walk down memory lane through my own path of discovering the world of photography. My father was very encouraging of my keen interest in photography. At my age of thirteen he pledged to pay for half of my first single lens reflex camera if I first saved for the other half. Winnowing these final photographs out of the many was such a joy-filled challenge. As you will see, I chose some photographs of camaraderie as identity, of past as identity but I also chose a few as place to represent identity. How can we not have our identity formed by the camaraderie of love and how that love fits into the past and is connected to place? All three

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are the brick and mortar of who we are. By far the most difficult choices as curator was choosing to leave out the many wonderful photographs that tempted me but did not fit well enough with the theme. I have said it many times that one of the many blessings that comes my way as a poet and publisher is that I have had the opportunity to know so many wonderfully creative people. Pablo and April along with many of the poets in this book are among the artists that have enriched my life. As I finish writing this introduction I realize that I also wear the fifth hat of audience, reader, viewer and appreciator. It is with joy-filled wonder that I finish this book and devour the words and images that fill these pages. I hope you will enjoy this book as much as I did creating it. The man of many hats, Richard / Ricardo / Tai / Unc Poet Laureate of Brighton, Ontario

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The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are. Joseph Campbell

Introduction by Dr. Norman King

Our True Story The original image we have of ourselves and the script that we follow in our life story spring from those to which we have been exposed from childhood on, whether from family, school, culture, or nation. Only gradually do we become aware of them and either reaffirm or change them. It is crucial to come to an understanding of ourselves and a script that do help us to see ourselves and life truthfully and in depth, and to live accordingly. We need images and stories that enable and challenge us to celebrate our joys, survive our sorrows, share our lives, and build our world. We need a vision that, while acknowledging our wounds, nonetheless affirms our own sacred worth and the sacredness of all else. The deepest truths are best expressed in images, symbols, and stories. The truth of a story lies not in its factualness but in the vision of life it contains. A good example is the verse by Rumi, the 13th century Persian poet. “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” He is not talking about a physical place, but a way of being present to ourselves and one another. It is the inner, home place within each of us, behind

and deeper than thoughts, feelings, judgments, wounds, prejudices, and all else. The story of Echo in Greek mythology tells of a young woman who can only repeat what she hears and gradually fades away. At a deeper level, the story challenges us to find our own voice from within or die inside. In effect, to understand ourselves, one another, and life’s meaning, we need the help of images and stories that affirm a deeper underlying worth which yet allows for the shadows that fall across our life. Dr. Norman King is Professor Emeritus at the University of Windsor, where he taught for 35 years, chiefly in contemporary spirituality.

Don Gutteridge

Plots and Perils I teethed on Bible stories: Adam and Eve in the Garden where everything grew but love and sex was unacceptable; Samson with his impeccable coif that Delilah bisected, then tittered as the temple unresurrected around him; Abednego toasting his toes in the fiery furnace; Daniel lounging with lions as limpid as lambs; Moses in the bulrushes, who pulled down the pillar of fire to light the way through a severed sea; Job: who suffered boils and sores and begged for more; Joshua and his jolly jaunt to the portals of Paradise; and Jesus who ambled with ease on Galilee, rolled a rock away and rose from the dead like a hallowed Houdini—and these were the plots and perils I carried with me like an embarking bard and I let them breed in my genes.

April Bulmer

Ocular Eye Clinic A woman with a huge bag of coloured wool hooks blue strands around a wide, plastic ring in the waiting room. “You can make a hat in no time,” she tells me. “It will be a toque.” An old man fingers his cellphone. He wears a cap that reads, “I’m Following Jesus.” I read the clinic motto behind the front desk: “Our Vision is Your Vision,” it says.

Breath The winds whine and pass through trees like a chorus of slim angels, noisy and who have lost their destiny. I am sad and so very tired, loss a presence in my gut: absent and here like Jesus. I am alone-and-not in this beige room littered with poems and books the Lord has written from the ambry of my heart. I am mute really and my tongue a pink stone worn by the steady tide of time and the shallow waters in the dark cave of my mouth. I am breath, as is the wind, meditating on the mystery of throat.

Body of Christ Today, I met with my friend S— who suffers from schizophrenia and celiac disease (she is sensitive to gluten found in wheat, rye and barley). She had a donut with her coffee, and I asked if it was gluten-free. She said God had sanctified it, and she would be able to safely digest the wheat. Little is known about schizophrenia. It seems to me to be a spiritual disorder. I don’t doubt that those who suffer with it hear messages from Spirit, but they don’t always seem true or beneficial. The spirit world is a busy and deceiving place, I think. Gods, demons, spirits and other entities move in and out of some of us confusing our perception of reality. I imagine the portal of these minds unlocked and the personal rooms there inhabited by divine trespassers. In the case of my friend, I watched her take a bite of the cruller. I wondered if she would receive it like gluten-free holy bread or a sweet med. Would it dissolve on her tongue like the body of Christ or upset her tender tum?

Maria Caltabiano

My Two Pietà On my return, the skies of Rome domed the prodigious cathedral. Pride surged in me, as if I’d built it (though I was built of it). Clouds condensed— breath of ancient gods released in raindrops as if to chase away the wave of tourists in the piazza, or push them into the dimness of marble saints and marble death; the breath of incense where I was releasing tears to relieve the effect of horrible beauty— marble capable of agony— portraying the betrayed; the lifeless body of a son draped over his mother’s lap: Michelangelo’s Pietà. On my return, Montreal skies— October dome. Trees pass me by as I stroll in autumn crispness I’ve grown up with. Grandeur stills my step— a masterpiece without a church. In awe, I cross the road to it. Branches, once with leaves now flail in the wind: arms enduring loss. Leaves in heaps still glorious yellow drape the ground around a Big Leaf Maple. The tree stands stark and dark and monumental, mourning its yellow shroud of dying sun. In this stunning scene I smile at my two Pietà

Kate Marshall Flaherty

Son as Tree for Gabe

This morning he asks will I read his poem? I am flattered and pick up the paper pencil’d with words and scratches; a poem about mindfulness. I think of all the clouds in this sheet of foolscap— the rains that watered the trees that gave up this pulp. I see my son as tree. Fingers of roots reaching deep into good soil, he is sturdy in stance, grounded in his own skin. Roots in earth, branches in sky— both/and. He weathers storms well. See the many buds facing up. Woodpeckers bore small holes, wasps hang their angry nests, yet his leaves just draw in a simple breath of wind that turns their undersides gold. Like a proud white birch in the sun, he stands, accepts what is.

Published in Radiant, Inanna Publications, 2019

Karen Massey

Winter Moon, Mercury Retrograde Let us not name loss, let us say she is a woman with a lake inside her, layered with snow. Time uncoiling the wintry edge of her pith and vigour. A feisty diary of haiku scribed onto her voluminous life parchment. Long ago, she took in the city, slick towers of algebra and steel, streets surprisingly feral. A woman sheltering an inner city; a village, a town on a harbour reshaped by history. A woman who watches for sunrise, lifts its hem to check the stitches she once mended, her handiwork surviving too many tragedies. She sings the protest song of young women singing forward, waxing in the lake’s boundless memory; what that lake took in and took on, beheld in indelible silence. Her own ageing memory now porous, growing feckless, mortal. Listening to heal. Watching each moment transpire, transform into rust or gilt, now to gauge herself only beside acceptance, her body a lake like a pan of mercury quivering before dayshaking dawn.

Morning. Chickadees flit down, black coifs bobbing. We will not rush grief, will wait with our tourniquet of trust, counting the rests, every measure, poised. Darning the safety net. Weaving another tough matrix aligned to fasten to the changed world. Some new ringing geometry. Small frisson of rising joy, weaving the impossible into the possible. All of her life whorled into this pooled memory draining neatly out of time. Dreaming the scent of heaven deep inside her pineal privacy, a summer pond where wet morning reboots in roric grandeur. Not dreaming blood, but the sweat and tears of a trillion pine trees extending starward. Further.

John B. Lee

That Isn’t You I am currently gathering poems together for a new collection I’m calling That Isn’t You, the title inspired by a comment made by my mother concerning a video transcribed from an old eightmillimeter film. In the still shot, isolated from a single frame of the moving picture, I am riding high on my uncle John’s shoulders. When Mother saw the photograph she said “that isn’t you,” meaning she could not imagine a day from the past when I would have had that kind of relationship with my father’s elder brother, the bachelor farmer who lived in our house. In the photograph I am obviously delighted and thrilled and full of the joy of riding high on my six-foot-two uncle’s shoulders. So, her phrase got me to thinking about “identity” and how we see ourselves, how we are seen by others who might claim to know us well, how we are seen by friends and familiars, how we are seen by strangers, both in chance meetings, and in brief encounters, how we are seen after we pass away when the living refuse to acknowledge what I call ‘the full grumble of the human being.” The true self, the persona, the disconnection between the mask we so often wear to show the world what we wish to reveal, and the face behind the mask. As an aging man I sometimes feel I shave a stranger every morning. I catch a glimpse of my own reflection and wonder, “Who are you?” I was once startled beyond words by being greeted at a family picnic by a seldom-seen relative, “So, how is my sexy cousin doing?” Surely, she could not mean yours truly. It was quite embarrassing because I think she thought I saw myself that way, when it could never be further from the truth.

The Dry Bed of Silver Lake Imagines Itself as Me one lonesome goose has left a track meandering in the mud like crooked stitching in torn cloth mending its way like wind-ripped tin that cuts the marl that marks the lakebed dry-wending in an autumn drought meanwhile close by a gaggle of late-fall waterfowl have gathered in the last remains beside a wet pool shrinking in the sun a mirror held against the vanity of black transcribed on blue as a looking glass in darkness sees the sunlight tracing every surface with a multi-coloured brush and yet an etch of burdock rusting in the season seems as ugly as a leaf of iron washed away in rot and can’t you hear the crack-voiced choir singing like a wind-flexed hinge in need of oil what calls itself itself in this a practised Kapellmeister tapping in the oak and weedy stag horn sumac burning on the fringe of fire I name the day and it names me the wind in words am I an autumn cricket shrills and the god of winter crickets echoes not at all

Kathy Robertson

Rippled Reflections The stone—smooth, flat— skips in spiraling circles across Loon Lake’s inky surface painting perfect patterns atop liquid palette. I watch, hillside, while a carrot-topped lad whoops with glee his golden retriever barking at bouncing pebble while family, picnicking on blanket, cheers them on. Red-winged blackbird’s conk-a-ree from marshy bull rushes echoes in the air as the little clan gathers its belongings to head home. I breathe in the mustiness of early eve reflecting on the ripples of my life; wondering what spirals this boy will cast along his own life’s journey.

Published in Tower Poetry Society, Winter, 2020-2021, Vol. 69, No. 2.

Antony Di Nardo

A State of Being Bees, my love, are enriched geranium reactors in the business of radiating opposites for total annihilation. It takes one to know one is the buzz in the bee world. Bees need to keep busy. To feed themselves they proceed according to rank. They have their place in the great grand scheme of things. The hive is bigger than a human brain. It can stretch and pull in all directions. Even to the ends of the earth. Dendrites, six-sided polygons, apertures, rhizomes, petals, plasticity are often on our minds, but always in the heads of bees. Like you and me, my love, tranquility between them resembles the hum that generates a grounded state of being of which the end product, as usual, is sticky and sweet.

Joey Rae

My Name is Sensitivity I taste both blood and kisses l o n g after they’ve evaporated and I smell the roses almost before they can smell themselves. I recognize truth by how my body trembles and know its absence by how it leaves itself. I. Listen. with my w h o l e body and speak loudest with my P r e s e n c e . Many have called me by many a name but often they centre themselves and lose sight of what I really am in the process. I’m not shy nor dis-engaged I’m actually praying attention Nor am I “touchy”... yet I am deeply touched by e v e r y t h i n g that enters my field. I am not in-decisive. I’m in-clusive. And no, I’m NOT unnaturally s -l-o-w I operate at the speed of Integration. My vulnerability is Not a liability rather a TRUE ability to reveal and be revealed And when I start coughing or crying or careening Sound the alarm!

As it is NOT on account of MY body being weak or sick it is because... it is A W A K E and sentient to the dis-ease within the shared body of this relationship, this community this environment, and this world. My Name IS Sensitivity And while you will frequently find me accompanied by abundant and unapologetic boundaries Please do not confuse these with the defensive posturings of white fragility, male fragility... or wounded femininity Because when it is time to be accountable I take the learning IN... deeply and Make. Changes. Not excuses. ~ My Name is Sensitivity. My gifts have been ignored at great loss and my warning signals, at great peril. My Name is S e n s i t i v i t y And it is time for You to understand why I have come here

I WILL make my Presence and Purpose known to you one way or another because I love you and because y o u r name is Sensitivity too.

Gratitude to Sister in Sensitivity, Glennon Doyle...for the phrase: “praying attention”.

Jenna Kalinsky

What’s In a Name I don’t speak my name —anymore to protect it from itself. I lowercase my heart Curl it into a snailshell, hard hidden away tucked below discernible. A name dies when you call out for something else. A title is fine. A pronoun will suffice. Belonging to such a canon is life’s ouroboros, the holy work, biology’s inevitability. I peel carrots, dry dishes, clean surfaces, and rake. Sew. Deliver. What’s in a name? A true gift need not exalt the giver. Snails trail off when no longer in need of their shells. The frozen ground bears no mark. No one hears them complaining.

I.B. Iskov

In Front of the Arc In a holy room the congregation rises from their seats sings the She-ma in Hebrew I am struck by the Torah thick with scriptures. Although secular I swim in the comforting prayers in the stained-glass pool.

Ellen S. Jaffe

Identity Papers Identity Entity Id I I am Esther, my great-great-grandmother’s name, the woman for whom I am named, known only in a photograph, tiny, with kind eyes, who emigrated to New York with her family, to tenements and new life. And I am Esther of the Bible, who (once again) saved the Jews, like the women of resistance during World War Two. What would I have done? I am Ellen, the Americanized name my parents chose, for a child born during that war, shaped by the death-camps and Hiroshima (though only second-hand). I am, and am not, the numbers that define me: driver’s license, social insurance, car insurance, bank accounts, passport, OHIP and hospital, the blue numbers that could have been tattooed upon my arm, if my family had stayed in Europe (but then, I wouldn’t be the “me” that I am now.) The numbers in a data base, identifying me, numbing out feelings and thought. I am a mother, a daughter, a grand-daughter, niece, cousin, friend, lover and partner, writer and reader. Or to use verbs, which mean more:

I write, read, cook, garden, travel, desire, hurt, love as best I can (often not enough), live inside my body/my mind/the world in this “choose your own adventure” story that may (or may not) end with the verb to die. Strangely, we say “to die,” but there is no active verb for birth, we need to say “be born.” Maybe there are worlds before and after this where I have a different identity, become another entity, perhaps non-human, emerge from a cocoon into another I, an eye that sees things differently, dazzlingly. from another perspective — the ocean, a butterfly, a black hole compressing the light something I practice each morning, waking from dream, feeling a slight shift in who, today, I am.

Marsha Barber

Suicide Bomber “Suicide Bomb Kills 3 in Bakery in Israel” – The New York Times Somewhere a young man the same age as my son wants to blow me up. Oblivious, I apply fresh lipstick, blood red, the day is filled with hope. I leave for the market to buy bread: thick crusted, warm from the oven. When it happens I’m thinking how good a slice will taste after I spread fresh butter and share it with you. I note the boy. He has dark curls just like my son, which makes me smile. In a second, the sunshine through the bakery window becomes too bright, as bright as fire. Yesterday the boy ate with gusto the hummus and olives his mother served, was tender in the way of sons, teased his mother, told her she was the best cook in all the world, and she blushed. He held her tight when he hugged her close for the last time.

This morning he shaved carefully, washed with rose water, repeated prayers, rhythmic as rain, the soothing notes bracing him for the light-filled path ahead. In a second we are on the floor in pieces, the bakery now a butcher’s shop. How strange that his blood, muscle, sinew, last breath, mix with mine, in a puddle on the tiles, which means he is now part Jew.

From Love You to Pieces, Borealis Press, 2019

My Friend And I Argue About Whether I’m “White” No, I don’t think so. Not quite, as I think of my father fighting his way home from school, called Dirty Jew my husband who smashed his ink-black skates over some kid’s head who called him Filthy Yid Pierrette, not knowing, in Quebec who told me her family had nothing against the Anglos, except, of course, the Jews and those frayed black and white photos of my family: my aunts Masha and Helen, their large-eyed children wiped out in 1943 their tender skin good, only for stitching into pale lampshades.

Note: This poem references the Nazi practice of sewing Jewish skin into lampshades, as documented in New York Magazine and other sources.

John Di Leonardo

What I Will Miss When Gone your eyes my true north a place built for dreaming where you wake seven hues in dew a limpid light I’ll set-off to — meet your smile lean into Algonquin’s traceless blue when I on cusp of morning lust ecstasy-hushed angle toward the lone call of loons my rayed aster star my vantage point my evening and dawn you

Honourable Mention, The Banister, Niagara Poetry Anthology, Volume 34, 2019

Lee-Ann Taras

Commemorating Heather For Heather Hall

you passed away in the early hours of morning just as the sun was waking up and shining with such a brilliance like your luminous spirit you were so resolute in your battle like the candle I lit in memory of you it burned with a weakened flame but persistently endured I am remembering your essence curious as a child graceful as a dancer and ah, your long, elegant fingers you were so witty and insightful as you spun me stories of your adventures one after another always the rebel hell-bent on embracing life’s wonders this is not the time to say goodbye my friend for the last day I spoke to you I said “Come visit me soon, ok” I will keep my ears and eyes open for a sign of your soul’s flight like the hummingbird that visits our garden all too fleeting and brief like our time together, ephemeral but so bitter-sweet you were so precious like the flowers we will rest on your grave farewell yet not my friend for you are with me everywhere in the soft summer rain in the moon that climbs the evening sky in the art you made with those beautiful hands in the tremendous inspiration you gifted to me in the music that imbued you with delight and sadness

Marn Norwich

Face at 40 Nature gives you the face you have at twenty. Life shapes the face you have at thirty. But at fifty you get the face you deserve. Coco Chanel By 40, you have lost perspective, you no longer know whether or not you have grown up to be pretty. The mirror, your surest tool in this matter, has proven unreliable, at best: some days, you think you catch glimpses of your own beauty, a sudden certainty, an of course, sunrise on the deep green waters of a lake after a storm. Then the moment passes and you stand dismayed, a child intent on chasing her shadow.

At 40 you know that a woman has not one, but one hundred thousand faces, each offering a perfect reflection, like a piece of chipped glass or a molecule of DNA. Now you understand that your face has been molded over time by your life, and your life by your face and a certain fondness has grown in you for the allegiance between the difficult and the familiar. At 40, you do not always have the face you want but there are times you feel the features, arranged just so, are a perfect balance of light and shade in the middle of the afternoon.

Eva Kolacz

In the Maze of Lines They say we have a map of lines or at least a fraction of it on the palm of our hands. In the web of tiny lines we act like birds destined at birth to follow the path of our ancestors not knowing yet we are just instruments needed to compose the songs of life. With no time on our side and trying for clarity of this complexity we walk leaving scattered footprints over the roads beyond the patterns of failure. Who are we when we are born with a silver spoon? Who are we when we are left to survive, when we are dreaming like flying fish of conquering the sky, but we end up in a net of our own vulnerability?

Previously published in Whatever We Are by Hidden Brook Press

Shireen Huq

The Cry a piercing wail shred the humid monsoon night and she was born to be thrown into the garbage bin, the stray dog sniffing the morsels turned its head once in curiosity and went back to the scraps unknown hands picked her up put her in a lonely crib with other lonely cribs in a room bereft of sun and love, milk from the bottle thrust into her mouth dribbled down her ears her mother’s eyes had sizzled at her cry. Was it hate? Or rage at all the things that had been done and could not be undone. bullets ripped the air nails tore the flesh mindless violence the hyenas giggled mines exploded in the paddy fields her mother’s cries went unheard there was only the ratatatatata!

too young to feel her mother’s pain she lies in her crib curly black locks glossy dark brown skin while her grey blue eyes follow the line of ants on the wall too young to ask Who am I? too young to ask the nation that fought and won the war Why am I here? too young to ask the world What have you done? Meanwhile silence reigns...

Becky Alexander

Anna (Ukrainian Village, April, 1968.)

Sunlit spring morning, three men in grey uniforms pound on a door at a row of peasant huts. Her father tries to bar their way; they smash through, knock him aside like a stick of tinder. Announcement that one of the children from this house is immediately assigned to a farm labour camp in Yugoslavia. Mother, four daughters, and one hale son quiver in the background. Back in three hours, the pronouncement: have a volunteer ready or we’ll choose two. So Anna, middle of the pack, tall, thin and strong is tossed out the door, followed by a ragged satchel, her screams ignored as she is dragged away. Three years later, beaten, cold and starved, they return her to the bosom of her family; in silence, they pack for immigration. Forever to know hate, the poison of her youth passes on to her son, despite her wealthy marriage. She speaks only in contempt of her parents, who now subsist in her swishy, updated basement: “Peasants! Thirty years in this new country,” she hisses, “and not one word of English.”

Published in TOPS Arborealis, 2017

Stan White

Birks Painting Is typical of the city of my childhood. In general, it is grey all over. The expanse of leaden sky tells the story of the days of soft coal. There are many stacks spewing smoke as are the chimneys of row houses. One of which sports a chimneysweep’s brush. Grey washing hangs on a clothesline. A man on a ladder is cleaning windows and in the foreground is a small open coach which I recognize from photographs of my parents’ courting days. It is a small roofless bus used for sightseeing and called a charabanc always pronounced, in those days, as a ‘chara bang.’ There are many people standing around, painted in Birks’ gawky style but it is how I remember us. On the left is a service station, which we called a ‘garage’ and standing in front of an ancient Austin 7, similar to the one I owned later as a youth, is a small boy wearing short trousers with a snake belt buckle. It might be me. Could it be I am not looking at a painting I’m looking at a memory?

Alan MacLeod

Is That Right, Siggy? In my youth I was a great admirer of Sigmund Freud. Especially when it came to children and babies. He thought that babies were all about instinctual and selfish urges for immediate gratification. He called it the id. Well, I thought, that explains a lot, those little ones are just tiny mouths, not much happening there, certainly not a person yet. I tucked that self-satisfied assessment away in a corner of my brain, maybe my unconscious, along with other truisms. It lingered there unchallenged and content for years. No bother. Except, a contrary feeling abided in another far corner of my brain, maybe an ancestral echo. Then I had a grandson. At first it seemed like Siggy had nailed it; the kid just ate, slept, waved his arms, and pooped. But, about four days in, his eyes popped open. I recoiled at what leapt out at me. Someone lived in there! Someone who was talking to me with his eyes. And, I lost myself. No, that doesn’t strike the right note. The echo snapped alive and raised its dozy head. I felt like I knew this wonderful being, and what’s more he recognized me. I locked in on those black pupils, and it was like our brains harmonized. There was a buzz that beat in our deep reaches, releasing a chemical stew of pleasure. A lullaby lit up inside me and crept along that empathic path between us. And, a spark flashed out from his infant peepers with the warmth of a sunbeam. A tenderness broke around the corners of those orbs. His hands and feet bicycled along with the melody. I caught the rhythm and swayed with it. So Siggy, my grandson and I request a hearing. Listen Up!

Katherine L. Gordon

Attic Archaeology There is a drawer in this old house where some small relics of another century are stored… when the day is winter-drear I find them again, hold them, let their memories and meanings permeate my empty hours. One a handmade little book of corkwood, each page the uniqueness of that tree stippled in faint arboreal beauty, bark covers enclose the mystery: only one word written within, LOVE stained with blood. It must have meant forever your blood and bone, the who and why of it never to be known. I hold it until my fingers ache. In this bleak winter-world can old and longing love cause some connection to wake?

Blaine Marchand

Aftertaste I pause by the door seeing you lost in thought, chin in hand, gazing out the window that overlooks familiar landmarks of the old neighbourhood, Ottawa West. You sense my presence, turn, wave me in. I have to tell you my recurring dream– it is early spring, I am outside the Elgin Street orphanage with its many windows like prying eyes. A woman in a cloth coat by the iron fence that keeps us in waves to me, places a small white bag beside the black railing, turns and walks away. I am afraid. I have been warned not to go by that fence but I do. I take up the bag, open it, inside a clutch of confection– horehound, my favourite sweet. Was this woman my real mother? Was she Aunt Kathleen? She must be Aunt Kathleen. How would my mother, who abandoned me, know of my weakness for this hard candy, so well-suited to me, its sharp aftertaste the residue of bitterness when I finally figured out

Mummy and Daddy were too old to be my parents, overheard the sibilant whispers of people – a girl of unknown origins. I learned to cope, put my best face forward. It was easy, just like horehound, sugar-coated, a balm for what ails you, slowly dissolving in my mouth.

Catchphrases Did you have your porridge? I always ask. Oh yes, and your fingers mime tearing brown-sugar sachets; your lips smack. An easy start as we muddle through talk. Sometimes I navigate through your favourite maxims – Take each day as it comes... Move forward… Do not look back… Be grateful for small things… These bring responses honed over the years. A clear That`s true or a Hmmm or a vague Uhuh, slow nod of head that serves as both yes or no, the scrunch of eyes, upturned corner of mouth. I’m-getting-by comebacks of the hard of hearing. Lately, I catch your phrases slipping from my mouth, veneering fears and anxieties that fluster us both. I hear your rasp in my voice when I speak, the struggle, frustration to find the right word.

Deb Mowatt

Unravelling This morning I awoke to the reality of my life having changed: to no job demanding an immediate transformation to a professional self, no children to hustle off to childcare or school, no chuckles over breaks with coworkers, no scraped kid knees nor broken teenage hearts to mend, no peals of laughter through this once busy house. There is only an old man, who used to be someone else, in a bed downstairs surrounded by mechanical devices that ensure his breath moves in and out for another day. He used to fill daily planners with activities, with hopes and dreams, with life. This morning he groans over a new prescription, asks what it’s for...again. Says he’ll consider whether to take it or not. There’s that and Jeopardy in his plans for today. Caring for him features large in mine. Our days plod on, each coming and going much like the last. Sometimes I busy myself with hobbies when he naps if there is time, energy, and desire to do so between chores. Moments of creativity can raise my spirits. Yet, too often, they come as thieves, snatching back more serenity than they bring.

Elizabeth McCallister

A Fall From Grace It was on Kingston Road with its downscale-upscale mood. The houses behind it not yet gentrified. We travelled this street every day – kilted and kneesocked. Our black Oxfords losing their shine. We learned to hold our hands in front of our rolled-up skirts. Our vests hid the evidence. Kept our pleats close to our bodies so we didn’t flash the world with every gust of wind. After school, we went boy hunting. Cute guys with their shirt tails hanging out. We’d stroll past fogged-up windows of the florist, old ladies selling specialty chocolate, next to the Polish bakery/deli, hoping to be noticed by the most dangerous guy, because that’s what we thought we wanted to flirt with the forbidden fruits of life. We were making our way down the street – the target was well within sight – my head held high when I stumbled tripping over the smooth pavement and caught myself from a tumble.

Glen Sorestad

Shopping for an Identity Gone, it seems, are the days when a Saturday morning at Safeway could become a conversation with a one-time colleague, or a former student, resurrected from another life I lived; or a former neighbour, who lived one door down from the house we once inhabited, before we moved into newer digs that we bought replete with a fleet of new neighbours. A pleasant Saturday morning in a busy supermarket with carts careening in every aisle, with children wheedling and whining, while their harried parents try to placate … well, just no telling who might pop right out of your past and be standing just ahead of you at the check-out counter, a smile of recognition forming on their lips. Except, these meaningful scenarios are vanished now, verboten. Faces are hidden like failures and fellow shoppers have mutated into masked hordes, strangers scrabbling over each other in dumbfounding silence as they vie for the product rumoured to be next on the list of Items to Stockpile. I recognize no one. I get my groceries, pay and leave. Who have I become?

James Deahl

Becoming Norma’s for Norma West Linder Conceived by one woman and one man, with one soul, one spark of expanding breath — how many people I’ve been just passing through one life! What’s a son but darkness seeking light? And the role of adult love at so tender an age — can a boy be an object of lust’s black fire? Of passion? Then, a lifetime later: boyfriend, husband, father. A riddle too tangled to unravel, fevered kisses flare and falter. A life. Shockingly, all begins anew: boyfriend, husband, father. A tapestry beyond any pattern, so hard to see, and then — widower. Phil Levine asks, “How did we come to despise this life?” I’ve always lived in hope, never despised life, nor the agony of birth, nor the interminable suffering of my death. I climb a lattice of flames, their smoke blurring my vision, their roar filling night’s hollow heart.

Yet nothing’s as fearful or as joyous as being summoned by a woman to enter her labyrinth, her dense thicket of desire. Deep in the autumn of my years I’ve long forgotten who I am, or ever thought I was, and stand bewildered before my reflection. I doze beside a river whose shadows stain the day blue. When the wind shifts, love’s inferno rages, and I awake to find I’m Norma’s.

The quote is taken from Philip Levine’s “The Wandering Poets” first published in Dossier, and most recently in The Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry, 2011.

John Tyndall Golden Joining, Golden Repair When I came bro -ken you mended me with gold-of-heart dust and the lacquer of love I, rough Raku ware shaped by hands a generation ago bore heavily my age showed covertly my wear so you taught the way the ceremony of tea in a special room painted goddess green bringing the liquid to a slow simmer wiping me clean with warm cloth and I in my turn whisked you to froth as we learned the path of quiet acceptance of transience of imperfection for, together through simplicity with asymmetry we have found beauty and serenity

Patrycja Williams

The Crone Crowned with worn antlers that hold the memory of an ancient chase, she sleeps in a calcified seashell with barnacles sprouting from its smooth veneer. Her face is cracked, red earth which has witnessed unrelenting rain. She waits on her mossy throne as cedar’s sinewy roots wind their way around her feet, Remembering the ancients venerating her with garlands of fragrant flowers, sharing their prayers, awaiting the full moon to fill their wombs, penetrate their souls. A cauldron sits on its rusty legs, puffing out rings of blue smoke. An old raven hobbles past her, cataracts veiling his eyes like moth-eaten curtains. Her emerald heart shimmers, releasing all from the holds of their caged minds.

Basudhara Roy

Venusian It’s one of those days of the month I am not well. Caught in my own waning cycle like the moon, I warp within myself, my ears pressed against my navel to hear the wild rumblings of the sea. In the karst of my abdomen, slumbering rivers pandiculate, rising from sleep, their youthful growing pains undulating across flowstones of dark cave floors till every crimson uterine tale is told. Enclosing, in a foetal comma, this thundering world, my mind increasingly turns to Venus, that one female planet in a masculine universe, stormy, volcanic, her spirit homed in unrest. I think of the way she turns clockwise, playing truant to time, her one day of love longer than memory’s year as fiercely embracing her own light, she scorns moons. Her orbit, the perfect circle hugging her motion, her axis refusing to lean upon none but her untamed turbulence, 71

she calls out to me in my upheaval. Doubled over the pain and joy of being myself, I realize I am already Venusian.

Appeared in the blog of Café Dissensus Magazine, April 2021

Stan White

On Opening an Encyclopedia She would have passed unnoticed in any crowd not even the merest hint her left breast like an atlas globe, pictured the world as it was in the sixteenth century, her other, the craters on the moon, I recognized Vendelinus. On her back, draped as though from her shoulder the complete text of the Rosetta Stone followed by a Hebrew prayer and on her belly, fully illustrated, a page from the Book of Kells and several cave paintings. Elsewhere a plethora of names: Pythia, Hadwijch Baba Vanga, Abe Ro Seimei, Therese of Lisieux and a quotation from Nostradamus. In the middle of her back, an equation appeared to solve a riddle of the quantum... a foreign tongue told the fate of the crew of the Mary Deare and an account of the history of the Amistad natives. In a place somewhat hidden from view some tiny modest diagrams from the Kama Sutra and a portrait of Grigori Rasputin all in the midst of mysterious clefs of an unknown symphony. Such was the magnanimity of the outpouring of knowing that it overflowed onto her upper arms and down her thighs. Only one small panel of ivory flesh remained untouched an inch or two above her navel. She was keeping it, she said, for the epitaph of a lost lover.

About the Editor April Bulmer is the poetry and prose editor of this anthology, which includes work by Canadian and international authors, as well as photos by Cuban photographer Pablo Manuel. The book investigates the theme of identity from a variety of perspectives. April’s micro-prose writings included here are excerpts from her manuscript “Year of the Dog: A Poet’s Journal,” which was shortlisted for the International Beverly Prize for Literature in London, England. The collection is composed of diary entries written in 2018. April’s works include over a dozen published books. The most recent is called Out of Darkness, Light (Hidden Brook Press, John B. Lee Signature Series, 2018), which was shortlisted for the Next Generation Indie Book Award in the U.S. She has been published in many prestigious journals, newspapers and magazines including The Malahat Review, Arc, PRISM international, The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and Grand Magazine. In 2020, she received a YWCA Women of Distinction Award in the Arts & Culture category. April lives in Cambridge, Ontario where she is a poetry editor for the online magazine Devour: Art & Lit Canada. More information about her is available on her website: aprilbulmer.wordpress.com

At my request April has sent me three more poems. It is a small way of my saying thank you to her for being the poetry editor of this book. Publisher, Richard M. Grove

Queen of Wands I dream of you, J—. You walk with a cane. On Saturday: a fortune teller again. She will read the tarot, my chart and the lines on my palm: the geography of love and fate. Remember, we were girls at the Cozy Tea Room on Gerrard? A man behind a velvet drape read my wristwatch, a well-worn ring. Promised a career in TV. You wrote novels, won awards, married, bore a blonde girl — a photographer who shoots for Vogue. I worked for TVOntario; care for an elderly mom, a sickly dog, my own wounds. Pen little poems about the feminine God and Her battered earth, Her runes. For I am Taurus, Virgo Moon.

The Rock Today, I learned my former handyman at our country house passed away almost 15 years ago. B— was a retired fellow from Bell Island, Newfoundland whose big, meaty hands were put to good use at our decaying property, though I had trouble paying him from my wages at the gift shop. But he arrived almost daily in coveralls and an insulated hat looking for little jobs. I gradually projected father feelings onto this capable man. My father could barely light a match with his soft, clammy hands. But B—, though a devout Catholic, liked his screech and began arriving three sheets to the wind wielding an electric chainsaw to chop wood for my potbellied stove. We argued on the telephone and he called me “aggressive.” I thought he would contact me and apologize, but he never did. I mourned when it was clear I wouldn’t hear his Newfie expressions again. I remember plodding through deep snow and leaning against an old tree for awhile. “I’ll drop over ‘round by and by,” I heard him say in my mind as I had a good cry. Only imagined the Celtic lilt of “Stay where you’re to ‘till I comes where you’re at” on the winter wind.

Frames I buy new eyeglasses. They are large and burgundy. Made by Ralph Lauren. Drive home in the rain. My friend L— flies to Dublin today. My mother’s people are Irish: Stinson, County Armagh. My great-grandmother was Sarah McQuaid. I love shawls and Celtic brooches, a band called the Pogues, urns of ashes: evidence of ancient souls. Imagine the sound of the sea still in the moons of their hearts, as they wax and wane. The old green waters dragging them home.

A Bit About the Photographer, Pablo Manuel Velázquez Pérez by Richard M. Grove The first thing that I have to say about Pablo is that he is a warm, gentle, generous soul. This comes across in his response to my email asking a few questions about him and his relationship to photography. “It’s impossible for me to describe how happy and thankful I feel for you to make this book real. Thank you, so so much, I always thought of photography as nothing but a hobby, but I see this book as taking it to another level. Thank you so much.” He ended his long email reply with, “Thanks again for the book unc, it truly means a lot to me! Love, Hugs and Kisses, The Cuban Boy.” This alone tells you a lot about the heart and soul of this now 17-year-old young man. I found it interesting that Pablo’s favorite subject was math, from 1st grade all the way to high school. This was also the case for me but I never got 100% as my dear godson did. Pablo confesses that his best grade, “was the maximum, 100, in different subjects, but I guess as I mentioned before, a 100 on a math test made me extra happy.” Sports were not his big interest or skill. He said, “I was on a baseball team for almost a year during my 1st grade, on a football team for a few months, on a basketball team for 2-3 years around 3rd grade, and in a karate dojo club for a year during 7th-8th grade.” I remember going to one of Pablo’s basketball practices many years ago. It was like watching a beautiful swan flutter around the court not quite

knowing what to do. Aside from sports it is also interesting that reading was not always a high interest. He confesses, “I have the same problem with reading as I did with sports and almost all of my other hobbies, I can get tired of it suddenly and spend a few months without doing anything related to it until I pick it up again. A few months ago I read two books in a week, and till now, I have not picked up any book.” Of all of his interests Pablo is serious enough about photography that he belongs to a photography club at the university where he lives, where his father teaches, though he has only participated in one group photography trip to an island. He says, “I don’t know if I have enough confidence in my photographs to say they are art, but I do enjoy the process of both taking the photographs and editing them into something both comfortable and pleasant to look at. I tried working on my photos on the computer, and found that it’s harder to use the mouse than my phone, so I decided to continue to use photo apps like Snapseed and PicsArt to edit my pics.” It might have been a bit of a non sequitur question, having nothing to do with photography, but I asked Pablo about heroes to get an idea of who he might admire. To this he replied, “I guess I was not a big fan of heroes when I was a kid. The only reference I got was my dad, who used to tell me stories about Superman. He used to read comics when he was a kid. Lately, as I went through many ‘movie analyses’ about Batman and Heath Ledger’s Joker, I realized I’m quite interested in Batman’s personality, as he is a hero on the brink of becoming an anti-hero or even a villain, like The Joker. It’s something that we don’t see so much in many other hero movies, where heroes are perfect and would never kill or break their code.” Now that he is living in China, on campus with his dad, he has fewer close friends than when he was living in Cuba with school chums. Now fluent in Mandarin, after only a year and a half, he says he has around 6-7

friends. “I really enjoy being able to communicate with natives as if I were one of them. Being able to go to some old neighborhoods, talk to some grannies. Being able to order food in family restaurants makes me truly happy and proud of myself. Learning a language is a lot of fun.” Pablo’s aspirations go well beyond the hobby of photography. He says, “I definitely want a university degree, probably will even aim for getting a PhD after graduating. I’m not entirely sure about what my profession will be. I have thought about teaching , about engineering , about becoming a doctor, but I guess I will know at the right time just what it is I want to do.” For now this young man has the world as his oyster with parents, family and friends that love him. Fluent in three languages he is already an English teacher. If photography stays a hobby you can bet he will grow and seek new levels of creativity. If he pushes the boundaries in the direction of being a professional you can also bet that he will leave his mark. No matter what he does he will do it with joy.

Biographies Becky Alexander was born and raised in Hespeler, Ontario. Her poetry has won awards and has been published in over 400 periodicals, anthologies, etc. She is a member of the Cambridge Writers’ Collective, The Ontario Poetry Society and Green River Writers of Kentucky.

Marsha Barber’s third poetry book, Love You to Pieces, was recently published by Ottawa’s Borealis Press. Her writing has appeared in such periodicals as FreeFall, Literary Review of Canada, The Walrus, The Antigonish Review, The New Quarterly and The Prairie Journal. Marsha is on faculty at Ryerson University in Toronto. Maria Caltabiano was born in Italy and immigrated to Canada as a child. She is a graduate of Concordia University and former teacher, magazine editor, and journalist for CBC radio. Her works appear in various literary anthologies and magazines. Drawing Daybreak, her first poetry collection, is forthcoming by Guernica Editions (Fall 2021). She lives and writes in Montreal. James Deahl is the author of 28 literary titles, his three most recent poetry books being: Travelling The Lost Highway, Red Haws To Light The Field, and To Be With A Woman. A cycle of his poems is the focus of the television documentary Under the Watchful Eye. He lives in Sarnia, Ontario.

John B. Lee is Poet Laureate of Brantford, Norfolk County, and the CCLA. He lives in a lake house overlooking Long Point Bay where he works as a full-time writer and editor. His latest book Darling, May I Touch Your Pinkletink was published by Hidden Brook Press in 2020.

John Di Leonardo is a Brooklin, Ontario poet, artist who has published in journals across Canada, the U.S, India, and Germany. His poems have been anthologized in over forty collections. His debut poetry collection, Conditions of Desire (Hidden Brook Press, 2018), explores possibilities of the modern ekphrastic poem. He has also published two award-winning chapbooks: “Book of Hours” (2014), and “Starry Nights” (2015), and is the recipient of The Ted Plantos Memorial Award 2017. You can visit his art and poetry at: johndileonardo.ca

Antony Di Nardo is the author of five books of poetry, most recently, GONE MISSNG (2020). He won the Gwendolyn MacEwen Poetry Prize in 2017 and was nominated for a National Magazine Award. His work appears in anthologies, has been translated into several languages, and is found in journals across Canada. He was born in Montreal. Kate Marshall Flaherty was shortlisted for Tifferet Journal’s Poetry Prize 2020, Arc’s Poem of the Year 2019 and others. She’s been published in Vallum, Room Magazine, The Malahat Review, Grain Magazine, Saranac Review, Trinity Review, and Descant. She guides StillPoint Writing Workshops and types up spontaneous “Poem Of the Extraordinary Moments” (P.O.E.M.s). See her poetry at https://katemarshallflaherty.ca Katherine L. Gordon is a poet, publisher, judge and reviewer. Her work is published internationally and translated to other languages. She believes that poetry is a unifying force throughout the world.

Don Gutteridge was born in Sarnia and raised in the nearby village of Point Edward. He taught High School English for seven years, later becoming a Professor in the Faculty of Education at Western University He is the author of seventy books: poetry, fiction and scholarly works in literary criticism and pedagogical theory and practice. Dr. Shireen Huq is Professor of English and former Chair in the Department of English and Modern Languages (DEML) at North South University, Dhaka , Bangladesh. Prior to this, she had been Dean, Bangladesh Open University, and Professor of English at King Khalid University, Saudi Arabia (KSA). I.B. (Bunny) Iskov is the founder of The Ontario Poetry Society: www.theontariopoetrysociety.ca. In 2017, Bunny received the Absolutely Fabulous Women Award for her contribution to the literary arts in the Golden Horseshoe in Ontario. Her poetry has been published in several literary journals and anthologies, including Tamaracks: Canadian Poetry for the 21st Century, edited by James Deahl. Ellen S. Jaffe grew up in New York, emigrated to Canada in 1979, and lives in Toronto. She has published three poetry collections, as well as a y/a novel and a book on writing. Her work is published in anthologies and journals, and she has received grants for writing and artists in education from the Ontario Arts Council. See more at www.ellen-s-jaffe.com.

Jenna Kalinsky has published fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, including in the LA Times best-selling The Modern Jewish Girls’ Guide to Guilt (Penguin). She is the founder of One Lit Place, a full-service writers’ center. Originally from Los Angeles, she earned her MFA from Columbia University and lives in Toronto.

Dr. Norman King is Professor Emeritus at the University of Windsor, Principal of Iona College, and Coordinator of the Interfaith Group of Windsor and Essex County. His work has focused on the human search for meaning, especially in areas of personal depth, interpersonal compassion, and social justice, with an emphasis on the intrinsic worth of the person. In these studies, he has relied upon stories and myths, ancient and modern, and other arts along with more philosophical sources. Eva Kolacz is an Oakville poet and artist. She is a member of the League of Canadian Poets and The Ontario Poetry Society and has published two books of poetry: Whatever We Are and Fire and Water, a collaboration of love poems with Laurence Hutchman.

Alan MacLeod is a writer and proud new grandfather, living in Bruce County, Ontario. He is happy to have celebrated his little grandson in print. Blaine Marchand’s award-winning poetry and prose has appeared in magazines across Canada, the US, New Zealand, Pakistan and India. He has six books of poetry, a young adult novel and a work of non-fiction published. His full-length manuscript of poems, Becoming History, will be published by Aeolus House Press in the autumn of 2021. Active in the literary scene in Ottawa for over 50 years, he was also the President of the League of Canadian Poets from 1991-93 and a monthly columnist for Capital XTRA, the 2SLGTBQ community paper, for nine years. Karen Massey lives in Ottawa. Her work has appeared online and in literary anthologies and publications in Canada, the U.S. and UK, including Arc Poetry Magazine, subTerrain, The Literary Review of Canada, Ottawater and Experiment-O. She received the 2020 Diana Brebner Award from Arc. Her two chapbooks are from above/ground press.

Elizabeth McCallister resides in Brantford, Ontario, Canada. Her work has appeared in Hearthbeat: Poems of Family and Hometown, The World Around Us and Tamaracks: Canadian Poetry for the 21st Century. Some of her work will appear in forthcoming publications, Voices Israel Poetry Anthology 2021 and Literature for the People, Issue #2.

Deb Mowatt has completed two novels (as yet unpublished). Several of her short stories and poems have won awards and/or have been published. As a former instructor/trainer/job coach, she developed training materials, college-level curricula, and project/funding proposals. In 2010, she published the non-fiction book “Job Search Sucks!” (Chapters, Barnes & Noble).

Marn Norwich is the author of a poetry collection, Wildflowers at my doorstep (Karma Press). She runs Vancouver Women’s Writing Courses, where she facilitates workshops and coaches women on the writing process. Her work has been published in a range of literary journals, and her two new poetry manuscripts are actively seeking a home.

Joey Rae lives, works and plays at the intersection of Empowered Sensitivity and Embodied Sense Literacy while constantly smelling for the poem in the present moment.

Kathy Robertson is an award-winning writer whose works have been published in seven countries. She was the Centennial Essay Winner in The Elora Writers’ Festival 2017 contest entitled My Canadian Moment. She has a B.A. from Wilfrid Laurier University and a B.Ed.. from the University of Western Ontario. Dr. Basudhara Roy is Assistant Professor of English at Karim City College, Jamshedpur, Jharkhand, India. An alumnus of Banaras Hindu University, she holds a Ph.D. in diaspora women’s writing and is the author of an academic monograph, Migrations of Hope and two collections of poetry, Moon in My Teacup and Stitching a Home.

Glen Sorestad has been writing and publishing his poetry around the world for over fifty years. Among his more than 20 poetry books are two bilingual volumes that include Spanish and Italian. Sorestad is a Life Member of the League of Canadian Poets and is a Member of the Order of Canada.

Lee-Ann Taras is a Kingston visual artist and poet. Her poems have been published by Hidden Brook Press and Queen’s University Press. Her work has also appeared in Devour: Art & Lit Canada, Free Lit Magazine, Ultra Violet Magazine, Heads Up and Collections.

John Tyndall lives in London, Ontario. His books include Listen to People (Hidden Brook, 2020) and The Fee for Exaltation (Black Moss, 2007). His poems have appeared in the anthologies Dénouement (Beliveau Books, 2021) and Translating Horses: The Line, The Thread, The Underside (Baseline, 2015), and in the journal The Windsor Review. Stan White is a retired professional photographer and postsecondary teacher of photography. He has written non-fiction and published, in 1988, a slim volume on the subject of Stereo Photography. More recently, he has published several poetry books. His poetry is also published in local anthologies and on his website: stanjwhite.com

Patrycja Williams is a poet and artist who hosts workshops in creative writing and visual art. She lives with her husband and two children on Pender Island, BC.

An Essay of True Identities MSc Miguel Ángel Olivé Iglesias

Who are you? Pete Townshend To be or not to be. Hamlet True Identity, a 2021 Hidden Brook Press photographypoetry-prose book, came to me thanks to Richard Grove, a seasoned publisher. Grove has published books with poetry and pictures many times in his long, prolific career. Approaching identity from a poetic-photographic perspective is appealing—and challenging. However, the book does not let us down, not at all. I have always been an avid TV viewer and reader. I inherited the habit from my parents, who in many ways helped me outline my own identity, my own way of absorbing life around me, recording it and facing it. Some of us are visual learners-responders, some are more the auditory or touch kind yet whatever senses-responses we develop more strongly, the idea of perception is there to boost learning, growth and finding our place under the sun. Fine Canadian poet April Bulmer, the book´s editor, and young Cuban photographer Pablo Velázquez, have found their places and they assist us in rediscovering ours. Her editing and his pictures have been masterfully woven in a communion of interests and artistry.

The photographer surprises for his acute intuition to capture realities, people, moments. No wonder the book´s promoter and designer, Richard Grove, put his best endeavors in compiling and selecting a rich variety of Pablo´s photographs. Identities are profiled by the photographer in an across-frontiers voyage of clicks and flashes. I value Pablo´s treatment of horizontals and verticals, balance, black and white, colors, poses, and his sensitivity to register an image that speaks a thousand words or provokes a thousand thoughts. Bulmer works with the magic of the words in no lesser way, complementing what Pablo is trying to convey. Wellknown Canadian poet and professor, Antony Di Nardo, who appears in the book, has wisely looked into and shed light on the notion of poetry as a special form of visuality: “I often consider poetry as a form of visual art painted with words…” Thus we are in the presence of a mutuality of art and lit, a confluence of sensations in the authors and the artist, which renders outstanding pieces we relish. Identity as a category belongs to many fields: psychology, sociology, cross-cultural studies, political geography, nationhood, etc. In his piece “That Isn´t You,” John B. Lee, the iconic Canadian poet, reflects on the multisided character of identity, deemed here from an individual-group stance: “… how we see ourselves, how we are seen by others who might claim to know us well, how we are seen by friends and familiars, how we are seen by strangers, both in chance meetings, and in brief encounters, how we are seen after we pass away…” We develop an awareness of who we are but also of who the others are, how they perceive us and how we see them.

Pablo explores those angles leaving for us instances of people and places here in Cuba and in China, where he is currently living with his father. Antony Di Nardo tells us in his poem “State of Being,” that “It takes one to know one,” so Pablo “freezes” himself for posterity in his photographs, freezes his companions and two worlds´ bustling life along the way. His alert eye does know how to do it well. I know Pablo´s parents. Somehow, the profound grasp of life they both have, proven in word and action, reached him and shaped his own personality and pursuits. His father, Manuel, former Canada Cuba Literary Alliance (CCLA) VP, editor, sentient writer, necessary friend and outstanding professor in Cuba and China, has definitely influenced him and many others, like me. I was his student. I know Pablo personally. He is a kind, smart, lively young man with qualities beyond his flair for photography. I remember one of our CCLA meetings in his home when he read a “little something” he had just written. I was impressed by his fresh ability for description and narration, a gift we enjoy now in his pictures. His photos reveal a remarkable approach to postures, light and colors, as well as wild-ride displays in many of them the viewer/reader should not be misled by: Richard Grove, who is a professional photographer, comments in his introduction about Pablo´s skill, “… he had more than a few photographs that I wish I had taken. I became the jealous godfather as I admired his keen eye.” Alongside the intrepid “snapshooter´s” tongues-sticking-out pics we smile at, there is a myriad of others filled with tenderness, sensuousness, a more professional insight and an evident capacity to discern, focus and portray a given situation seeking or suggesting (perhaps questioning) the true identity of what he has chosen as his graphic motif.

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My layman enthusiasm for Pablo´s achievements has made me temporarily forget the poetry-prose that accompanies this incredible book. True to the book´s theme, I was particularly drawn by Bulmer´s double entendre in her “Ocular Eye Clinic”: “I read the clinic motto behind the front desk: “Our Vision is Your Vision,” it says.” I loved the dissecting power of Ellen S. Jaffe´s “Identity Papers,” for example, where the poet goes deep into the concept, proposes alternate identities and fantasizes with could-be’s: “Maybe there are worlds before and after this / where I have a different identity, / become another entity, perhaps non-human, / emerge from a cocoon / into another I…” In “Rippled Reflections,” Kathy Robertson plays with meanings adding a philosophical spin to the opinions on identity: “I breathe in the mustiness / of early eve / reflecting on the / ripples of my life; / wondering what spirals / this boy will cast / along his own / life’s journey,” while Marn Norwich strums age/appearance chords— overwhelming human concerns—with her “Face at 40”: “Now you understand that / your face has been molded / over time by / your life, and / your life by / your face and…” Then we read Eva Kolacz and her “In the Maze of Lines” where she inquires, half wistfully, half inspired by that inner migratory starlight she pours onto her poems, “Who are we / when we are born with a silver spoon? / Who are we when we are left to survive, / when we are dreaming like flying fish of conquering the sky, / but we end up in a net of our own vulnerability?” The book is an endless search for more than ID pics and numbers that label us unsuccessfully intending to clip

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our rapidly spreading wings towards knowledge of the world, ourselves and others. Thanks to publisher, editor, talented budding photographer and poets who agreed to examine their identities, our identities, other people´s identities, we are invited to enter awesome pages where image and word wondrously collide to offer an explosion of “diverse uniqueness” where true identities are really forged. No matter how many hats (or masks!) our publisher wears or takes off, there is evident worth dwelling within the book that fully justifies his interest in Pablo as a photographer, expressed from a qualified, objective professional´s viewpoint, and his commitment to bring to the occasion excellent editor and poets, who have unstintingly gifted this new Hidden Brook Press publication with their unique seals. Loyal to my efforts towards becoming somewhat of a poet, I finish my review with my own musings on charting our own courses and looking into who we are, why we are here, where we come from.

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The First Day The first day. Genesis 1:5 As the first day. Bernice Lever To feel the pulse of life. Malca Litovitz and Elana Wolff

like the new sun rising and the sea renewing itself in wavy romance with the shore leaving runic signs on the sand, I breathe in the pulse of life awake at this hour in the sleepy waterside I calibrate my existence as I surf with the tide weigh my crests and shallows skin-deep essences retained substantial unrepeated I interpret ocean messages of long ago cosmic capsules wherein life was rocketed to earth and expanded sea to land from natural noise to sentient sound this is where I stand, before the primordial source. God divided light from darkness, my eyes receive awakening this pulse of life refreshed to embrace me like the first day of all creation.

MSc Miguel Ángel Olivé Iglesias Associate Professor Holguin University, Cuba CCLA Cuban President Author, Editor, Reviewer

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A Review of True Identity Anthology by Laurence Hutchman

True Identity is the latest anthology to be released by the publisher of Hidden Brook Press, Richard Grove. In the introduction to this book, he presents himself as a man wearing four different hats: publisher, designer, godfather, curator of photography. But Richard is more than this—he is also a creative force behind every project that he undertakes. He chose the fine poet, April Bulmer as the editor of this collection who by selecting a wide range of poems that explore different aspects of identity brought something what is needed in our challenging times with the transpiring of recent events such as “The Black Lives Matter” movement and the discovery of the unmarked graves on the territory of former residential schools. Dr Norman King in this anthology writes “We need images and stories that enable and challenge us to celebrate our joys, survive our sorrows, share our lives, and build our world.” Professor Miguel Ángel Olivé Iglesias speaks eloquently and with enthusiasm about the nature of identity, illustrating it with pertinent examples of poems and in his essay, he introduces the promising young photographer, Pablo Manuel Velázquez Pérez speaking about the nature of his art. There are a number of strong works in this collection that speak to me. John B. Lee in his prose piece “This isn’t you” writes in a philosophical manner about what is real in identities and the difference between the “true self ” and “the mask we so often wear to show the world.” Antony Di Nardo sees the similarity of humans and bees: Like you and me, my love, tranquility / between them resembles the hum / that generates a grounded state of being . . . “Blaine Marchand writes of a dream his mother had of being an orphan: I am outside / the Elgin Street orphanage with / its many windows like prying eyes. Ellen Jaffé talks about the deep effect of her Jewish religion on her: “something I practice each morning, /waking from dream, feeling a slight shift / in who, today, I

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am.” Patrycja Williams writes about the identity of a crone drawing on her ancient wisdom. A cauldron sits on its rusty legs, puffing out rings of blue smoke. An old raven hobbles past her, cataracts veiling his eyes like moth-eaten curtains. Her emerald heart shimmers, releasing all from the holds of their caged minds. John Keats in one of his letters writes that a poet is “chameleon,” changing identities and the poems in this anthology illustrate the versatile character in the poets’ lives. Laurence Hutchman, author of 13 books of poetry including Fire and Water (with his wife, Eva Kolacz) and Swimming Toward the Sun Collected Poems: 1968-2020. He is the Poet Laureate of Emery Ontario.

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Review of Pablo Manuel’s Photography by Stan White Not surprisingly, since both are creative entities, a photograph has much in common with a poem. Both require an interesting concept and a unique way of expressing it. One of Pablo Manuels’s photographic passions would appear to be people, and he beautifully conveys the wonder of youth in his portraits. But a good photograph, like a good poem, should convey more than the obvious, and in all Pablo Manuel’s Cuban photographs there pervades the powerful signature of the Cuban culture. His photography taken in China also carries his creative talent for strong concepts and novel viewpoints. Clearly, Pablo Manuel’s photographs convey a maturity way beyond his years. It is to be wondered if in the future, his photographic talents might be put to a more significant use than to merely satisfy a hobbyist’s interest.

Stan White was an industrial photographer in Birmingham, England, before migrating to Toronto, Canada, in 1957 where he became a commercial and advertising photographer. He subsequently taught in the Sheridan College photography program, running the studio for them for 20 years.

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