Amand Garnet Ruffo

Pages: 1 2 3 4

My Son is Crying

Tonight my dream takes me to a black lake

thick as oil. Fire the horizon.

Trees shrouded in tattered grey cloth.

Their skeleton limbs reaching for help.

No birds, no animals.

Nothing but the swoosh of a flare up.

I keep paddling until I awake.

We are giving our son a bath when it happens.

The house manacled and pulled. The ceiling

trembling like a prisoner.

A construction blast without an explosion.

I scoop our naked boy up in my arms and run.

Stand beside a neighbour in pink pajamas.

By the time we’re out the door, 30 seconds later,

the earthquake is over.

Pages: 1 2 3 4

1 Comment

1 Comment so far ↓

Tade Ipadeola says:

September 30, 2011 at 4:39 pm

I have never lived through an earthquake. But I found this poem instructive.

Reply

About Amand

Author

Armand Garnet Ruffo is a professor in the Department of English at Carleton University in Ottawa. He recently completed a book length manuscript called “Norval Morrisseau: Man Changing Into Thunderbird. His feature film “A Windigo Tale” won Best Picture at the 35th American Indian Film Festival in San Francisco in 2010.

Poetry

Crusade

Salim Gold

One lover’s lips spill into another’s;
Our two combined thighs bandy up and down;
One flesh confronts and conforms to the next—
Until we’re shouting, organ by organ.
When I breach your castle’s molten marble,
I please you by seizing every treasure;

Night Swim

Céleste Parr

A large condo with high ceilings and a wall of windows. Spacious, elegant, minimalist. A sparkling late-night skyline. Upstage is a King-sized bed with the mattress leaning halfway off, touching the hardwood floor. A large piece of white fabric is tangled between the bare mattress and the bare box spring. Downstage right is a plush, microsuede sofa and ottoman. Near it, a liquor cabinet and a variety of glasses, flutes, tumblers.

Sybill

Bert Bailey

"All of Toronto seemed to have shown up for that awful production!" Phil complained.

"It wasn't so dreadful, was it?" someone asked.

Sybill's eyes lit up, and she almost rose out of her seat to add:

"Yes, and didn't Millie say she saw Christopher Plummer in the lobby?" Everyone turned to her end of the table. This was the first thing she had said since the three couples had arrived from a nearby theatre.

Quote

The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art's audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public.

- Paul Gauguin.

Gwenaël Bélanger

Art

100, rue Blainville Ouest
- Gwenaël Bélanger

Thank You

Volunteers for Issue 10

For copy-editing this issue of MTLS thanks:

- Lequanne Collins-Bacchus

- Amanda Tripp

- Claudia Del Balso

Acknowledgement

MTLS is grateful to Jetioluwa Olafimihan (Cotta Red Creative Studio) for her hard work on web development and management.

Dedication

To the memory of Stephen Potts