We're launching Secrets, our 22nd issue, on October 21, 2016. Leading up to the launch, we're publishing a series of poetry & prose pieces that feature unconventional lives and secret histories.

Everything in Moderation Especially Spring
by Adèle Barclay

Earlier this week
I was startled
by sober eye contact
during inaugural fucking
with a cock made of flesh
instead of silicone.

If this had been five years ago
I would’ve fallen in love
because oxytocin softens me
into a glamour

but now I know better
than to fall with such abandon,
although I do miss it—
the only kind of cliff jumping
I can abide.

When I was a child
I thought two fist-sized shells
flanked the heart.

I noticed how pleasure and hurt
swelled and burned the same.

Adèle Barclay’s poems have appeared in The Fiddlehead, PRISM International, The Puritan, Cosmonauts Avenue, The Pinch and others. Her debut poetry collection, If I Were in a Cage I’d Reach Out for You, was shortlisted for the 2015 Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry and is forthcoming from Nightwood Editions in fall 2016. She is the interviews editor for The Rusty Toque.

Tara Williamson is a concept artist & illustrator working in the animation industry in Vancouver, BC. She also paints and makes comics. She is interested in the universal themes present in mythology and classic storytelling, bringing to life the creatures that haunt our collective imagination. You can find her at www.taraywilliamson.com and she’s @taradrawstuff on Instagram.

Adèle will be facilitating a spell writing workshop from 6-8pm on October 11th in a hidden gallery at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Details here. She will also be reading in our SAD SPELLS series on Oct 15th/16th at the Vancouver Art/Book Fair.