BC Poetry 2018: "Bad Egg" by Beni Xiao (Rahila's Ghost Press)

Dear God, Can I Have A Designer Purse?

Bugs have no concept of personal space--what's that about?
My Dick could touch your Dick and it would just be chill, 
imagine that.

If I was a bug I would be loud and annoying like a cicada,
except my bug noise would sound like KACHING 
KACHING, and not in a cool way like the MIA song. I would 
be the cicada's rich and tacky cousin,
but I'd have a huge bug Dick.

You know how people look like tiny bugs from tall buildings? 
Well do you think if my boyfriend's mom saw us touching 
Dicks from the CN Tower she would be okay with that?
Would she even notice? Would she be into it?
Or would she wanna squish my huge bug Dick into mush?

Hello God, yes, hi, it's me; 
you probably can't tell me apart from the other bugs
but I just want to say that I think you are OK, 
even if I've asked you

for a Marc Jacob's bag a trillion times and you never deliver,
thanks anyways,


from me, and my huge bug Dick.

Who?

Beni Xiao is a recent UBC graduate who’s work has been featured by Room Magazine, Sad Magazine, The Real Vancouver Writers’ Series, and Can’t Lit. In their spare time they like to nap and snack. They are very into fruit. They can be found on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @verysmallbear.


What?

Poems! In a chapbook!


When?

Arrived November 2017.


Where?

Book Launches:

Done and gone!

Purchases: From the Rahila's Ghost Press website. $10.


How?

Dicking around.

Rahila's Ghost Press * About This Series * More Books, Please!

The copyrights of all poems included in the series remain with their authors, and are reprinted with the permission of the publishers.

BC Poetry 2018: "The Tide" by Jake Byrne (Rahila's Ghost Press)

from The Tide

You’ll go to a place that is crumbling in order to watch civilization fall.
- Lisa Robertson
This is personal as eschatological.

We lost Miami and Riga in the opening salvo.

We lost friends on both sides.


Mica dusted our mouths.

We don’t talk about what happened.

What will continue to happen.

The nights: rabid and snarling.

The days: purple and hydrophobic.


Jet smoke over coral horizon.

I found myself caught in a machinery I could not comprehend.

The scaffolding fruiting over the top of the city.

Sky crowbarred open.


If the reports are true then we’re all going to die.

I love you.

I’m sorry.


This is not confessional poetry.

Confessional poetry presupposes something like truth.

Nothing is permitted, but everything’s free.




Sparrows bathe in a tub full of rocks.

Who?

Jake Byrne is an alumnus of Concordia University, where he served as the Editor-in-Chief for Soliloquies Anthology from 2016 to 2017 and won the Irving Layton Prize in Poetry. In 2017, he was a participant in the Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity’s Writing Studio program. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in PRISM international, Lambda Literary’s Poetry Spotlight, The Puritan, Plenitude, BAD NUDES, and Poetry is Dead. He lives and writes in Montreal, Quebec, on the traditional and unceded territory of the Kanien’kehá:ka people.


What?

A long poem! In a chapbook!


When?

Arrived November 2017.


Where?

Book Launches:

Done and gone!

Purchases: From the Rahila's Ghost Press website. $10.


How?

Crowbarring.

Rahila's Ghost Press * About This Series * More Books, Please!

The copyrights of all poems included in the series remain with their authors, and are reprinted with the permission of the publishers.

BC Poetry 2018: "Normal Women" by Megan Fennya Jones (Rahila's Ghost Press)

Aliens & Anorexia

To empty and empty again – to treat my body like a wide chute
through which rain
and dark shapes rattle – this continues to be a radical act for me.

We lost another girl last week
to potato chips and dip. She won’t be coming back,
not after that. Today: celery with peanut butter
looks like giving up to me. 
I can go to the toilet
but I am accompanied.

Suzanne sits in a chair while I pee. 
She talks about her daughter: twenty-one and loooooves to shop:
loves pashminas, loves jewel tones—
soft arms draped in sapphire, emerald green to match her eyes.

It makes things harder when someone watches you pee:

it makes you hurt somewhere new.

Like your body is a space suit you could lift 
your soul out of and drift away from
but this woman watching you pee
she would hold on to the tiniest wisp of you, she would.

Who?

Megan Jones is a poet whose work can be found in Poetry is Dead, SAD Mag, Lemonhound, PRISM International and the anthology The City Series: Vancouver from Frog Hollow Press. She lives on unceded territory of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations (Vancouver, BC).


What?

Poems! In a chapbook!


When?

Arrived November 2017.


Where?

Book Launches:

Done and gone!

Purchases: From the Rahila's Ghost Press website. $10.


How?

Treating your body like a wide chute.

Rahila's Ghost Press * About This Series * More Books, Please!

The copyrights of all poems included in the series remain with their authors, and are reprinted with the permission of the publishers.