SEX AT THIRTY-ONE Here’s hunger’s sweet spot, extra dough, and a summary of my competencies, is what I thought the year would be. Under its canopy, I vowed to string…
Author: Jake Byrne
ORIGIN STORY Some of it was probably cozy and nice. Close to the fire, silly drunk on sweet fermented plums. Some of it was urgent. One last romp before the…
Jake Byrne: Why did you decide to start Metatron? Was there a void in the Montreal literary community or the publishing scene at large that you felt you needed to…
HOW BLACK? Roland Pemberton She said I was the whitest black person she’d ever met and she laughed when she said it A kind of nervous jagged laughter the rest…
WHOLE MESSY THING This sadness is bigger than B vitamins, it is not interested in working around my schedule, or all your good ideas, it arrives anyway on wings of…
LA VOIX HUMAINE It begins seductively, with the potential loss of her hands parting in a bath O Fernet, able to close again, close enough to his temples that his…
AGE OF WAITING Crows rasp and wrestle for a scrap of kill discarded at the curb: carcass dropped from the claws of a passing gull. Each beak pecks out its…
COLOMBIANA 1. (noun.) The CGI favelas superimposed upon the intricate-lit sheen of Zoe Saldana’s left tricep as she nuzzles a handgun between praying hands, barrel kissing her brow as…
INTRODUCTION TO HOMELESSNESS _____“The point is that fashion is the armour to survive the reality of everyday life.” _________________________________________– Bill Cunningham Bare feet in old running shoes, a tattered cape…
URBAN KOANS (I) Bricked corridors, buildings bunched elbow-to-elbow in the blue-shift of coastal rain. Street-lamps duck and blush as we pass, fluoride-gazes eschewing all but their own perimeters of pavement,…
PHALANGE I used to—with a flashlight— inspect the bones in my hand a child’s fascination: what’s in? orange phalange glow but the bones in these hands of mine moved like…
MUK-BANG You sign in to watch the K-Pop princess eat three steaks, a bucket of kimchi, ten carp pastries filled with custard and red bean paste. You sign in to…