John W. Macdonald is the unofficial photographer of Ottawa’s literary Scene. Although not a writer like Carl Van Vechten, he is still to Ottawa what the former was to the Harlem Renaissance in terms of visual arts. His lenses are indispensable to the archiving of Ottawa’s unfolding scribal history.

Isle of Desire

Salim Gold

As you reached down plates from a cupboard,
And your blouse lifted, I chanced to witness
A strip of flesh, that dawn’s albescent blaze.
Desire—its pain—became my daily bread.
It was spring, on that isle, when you arrived,
Retired, withdrawn, no longer wanting men.
But it was spring, and our wine-fired voices
Burnt up words, and Desire surged like wild seas.

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The Game of Love and Chance

(by Marivaux) - Translated by Nicolas Billon

ACT I – SCENE I

SILVIA
For the last time -- mind your own business! How dare you presume to speak for my feelings?

LISETTE
I assumed your feelings would be the same as anyone else's. Your father asks me if you're pleased with the marriage he's arranged for you. Does it make you happy? I answer, "Of course it does!" But perhaps you're the only woman in the entire world for whom that "of course" isn't true?

SILVIA
"Of course it does"? "Of course"? How ridiculously naive! Do you really think marriage is a synonym for happiness?

Watermarks of the Body

Lynn Cecil

This morning: Saskatchewan; this evening: Florida. I’m a little disoriented, as if I’ve just folded a map, linking two distant places so improbably, so quickly together. I hadn’t planned on seeing Chalice again, so soon after planting season, but she’d called me yesterday, asked if I’d come and see her. Didn’t say why and I didn’t ask.

Chalice met me at Miami Dade airport, but she’d cut her hair, making her appear older than her twenty-four years, and I’d shaved off my goatee – now I look younger than she is – so it took us a while to find each other in the thinning crowd. First time we’d ever seen each other cleaned up.

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“Painting is easy for those that do not know how, but very difficult for those that do!”

Eauhh Yellow Pain- Zane Turner

Volunteers for Issue 12

For copy-editing this issue of MTLS thanks:

- Lequanne Collins-Bacchus

-Chris Galvin

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