Reading Room

Ritardando

this metropolis is hurly-burly— you’re striving with deadlines crosstown, half-drowned in long lists—consume that, buy this chase what’s brash and new— your strained schedule bursting with some added task always left to do while nearby, along cool paths sun sips...

Reflections on Water

Our water flows from an unnamed, underground spring. It flows downward from a point about a kilometre north-west of our home. Our water flows from an unnamed, underground spring. It flows downward from a point about a kilometre north-west of our home. We share the...

One Last Winter Moment

Today is one of those days of sloping light that you sometimes get when the hard edge of winter cuts into spring. Where the sun doesn’t just shine, but scuds across the fields in great golden planks. It is one of those days where mothers everywhere are nagging at...

Chocolate Season

It’s late May when James arrives in Rose-Marie, fresh from Antigonish, where he lives now. He shows up without fanfare. Without flourish. Without so much as a phone call to let me know he’s coming. He is simply, suddenly, standing before me in the grey light of a late...

Pill-Sorting for Dummies

Jack tilts back on his chair, balancing on two legs. A circle of smoke drifts up from a saucer beside him. “Need a big purple job,” he says. Kenny, your younger brother, slings a monster purple pill across the kitchen table. First Night Jack tilts back on his chair,...

The First Word

The honourable mention in Room's 2010 poetry contest, judged by Jennica Harper. The first word took root quietly, self-sufficient oocyte into morula, split and grew new words, a semiosis in the dark liquid primordia of vowels. Punctuated by consonantal vertebrae: the...

Oranges, Blueberries, Cucumber, and Mint

The cyst behind Andy’s left knee is soft as an overripe pear, the veins and arteries blue and purple. She believes that the left side of the body is the feminine, dependent, side. The cyst behind Andy’s left knee is soft as an overripe pear, the veins and arteries...

2010 Contest Winners Announced

Congratulations to the winners of Room's 2010 Fiction, Poetry, and Creative Non-Fiction Contest!Our sincere thanks to everyone who submitted their work. Look for first and second place winners in issue 34.1, coming to newsstands in late winter.Our winners for...

Shoes at the Holocaust Museum

Dusty, corralled by clear walls of plexiglass, they smell of age, the violent polish of pain. Red, mismatched, many, owned by the women who wore them, sophisticated, matching lipstick to dress, never imagining that by the quiet end of one day they would be nameless....

Cadwallader Creek

Some sixty to seventy miners, mainly married men with families, went down into the underground workings at Pioneer Mine for the first mine ‘Sit-down’ in Canada. Some sixty to seventy miners, mainly married men with families, went down into the underground workings at...

Pre-order our newest issue

Cover image for Room Magazine Issue 49.2, Science. Art by Candace Cosentino of an old-fashioned computer monitor with a bounty of dandelions growing from it.

ROOM 49.2 SCIENCE

I hope this issue makes you curious and furious, leads to 2 a.m. Wikipedia rabbit holes, fulfills urges to seek out knowledge-keepers. Quickly or slowly, dive in: -ologies of all varieties await you.

Order our previous issue

ROOM 49.1 No Future for Who?

In Room Magazine 49.1 No Future for Who?, we are really asking. We are coming in hot. We are causing a scene. We are being unreasonable. We are not fucking around. We are not taking “no” for an answer. “No” is the only word we still know. For who? For who? No.

Subscribe to our newsletter

Be the first to know about our contests, calls for submissions, and upcoming events.

* indicates required

Join us on Patreon

Become a RoomMate

Seeking members who love literature, events, merchandise, and supporting marginalized creators.


Visit our Store