Reading Room

Learning to Unfurl

Every time she breathes the muscle hisses, a sharpness of tissue refusing its shape. No position is comfortable, all hold the weight pressing her shoulder onto the bed. Still she lies there, counting on her breath to draw her into the present, fluttering up to the...

How to Coach Soccer to Five-year-olds

Show them which goal is theirs and which goal they’re supposed to score in Show them which goal is theirs and which goal they’re supposed to score in show them the ball and how to kick it tie their cleats when the laces come undone let them stop in the middle of the...

Glass Balloons

I journey to nameless shores to wrestle glass balloons from other women. We eat potato salad and meaty gooseneck barnacles that slip out like socks from boots. We tease each other about love and lust and drink black coffee from steel thermoses. Along the beach there...

math for couples

subsumed: 1 + 1 = 1 she had no socks so she wore his that left him short of socks so she bought him more subsumed: 1 + 1 = 1 she had no socks so she wore his that left him short of socks so she bought him more equated: 1 + (1 + 1 - 1) = 2 the young woman snared an...

The Virgin Mary is a Collapsed Umbrella

The honourable mention in our 2009 poetry contest, judged by Sachiko Murakami. Walk down the street getting wet from the rain washes sheets onto clothes stuck to skin. Take clothes off; walk down the street naked and alone. It is night time; the sky is dark. There is...

Seagull

I am standing in the middle of the ragged highway that passes my home when a wildlife officer offers me a seagull egg sandwich. The road winds its way northeast from Yellowknife for seventy-five kilometres, then just ends. If you don’t heed the giant stop sign, you’ll...

Deciding to Wear an Enormous Hat

At first the idea of the hat might have been a cover-up, a need to move through the world without being seen. But down deep, I know that wanting led to it and not the other way around. The hat became a strange kind of mask, like some feathered piece, a shaman’s tool,...

How to Keep Your Day Job

Do a dry run on the bus a week before you start, at the right time of day, carrying the right amount of stuff, in the stiff uncomfortable black shoes you can’t run in. If you don’t own such shoes, buy some. Don’t get paint on them. Do a dry run on the bus a week...

2009 Contest Winners Announced

Congratulations to the winners of Room's 2009 Fiction, Poetry, and Creative Non-Fiction Contest!Thank you to all who participated this year's contest. Look for first and second place winners in issue 33.1, coming to newsstands soon!Our winners for 2009:Fiction: 1st...

Identity Crisis in Reflection

Teresa lifted a stone from the beach and it spoke to her saying: “I am God.” “There was one thing which at first I was ignorant: I did not know that God was in all things, and, when He seemed to me to be very present, I thought it impossible. I could not cease...

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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.

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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.

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