My slightly dyslexic brain first read the title as Take the Back Stairs. And the image on the cover featured zombie-like high school kids I might have known. I figured this zine would be about, you know, geeks who didn’t want to take the back stairs anymore, muttering jealously, but only to themselves: “we have the right to take the front stairs as much as they do!” Upon reading the zine, I find it’s poetry that’s too angsty for its own good. It gets bogged down and heavy, but not in a good way. “Poetry is painful,” indeed. Messy layout and a suspect typewriter, but the effort is there, and it definitely has that push. (Michelle Emmanuel)
half zine, #1, 75 cents or trade, Kevin Barry, 99 Hawthorne Rd., London On., N6G 2Y2