SYMPOSIUM
An Arts and Humanities Students’ Council Publication...
SYMPOSIUM VOLUME 7
ISSUE 1
FALL 2019
Copyrights remain with the artists and authors. The responsibility for the content in this publication remains with the artists and authors. The content does not reflect the opinions of the Arts and Humanities Students’ Council (AHSC) or the University Students’ Council (USC). The AHSC and the USC assume no liability for any errors, inaccuracies, or omissions contained in this publication. Cover Art by: Linda Qian
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR As I sit down at the end of a long publications process and reflect on everything I have learnt and felt as the publications team has been working on Symposium: Obscura, I am reminded of Margaret Atwood’s 1939 poem “This Is a Photograph of Me”: It is difficult to say where precisely, or to say how large or small I am: the effect of water on light is a distortion but if you look long enough, eventually you will be able to see me. The writing found inside this issue is a small selection from amongst the vast fields of beautiful writing and artwork found on Western’s campus. From the personal to the metaphysical, these pieces all inspired our curiosity, our rebellion, our desire to chase half-seen images in our periphery. We hope they unlock the same feelings in you. This publication would not have been possible without the passion and dedication of the Arts and Humanities Students’ Council and the Publications Committee. To all our general members and editors, thank you so much for your vision, your laughter, and your support. It has been a true pleasure creating with you. And thank you to you, reader, for picking up Symposium and going on this journey with us. Rose Ghaedi Editor-in-Chief
WHAT WE'RE ABOUT
Symposium is made of a collection of short stories, creative nonfiction, and poetry that are
original, inventive, well-written, and allow for a variety of personal interpretations. Symposium accepts creative work form any Arts and Humanities undergraduate student within the University of Western Ontario.
Symposium is published bi-annually by the arts and Humanities Students’ Council of the
University of Western Ontario. The Publications Team would like to thank the Donations Fund Committee, the students who submitted their creative works, and the rest of the Publications Committee who volunteered for the creative review board.
To view previous editions or for more information about Symposium, please contact the Arts
and Humanities Students’ Council in Room in University Collage room 2135.
Special thanks to the Publications Committee... Editor-in-Chief: Rose Ghaedi VP Communications: Shelby Hohmann Academic Managing Editor: Courtney Ward-Zbeetnoff Creative Managing Editor: James Gagnon Copy Editor: Neha Khoral Layout Editor: Jess Attard General Members: Amelia Eqbal, Denise Zhu, Francesca DeNoble, Lela Burt, Mia Sutton
I don’t believe in ghosts By Gabrielle Drolet
I don’t believe in ghosts but I’ve met them. The first one was all sound — no body, no face, no hands, just a dull knocking between walls. Squirrels, my mother insisted, but squirrels have neither presence nor rhythm. Besides, a squirrel could not survive that long between walls. The knocking was there before I was. The second was just shadow — a shape at my doorway when I opened my eyes between dreams. Hello, I greeted. The response was all light, no sound. The third looked like my father. It faced me in the mirror, though I’ve always been told that I look more like my mother. His dark eyes, so different from my own. His olive skin, so different from my own. What an illusion – a ghost to imitate the living.
The Art of Chalk Drawings By Aurora Rivera
The Art of Chalk Drawings chalk outlines on a black background her face — lines and circles topped by a curve of orange hair odd-angled buildings of Paris she slips and swishes from rooftop to rooftop girl becomes poetry in motion distinctive style first step to nocturnal adventures enjoy some of the flaws life is not perfect
Works Cited “A Cat in Paris (2012).” Rotten Tomatoes, https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/a_cat_in_paris. Desowitz, Bill. “Alan Gagnol Talks ‘A Cat in Paris’.” Animation World Network, 6 January 2012, https://www.awn.com/animationworld/alain-gagnol-talks-cat-paris. Scott A.O. “Ignoring Laws of Physics as They Run Across Roofs.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 31 May 2012, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/movies/a-cat-in-paris-theanimated-french-film.html.
The Unseen Power of a Concrete Wall By Liam Waterman
It’s dark. If I were to open my eyes slowly, I would see only the faint outline of
the desk, the lamp, and the wall. There is no colour.
Someday, I might surreptitiously pull back the curtains and peer through the
window to the world beyond, which is made of pavement, concrete, and bright red lights, which shine defiantly in the face of the same, hanging, black darkness. The sun is just beginning to move.
If I could lie here forever, I probably would. I don’t care. I’ve walked those
streets before, and those sidewalks, and I’ve entered those grey limestone buildings, and I’ve seen the green grass and the park benches and the clocktower, and I’ve read books and written words and taken notes. Isn’t that enough?
I’m jealous of people who can take naps. I lie down unthinking for a few
moments and a half hour passes, which I know means I slept, even though it feels like I didn’t. I’m sad and I hate everything because I know that in a few minutes I’ll get up and I’ll put on those shoes and that shirt, once again, and I’ll leave, just as I do every day.
Descartes says that we can never trust anything we see, because we can never
be sure we’re not dreaming. I like to think that I’m dreaming while I’m walking out the front door and down the hallway, and that the yellow lights and blue carpeted floors are just products of my imagination.
Because if I’m dreaming then I’m not really here.
“You’re saying that you have seasonal depression, but it’s only mid-October.”
(The unspoken phrase here is: “how bad is this going to get?”)
I said that. A day later, I walked home from class and it was windy and cold. I
had to keep my hands in my pockets to stop them from freezing.
I wore gloves yesterday morning, just to let you know how serious this is.
The cold reminds me of home. Specifically, it reminds me of walking around
my neighborhood delivering newspapers when I was nine, with my hands slowly going numb, only going to every third house (because who reads the paper anymore? Evidently, one third of people). It was on those grey fall days with strong winds, where the leaves are piled up in the gutter, and the Halloween decorations are just beginning to emerge. My sister was there. We would split up the papers, half and half between us, and then race to see who could get theirs done first. She always won. There was one house which had a long row of hedges surrounding the walkway up to their front door, and I was always too scared to walk through it because I thought something I couldn’t see would reach out and grab me.
I love the cold, and I even love the dark. The seasons don’t depress me, so I
figure that it must be something else. I figure that if it doesn’t come from outside me, then it must just be my own fault. Everyone else loves open roads and yellow dawns and blue skies, so If I don’t, then there must be something wrong with me.
(You must have a screw loose, my dad used to say.)
How can anyone else not see it?
ineffable
By Lela Burt ineffable things exist without border like a perverted colouring sheet full of substance, hew, and shade but, lacking lines, it becomes a blurred chaos of impressions on a page that feel, to me, like silent music go ahead, pick up a pen and try to draw the lines in you’ll find it won’t feel right because what’s needed to complete the picture is a non-sequential grasp into the spaces breaking the tension between thought even these words dimensionless and dry steeped in their black and white dye die before conception because they too, strip colour, the way subtitles and translations turn down the volume on impact and memory how do we give way to the material? how do we drill a hole through its being, and let language bleed meaning into the pores of the fingers holding the page? how do we ask “how”, when all “how” is is a disconnected string of sounds begging the question of their own existence?
Untitled
By Carol Xin
Things Ghosts Do By Ashley Li
Things ghosts do to prove they are still here:
Xylene, Toluene, Methylene chloride. The hiss of aerosol: the only sound that
feels like his own. The fumes will kill you, they say, if the cops don’t. The fraying line between expression and crime is a colour, a number. In school, his eyes trace low to the floor, like they’re holding something heavy. Chloride is yellow. He learns this in chemistry class, where a teacher with pin-straight hair and a peroxide smile asks if he wants to be a doctor when he grows up. He is already grown. Yellow is his mother. It is her tired feet and daffodil-sage tea and the fear in her eyes when she sees him scrubbing his hands in the sink. He sprays her thick across billboard advertisements and town murals. Knows that Acetone does not discriminate. If they want to scrub her off the city walls, they will have to take their murals with her.
MIT graduate state-debate champion animal shelter volunteer— glass eyes
do not hold her reflection. Less is more. Sleeveless. Backless. Three-top-buttons-ofher-shirt-less. Their pupils blown wide. Fingers trace every scar, every freckle, and asks for the story. Shivers as her sigh fans down the slope of their ears. Let’s try this again. Thigh-high slit up her faux leather skirt. MIT graduate. Sliver of midriff above daisy dukes. State-debate champion. Blowout curls and mink-hair lashes. Animal shelter volunteer. Skin-tight is her platform. Without it, she is helium balloon, sans latex cover. All substance, nothing to reflect the light. Finally, they see her. Finally, they are listening.
At night, the lawn chairs in Briarwood Park rearrange. Funny the way factory-
issue plastic still stacks imperfectly. Paper collects in nonsensical piles. Smeared bagel receipts. Soggy bits from love letters. Crumbled grade-school tests from the children down the street. Here, at least, there are no eviction notices. He sleeps, breath halficicle. Dreams of a time when dreaming did not come at the cost of waking. Joggers stiffen at his snore, but eyes slide past him, through him. To red-brown clay, caked into the life-lines of his palms, a lifetime balanced on needle-tip. He wakes to puzzled glances. Two symmetrical lawn chair stacks, pristine, colours jumbled. It can only be him who has done this.
Some days, the door is too far. Light peaks through the black-out curtain, yet
she wakes to nothingness—which is not quite darkness, but not quite not darkness. Some days, relief lies too close. Pain is an electro-shock current that runs through her like she’s water, or air, or something thinner than air. Lights her up inside and for a moment she can almost see herself again. She leaves an imprint of her form on the bed, the edges tangible. As the sheets bleed red around her, she is paint-by-numbers. Except there’s only one number. She will try again tomorrow. A smile. Thinks about how fucking hard it will be to get the stains out.
Untitled
By Ashna Thaya
Looking Glass By Breton Lim
Ethereal veil draped over bamboo ladderseashells littered the sand by its feet, dried vermillion coral starfish splayed amongst the Conch, and the Ribbed cantharis, sun-bathingon display for the guests. Ten pink little toes dipped in bottomless pool, like chilled, fine wine. Canon ball dive into the autumn numb; Prussian, and cobalts, cerulean blueseyes-wide open; just a blur of blues. Happy 8th Birthday banner strung amongst the palm trees whom watched her grow, Hot tub, a pot of tea, and the pool man who came running with a pufferfish, blown and dried, placed in the tub, and sat floating in circles with googly eyes crossed. She imagined a smile across his pokey pucker; a stone tied with a string to hold him down and float forever – Mother’s handmade Nemo piñata: perfect mannequin hanging above his head. Soiled, bare feet running amok, she gallivanted through her father’s land, crawled through windows to dance on oak slabs, and stole the keys to the big empty villas right out of the bell boy’s navy-trim, back butt pocket. Stray cats with knowing chartreuse eyes, spied on her padding byTheir fine, grey hairs growing wild from their ears, twitched their witchy cat-sensetwitch sensing unease ooze from her impish form. Their pupils dilated, lids squinted in suspicion Clogged sewage, torrential rains: swimming pools everywhere.
In the Backseat of a Cab, I Remembered By Amy Gerster
We sat in the backseat of a cab My window down a crack Wind whistling through it You told me it’s okay, you don’t have to close it You told me it’s okay, don’t take your hand away from mine The moonlight trickled in, kissed your cheekbone A line of pearls along your face Your hair fell into your eyes And I sat on my hands to stop from reaching up to brush it away My muscle memory betraying me And your hand on my knee made my mouth form the words I swore I’d never say I clenched my teeth together, stopped them from slipping out Let the words stick in my throat Swell in my stomach I coughed until they were gone Your lips moved And I tasted fresh cut grass Lake water Raspberry tea steeping in your mug A shiver down my spine, fingertips that weren’t really there We sat in the backseat of a cab But all I could see were your eyelashes soaked with tears Your fingers grabbing for my hands Face flushed pink with regret, or with pain, Or with something that looked a lot like sadness But it was probably something else The way you said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
the canon law By Eva Alie
He comes to visit me on tidal waves, especially during those two hours in the middle of the night, when the streets are your own, interrupted only by the pools of soft gold under every lamppost I sat in your house every week broke the bread drank the wine I felt the guilt, embraced the shame and declared hallelujah I became the lamb, and then sacrificed it, watching you tear into my wounds with perilous elation Why must I wither for you to reach glory? A truce must be reached I have shattered the speckled windows, melted the gold chalices, and now I meet you I cry What have they done to you? For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever and ever amen
the shadow dancer By Lela Burt
she dances with shadows because, turned on her side in the arms of another like a skeleton she disappears she longs to be that inky stamp that weightless kiss of stone that bodiless whisper that floats like smoke or a dancer starved by day to be this shadow is to be reduced to gravitation to be without perspective to be two dimensional and one with one’s own disappearance but instead, she’s upright and walking taking up the spaces between ellipsis silenced by unfinished sentences and stretched across these three dimensions slipping through shades of sharpness and frayed fault lines on pavement she steps, losing herself at the edges before glancing back to regain her place anchored in transition in a halo of celestial light she passes the lamp post smitten with darkness and distracted by faceless shadows
“any further, my dear, and you too will lose face like the rest” the voices preach to her deaf ears “become bones, unable to swing, like clotheslines dripping with flesh” fully aware, she forges on step by step, beat by beat, into the self-consuming abyss because secretly there’s nothing she’s wanted more
Come Find Me By Hafsah Jasat
Chameleon
By Rachel Turner
We are sitting side by side in this steel cannister and it is 1am
lamps are flashing by like popcorn bowling alley carpet so I do small
or fireflies
tell me to turn your body into a pillow
your hair smells like peppermint shadow I worry my skull is too heavy
stops on campus and
away
steeping in blanched almond smooth I ask if you have a ride home
twitch
eggshell
pink panic. you do
my stomach
I The bus
we part
I
apple
cupholder full of the dried orange rinds we forgot to throw
stinking of citrus
somewhere
your shoulder
you lean your head on mine and
climb into the passenger side of my boyfriend’s car upside down cake
the seats made of recycled
the AC is cranked despite it being nine degrees outside
you cover us in your jean jacket
am fifteen again
the street
later
we fall asleep in each other’s arms
half of me begins to sink back underwater
skin scaling over
like dried paper chameleon
and
eyelids double and
2 Pictures of Family By Isabella Kennedy
1. My mother looks up at me from across the scratched dining room table. Her eyes are brown, like mine, but tiredness hangs underneath them like sandbags. She focuses on the window behind me, on the soft smattering of raindrops on the glass. It’s always raining on the Island. “I thought about falling down the stairs at work today,” she says. “Then I wouldn’t have to go back.” Her eyes stay on the window, and I imagine her, alone, looking down at an empty flight of concrete steps: straight, sharp edges and flat landing pads between floors. In the kitchen, my father begins to tenderize slabs of meat on the white marble countertop. The slick, thud sound of studded metal hammer hitting tough, bloody cuts. Her body falling down all those steps. Later, my younger brother and older sister join us at the table and my father lays out the fancy blue platter with all the cooked red meat on it. They all lunge for the rarest slices, laughing over jazz record wails. I watch her float to bed without eating. It rains through the night. 2. The off-white tiles of the floor in the basement I rent are slick with condensation. When I left home for the first time, the short trip across the Pacific to Vancouver wasn’t far enough from the rain clouds, so I went East. Here, the hot mouth of the Ontario summer heat pants against the window panes and licks up the back of my shirt. Hanging above my mattress, on the lavender painted wall, are four black-framed pictures: all of my family. There’s one of my sister and I caught in the only snow storm we had growing up on the West Coast. Two black and white smiles with twin frozen eyelashes. Isabella Kennedy 2 My mother called earlier in the day. When I’m away from her, I think about that night more often: the sound of the rain and my mother’s blank face when she told me she was suicidal. She called to tell me that my sister had stopped washing her hair for a week. That she didn’t care what she was wearing to work. That she was sleeping all the time, tired all the time. My mother’s voice on phone was muted, like she was speaking through glass. “She’s just like me, Bella. Just like me.” I imagine my sister, alone, downstairs in the room we used to share. She’s covered everything with plants now. They hang from the low popcorn ceilings and fan out over the hardwood floor. I picture her there so clearly – doing master-level sudoku puzzles, and inhaling on her THC pen. Then the image changes into something else: the nights when she would scream herself awake. I stare at her face and mine hanging together on the wall, and the other three pictures of our family arranged around us. Five frozen smiles.
babylon
By Josh Thompson-Persaud staring at hollow space thoughts like razor wire ripping up grey matter faster than concrete can be churned, turned into sidewalk. this is no man’s land, errant shells whistle like the rusty shower head hiding tears meant for more than the drain, mixing metaphors like cement you just want something solid, surface level stability because what’s underneath is coiled like a noose ready to carry you away from staring at hollow space stars drip into periphery you’re so close to god, but a thin chord tethers your balloon to your body.
Sparkling to Still
By Sofia Spagnuolo A white kitchen, with tiles resting in a squared, checkered pattern freezes the touch of a toe. The marble counter is almost empty, with nothing but leftover burnt smush on an untouched plate. The windows are latched shut to hide the unfamiliar view. Swing sets and treehouses transformed into short driveways and bus stops. The new, plastic scent tries to wash out the memory of mom’s freshly baked banana bread. Feet are rooted in front of the metal sink, with his fists digging into the counter, like plastic shovels in the sand. The tap is left open, slightly, and begins to weep. Drip, drip. His eyes stay stationed on the sink. Drip, drip. As the liquid hits his cheek.
The Things
By Abbie Faseruk It wasn’t a pleasant job, and it didn’t pay well. I can’t remember why I stayed there for as long as I did, but that doesn’t change the fact that I worked there for ten years. I vividly remember one resident of the building, named Garber. He died shortly after arriving at the nursing home, and that was when I finally quit. I remember looking down at his lifeless body at the visitation, dreading every moment of it. That was the evening I had sat on the couch in my collared shirt and glossy shoes looking between the door and the clock. In the end, I had rushed to the funeral home just before the visitation ended. I had to reassure myself that he was dead. I remember that first day we wheeled Garber in. He had the same tufts of hair and gangly limbs that he had had the day he died, and he had that charming mouth that told us, “I do not need to be here. I am capable of looking after myself.”
“No, you’re not Garber,” we had told him. He answered with his smile.
A few evenings later, I arrived to relieve my co-worker Henry from his shift, and with a furrowed brow and a light laugh, he told me, “Maggie thinks someone is going to die tonight. Have a good night man.” He shook his head and held in his laugh as he headed down the hall. I ventured into Maggie’s room, which was across the hall from Garber’s. The blinds were drawn, but a little light escaped through one of the slits. It illuminated her face like some kind of supernatural scar. “Good evening Maggie,” I said. “So, you heard?” her quiet voice answered from her chair. “Heard what?” I asked, playing the game. “Someone is going to die tonight,” Maggie said simply. I’ll be honest, of course I doubted her. What patient in a nursing home doesn’t experience bits of confusion, or doesn’t have an onset of dementia? But that night, Maggie had looked so sure of herself. Her eyes had looked so clear. “Why?” I asked. Maggie didn’t answer, instead she slowly raised her arthritic fingers to her ear and tapped it.
Listen. I heard a slight noise: the echoing of contact on metal. I stepped out into the hall to investigate. Henry stood at the end, face to face with the elevator, beating the doors with his fist. He threw his arms up, and noticed me standing down the hall observing his frustration.
“The elevator isn’t working,” he said.
“Oh,” I said, “well you can use the stairs.” Henry cracked a smile as it dawned on him that the building did, indeed, have stairs. Everyone depended on that damned elevator. That night, I did my rounds. I fed and bathed those who couldn’t do it for themselves: I changed bedding, cleaned, and tried my best not to dwell on Maggie’s prediction. I wasn’t worried, until I entered Garber’s room. Garber was rigid in his bed, pale as the murky waters of the polluted lakes. “Are you alright Garber?” I had asked him. Garber shook his head no. He told me that he was afraid. I had a horrible habit of asking “why”. “I can no longer tell what is real and what is not,” Garber said. “I know I see things that aren’t there. I know I come in and out of my periods of confusion. I know that, soon enough, my memory will be able to recall my stories just as well as a crumpled, wet newspaper can recall its own.” Garber was deadly calm. “Sometimes, I see things. Things that I can’t separate from my delusions and my reality. Some moments, I see the shadows of the branches from the outside window on my wall, and other moments, I see that long, grey fingered hand that reaches out from under the bed to grab my foot. If I speak aloud to myself in this empty room, sometimes a voice will answer, yet I cannot tell where it’s coming from. These things are everywhere.” I thought about Garber’s delusions that night, while I worked. It wasn’t until someone died that night that I started to believe him. I still remember how sick I felt when I had to call Maggie’s next of kin. Over the next month, three more residents died, not from any complications like heart disease, but from natural causes. Or, at least, that is what the doctors and autopsies claimed. While cleaning, a very specific horrific thought popped into my imagination… what if they died in fear? Terrorized to death by some unseen, invisible thing. I pushed the thought out of my mind, and had just left a patient’s room when I
heard the elevator doors open. I stopped. I slowly turned to face the elevator. Its doors were wide open and in the darkened entrance stood a tall, thin, gangly man with a smile. His hair stuck in different directions, and his wrinkles were deep cracks in his drooping skin that flowed from the corner of his eyes down to the corners of his mouth. He held his smile like puppet strings. It was as if the elevator had waited for me to step into the hall before revealing the thing that stood inside. The thing that looked like Garber. I risked a quick glance behind me, a route to escape, but when I returned my gaze to the elevator, the doors were closed and the hall was completely lit. Garber died that night. I stood beside his bed looking down at his face. I had seen the fresh face of death many times, but Garber seemed different. “I am going to call his family,” my co-worker Elinor said. I felt her stop at the door to look back at me. “You should cover him up, hunny,” she said, then left. Blood seemed to pump through my ears, and all I could think about was how eerily similar Garber looked like that thing in the elevator. I stood watching Garber’s face until my nausea faded, and the pounding in my ears subsided. Slowly, I grabbed the sheet that Elinor had laid on the bed, and started to pull it up over him. The room grew silent, and in the shadowed corner, a slight movement caught my attention. I watched as Maggie sat staring at me from a chair in the corner. Lips unmoving, but eyes alert. She slowly lifted her fingers to her ear. Listen. I heard the ding of the elevator doors open, and my heart felt like it was tumbling down a flight of stairs. Garber jerked, eyes open, and his hands reached for my chest as he gasped for air. I stumbled back, clutching my own chest and slammed into the wardrobe. Footsteps followed by people filling the room, and voices repeatedly saying my name, and faces blocking my view of Garber. I pushed them out of my way and stumbled to the bedside, but Garber was dead. That was the night I quit. A few evenings later, I stood over his limp body in the casket, my sweaty fists shoved deep into my pockets. For a quick flash of a moment, I imagined him jerking in the casket like he had in his bed, and I felt a pang of fear as I imagined his dead arms reaching out to cling at my chest. But, of course, that didn’t happen. I sent a silent prayer that I would never again see that thing, and I left the funeral home without looking back.
Untitled
By Carina Pagotto
The Somewhere Else By Asha Sivarajah
I gazed out towards the galaxy, and it stared right back at me. An assemblage of infinitesimal glimmering bulbs, watching me move, deciphering my mind, extrapolating my psyche until I went blind.
I leaped into a pool of metallic tears, and it spit me out whole. My trembling body in paper-thin linen, sopping in the silvery residue of a memory, yearning to plunge back into infinity.
I ran towards a narrow horizon, and it grew further away from me. Hypnotized by the fumes of the golden tallgrass, entangled in the limbs, pierced by its bark, I, a stationary spectator, stuck in the dark.
I stopped wishing onto abysses. I stopped yearning for a sea of strawberry clouds to whisk me away into a limitless existence.
Exiled by my dream of a somewhere else, I had nowhere to stare at, but into myself.
Thirty-Six Pieces By Aurora Rivera
she lays in bed, attempting to sleep small fingers of mine turn the door handle chipped paint falls thirty fourth bit this month sighing, she pinches her nose, smiles, and covers me in her lavender-scented blanket my body shakes and I move closer to her that noise downstairs rises she slams the door shut thirty-five scraps of door scatter I pick up a jagged shred and lick it to the door it doesn’t stick I rip a chunk of door out thirty-six pieces at my feet my sister frowns her eyes crinkle as she looks at me we frantically peel white wood together our brown faces shining with sweat a commotion louder than the racket below
Morningside
By Josh Thompson-Persaud bruised and beaten steps cut
into red bricks, stuck
in time, evergreen principles sprawled over every hard line
fit the mould, unforgiving concrete forgetting the rubble of beginnings, forgiving long enough for support set in stone, cold in winter, warm
in spring, changes abound astounding the pastors preaching service, how many lives lost to that ice cube democracy?
You Don’t See Me (Series) By Hafsah Jasat
Float
By Courtney WZ
I don’t know who holds a backyard wake in August. The barbeque is hissing,
and Meena’s step-dad is flipping patties. He’s got a Corona in hand that’s sweating more than him, while my sweat trickles in streams from my pits. My skin is blistering in the heat. No one is wearing sunscreen today.
My body sags in a chair that was never put away after the 4th of July, and the
red-white-and-blue plastic slats have sliced open the back of my thigh. Sandaled feet crush the grass around me, and I watch as the blades try desperately, hopefully, to stand up, only to be stepped on once again. Voices are still mumbling, still echoing, passed away – like Meena was some sort of sports play, a fumbled ball. Her mother is hunched on the pool diving board, alone, rubbing her arm with her palm, like it’s an ill child’s back. She’s looking at something in front of her that I cannot see, but recognize, squinting as if looking through a telescope at a far, unfathomable world. Glossy at the sight of something thought to be unreachable.
Pressure tightens around my head. A slow sink into deep water. We used to
dive into this pool, over and over, until we thought our brains would surely pop. Those breathless summers with Meena, gasping for air, after our underwater breathholding contests. 20, 30, 40 seconds ticking by, our record times increasing as our water wings were replaced by waterproof mascara. We kept count for each other, and after Meena burst to the surface, I’d proclaim her time, but she’d go no, no, I know that’s not right, my time was much better. She’d add a few seconds and I’d let her. When it was my turn, I counted in my head, 1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi, 3 Mississippi, so I know the number she gave me was always lower.
Meena made up all of our games. There was the one when her parents got a
divorce in sixth grade – when we heard them screaming from the bedroom, or kitchen, or living room, or bathroom, and we’d go underwater and howl, drowning out the world above water. We scored each other too, from 1-10 for loudness. Naturally, she got a bonus 2 points each time, she’d said it was ‘cause it’s my pool and ‘cause it’s my parents. Then a few months later, her dad moved out, and a new man who she’ll never call dad moved in. Paul yelled even more than Meena’s real dad, so we had a new game for when it got really loud, or when a plate would shatter against a wall. Meena’s body would start to shake too. She’d teach me a swear word – she never seemed to run out of them – and together we’d scream them above water. We’d get louder and louder, flapping our arms, splashing up a great scene, until Paul would come out and tell us to shut the fuck up, kid, even though there were two of us. But after that, the yelling inside would stop, and Meena would seem satisfied, so we’d continue playing. We’d swim to the bottom of the pool with imaginary teacups and raised pinkies, pretend-sipping tea that always tasted like chlorine, fighting our buoyant bodies to stay below the surface.
Now, that world is far away, more unfathomable than this one, than this lifeless
pool with its dead salamanders and their dead, mushy eyes, and the goddamn sun reflecting on the water.
I remember being in the pool the summer after grade seven, when Meena got her
period. We watched the blood drift through the water like puffs of smoke, swimming after lingering trails before they washed away, trying to hold onto something that disappeared as quickly as it had bloomed. Trying to hold onto something that had suddenly become just a memory.
Untitled
By Linda Qian
Stihl Silence
By Rachel Fawcett Your drunken snarl woke me. My knotted limbs recoiled from your acid breath, like the kickback of a shotgun. Your steel teeth tear through layer after layer of my cracked leather bark to reveal my knots abandoned, alone in the alleyways of my rings filled with golden blood.
Spiderwebbed lichen floats in the air, a halo of lost feathers, as I collapse onto the soft bed of needles.
Small Town Arrhythmia By Jessica Le
In the distance, we watch a sheep get gutted by a long, shrill knife. Back to kitchen-dingy lighting, we watch Mom pour the tea out in a steady stream. At the end of it all, we stand, watching sheep’s throat spurt out like a shaky hand on a kettle, scald splashing everywhere. We peel away noodle strips of fat; there’s the liver, looking yellow and big and wrong. Watch the mountain again. No, wait, watch the mountains again. The neon green peaks of them: careful, we’re hiking up turbulent area. I wish it were flatter. Wish it didn’t sound like cashier check-out in here, tumbling rotten fruit onto the belt and waiting for the inevitable. This is not what you’re meant to be dwelling on. The best part of hospital nights belongs to the sound of Dad’s heart-beep, louder in the quiet. Neon green in the dark, moths flying around your head, sitting hunched waiting for a bus that never comes. The streetlights standing hunched, coughing up dingy lighting in a steady stream. This is not what you’re meant to be dwelling on. The steam wallows out of the teapot, and your book’s pages turn themselves. Dad was wearing his son’s shirt, and time had seeped out the window. Back to the brown-grass field, back to the mountains, back to the nearby farm. The sheep on the ground. You standing up, watching the clouds roll by. The sun is coming up again.
Offshoots (Seed Born By a Breeze) By Mia Sutton
TORN FROM THEIR ROOTS, THE WORDS GROW CHEAP TORN FROM THEIR ROOTS, THE WORDS GROW THE TREE IS GREENLY DYING ITS SOIL IS DEAD, WEIGHTED BLANKET THE GAME, THEN BECAME OBVIOUS WE KNOW THE GAME AND WE’RE GONNA PLAY IT PRODUCED, ENGINEERED, INSTRUMENTAL ESCAPE UNBOUND ALLOWED TO REACH RELEASE OF UNPLEASURE CONCERNED WITH NOT THINKING ABOUT IT SO GREEN, GREEN GROWS THE GRASS BEHIND OUR TIRED FEET JOY AND SUFFERING ON A MOTE OF DUST SUSPENDED IN A SUNBEAM ON IT EVERYONE YOU LOVE, EVERYONE YOU KNOW, A MILLION MOMENTS ESCAPE FROM, ESCAPE TO ON THE GO, WAYFINDING FLURRY OF WORDS BENEATH THE BODY’S CURVE BRITTLE STEM LIVE SEEDS AND SHRIVELLED FLESH THE SINGING HAS NOT MADE ME LESS ALONE NOR WILL IT YOU FROZEN SUN STAINING YOUR FADED SMILE EXTRA BEAT, THE FOLLY OF HUMAN CONCEITS THE ONLY HOME WE’VE EVER KNOWN YOU ARE HERE
SOURCES CITED 7 Day Unlimited Ride NY MetroCard. May 2018. ASTLEY, Rick. Never Gonna Give You Up. Vinyl. Produced by Stock/Aitken/Waterman. Manufactured and Distributed by BMG Music,NY. 1987. CHILD, Philip. The Victorian House and Other Poems. The Ryerson Press. Print. 1951. FREUD, Sigmund. BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE. Print. 1920. SAGAN, Carl. Text on galaxy Poster. Published and distributed by CultureNik. SUTTON, Mia. Memos and notes from GOOGLE KEEP. 2017-2019.
The Unbecoming, By Denisa Logojan
The girl laughs in the moonlight, And her skin is brighter than the stars, Her gaze hungrier than that of gods; She is the huntress of ravaged souls.
Blood drips from her lips
How many hearts did she eat today?
I wonder,
Too many
Or not enough
I ask, What is it like, to miss someone?
She laughs more, retorts, What is it like to die and wake up with just a little bit less of yourself, every day? X. The skies exploded, you see, The clouds were swallowed, the rain slipped and fell, And thunder screeched, lost its voice as it watched—
Horrified, powerless—
Its home burn and burn and vanish
Home—lost to tragedy, lost to something much worse
Solitude, fear,
The loss of belonging.
And lighting seized and choked,
It broke and drowned and lost itself
Why bother remember;
However,
If there is nowhere to return?
XX. Daylight is a distant memory, An artefact from another time—
The warmth of hope,
And the death of love.
A tragic ending, if you ask, And a life of darkness and night and cold There is nothing—
Emptiness, a void of black,
A day without direction, With broken whispers and muffled screams,
And unheard prayers
Life does not remember who she is,
Why should she,
When she has nothing left?
Missing someone, or rather,
Missing you—
It’s like the entire universe gave up on itself. It’s like the skies explode and daylight perishes;
A dying star grows within the heart,
And implodes every night, night after night.
In the hours past dusk,
Life feels like a stranger, a faraway parent,
Like a huntress of ravaged souls,
With blood dripping from her lips
And a gaze hungrier than that of gods She lost herself, you see—
Haven’t you?
Untitled
By Jacinda Brisson
Immortality
By Grace Campbell the mona lisa is peeling david wears thick layers of dust like modesty naked and alone he prays but years ago someone broke the glass in the sistine chapel the sunlight bleeding in faded the heavens no one saw the final judgement god and adam’s hands still reaching with thin fingers for something forgotten weeds push through the rubble that once resembled alexander the great guards used to stand beside the starry night fearing fists or spray paint the blues and yellows that were raised and thick now lay underneath a rotting building when the frame cracked no one flinched
Miss October Stays Young By Gabrielle Drolet
“How much longer can I get away With being so fucking cute? Not much longer.” —Margaret Atwood, Miss July Grows Older
How much longer can I get away with being so fucking cute? A while longer. The dog-shaped mug and the peach wine can stay for now, along with the sweaters. After a while, you forget about impermanence. You remember you’re graduating. You pretend not to care. When I was younger, I only went out with boys, thinking myself straight. I did not know about politics, nor did I need to. Ignorance was a skill. You had to have a strong will and soft hands, the ability to avert your eyes quickly. It was something I did quite well, like reading tarot cards. People gasp when I pull card thirteen (death), forgetting that endings can be good. Something’s gotta give, doesn’t it? We just don’t know what. In the backyard, the neighbour’s cat stalks a chipmunk he will bring me later. I don’t condone this behaviour – the killing of wild things – but Bam doesn’t know any better, and he is not mine to reprimand. In exchange, a handful of dog food and a pat on the head. I wonder what he’ll do in a month, when snow covers rotting leaves and fallen walnuts. I wonder the same thing of myself. Meanwhile, the sun sets earlier each day. Meanwhile, we cook split pea soup and drink more tea than usual. Meanwhile, we wake to frost on green grass.
Brainstorm
By Mia Sutton brainstorm hard jaw raw cheekbones dripping shadows dripping thunder and liquid lightning liquid lightning dripping down my throat suffocating on clouds of salt acid rain an ocean choking on my stomach’s teeth gnawing biting scraping carving tearing acid clouds eating at the seams salt trickling up my throat sweet spot sweat spot sweat sweater-stuffed sleeves seems seams bursting arms inside just bones veins full an ocean of acid an ocean thrashing acidic webs of electric blue eyelids skeletal dripping shadows eyes bruised underneath translucent skin an ocean thrashes suffocating
starving for air for anything
Beware the Night Time Thieves By Abbie Faseruk
The corn stalks swayed slightly in the field behind the farmhouse, almost
in tune with the grandfather clock inside. The moon dared to peek its face out occasionally as the clouds floated under the black sky, and so did the farmer.
The farmer’s boots hit the back deck as he stepped to let the cat out, and the
screen door slammed shut behind him. He scanned the farm with heavy eyes and a heavy heart, and watched his cat slip between the corn stalks. With a grunt, he lowered himself into his chair. The sound of the clock ticked away, and the farmer kept track of the minutes as they went by, counting the seconds like a child counting sheep.
The farmer jerked in his chair, unsure if he heard a noise or had fallen asleep,
and looked up to see the face of the moon bright and above him. Quickly, he stood and searched the porch with wide eyes. His poor heart quickened in the absence of his cat. He dared to make a noise.
“Lollie!” he hollered. Usually, the cat came straight back.
With shaking hands, he pulled the screen door open, and reached for his gun perched on the wall. He hesitated as he grabbed it, but yanked it down and grasped it like a new companion. He descended the stairs to the grass, but stopped short as a man clothed in black emerged from the corn stalks. The man became clothed in shadow, as if, at this moment, the moon had turned its face to not be a witness.
“I figured this was Lollie,” said the voice. The farmer squinted his eyes, and
realized his cat was curled in the man’s arms: both man and cat a perfect camouflage to the night except for the spots of red on his cat’s fur.
“I suspect he got himself hurt,” explained the man. “He whined when he heard
you call ‘em, but I don’t suppose he could stand.” The man walked over and softly placed Lollie in the farmer’s outstretched arms.
“Now that I’ve returned your cat, I don’t think y’all mind if I finish my
business.”
The farmer glanced at the man, who had pulled his hood further over his face.
Behind him, along the edge of his field, sat a basket filled with husks of corn. The farmer’s grip tightened on both the gun and his cat.
The hooded man gestured at Lollie. “You have your family to look after, and I
have mine,” he explained.
The farmer relaxed his grip and took a step back, nodding. The man returned
to his basket, and entered the maze of the field as the moon turned its face back to the farm.
The farmer stood frozen, watching the cornstalks dance and imagining he
could hear the hooded man’s footsteps as he weaved through them.
The farmer padded into the empty farmhouse, all the while, clutching Lollie
and his gun.
Untitled
By Yixin Zhang