The ALP
Mandate Good. Short. Writing. The Anti-Languorous Project is an online open-access creative writing hub that publishes antilang., a magazine of literary brevity, the On Editing blog series, and Good Short Reviews. Show, don’t tell; imply and implicate. Antithesize languorous language. antilang., no. 8 Published by The Anti-Languorous Project Victoria, BC, Unceded Territory of the Lekwungen People, Fall 2020 Edited by Allie McFarland & Jordan Bolay Layout & Design by Jordan Bolay & Lissa McFarland Cover by Angela V. Scardigno www.angelascardigno.com Logos & Art Direction by Lissa McFarland ISSN 2561-5610, key title: antilang. (online) All rights revert to the original artists upon publication. No portion of this magazine may be reproduced without permission from the artists. The ALP is a non-profit organisation. We invite you to support us on Patreon, Issuu, or by donation.
@antilangmag / antilang.ca
antilang. no. 8
Contents Mark Laliberte 1 Excerpt from ‘Circularities’ Laura Goslinski 4 How I Reevaluated My Relationship with People
Nick Brandt 11 Televein Vigil Gabby Vachon 18 Cured meat Olga Gonzalez Latapi 19 and you 21 solo azul Maryam Gowralli 22 Ahab the Arowana 23 Revenge of the Monk Seal B. W. Teigland 25 Ad Nauseam Natalia Chepel 28 lily pads 29 the irony of fate
Fall 2020
Senica Maltese 30 Teeth Sarah Hilton 32 eating out in a Ford Explorer
33 Mitski Playing at 2:29AM Jordan Colledge 34 Rabbits in Cages Vina Nguyen 40 What Is Mine 42 Social Engagement Spenser Smith 43 Dear Chris 44 Dear Dallas Radoslav Rochallyi 45 A dozen 46 A:I Julia Florek Turcan 47 Sukodawabuk (Sage) 48 slight of Self Mika Deneige 49 The English Professor 50 Would They Have Let Me Live?
Samantha Jones 51 Am I a Trope? 52 A Resemblance 53 Ballet Bun B.S. Roberts 54 Insomnolence 56 Finality A. N. Higgins 57 Matthew 12:43 58 Matthew 12:44 - 45 antilang. no. 8
A. N. Higgins 59 In Dublin my grandmother is dying...
Danny McLaren 60 adonai uses they/them pronouns
61 I want top surgery. Ashley Pace 62 Along the 49th Cale Plett 63 Guessing Hope Joseph Paulson 65 Same Thing 66 Pea Plant Cuttings Sneha Subramanian Kanta 67 Coastlines 69 Hymnal Pamela Medland 71 Apocalypse Tim Conley 72 Ideal
Fall 2020
Good. Short. Reviews. Russell Carisse 75 Amanda Deutch’s Bodega Night Pigeon Riot
Allie McFarland 78 Nicole Haldoupis's Tiny Ruins
Biographies Contributors 83 Editorial 87
antilang. no. 8
Mark Laliberte
Excerpt from 'Circularities' Pane
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pulse
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Mark Laliberte
oculus
Excerpt from 'Circularities'
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Laura Goslinski
How I Reevaluated My Relationship with People from the Hallway of a Gas Station, the Back of a Cab, a Hotel, a Bus, a Door, and a Valley; and Tried Again Important things for the Composition of Story-telling and the Realization of Tinder Prostitution, in the Worst, Best, and most Sincere Formalities, Accompanied by Truth; and Sadness; and Joy A. The Very Ending • The boy (myself)— o The boy—twenty-two at the time, tall? Medium? Scruffy with enough hair to cause envy and lose fingers in.
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• in a cab with a man named Devon— o Devon—middle aged, middle part, greasy hair down to his shoulders, cab driver for Taxi Toronto—a cab company his grandfather started, he still drives the cabs though; doesn’t say much, eyes out the window and windshield whippers causing a ruckus after the rumbling of rain gave up. • The cab is old, 1950s old, says it’s the charm of the thing that keeps it running but it’s barely running, and Devon is boring the boy. There’s one…two… three…four…five. Five different ways for his hand to reach behind the driver’s seat. Thirty-minutes to give it a try before the boy bails out at a gas station, cell phone dead, looking for a payphone, half-way to nowhere. B. The Ending • Only boxers when he got there, knobby knees up to his armpits, elbows and body like a spit roast. A scratchy hotel room on the third floor of a motel turned hotel with the same style of a motel and the same quality of sandpaper through cat’s fur backwards. He was Jay— o Jay—A middle aged man, cropped hair down to the root like there was no root to begin with, bags under everything, eyes, arms, legs, toes, bags of loose skin dripping and flapping and sliding and squishing between crossed fingers. A sad man. Pleading eyes? Sorry eyes? Begging How I Reevaluated my Relationship with People
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eyes? Begging words and angry eyes? Begging words and angry eyes and clench fists? • Jay was not forty-year-old Melinda— o Melinda—A cougar in every sense of the word. Literally wore cheetah print in every picture she sent. Blonde highlights from the 1990s and blue eyes bigger than forty-ounce bottle bottoms bottomed below bellowing bruises blurred back behind bad decisions? An assertive woman, a kind woman, who sent pictures and morning hellooooos and messages during class that my teacher, Mr. Walker— ➢ Mr. Walker—no relevance, but walks with a walker that’s why we call him Mr. Walker, he’s actually named Mr. Green but he never wears green so what is the relevance? o Confiscates and reminds me to Stop smiling at my crotch, and the class always laughs so there’s a bonus point in favor of Mr. Walker. Melinda’s hot, and horny, and divorced, and nice, and rich. • I left with a wad and a bruise, four times bigger than arranged with Melinda. The hotel receptionist blew wind past my shoulders with his eye lashes flapping up and down. up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down, as it rained outside on the boy waiting for a cab from Toronto Taxi
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Laura Goslinski
C. The Middle • The boy got on the bus at 3:50 pm, gray clouds were catching in the net behind the antenna. A squished seat and Bill— o Bill—late twenties, a gentle voice, slips over women’s knees on their wedding nights, the curl of cream flooding black black coffee • Blue car, red car, white car, silver car, silver car, white sketchy van, black sketchy van, silver car, red car, blue car, blue car, black car, black car, black car, zitch-dog wiener dog out a truck window! Tree, red car, blue car, Go bus, punch buggie no punch backs! Punch stretch-limo-hummer no punch backs! Ugly orange car, canoes on cars, cows, horses, sheep, tree, tree, tree, tree, tree, tree, tree, tree, tree, tree red car, zitch-dog, same dog, tree, tree, tree, tree, tree, tree, tree, tree, tree…
A hand on the boy’s knee tree, tree, tree, tree, nothing, nothing, house, house, house, house, house, house, house, station. • It was a fifteen-minute walk to the hotel that tasted like a motel, but a five-minute run. How I Reevaluated my Relationship with People
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D. Mid-Beginning (Midinning) • The door was louder than I had expected it to be, it slammed the soul out from under me, and let my feet crumble into the cracks of our cement front steps. The red paint had begun to chip away even after having just been painted the summer before. Mr. Rockwell— o Mr. Rockwell—Eighty-eight? Ninety-five? Long Dead? A Ghost? • Looked on from across the street. “Fuck off.” I wanted to say, but the slamming of the door made my soul, and legs, and chest, and arms, and then my vocal chords fall out from under me and mix with the chipping paint on the steps of my childhood home, so I couldn’t. • I would have been late for the bus if I did anyway. E. The Beginning • She had borrowed my laptop to check her work emails because she could never get it to work properly on her tablet, and that’s how she found out • A picture of Melinda lay across the desktop, only for a moment • That was enough for the breaking of hearts, the confirmation of coffins, I was so close to my mother—
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Laura Goslinski
o My mother—sharp tonged and desperate, eyes flashed across a scalding stove to boil and pop enough that it burns at the bottom, the smell of black popcorn caught in my ears as she saw it • What is this? What is that Raymond Alexander Sutton? What was that? Was that a woman’s—I don’t even- I can’t. Raymond explain yourself. No! I will not calm down. No, no, no, Raymond what are you thinking! I can’t even imagine what you thought when you—You are so stupid Raymond Alexander, just so stupid. I didn’t raise you like this. If you needed money, why didn’t you ask? Don’t walk away from me! Don’t you dare walk away from me! She could hurt you, or kidnap you, or kill you! You never know with the internet these days; how could you be so stupid. Come back here! Come back here! Raymond! • The boy wanted to tell her so many things, how “it wasn’t the money”, how he “wasn’t stupid”, how he “didn’t want to”, but how ne “needed to”, and he did, and the door heard every word. F. The Very Beginning The boy was eleven. A bag was packed for the weekend: bear, snacks, comics, sunscreen, pjs, toothbrush, toothpaste, socks, underwear, extra underwear just in case, sweaters, all zipped into his mom’s old brief case. His dad was waiting outside, he just honked, he didn’t want to speak to Mom—
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o Mom—soft eyes, a bob hair cut that kissed her eyebrows and jaw, glasses that had grown and shrunk through family photos but were always perched on the edge of her nose, a smile wide enough to hold a bird, or two birds on special days, her hands were soft and smelled like lavender as she cupped his face and straightened his jacket. You have bear right? Good, and pjs? Good honey. Don’t worry my sweet heart. It’s just a sleepover with your dad, it’s going to be just fine. There was a crinkle beside her eye, a valley that she would one day find herself walking around in the dark, looking for answers, but she just cupped my cheek one more time. And if you want me to come get you— You’re just a phone call away
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Laura Goslinski
Nick Brandt
Televein Vigil She lives in the portable projects, an assemblage of shipping containers packed together onto the roof of a dead mall. Hers is a standard forty-footer home. Stacked two or three high in places, pocked with rust, graffiti, and neglect. The big bay door rolled up accordion-style into the ceiling so she can watch the sunset bleed its greenhouse blood. Flashes of iridescence across the cloudbank. The pale stink of ozone. New South Horizons Mall was a still-birth. It sat, an infrastructure of bones awaiting organ transplant, the promise of commerce that would give life. A construction planned before the housing bubble. Built during it and left to rot when it popped. Both that promise and the mall rendered hollow. And on that skeleton of pastel concrete, embalmed by years of sun and chemtrail rain, the projects creep across her corpse. Commensalism within the urban rot. Cassette Lee lives in a corner cargohome. Picked up antilang. no. 8
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the spot a few years back when municipal government flipped, when economy-sized housing was a fashionable activity amongst philanthrocapitalists. A trendy conversation piece spoken through silicon. Spoken on channels whose wavelengths are inaccessible. She got lucky with the home, no doubt about it. No upstairs neighbours, though there’s a cargohome on each side. Hasn’t spoken to any surrounding residents in weeks now. Never says much to begin with, but all she hears now is garbled T.V. gossip buzz through her walls, vibrations from metal-to-metal. A feedback loop of low-grade ASMR euphoria. At least this she can access. On a corner plot of New Horizons, Cass has two full walls for windows, but lately, those only aggravate her condition. She paces around her compartmentalized life. Clasping the latch under her windows, she checks the locks, makes sure they haven’t wiggled free. Pulls down the shades which cast the sunset in filtered lines across her throw rugs and the insulated metal floor. Slippers scuffle against the corrugation. Cass passes through the shaft of light to the other window, kicks up little motes of dust and rust. Checks the locks there too. The entranceway is the tough one. That big, segmented door rolled down, chain loose like idle windchimes. Of course, there’s no wind in here to make them stir. 12 |
Nick Brandt
Pieces of the metal door are replaced with long slides of plexiglass plastic that forms a bit of a translucent zone. A window of milky yellow strips stained by the elements. Cass works to cover them up with paint and old fabric, keep the outside outside for as long as possible. Still, bits of yellow light cut their way through her fabrications. Streak across the futon-sofa, flecks of sunset distorted by the synthetic resin window. A wobbly rainbow, but she can manage. Beneath her feet, the lo-fi garburator of her neighbours switching T.V. stations crawls through her slippers, up her shinbones. Reverb through veins washes cool the arrythmia of her pulse. Cass steps out of her slippers, worms her feet between the rugs until she touches the corrugation. Touches that feedback loop. Shudders out whatever thickness gestates inside her, breathes in her neighbour’s media. Plants roots in the ridged of her floor. Draws a lifeline between her sickness and their sedative. Dr. Kengston’s infomercial on MDTV diagnoses it as an acute form of agoraphobia. Something sharpened by social tensions, turbulence within the political climate. With the red tape riots marking off larger sections downtown each day, there’s no shortage, even locally, for stressors. Cass breathes in again. Holds inside a calmness the world outside her metal walls will never feel. Holds it in until her neighbour’s T.V. murmurs through to her lungs, rattles her from within. Shakes away the noise from outside, the sirens, the shouting. Televein Vigil
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Exhales it all, then falls back onto her futon. Lets the bits of sunset sneak their way through the shielding. Red pinpoints through the dust. Her own T.V. chunked out a few days back. She can get a signal if she whaps the side of the box in just the right spot. Feed’s all scrambled though, something about all of this metal so close together that fills the screen with layers of static. When the picture was clear, Dr. Kengston prescribed media. Any visual or auditory broadcast to fog up whatever’s happening outside, but she hasn’t yet dialed in on the right dosage. Even the MDTV station is good for a bit, they say. But if media repeats itself too much, you’ll grow complacent to the sickness. Drift back to what’s happening around you. Medical broadcasts work on a cycle of repetition. New information arrives upon discovery and a lot of the presentation is a rehash of already-established content. News feeds too are a tricky slope with their similar formula of repetition, but at least they’re a 24hour permacycle. And while a glimpse into the outside world though a cathode ray screen should spell disaster for her condition, so much of the news is seen through the collective delusion of hypernormalization. No, the proper prescription of programming is reality television. Infomercials, pop voyeurism and hidden camera court shows, soap operas, anything to get lost in the scripted reality. Cass slips off the sofa, slaps the side of her T.V. and the static jumps at her touch. The volume’s real low 14 |
Nick Brandt
and she cranks it up. Sounds like they’re speaking underwater. She gets the rocky outline of someone’s torso just so, then the picture buckles. Snaps back into place. Some sort of news station. Can’t make out any of the words on the ticker feed, but the graphic is bright orange. A similar image appears in the background behind the news anchor, rattling off a script. Audio’s distorted a few octaves down. She falls back onto the futon. Her eyes blur, or the picture blurs. Lets the broadcast smother then sedate her. Survives off of the static feed and a second-hand prescription from whatever her neighbours watch. Cass blinks heavy lids. Feels the warmth of the sun speckle through to her skin, but no, that’s just the T.V. working its medicine. Languid waves of sound and picture. A tickle through the floor from next door; sensory suppression. Could fix the T.V., hope to get a stable broadcast, then she’ll be better. Back to normal in no time at all. But following the wires up and onto the roof is a bit too much to think about right now. Too much realia out there, too many complications that work to pry cracks in her medicine, steal away the sick parts of her brain and set them free, right when her dosage is getting weak. And as the medicated lethargy overrides her evening, as wetness films her eyes so the entirety of her vision is periphery, the T.V. rubber-bands. But this time, the Televein Vigil
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picture doesn’t snap back into the right place. Prescription fills her cargohome. Her eyes soften to a near-perfect eclipse, and the broadcast stretches with a depth unseen. The layers of static expand into her home, the T.V. screen a window through a snowstorm. The newscaster is sliced laterally, bent over the folds of her futon-couch and coffee table, retains motions, but stretches into third dimensional space. Cass resists every urge to clear her vision, to focus on the feed entering into her home. Knows deep inside that somehow, she sees a truth not meant for her. She stands like a zombie. Slack-jawed advance through the ephemeron. In her blurred existence Cass walks towards the T.V.-turned-window. Her vision clips between the news show and something altogether different. Something layered into the broadcast, no, on top of the feed by a third party. Like a symphony written in an esoteric language. Is this the medicine? On this channel? Have these words always existed? Cass fights the need to focus on their depth. When each lingual strand approaches recognition, the form of the characters reshape, returns to the newsman whose funhouse projection sprays orange graphics across what was once her home. She reaches toward the knob under the screen. Feels the tension behind the dial and flips through the stations. The indoor snowstorm changes frequency, 16 |
Nick Brandt
intensity. Words unrecognizable burst through the infinite greys. Her ears fill with electric wind, words from beyond, schematics who find form in a dead language. Reanimated through coincidence, through Cassette Lee, in her medically-induced stupor. She clicks through the stations, dialing in on the frequency that gives life to whatever sleeps within every broadcast. Becomes an automaton. That which draws the televeins from the machine, splays the lattice across her foreground, where words throb in fractal geometry. Breath catches in her throat. But Cass doesn’t feel it. Gone is her apartment, gone is the trauma which grows outside of her corrugated walls. In this snowstorm no sunlight exposes venom into her vaccine; in this time, in this place all that fills Cass is the flick of televeins. The language that rides along those lines, and the cross-eyed-stare she weaponizes to filter through the broadcasts as she clicks, clicks, clicks between the stations.
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Gabby Vachon
Cured meat i think thighs are named after the sound your tongue makes when punctured by your front teeth, or after the forest fires created by the meat of your legs being rubbed together into blistered sparks. i think bipolar disorder is named after the weight of its pronunciation in your mother’s throat, carved into your family tree like a maple glazed ham at an Italian wedding, cured meats are only cured if let out to dry in a salt bath, slashed into by sun rays that cannot comprehend why their bones are now so sticky to the touch.
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Olga Gonzalez Latapi
and you I eat seeds
and they sprout
I eat seeds
and I
fall away
inside
here
I am
you built
a husk
a skin
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a red ribbon words
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flown away
splintered
and you
solo azul voices
away
waking
in disappearing eyes
dust
in my
veins
back
to a life
rapture
of music
busca mis ojos
in
en los ojos de un extraño bring me back
stranger
to
those who break my song
to those
you pushed
in waking searching
out
living eyes Olga Gonzalez Latapi
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Maryam Gowralli
Ahab the Arowana Can you hear the sunken stories googly flint and casper craw do you see beyond glass quarries blind eye cretaceous maw like Melville fantasizing watery braves do you smell the salt beneath white-capped waves? Last night. Medusa marbled blight dreaming silver shards in the sea swallowing whole hominids in appetite eating legs who stole you from coral-cities— you’re flustered. We talk, nestling enclaves do you smell the salt beneath white-capped waves? You felt the phalanges gripping the phantoms of a tell-tale scar, eating mice from my hands flipping bodies’ capsized caviar like Melville imagining blubbery graves do you smell the salt beneath white-capped waves? 22 |
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Revenge of the Monk Seal rubbery baseline, she is done being extremely shy chubby babes sculling in caves
since fourteen ninety four
hiding fugitives oily bodies the kind that can’t be swallowed racy and whole we’ve seen ripping
ravenous
buckshot to seraphs and sunbathers on the beach
some desire to see a body bag
he does not know what it’s like to have daughters
what it’s like to live off of food stamps in a place where everyone leaves
docile my ass, she is done playing nice
a stomping solicitor,
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she chews his heel
to cut a chap down
toxic algae seeping
the anger of a thousand women and heredities
just so she can see the shoreline
once more if asked, she’d say
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i’d eat Columbus again
Revenge of the Monk Seal
B. W. Teigland
Ad Nauseam Out of the water, the walrus has bad eyesight. When it drags its thousand-pound body out of the ocean, out and up, it can no longer see where it is. But it has found a place to rest, away from its pod. It has climbed the sea cliff. The spot where the walrus would have rested—the spot where nature deemed it should rest, the spot where the salty foam of the sea meets the shore, a thousand feet below—this spot has become so overcrowded with rival walruses that it has become safer to take this evolutionary drunken walk, away from its part and share in that animal kingdom. In the entire history of walruses, the animal has not done this before. Not until now, at the North Pole, where the polar caps are melting earlier each year, leaving the walrus high and dry, broken by weariness, vertically pushed outside the pod.
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Uneasy, the walrus falls asleep on the open cliff, spends the night alone, not with the herd of walruses. Then the walrus wakes up on the edge of the precipice. Sensing that the rest of its pod is below, it tries to go back the only way it can—the way it came. Down the cliff. Using flippers and not wings, it slides on the loose rock, somersaults, falls the thousand feet, and is crushed, blubber and bone, by its impact with the rocky seashore. It jerks convulsively and dies. Not just one walrus. Herds of walrus share the same fate, the same fatal destiny. —— The polar bear hunts seals. But the sea ice is melting in the Arctic. So it cannot hunt seals, cannot stand motionless for hours at the seals’ breathing holes. Unable, just like the walrus, to solve the problem of failing life, the maritime bear swims to the shore below the cliff from which the walruses have been jumping. The polar bear usually eats enough to see it through eight long months of eating absolutely nothing. But having eaten only one seal, only eight days’ worth of energy, the polar bear is hungry again and so will swim the distance, to the northern cape, to the cove of suicidal walruses. And in doing so it will risk drowning or being killed by orcas, which eat the seals that the polar bear did not, which will happen more and more in the years to come, when the ice has melted completely: from solid to liquid, from glacial silence to nothing yet known. 26 |
B. W. Teigland
Not just one polar bear. Many will make this trip. The cubs quickly learn the new ritual from their parents. After striking the hollow carcasses in playful imitation of the hunt, they eat the walruses. At one time, polar bears and walruses were equal predators—equal in strength, in body mass, in aggression and instinct. But not now. Not now that the walruses are hurling themselves against the steep, jagged rocks. —— In turn, seabirds dive. They glide into the watery mass, into the old ocean and swim, forcing back the aquatic layers with the bones of their wings. Whales roar, and their huge mouths filter krill through baleen systems— krill that feeds on the polar lichen growing below the edge of an iceberg. Ice floes crash incessantly against each other when the ice breaks up in the polar sea. And under all the power of the narwhale’s spiral tusks, which migrate through fissures in the sea ice, millions of diatoms are spontaneously born. The obstacle of survival is everywhere, so much so that it is not untrue to say that life is an obstacle. And that obstacle, varying as it does in the trials it offers, is indifferent. All things on the planet are connected through this indifference. And all things become one thing.
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Natalia Chepel
lily pads out on the water, ice sheets look like lily pads eye-dropper masterpieces with imperfect edges reflecting carelessly the soft pink sparks of day rising above the phantom fingers of mercurial waves with all the plucky fortitude of bathtub rubber ducks. and weathered bridge-legs make their way toward me far too austere in the gray haze of slipping night cutting through current with the acute sharpness of cold daggers and unanticipated words and as i watch, riding the train away from home, a skinny blade probing the space between my ribs, i wonder if, perhaps, this entire time i’ve really just been standing still
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the irony of fate (or enjoy your bath!)1 my mother was 16. living in her first apartment, she couldn’t afford a television. they were like boxes, then. blinking pixels, the soft rustle of static—technology clearing its throat before the curtain. it’s all quite uncertain, in the hazy grey of a st. petersburg morning— so she had recorded this old movie that she loved, and played only the sound. when she told me, i imagined it was like a kind of secret, that i’m keeping only with myself: a bright shard of glass, in my best coat’s breast pocket. even in my fancy, those immaculate rooms are staged by someone else’s hand. i cannot watch the scene, but pry, greedy and crass, and unbeloninging, understanding nothing. to ask questions, to take one step closer— somehow, that would be irrevocably wrong. the difference between life and art is one’s made to intrude upon.
1 The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath! (Ирония судьбы, или С лёгким паром!) is a 1975 Soviet holiday rom-com. To this day, it remains a New Year's Eve classic in Russia.
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Senica Maltese
Teeth We believed our mamma when she told us she’d stuffed our beds full of teeth. She said she’d know if we were naughty during the night, that she’d hear the teeth grating against each other, the sound of the rotten ones cracking under the pressure of our identical, lordotic spines. “It don’t do to sneak about, rat-a-tat-tatting during the night,” she hollered, dental drill poised in a gloved hand. We scrambled up the stairs to the loft over Mamma’s dentist shop with thunder under our feet, toe bones crackling as we leaped, electrified, through the air. You’d stashed the dollars we’d found loose on the street, in the market, in unwatched purses, between the leaves of oily paper in Mamma’s bedside cupboard. I’d packed the wear one-strapped rucksack full: socks, toothbrushes, a hairbrush we could share, an empty bottle for water, three granola bars, and a couple apples. The clothes we’d take, we’d wear. 30 |
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No lights after eight. No talking, reading, miming: Mamma would hear the teeth shifting underneath rubbery insulation of our beds. That night, once Mamma’d locked our bedroom door, we slid across our silent floor, and into the oak tree that thwacked our window in the breeze. Mamma didn’t believe we could be any different than her and Papa. That’s why she listened at our door in the middle of the night. The cold night kissed our cracked lips and smacked our cheeks: Wake up, it said. Run.
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Sarah Hilton
eating out in a Ford Explorer 8:30pm thursday evenings mcdonald’s bag riding shotgun, legs spread in the back, middle school parking lot shedding light for the act. bringing her to my mouth with the pull of the middle & ring finger— topping with the itch of teenagehood. never forgetting to leave the backseat with bra, unhooked, & handful of fries, now cold.
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Mitski Playing at 2:29AM I think I understand the hypothetical behind loving you hypothetically speaking there’s nothing extraordinary to us because it’s safe to live this life Hypothetically—this loveseat this apartment the way I hold your hand we have worked for everything which is to say everything was gifted so easily it’s hard to imagine a life where I had to fear for every heartbeat that sounded for you every breath in your hair every kiss Hypothetically—we can be slow dancing in your apartment your nephews at our feet our sisters sharing dinner and everyone knows that life will exist like this past the altar Hypothetically—we are two hands to the same body two violets grown from the same root Hypothetically—I can love you everywhere you can love us as we are
Sarah Hilton
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Jordan Colledge
Rabbits in Cages Nothing has changed by the time you wake up; the popcorn ceiling is the same as your bleary eyes left it the night before. The off-blue wallpaper still peels away from the wall in a half-spiral. You look down at your feet, poking out from under the too-short, toodark-for-colour blanket, only to be blinded by the light streaming through the useless curtain. Blinded enough that the scraping, for a moment at least, escapes you. Blinking dumbly for several minutes, you take a while to process the world. You’d tell anyone who cared to listen any more that your brain needs time to kick itself into gear. They tell you to drink coffee; you tell them piss tastes better. You roll over, check your phone; it reads a blurry 9:32. You blink hard, try to rub the sleep away. You’re tired, you’ve been tired for so long that it’s starting to prey on your senses.
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Finally, that noise manages to break through the haze. The scraping has already stopped before it breaks through the gauzy feeling of exhaustion, now replaced with heavy thumps coming at intervals. No matter. Dad has been working outside the house recently, machining wood into things that would be called slapdash at first, engineered at second glance. This repetitive thudding is normal, even though it resonates in the floor. Even though it sounds like it comes from the kitchen. Maybe this incongruity is what leaves you sitting on the edge of your bed, staring at the wire coat hangers hung empty in the closet. You shut your eyes, wanting to seal out the dazzling light for just a moment longer. Just then, Anne, you recognize the cadence of her footsteps, walks past the door. She stops, pokes her head into the room. Her expression confuses you at first—it’s terse, businesslike, but there’s a twinge of sadness somewhere inside it. A fraction of a second ahead of her voice, you know. This doesn’t mean that it stops the ringing in your ears as she tells you she’s leaving. The flinch of your gaze when you hear that your dad threatened her, that the police have been called. Of course, knowing couldn’t have helped as she’s carting away her appliances, the ones she had moved in a month before - when she sold her house and, after years of living one foot on the platform, decided to commit to building a life with my dad. Why would it have helped.
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It makes it worse, and I’m sorry. —— You sit on the edge of that bed for longer than reasonable; likely for longer than you had slept. You try, in a way, to wake up from the dream, to escape the gnawing that’s moving up your chest and into your throat, that you didn’t sign up for when you flew up north to visit this summer. It’s your dad that snaps you out of it, calling you from his friend Mitch’s house. He asks if you’re doing alright, you stammer a “yes” as best you can. He asks you to get dressed, get a few things packed, Mitch will be there soon to pick you up. It was apparently his idea spending the day away from the house, the “threat” was exaggerated, he’s making sure the cops don’t have too much to worry about because God knows these domestic calls have bad results far too often. You manage to nod, slide off the side of your bed. The creak of the floor beneath your feet is muffled by the footfalls of heavy boots walking past your door toward the bathroom. You get dressed in complete silence. Talking didn’t feel right. Just get it over with. Get dressed and it’ll be over. Pack your bag and it’ll be over. Computer, Switch, a few games and it’ll be over. You leave the room, mouth squeezed shut, and close the door behind you. The front door is flung wide open and for a second you worry that her cats will get out. At the thought coming to your mind, you shake your head 36 |
Jordan Colledge
like a mule and keep walking. There’s a great cavity where the fridge used to be, food strewn at the foot of the closet opposite. On your left, the oven is gone too. The facts register in your mind, but you pass no judgment on them. You just walk, shoulder bag in hand, to the living room and sit down on the couch. It’s not as though there was any more you could do. The couple of guys—you hear one call the other “son,” but they don’t look alike—walk in and out, packing around various things she owned. You stare at them blankly as they go, not noticing what they’re carrying out until the two of them walk together with the washing machine on a cart. The son stops behind his father, waves to you. You stare at him, trying to respond but feeling as though your mouth is dry-glued shut, and fumble into a lopsided almost-shrug. He nods, his mouth quirked, and walks out the door. At the sound of the door slamming behind him, you breathe out deeply and look to your right. The rabbits are still in their cages. Thank God. —— Time leaks as you pet the rabbits, the drips of their water bottles punctuating your breathy crooning; Hello Honey, that’s good isn’t it, Honey. Hey Butterball, goodness you’re so soft. Oh, Licorice, yes I know you need attention so bad don’t you, silly. Rabbits in Cages
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Standing in front of Cashmere’s cage, you choke as you kneel down to the lower levels. The rabbit—the biggest of the five, she was always a big girl—huddles at the back of her cage, ears perked up, eyes wide. Her rabbit. Anne’s rabbit. You poke your fingers into her cage, she sniffs them, retreats back to her hiding place. Defeated, you move to the last cage. Cashew, the little football-shaped rabbit with the tiny ears. She scrabbles at the door, but just as you move to open it you hear Anne’s voice. Mitch is here, she tells you. You close your eyes, breathe in, and nod. Turn around. Pick up the bag. Walk out the door. Close the door behind you. Don’t trip on your way down the stairs. Mitch appears from around the movers’ truck and waves at you. You wave weakly back, before turning to Anne. You realize, with a shock, that she’s tearing up, her dirty blonde hair frayed, face red. I guess this is it, she says. I guess so, you respond. She opens her arms and, despite yourself, you drop your bag and surge forward, embracing her. Take care of yourself, she tells you in a broken voice. I love you. I love you too. Her arms squeeze like a vice around your back, before 38 |
Jordan Colledge
letting go. You force yourself to dam off the tears. Pick up the routine. Pick up the bag. Turn around. Walk out the entryway. Ignore the movers who stare at you quizzically, even if you want to stare them in the eye and choke out a defense for you-don’t-know-who that you can’t put into words. Just walk over to Mitch’s truck, and climb in. —— You assume she turns around when Mitch pulls away, but you don’t look back. You listen to Mitch complaining about how she did your dad dirty, that he’s sorry you had to go through that. It’s fine, you tell him. It’s fine. Everything is always fine.
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Vina Nguyen
What Is Mine Yes, Ethan? Can you help me draw the guitar? He has already set our papers on the coffee table along with a tidy bucket of crayons. Which one? Orange one on the wall. His legs curl commas under him while long lashes fan bonnets around his eyes. He has his dad’s charcoal brows—thick, dark, a definite shape. Definite genetics. Nature calling attention to itself: I made this. A stamp on the forehead: Mine. I draw and explain, See how this line is a third longer than the other? Yes… Like that, I say as he draws. We take turns watching and drawing as I watch and draw out what I can see of myself in him. He gets up and sits in my lap, pointy chin nudging my forearm as he laughs. He wants to be rocked and sang 40 |
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to. A lullaby, he begs. I sing him one. Then another. He crescents himself between my arms, nestling his cheek against my chest, eyes closing. I need to stop looking, stop searching. How selfish love is. Everything that isn’t from him is from her. I envision a narrow-framed woman with the slim-eyed gaze of a hawk, keenly observing and setting things in place, memorizing exactly what you say and promise. A relentless, sharp woman with long, slim fingers. I’ve never met her. I only know of her through Ethan as she knows of me. He is our portal. Really, I’m wasting my time. I don’t even want children. Didn’t. Don’t? He’s fallen asleep, soother thumb between teeth, his breaths are of the ocean. He breathes like his dad. All afternoon we’ve sketched guitars. Our waxed papers of yellow and orange streaks are closely identical. His dexterity, I decide, is mine.
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Social Engagement Scroll. Sea turtle strangled raw with six-pack yokes, impaled through the nostril with a white straw, wrenched out of the water, pinned to the bottom of the boat, then pliered apart, as humans cheered, Yay! We saved you from us. Today I ordered a bubble tea that came with a humungous straw I didn’t think about. Scroll. Minimalist, open concept living room with wall prints of abstract minimalism surrounding a teal sectional with minimal lines (does this place come with minimal garbage?) and hanging terrariums of miniature succulents. Free shipping 24/7 on minimum orders of $50. For fifty bucks I can expand my carbon footprint to live minimally. Scroll. Picturesque, white-bordered snapshot of Amazon forest torched to the fringes, smoke clouds wringing its neck, choking it with cancerous grazing cows and soya bean exports. Choose: business or biodiversity. We must save the lungs of the earth, the home to millions of potentially life-saving medicines, the sink that drains the carbon we put in the air out of the air! (Subtext: The Amazon is still useful; therefore, we must protect it till it isn’t.) Choose: extortion x expulsion x death or minimalism x reverence x life. Scroll. National Geographic shot of exotic, endangered frog in blurred swamp, of exotic hummingbird in blurred bush, of exotic, starving, dust-filmed toddler stooping naked in the mud while dilapidated shacks fill in the unblurred background of 3.6 million likes. We enjoy being aware of important political events— which country was this again? Iran? Iraq?—and tapping our hearts. Look, we (almost) cared. Scroll. 42 |
Vina Nguyen
Spenser Smith
Dear Chris I creeped your Facebook, but please don’t be creeped out. It’s how I check for vital signs, the temperature of bodies two provinces away. A stream of comments signaled cold skin. RIP. WTF. The good die young. I clicked your obituary, and my laptop slideshowed your life. Little Chris in a Lion King shirt. Drug dealer Chris with a gold chain. His gift to gab made every moment with him an adventure. Yes, you were a talker. Your go-to salutation, “guy man bro,” was Regina famous. Once, you brainstormed my obituary out loud, said I was a fake friend who only hung around to buy pills.
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Dear Dallas You’re alive. I know so because I’m Facebook friends with your mom. I know so because last night in a dream you stuck a butter knife to my throat. I owe you money, big money, but I don’t have that kind of cash. What if I paid you back in facts? Fact: you were my best friend before my drug dealer. Ghost back with me for a sec. It’s 2003, our lives the length of the Broad Street bridge to 7-Eleven. Red Bulls and RuneScape. Roughrider games. Easy, easy goodness. What if, instead, I paid you with leftovers from my boyhood? Take my club foot. Take the leech fastened to my thigh. I want to owe you nothing, Dallas. Not even a goodbye. Here, take my sobriety. Crush it up. Smoke it. It’s yours.
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Spenser Smith
Radoslav Rochallyi
A dozen
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A:I
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Radoslav Rochallyi
Julia Florek Turcan
Sukodawabuk (Sage) a wizened old woman not bowed but stretched not damp with life but dried and brittle sere-white with sun
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slight of Self i weave the light within from Nagasaki shadows melted into sides of structured consciousness struck down by autotomic blasts
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Julia Florek Turcan
Mika Deneige
The English Professor For A.H. They take away your license to be a Canadian woman if you haven’t read a novel by Margaret Atwood or at least have one sitting on your shelf. You mailed me a box of her poetry a desperate envoy of medical supplies to a desolate front reserve lines crumbling from disuse I guess I can stay in the country now or at least the right side of my brain.
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Would They Have Let Me Live? There is a game I like to play It goes like this: I open William R. Keylor’s “The Twentieth Century World: An International History” (Lavender Scare, concentration camps, you know the stuff) Flip to a random page And ask myself The Big Heavy Question.
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Mika Deneige
Samantha Jones
Am I a Trope? If I talk about identity, am I speaking cliché?
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A Resemblance I answer the same questions as my father. Where are you from? Who are your parents? Where are they from? Is that your mother?
You must take after your father.
I hear the same stories as my mother. Am I her child? What about my curls? Are they natural? And oh my complexion—
I must take after my father.
A script preserved with remarkable longevity. Another generation of whos and wheres— I’m well-rehearsed in is he your son? He’s so fair.
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He must take after his father.
Samantha Jones
Ballet Bun You can show up with unwashed hair like they recommend, but you risk frizz and curly flyaways. Especially around your face and neck. You can try it. Maybe it will work for you. Bring extra pins and clips. Try wetting your hair and pulling it back into a ponytail first. You need the thick elastics. Thin ones won’t work. Stock up on the thick elastics when you find a pharmacy that has them. Twist your ponytail or braid it. Then spin it into the bun and secure with big pins. Add the hairnet and about thirty more pins. Spray your hair while it’s still wet. Use extra hold hairspray. Use a lot of gel. Your hair will be crunchy. That’s okay, don’t worry about it. Don’t touch it, you’ll cause white flakes. Leave your hair in the bun for the post-show reception. Other girls might let their hair down. It’s fine to do your own thing. It’s better not to disturb it. If you leave your stage makeup on, it will all look intentional.
Samantha Jones
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B.S. Roberts
Insomnolence .......................................9 .............................10 ...................11 .........12 ...1 hand tumbles fingering past midnight rusted wires envelop the noesis with time [absence] emitting shadows in dark destroying one's peace of mind lost in memory yet floating on top, images conceal a fate [self-fulfilling prophesy] staying awake
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Mechanisms click breaking idle tears a sharp drop to the ground rendered [tick] unhinged [tick] unglued
[tick] unwhole Tick.
[unaffected] Life eclipsing death cognition's the culprit a self-depraving idol filled with villainous intent nothing exists and yet remain [subject to corrupted imagination] gnawing upon tendons that once formed cohesive thoughts forgotten ........4 .............5 ...................6 .........................7 Complete. 0.
Insomnolence
[tick]
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Finality Fear of the light keeps the dawn at bay as Djinn of the desert dance upon these graves Unmarked Unknown Buried alone I walk the encampment [this humble ghost home] and spy material riches a caravan lost to nature’s bite …filled with decrepit silk, …tarnished coin, …and herbs no more than dust Once the prospect of wealth [a happiness the rich soon disown] I see the irony of the joke, with a smile the wind unshrouds my bones.
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B.S. Roberts
A. N. Higgins
Matthew 12:43 We went through arid places seeking rest did not find it anywhere traded secret for secret shadows for rocks sticks shells left no footprints on the hopscotch court every summer hanging laundry hair burning paring our fingers to bone afraid to prick couldn’t become flesh and blood swallowed ash starving for rainwater leaving fingerprints on flower petals glass bottles wished to skate in long skirts red-cheeked knew if we touched metal poles our skin would stick forever glimmering in streetlights phone booths packed up and drove here ran around and around and around the baseball fields every ball falling right into the lake never found walking out of our way to each other’s bus stops waiting eyes peeling spinning on counter stools exhaling ourselves into clouds hovering between each other’s mouths whispering won’t you come back to me won’t you come back.
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Matthew 12:44 - 45 The house I left is unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Before I know how to read I stand in the backyard knowing I’ll never grow my own trees, my own lattice fence, know how to fan cards soft-edged between my fingers, hold them too close for anyone to see, know what to spend and what to save for last. Later, I grow afraid of photos, my own face openmouthed in the flash. In the Indigo on Robson, sign glowing like a wood smoke soft peony candle, a book about self-compassion says my friends and I are all narcissists that this is how it will be with this wicked generation. Going home across the bridge my fingers bleed, crackle light across black steamed windows, make a hundred tiny hearts float up. My friends are having babies without me and I want to buy a dress with flowers on it before summer is out. I keep sending them songs like, Can you hear this? Can you hear it? Can you hear me?
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A.N. Higgins
In Dublin my grandmother is dying more quickly than most people with two days left until I fly back home. I’ve always had a talent for getting out of the hard parts of life. Skylarks dip over roofs Mary weeping and weeping in the hospital lobby, tears immune to gravity and time. My grandmother knows the nurses’ names where their families come from, which ones are married and not. Little Women’s playing down the street and I don’t cry at all feel like throwing up popcorn, lime candy and wine. When I was born they called me a girl not a poet. I’ve always been the youngest daughter wouldn’t cut my hair to save my life, wouldn’t be taught to whistle, though my grandfather tried and my grandmother still dreams of him at night. I thought I wanted greatness or nothing but my grandmother’s dying and now I want coffee not compliments. I’ve always wished for my family to disappear from all my poems but I’ve found that my granted wishes aren’t always everything I hoped.
A.N. Higgins
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Danny McLaren
adonai uses they/them pronouns is it disingenuous to pray to a god(s) I don’t believe in when I go to synagogue once or twice a year? should I find one from somewhere, from someone, who I can fathom the existence of? because excuse me for being skeptical that a cisgender heterosexual man made this world and filled it with my queer siblings, those I can only call the ephemera of this universe, starlight sisters and brightburn brothers and nonbinary, trans, genderqueer wonders what cishet man would give us iridescent skin? what cishet man would set our souls to music? what cishet man would put me here, and try to let me figure out what the fuck I’m doing in the interim? what cishet man would give me the time? what cishet man would give me a fighting chance? I hope when they say god is a woman they don’t mean a cis bitch, either. 60 |
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I want top surgery. I want two crescent moons on my chest loose fitting t shirts and swim trunks and bare flesh. stitches like kisses, pink lipstick stains across my skin. I want scars that are joyful to keep close to my heart, keep happily, press my fingers to fondly in celebration. in desire. in worship. I want to give away binders stretched out, impressions of a space I used to fill a shapeshifter all this time in the making. I want to love my body for what it once was nostalgic with acceptance, and to surely, deeply love it for what it can be. I see the shapes this body can take and I want to write them into existence, be my own queer futurity, create my own utopia out of flesh and fat. an altar atop my chest. let me dream those crescent moons. let me not be burdened anymore.
Danny McLaren
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Ashley Pace
Along the 49th The roads between us rolled up in the night, snapping heartstrings at the border, like a chalk line. Here, at the end of the world, is where you stand and wait. Wait for judgement, for rules to apply. Wait for news. Wait for the fires to quell and then, maybe, the roads will grow back. But let’s not speak of hope before the damage is done.
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Cale Plett
Guessing Hope a jangle of small bells whenever you open the door. this is true for everyone, remember that. to say you are assumes the role of creator. rejected latency. centrifugal smile people mistake for hope. when i cannot distinguish if you’ve caught some sun or blushed or run from the pawn shop where you’ve been selling the items from the lost and found, i presume every windstorm causes a butterfly’s wings to beat
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out an unsure waltz in an alleyway. when you told me this, you said hurricane, physics, and far away. in itself, hope may not be a miscalculation.
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Cale Plett
Joseph Paulson
Same Thing I tell you from experience when weighing green beans there is no difference between life and dreams
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Pea Plant Cuttings For weeks I watched they pretended to live Their tendrils continued to curl From where and why did one white blossom unfurl Rootless these stems cut from the mother plant wishfully stuffed into Miracle-Gro were dead the moment they were severed but wasn't it nice not to know
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Joseph Paulson
Sneha Subramanian Kanta
Coastlines for Harshal— If you chant a sentence several times, it becomes a prayer for safekeeping. We have witnessed cities disappear from their rib-bone, a house of smoke. The ignition of piano chords as murmuring or melancholy. Fibres of a quilt compound to more than the warmth in our hands. Parallel lights over an elongated gulf as we exit one country, entering another without wings. A layer of embers from the feathers of all the birds who perched here. We are familiar with airport terminals similarly as the distance between points of departure.
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In praise of cypresses and finches. The draft of dew under spring grasses, seagulls wandering over gloaming crests. Cygnets on the lake. A gloaming frame skylight. A myth unmooring over the edifice as we stand on the terrace, feeding birds. It is a remembrance to break bread together, partake a ritual in ambrosia. A diagonal highway through the toothless landscape of gravel. Where we leave our footprints in the blurring day. The shrill of scarlet scented throats. A perineal summer. Waves weave into a soliloquy. The praxis of multitudes in a dandelion.
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Coastlines
Hymnal The first glance of autumnal leaves in Emmerich as prayer— what fractions did we encounter while inhaling the last of today’s sun? Even the reflections of cinquefoil leaves after the season’s first drizzle. Fog conversely proportional to the length of night. Begonia leaves amid grasses wading in the wind aglow with the joint refractions of nightlamps. There is something warm that doesn’t leave wax. The piping of a meadow pipit upland. Magenta coifs over a place of harvest. Where do birds gather at dusk before flying to their nests? Everything contains silence or a ceaseless quality. A cathedral beside the Rhine. The purpling sky. Casement windows refract the sun into octaves before the field.
Sneha Subramanian Kanta
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A memoir of petrichor— symphony shovels earth. We recoil as holy snails. An ascension orrery. Every hollow thing with wing clavicle. The likeness is an equatorial gleam.
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Sneha Subramanian Kanta
Pamela Medland
Apocalypse My knuckles bleed down Johnston Street On the door that shouldn’t be in front of me.
Emily Barker, Nostalgia
A black cross for pox on the door that shouldn’t be in front of me. My mezuzah can’t save our first born. Dan spills out behind your corpse through the door I opened, his shroud already drying on the clothesline.
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Tim Conley
Ideal In those years, the curious would cross great distances and incur no small expenses to get within view of Lord Lockington’s estate, and thereafter to wheedle any sort of invitation to visit, all in hopes of seeing his garden. There were many stories of its lustre and exquisite variety. Perennials were said to waltz with exotics, and with each turn in the path new fragrances and colours revealed themselves. Yet on the rare occasion when someone, by scheme or simply good fortune, managed to tour the grounds, the garden’s beauty aroused admiration only initially, then disappointment, and finally a sort of satisfaction, this last the result of no one really wanting to believe that the garden could be as fantastical as they had heard and imagined, and here at last they found it was only a garden after all, with certain inevitable and reassuring limitations. “This is truly a splendid garden, my lord,” these visitors would say.
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“It is,” Lord Lockington would reply, according to some accounts with a hint of amusement somewhere in the corner of his eye or mouth, and according to others with no expression whatsoever. “It is,” he would agree, “but it is not the garden.” No one has satisfactorily explained just what he meant by this, but in his final years he was confined to an asylum for the incurably mad.
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Good. Short. Reviews.
Russell Carisse
Arrivals. Departures. Exchange. Amanda Deutch's Bodega Night Pigeon Riot Rummaging around Brooklyn’s streetscape with Amanda Deutch’s Bodega Night Pigeon Riot, from above/gound press, one is drawn along and through the accoutrements and fashions of late-capital’s urban millieux. This chap of haiku rattles off with arhythmic comparisons made by the witness in the window of a moving train with words that embark on the dichotomous unrest of jarring the traditional fair of petals, lurching suddenly against the ossified detritus of economic growth—the final excrements of replicative production. There’s a moment hanging on a bridge reaching for itself, but the lull of progress, the lull of onomatopoeic security, of the flashing signs, the monetary venture to work arrives fully stationed for a fresh departure from tradition, again, but with touch of that temporal inflexibility and constraint incorporated antilang. no. 8
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in conjunction with the police state—America's cultural soul, as approved religiously over and over again. A soul that is expressed by civil iconographics and neon churches posing in stolen clothes. Pulling into a solipsism that is triggered by the act of naming, a feigned escape materializes from personal reminiscence but tempered with its assurances of willful forgetting and itemized appropriations—the valorized garb of existential valuation. And then it’s off again, with the cycle of storefront-church-mural, uninterupted and augmented by humanity’s popular refrain singing its tune of wealth appreciation. The destination arrives with the traditional fair now blooming and employed with a future naturally littering itself for an immanent return, as one will keep coming back to these poems. Oh, and FUCK the POL(ICE)!
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Russell Carisse
Allie McFarland
Queer. Abrupt. Sketches. Nicole Haldoupis’s Tiny Ruins Queer. This 88-page novella is told through brief flash fiction pieces that all centre on Alana, first as a child, and then as she grows through adolescence and into young adulthood beside her sister, Janie and their friend, Sara. As the girls enter teenagehood, Alana begins to fantasise about a sexual and romantic relationship with Sara. She recognises her feelings, as she has had similar desires for boys, and yet Alana is still uncertain about her own bisexuality. The book offers a nuanced take on internalised bi-phobia: “Alana walked Sara home and all the way there she thought about asking if she wanted to hang out after but got nervous because she didn’t want to be another creepy guy for her except a girl this time” (35). This brings together Alana’s fear of becoming predatory (a common stereotype of bisexuality) and her limited knowledge of dating (if all 78 |
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the boys are creepy, then she has no example to follow for asking out a girl). The tension caused by Alana’s uncertainty remains throughout the book, but shifts as she grows and discovers more about her queerness. Abrupt. The scenes that comprise Tiny Ruins are primarily no longer than one page, and so the reader is dropped into a scene, pulled out, and then launched into another in quick succession. Abruptly encountering scenes builds momentum as the reader is propelled forward. This style forges a bond between the book’s form and content—Alana feels her world shifting rapidly around friendships and romantic interests, and this is mirrored in the rapid delivery of each scene. While the abruptness of the style provides a compelling forward force, that same style presents a challenge in delving into the stakes and consequences of the larger narrative. Sketches. Temporally, Tiny Ruins advances linearly, which at times provides context to previous scenes as the story advances. However, this is not always the case, and certain scenes or storylines feel truncated, like brief sketches. For example, the scene titled “Janie’s Cat” early in the book features Sara calling Janie and Alana to say she saw Janie’s cat dead on the street. In another context, this could have seemed ominous—the scene hints at a strained friendship—so perhaps Sara hurt the cat, but as both appear many more times later in the book, that would be unlikely. The remaining Queer. Abrupt. Sketches.
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possibilities, if Sara did not harm the cat and the cat is alive, are that Sara could have been playing a cruel joke or she did see a dead cat on the street that she mistook as Janie’s cat. Those explanations are at odds with each other—one coming from a place of hurt or malice, the other from compassion. Like all young people figuring themselves out, Sara later exhibits all those characteristics as the young women’s friendships change over time, so the reader never knows the purpose of the phone call about the dead cat. At times, these sketches work well together to form a realised whole—such as the various snippets of Alana and Janie’s childhood relationship. But at other times, the plotlines feel thin and would have benefitted from more context or further development. Overall, Alana is a compelling character and her journey of self-discovery is an important representation for an often invisible queerness. She doesn’t have all the answers and her story does not tie-up neatly, but that makes sense, as Tiny Ruins feels like a beginning for Alana, the rest of the story open for all possibilities.
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Allie McFarland
Want to appear in this lit mag?
antilang. no. 9 Special Issue on Labour with Guest Editor Anahita Jamali Rad Open for Submissions Dec. 1, 2020 – Jan. 31, 2021
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Contributors Nick Brandt. Canadian. Writer. Librarian. Russell Carisse is preserving one hundred acres of wood and wetland in New Brunswick, Canada. Here they're homesteading off-grid with their family of people and animals, growing food, and building a stone house. Natalia Chepel was born and raised in St. Petersburg, Russia. She's currently attending her final year of high school in Edmonton, Alberta, and is previously unpublished. Jordan Colledge is a Kelowna-based second-year university student who writes poetry, short stories and creative nonfiction, with a piece forthcoming in UBCO Paper Shell. Tim Conley's most recent collection of fiction is Collapsible (New Star Books, 2019). He teaches at Brock University in Canada. Fall 2020
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Mika Deneige resides in Toronto, ON, where she studies Theatre and Economics at U of T. She has won no prizes, but her teachers say she is a delight. Julia Florek Turcan is a poet and performance artist from the Northwestern Ontario town of Atikokan. Her poetry has appeared in Literary Review of Canada, CV2, Understorey, and Northern Appeal. Olga Gonzalez Latapi is a queer poet. Her work has been published in Sonder Midwest literary arts magazine, Wild Roof Journal, among others. Originally from Mexico City, she currently lives in Toronto. Laura Goslinski is a Canadian writer and student who has been published in the International Festival of Author's Write Across Canada: An Anthology of Emerging Writers. She is also very tall. Maryam Gowralli draws inspiration from her Trinidadian-Indian/Indonesian heritage and is pursuing an MA in English Literature at the University of Calgary. Her debut poetry collection, Citizenship in Water is forthcoming with That Painted Horse Press (2021). A. N. Higgins is a queer writer living in Vancouver. She’s an MFA Candidate at UBC. Her work has appeared / is forthcoming in CV2, untethered, The Maynard, and other publications. Sarah Hilton is a queer poet from Scarborough, ON whose work is currently featured or forthcoming in CV2, FEEL WAYS: A Scarborough Anthology, Hart House Review, and elsewhere. She is a Master of Information 84 |
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student at the University of Toronto's iSchool, and she is currently compiling a collection of poetry. Samantha Jones is a Calgary-based writer of European settler and Black Canadian descent. She is a literary magazine enthusiast with poetry recently published in CV2, New Forum, Grain, and Room. Mark Laliberte is an artist-writer-designer with an MFA from University of Guelph. He has exhibited extensively in galleries across Canada and internationally, curates the online experimental comics site http://4panel.ca, and edits the hybrid art/lit mag CAROUSEL. Laliberte is a member of the collaborative writing entity, MA|DE. More info: marklaliberte.com + ma-de.ca Senica Maltese is an emerging Canadian writer. She holds a BA in Writing and English from the University of Victoria, and an MFA from the University of East Anglia. Danny McLaren is a queer, trans, and non-binary writer who uses they/them pronouns. They enjoy collaging, zine-making, and found poetry. They write about trans and queer existence and resistance or video games, or both, if they can pull it off. They can be found on Twitter at @dannymclrn. Pamela Medland is a Calgary poet whose work has appeared online and in print in numerous literary journals and anthologies. Her short poem "Dust" won the 2020 Word on the Lake writing contest. Her first chapbook is Bright Blade (Loft on Eighth, 2020).
Contributors
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Vina Nguyen has stories published in The Selkie and Every Day Fiction. She spearheads the brooding pop band, Vina After Dark, while crafting moody, surreal novels. She should stop eating potato chips. Ashley Pace writes prose poetry and flash fiction, with past lives in journalism and communications. She is based just far enough from Montreal. Joseph Paulson resides in Venice, CA, where he is facilitator of the Viva Poets! Workshop at Beyond Baroque. He graduated UCLA with a degree in history and collects empty jars. Cale Plett lives and writes in Winnipeg, MB, where he is watching and listening for stories. Cale’s poetry is published and/or forthcoming in Juice, Grain, and CV2. B.S. Roberts comes from Maine, where he lives with his fiancée, daughter, silver pheasants, turtle, and cats. In his spare time, he is a museum curator and college administrate specialist. www.bsroberts.com Radoslav Rochallyi is a slovenských philosopher, writer, poet, and the author of eleven books in Slovak, English, and German. The author finished his studies in Philosophy at the Faculty of Arts of the UNIPO and completed postgraduate Ph.D. studies. Spenser Smith is a Regina-born poet who lives in Vancouver. His poems appear in The Malahat Review, Prairie Fire, Poetry Is Dead, CV2, and The Capilano Review. Sneha Subramanian Kanta is a writer from Canada. She has been awarded the inaugural Vijay Nambisan 86 |
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Fellowship 2019. Her work has appeared in Waxwing Magazine, Hobart, The Normal School, and elsewhere. She was the Charles Wallace Fellow writer-in-residence (2018-19) at The University of Stirling. She is the Founding Editor of Parentheses Journal. B. W. Teigland—an emerging Canadian author— studied Neuroscience, Contemporary Studies in Philosophy and Literature at Dalhousie University and King’s College in Halifax, NS. His fiction chapbook The Weight of Skin (The Blasted Tree, 2019) is now part of a public collection on display at the Bern University library in Switzerland. He has a forthcoming story set to be released by Orson's Review in the 2020 fall. Gabby Vachon is a full time digital marketing strategist, as well as part time writer. She has been published in Cosmonauts Avenue, Existere, and Maudlin House, and has been an invited reader at Slackline Series. She holds an Honors English Literature B.A. from Concordia University, and lives with her beloved husband Justin and puppy Lola in Montreal, Canada.
Editorial Jordan Bolay holds a PhD from the University of Calgary’s English Department, where he studied archival trace, Canadian literature, and new media. He has edited for filling Station, The Fieldstone Review, and The ALP. He is the author of two chapbooks, poems f(or/ ro)m my father | poème a/à mon père (Loft on EIGHTH) Contributors
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and how to make an English exam interesting (The Blasted Tree). His poetry, fiction, and criticism have been published online and in periodicals across North America and Europe. He writes, edits, and teaches literature on the unceded territories of the Lekwungen and Scia’new peoples of Vancouver Island. Allie McFarland holds an MFA in Writing from the University of Saskatchewan’s Department of English, where her thesis—a concise, genre-blurring, womancentric narrative called a novel(la)—was nominated for the College of Arts & Sciences Thesis Award. Her debut novel(la), Disappearing in Reverse, was published fall 2020 by the University of Calgary Press as part of their Brave & Brilliant series. Her writing has most recently appeared in release any words stuck inside you II (Applebeard Editions), untethered (vol. 4.2), and The Fieldstone Review (no. 11). Her poetic suite “Lullaby” won the 2015 Dr. MacEwan Literary Arts Scholarship. She is bi, drinks martinis dry, and currently runs a notfor-profit used bookstore on the unceded territories of the Lekwungen peoples of Vancouver Island. Lissa McFarland is a (mostly) visual artist from Calgary on Treaty 7 territory. Her work has appeared in NōD, Hooligan Mag, and antilang. She has designed and illustrated the cover art for each of antilang.’s print anthologies as well as The ALP’s logos. She's a lesbian, intersectional feminist, sandwich connoisseur, and Naruto enthusiast. You can check out her artwork on Instagram (@lil.trshlrd) and contact her for commissions and custom designs at lissamcfarland.com.
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Contribute to antilang.
What we’re looking for: Good. Short. Writing. Previously-unpublished work in any form, any genre, as long as it is brief (under six pages) and of exceptional quality. Poetry, short/flash fiction, creative essays, fictocriticism, flash memoir, photo essays, comics, postcard fiction, and collaborations across media. We support diversity in both the form and content of writing, and we prioritise voices that have been systemically silenced or have otherwise gone unheard. We welcome and encourage simultaneous submissions (because you should have the opportunity to submit your work widely). 12-point Times New Roman, one inch margins, maximum SIX (6) pages, regardless of form, genre, or number of pieces. ONE (1) piece per page, regardless of its length. Provide your entire submission in ONE (1) document and please only submit once per reading period (short stories and poems can be submitted together). Please double-space all prose. MS Word files (.doc or .docx) for textual pieces PDFs or image files for visual/hybrid work. Please send all submissions via Submittable and include a 30 word bio (we are all about concision, after all). @antilangmag / antilang.ca
