The Impressment Gang 1:2 by The Impressment Gang

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Ryan Everest, Donna Truesdale, Katie Hernandez, Ciarra Glass, John MacLean, Kaitlyn Guinan, Jaime Forsythe, Catherine Banks, Mollie Winter, Jacob Sandler, Lynda Talaga. BEARERS OF HOPE: Colleen and Drew Everest, Heather Jessup, Todd McCallum, Ann Marie Patterson, Colleen and John Primrose. PATRON OF THE ARTS: Cecelia Liu and Simon Chan, Grace Hon and Peter Chik, Winnie Wong, Susanna Ng and Tak Liu, The Nook on Gottingen.

ISSUE 1:2

EDITORS

PROOFREADERS

Pearl Chan Clay Everest Cassie Guinan Lachlan MacLeod

COVER

Dawna Gallagher Moore

DESIGN

Cassie Guinan

The Impressment Gang, Issue 1:2, November 2014. © Dawna Gallagher Moore, illustrations (p. 4, 92, 93). © Copyright remains with the writers. ISBN 978-0-9936077-3-8 ISSN 2292-955X Printing by Halcraft Printers Inc. 2688 Robie St. Halifax, NS. B3K 4N8.

EDITOR’S NOTE

POETRY

MATEA KULIĆ

12 13 21

THOMAS O’CONNELL

ANNE BALDO

DESIREE JUNG

JAMES CEDARHILL

ALAN HILL

67 69

WINONA LIN

Peel Out of Bounds Sick Ambition The Near Occasion of Sin into thin air The Burglary Something On Earth Hour Poverty Pink Betrayal

PROSE

BEN STEPHENSON

STEPHEN CHOI

King Domestic Silence 72 Dance of Uzume 22 MARK JORDAN MANNER Night Crew 58 ANNE WHITE The Shave 61 MARIE SOLIS Lady Fingers

OTHER

PEARL CHAN

NICOLAS BILLON

ALYSON HARDWICK

CASSIE GUINAN

CONTRIBUTORS

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Interview: Nicolas Billon Excerpt: Butcher In It Review: Hot, Wet, And Shaking

EDITOR’S NOTE

“BOBCAT” BY REBECCA LEE: A READING RESPONSE “It was the terrine that got to me. I felt queasy enough that I had to sit in the living room and narrate to my husband what was the brutal list of tasks that would result in a terrine: devein, declaw, decimate the sea and other animals, eventually emulsifying them into a paste which could then be riven with whole vegetables. It was like describing to somebody how to paint a Monet, how to turn the beauty of the earth into a blurry, intoxicating swirl, like something seen through the eyes of the dying. Since we were such disorganized hosts, we were doing a recipe from Food and Wine called the quick-start terrine. A terrine rightfully should be made over the course of two or three days—heated, cooled, flagellated, changed over time in the flames of the ever-turning world, but our guests were due to arrive within the hour.” - Rebecca Lee, in “Bobcat” from her short story collection, Bobcat and other stories.

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How do we interact with what we are reading? Still in school, I often find myself writing these things called “reading responses”. Over the years, I have discovered a few tips to writing these monsters in a very short space of time:

1. You don’t have to read the whole thing. 2. Footnotes are key 3. If you quote directly, it means you don’t really understand what is going on.

1. You don’t have to read the whole thing: I confess I did. Which goes to show that reading the whole thing may not actually be better. If I had read closely, which I did not, or, rather, promptly forgot, I would notice that the protagonist is making a seafood and meat terrine. This I notice now as I sit on my kitchen floor, waiting for my friend Camila to arrive to make this terrine. Also, that this is a “recipe from Food and Wine called the quick-start terrine.” The differences: the narrator is making a seafood and meat terrine, quickly, for dinner guests arriving within the hour. I am making a rabbit, chicken liver terrine for people I have yet to invite. I’ve also been in terrine mode for the last two months. Ask anyone I run into and to whom I have nothing of note to say. I do not have a husband to describe the procedures to. In fact, my roommate Flannery left because I was fishing for a compliment regarding my brand new meat cleaver (“just use another knife”, she says, when I complain about it being unable to cut through bone). But I am defrosting some fish, just in case. THE TERRINE READING RESPONSE:

My ingredients and how I found them: 1 1lb 3 stalks of 3 cloves of A bunch of A jar of A bunch of

rabbit chicken livers spring onions garlic thyme duck fat chives

special order from Wood and Hart Shani’s farm my fridge on the countertop Old Market Ratinaud the fish tank we grew herbs in

It took me a few inquiries to find a farmer who could get me a rabbit. After almost two weeks, I picked it up from the Halifax Farmer’s Market, along with chicken livers. I also bought a cleaver from Canadian Tire, borrowed 4 loaf tins from my friend Claire, and Camila brought cling wrap . ISSUE 1:2 7

THE RECIPE: DAY 1

1. Debone rabbit.

DAY 2

2. Mince green onions, garlic, chives, chicken livers, and the leg meat of the rabbit.

3. Add the duck fat to the minced paste.

4. Cut up the rabbit loins into long strips.

5. Marinate overnight.

DAY 3

6. Place cling wrap generously into the loaf tin.

7. Scoop meat paste into a layer in the bottom. Layer on the rabbit loins. Layer on the meat paste. Layer on the rabbit loins. Layer, layer, end on the paste.

8. Put the loaf tin in another baking dish with hot water, effectively making a bain-marie.

9. Place that contraption into the oven at 200 degrees Celsius.

10. Should take about 2 hours, meat should cook to about 65 degrees.

11. Take out, place heavy object on it, leave in fridge overnight to set.

DAY 4

13. Serve at room temperature or slightly heated. On thin slice of warm toast or however the mood strikes you.

Full disclosure, this would be easier with pork, but this girl doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t eat that. Also full disclosure, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve never had rabbit before, totally just winging it. Best of luck! - PC, fiction editor

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Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not eating rabbit.

- CG, poetry editor

ISSUE 1:2 9

MATEA KULIĆ PEEL Your hands make me peel. The potato, the peach. A certain dexterity with which you held things. (Always I find they slip out/lost, a sieve of fingers). You grasp by the tail, make it behave. Still in your palm a foot that wants to flinch will yield — wield — to remove the spine.

ISSUE 1:2 11

OUT OF BOUNDS No one can tell how the can materializes. We wild beyond the edges of our field. Limbs crunch among brambles silencing thorns. Girls in short khakis worry about stains; boys plan elaborate kidnappings. We snip the heads of pregnant weeds, yank clumps of hair from sidelines. For fight we snap to center close in with our flanks. We consider what it means to hide among the herd simply, to outlast.

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SICK AMBITION Two old gals benched by the curb liked to tell what girls should never chase in no particular order a man and a bus.

MATEA KULIÄ&#x2020;

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BEN STEPHENSON

STEPHEN CHOI DOMESTIC SILENCE Jane always thought it sounded like a muffled machine gun. It was her mother’s old sewing machine, passed down from her grandmother. It was a big hunk of metal, the machine, the table, and the foot pedal all molded together. She couldn’t lift it an inch off the ground by herself. It took two amateur body builders to move it into the den where she could work in the afternoon sunlight. One of those big, but not big enough men, her husband John, let his fingers slip and dropped the edge of it on his left big toe. He didn’t even make a noise. He cringed and stumbled off to the bathroom, breathing in the words, ‘fuck, that hurt,’ barely audible even in the concerned silence. He lost his toenail but kept his toe. The nail eventually grew back but it was thicker, as if his body was trying to prepare for a similar accident. It almost seemed as if the sewing machine was paying for the damage by making all these socks. Or maybe she was paying for it. She had been making socks all day without stop – the machine gun stabbing the fleece into a new purpose over and over again. The constant noise saturated the air in the room, which, in her mind, helped subdue the tingling smell of urine that threatened to assert itself again. She was making the socks out of old fleece blankets either donated or salvaged by community workers and church members. It was John’s idea to give out fleece socks to the homeless before winter, and his calculations as to how many to make included every homeless person in the city plus extras just in case. The day before, John had come home with four garbage bags full of dirty fleece in the back of his truck and carried them into the den without saying anything to Jane. He hadn’t even opened the windows, so when she followed its hint to the den and opened the door, the stench hit her face on and she almost fainted on the spot. When John came back later on with two more bags, after she had spent hours washing and drying, she met him at the door with a scream. No words. Pure scream. For a moment it seemed to pierce through all other sounds and weaken their resonance. The blast wave of her contempt drowning out the sound waves in its expanding vacuum. When they re

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surfaced, they pressed back with amplified strength, and the tumbling of the washing machine, the closing of the door, and the thunking of John’s boots against the wooden floorboards rushed toward the source of the blast to fill the void. Jane felt their pressure in her lungs as he walked passed her and headed for the den. She ran up to him and grabbed hold of the back of his shirt. ‘I’m not making all those socks, John!’ He kept walking, pulling her with him. She tried to wrap her hand around his neck and pull him back. She kicked at the back of his knees to make them buckle. He kept walking. She was at least a foot shorter than him and a hundred pounds lighter. He spent two hours every day at his company’s gym after work. It was physically impossible for her to impede his gait, let alone hurt him, without crossing the line. She let go of him and watched him enter the den. As he stepped back out, a thermos flew at his head. He managed to block it with his arm but he was too late to move out of the way of Jane running at him at full pace with the broomstick at her side like a spear. Her war cry gurgled deep in her throat as she rammed the butt end into his side. He folded over with a sharp groan and fell to the floor. A quick flash of a smirk was the only effect of satisfaction Jane enjoyed before noticing that her husband couldn’t get up. As always, a quick rush of compunction made her freeze. She knelt down beside her husband and whispered. ‘You okay?’ John sat in the sofa for the rest of the afternoon, wincing every time he changed his posture. Meanwhile, Jane washed all the blankets and laid them out in piles according to colour. The smell hadn’t quite gone away. She guessed that it must be from dogs, but it was not unlike what she imagined homeless people to smell like. She had never gone with John to the soup kitchens. Not only did the thought of seeing those unbathed bodies lined up to receive their share of life petrify her, just imagining the volunteer workers’ faces radiating with their pious glow made her insides churn. She tried to keep away from John as much as possible except to give him his supper. It was late in the evening when she sat down in an armchair beside him with her sewing box and a few cutouts to work on the design of the socks. She always worked by hand to perfect the shape before moving

STEPHEN CHOI

on to the sewing machine. The machine was too clumsy for creativity. John was watching some baseball game he probably didn’t care about but his eyes never left the screen. Her needle went smoothly through the fleece as she attached the bottom to the back, the back to the front. But the string was harder to manage. They were too thin. As she took out some thicker string she ventured to speak. ‘I think these socks might turn out quite nice. I was going to use the thin string and have the seams inside so it would look nice and sleek, but now that I think of it that would be uncomfortable for bare feet. And nobody’s going to care what socks those people are wearing anyways. But then these thick strings could be a nice touch too. They’ll go on the outside and give it that nice stitchy look. Look, John. How’s this?’ She held up the rough shape of a sock for him to see but John kept his eyes on the television. ‘John, look.’ Without saying anything and still without moving his glance, he reached for the remote and turned off the television. The buzzing silence tickled Jane’s ears and she could feel her nerves slowing down to a crawl. She kept holding up the sock like it was some holy receptacle. John just sat there staring into the black screen. He was seeing nothing and hearing nothing but he didn’t seem to care. She couldn’t see what he saw because he saw nothing. She couldn’t tell him what he wanted to hear because he heard nothing. The pain in her arms was getting unbearable and she was losing control of her breath. In the kitchen, the refrigerator whirred back to life and its hum broke the spell. Jane stood up with the needle in hand. The full inch of metal sharpness held firmly between her thumb and index finger. She walked up to John and stood in the line of his gaze. She looked down on this man she had once believed she could depend upon. Her defender. Her Quasimodo. She drove the needle into his chest. Her fingers slipped and the butt end drove into her palm. Two quick yelps broke out at once, harmonizing their pain for an instant. She wondered how much it actually hurt him, physically, as she pumped the pedal. It was already well into the afternoon and she was more than half way through the blankets. The finished socks were lined up on one side of the room and on the opposite side were the blankets yet to be cut. Scraps and cutouts were lying about messily in the centre. The strong thrusts

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of the needle went through the fleece like it wasn’t even there. Her stomach was growling but she ignored it. She needed to keep the machine going. It couldn’t stop. Once it stopped… The phone rang. She thought it might be John. He had rushed out last night and driven off in his truck and hadn’t come back. She took her foot off the pedal and walked to the kitchen where the phone was. It was Jack, the amateur body builder who hadn’t dropped the sewing machine on his toe. He was with John. ‘I’ll keep him for another night, Jane, if you don’t mind. He doesn’t seem to want to go home right now. I’ll bring him over first thing tomorrow. You guys talk this over and work it out then, alrighty?’ Jane returned to the den. The last bit of sunlight was leaving the room. She kept the light off and sat down at the sewing machine. There was nothing below the needle but she pumped the pedal. It sounded the same even when nothing was being sewn – the same muffled violence. The glow of dusk came and went. In the darkness she placed her hand, the one that had held the needle, on the table so that the machine made its piercing movements between the thumb and index finger. She slowly moved her hand forward as if she was stitching some invisible cloth. Her scream came before the blood. Her own sound seeped through her skin and filled all her nerves with its clear and constant pitch. It left no room for any other sensation, rendering her completely free – as long as the machine kept going – free of all pain and feeling.

STEPHEN CHOI

THOMAS Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;CONNELL THE NEAR OCCASION OF SIN The devil keeps leaving glossy magazines and mail order catalogues in the staff lunchroom. They are hard to ignore, waiting for my mug of water to heat, winding the tea bag string around my finger. The magazines show the colors you should use to decorate your beach house and how spacious your kitchen could be. The clothes in the catalogues are like none I ever see my friends wearing. But the people in the pictures, with their rakes and their Labradors, look very happy. And who would not want to be happy, that way, smiling in their new sweaters?

ISSUE 1:2

MARK JORDAN MANNER NIGHT CREW Nash was always swinging his knife when he got excited. He’d go, Oh shit oh shit oh shit, slicing the air like a madman. Tell me the Air Wick Freshmatic Mini Refills were fifty percent off or that there was a sale on cereal. Oh shit shit shit cheap Cap’n’Crunch! We worked on the night crew at the Frill-Free Grocery. Eleven pm until seven thirty in the morning spent breaking your ass for nothing, or less than nothing if you included deductions. Truly a bottom of the barrel bullshit fucking job. The kind of place that’ll hire anyone. Illegal immigrants, basket cases, you name it. All your coworkers either foreign or fucking nuts. You’re asleep in the day, awake all night, and your only interactions are with them, foreigners, nuts; it’s enough to drive you fucking nuts. I was six months in. I was stocking pesto in the pasta aisle. Nash wraps around the corner with his knife and his oh shit and it’s about one forty-five am, a bit before first break. We got given box cutters our first day, but Nash always brought his own knife from home. A trout knife. The kid was damn proud of the thing. He’d make a big show out of using it, cutting plastic wrapped around the product on the skids the way a magician might, all theatrical and queer as hell, slicing upwards so it’d end with the blade in the air. Oh shit oh shit Ryan man you ain’t gonna believe it, you ain’t gonna believe. He’s coming at me like my throat is a fucking trout. He’s sweating, chafing. Nash with his fat wet face and tits, the blubbery body of a big brown baby. He goes, Ya gotta see man, ya gotta come see. So I’m following him to the next aisle, the baking aisle, and he’s going, It’s fucked, it ain’t even real it’s so fucked man, and all I’m thinking is I wish he’d pocket that goddamn knife. But he’s pointing at the product with it, bottles of olive and canola oil, sunflower oil, vinegar. He goes: ya ready man, ya ready? Nash got hired around the same time I did. I remember seeing him at the orientation wearing a clip-on tie on a golf shirt, seated at the front, nodding like a motherfucker every time the group leader said something fascinating about pickles, or how to properly pick things up. Nash with his double chin tucked quadruple on each nod, nodding nonstop. Still nodding when he’d look back at me. He kept turning, and looking, making one of

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those what the fuck you even doing here? faces, probably because I was the only one there who wasn’t a middle-aged Asian lady, or flabby and dumb as hell like him. The way I got the gig’s through Quin. Her big brother was night manager. He put in a good word, but I still had to bullshit my way through the usual. Answer the same questions everywhere asks – One: Have you been incarcerated? Two: Are you currently employed? – but unlike everywhere, a place like Frill-Free Grocery couldn’t give a fuck less if your answers go One: yes, Two: no. So I start working six nights a week. I’m pulling pump trucks, opening boxes, stocking end displays, facing product so the English side of the label’s facing out, and goddamn, it’s sucking soul out my ass every second. But we do what it takes. Ya ready to shit your pants? Nash asked. Okay. He looked both ways down the aisle and back at me, stepping close. I smelled cough syrup on his whisper. Oh shit Ryan man, he said. Shit’s about to change for us man, shit’s about to get real. Shit. Dude, dude ya ready? Here goes: I found a dick in a bottle of vinegar. I looked both ways down the aisle too. What? I found a dick in a bottle of vinegar. He pulled a bottle off the shelf to grab the one behind it. A tall glass bottle of red wine vinegar with something sunk to the bottom, dick-sized and dick-shaped. It’s a dick, he said. I took the bottle and pressed my eyes against it. The thing sure did look like a dick, mushroom-headed with vein-like somethings coming out one end. It can’t be, I said, holding the bottle to the light. It can’t. It can, said Nash. Ryan man, we’re gonna be rich. Rich as a big-titted bitch! The reason I was there to begin with is because I needed money ASAP, even a bullshit amount like what they offered. Quin said I could only see Kim-Claire if I started paying what I owed. So I was paying what I owed and more. Put a fraction into rebuilding myself, for real this time, but most into them, my two girls. To build us a better life, I’d say. Quin breathed funny into the phone whenever I did.

MARK JORDAN MANNER

She’d go, Be good, Ryan. Don’t let my brother down. I was outside on break one night. I was just standing in the snow. I was looking at the footprints I’d made from the door to where I was, and I was looking at all the perfect white still in front of me. The back door opened and Carver came out. He leaned against the loading dock smoking a cigarette. Eventually he called me but it wasn’t right away. You crazy? he said. Where’s your coat, Ry? I was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. I walked over to him, but it wasn’t right away. When I got there he asked if I was doing okay. He was already done his cigarette. He tossed it in the snow. I was looking at his boots. I told him it was a fucked up thing working nights, and he said not to worry, I’d eventually get used to it. Carver’s hair was thick, but greying. His goatee had grey in it too. He was thirty-three, only four years older than me, but the guy looked aged as a crusty dog dump. His eyes, the way he stood. The way he walked. Like every muscle in him ached, a bag of bad bones. I wondered if those were the four years that do it to you, twenty-nine to thirty-three, or if it’s something else. Carver, I said, I’m gonna do right by your sister. He ignored me. Told me Susan kept giving him shit in the mornings. She says we’re scratching the floors, he said. She says we’re probably not pumping the pump trucks high enough so the skids have been dragging. But that’s not it. There are black lines everywhere, but that’s not it. We didn’t used to have this problem, only since the renovation. They put in those cheap orange tiles. So it’s not us. And if it is us, it’s not our fault. I was still looking at his boots because I hated seeing his old-ass face blabber about shit like scratched floors. I’d known Carver since we were kids. It’s a tough thing, seeing someone you knew then turn into someone you know now, especially when now’s got them so beat up and tired-looking, concerned with orange tiles, for fuck’s sake. Did you hear what I said, Carver? About Quin. Yeah, I heard. I’m gonna do right. Sure, Ry. I was thinking about it a lot in the baking aisle that night, imagining I’d had that same conversation, but with a kid-Carver. Like, him how he was, with skinny arms and legs, sprinting with water guns, ollying his banana

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board over pop cans and shit like that. Us in a world before his bones went bad. Me telling him I’d do right, and him believing in me. It’s not a dick, I said. It is, Ryan man, it is. Look at it. Nash held the bottle to his crotch. It’s probably a cork, I said. Fuck you, a cork, he said. Yeah man it’s a cork, a cork wrapped in human skin, it’s a cork with veins and blood and a fuckin dick hole. Fuck you, a fuckin cork. It’s a cock! It’s hard to see, I said. Fuck you, a fuckin cork. The vinegar’s dark, Nash. He was shaking his head, his fat face sweaty, creased as an old man’s balls. I could smell the sour stink of him. Fuck you, a fuckin cork, he kept saying. He was right too; if it was a cork, it was the most dick-looking cork of all time. But a dick didn’t make sense. That’s what I told him. I go, A dick’s not logical, Nash. Fuck you, a dick’s not logical. So we argued about it a long-ass time. Both of us touching bottles to make it look like we were still being productive. Eventually Carver came dragging his feet past the aisle. He goes, Ry, and Nash starts whispering, Oh shit oh shit he’s fuckin on to us. Carver asked if I had any extra Barilla pasta. There’s an empty dump bin in front of the deli, he said, so you can go dump anything extra there. I gave him thumbs up. He didn’t move. He stood there in his padded vest and Dickies, spine stooped, eyes bouncing between me and Nash and the bottles on the shelf we were pointlessly positioning, then his own boots. Carver, I said. He looked up. I’m helping Nash a minute, I said. Nash touched the dick-vinegar like it was normal vinegar, pushing it to the very back of the shelf, and half-smiled at nothing as he shifted other bottles in front. I need you in your proper aisles, said Carver. The daytime managers are going to be inspecting everything in the morning. We need

MARK JORDAN MANNER

shelves fully stocked, fully faced. Susan said they’ll be taking pictures of all our mistakes to show head office. Okay, I said. Just a second. I’m serious, Ry. Carver was always letting me know how serious he was. I’ll be literally one more second. He didn’t move right away because everything he did had to be in slow-fucking-motion. A slow-motion turn, and then right foot, left foot, right, left, gone. Shyiiiiiit, whispered Nash, patting sweat under his eyes with his shirt. That was a close one Ryan man. Too close. Ya think that dumb sonuvabitch knows what’s up is up? I’m heading back to pasta, I said. Okay, okay Ryan man, we’ll talk more on break. We’ll talk. In my aisle I thought a lot about it. Not dicks so much, but money. What money could mean to me in that moment. I was stocking ketchup and thinking what’d be like to never stock ketchup again. I could be buying ketchup. Heinz Ketchup. Not the No Name bullshit kind. I could be buying Kim-Claire tickets to go see that bratty Bieber bitch at the Molson Amphitheatre, but before we go, I could be making her grilled Black Diamond cheese and fries to dip in Heinz fucking Ketchup. I walked to Tim Hortons with Nash on first break. We ordered coffee from other overnight losers, and then headed back to the store. The snow was up to our ankles but we were wearing work boots. Nash sweated in the cold. We discussed how we’d go about it, like who’d buy the vinegar, eat it. We both agreed it wasn’t enough to discover a dick; one of us had to swallow the dick-vinegar, and prove that we did. Assuming it’s a dick, I began. It is. Okay, yeah, so, assuming it is, what if it’s got a disease? Disease? he said. He said it like it was a new word. I swear to Christ the kid was half-retarded. I think he mispronounced it too. I think he said decease. Like AIDS, I said. What if the dick’s got AIDS? Eights? he said. The second third of the night I spent making a list of the things I’d buy. The list was in my head. I was trying to think of all the shit Quin had

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ever said she wanted. Didn’t matter if she didn’t want it anymore. Like when we were kids and she’d go on about those Lite-Brites, or when we got older in Montreal and she was dying for a pink moped. Or before I did what I did, and went away for it, she wanted to paint. All she wanted was to raise our baby right, but still be able to make art comfortably. I had a picture of her and Kim-Claire on my shitty flip phone. It was them at the Toronto Zoo in front of the penguins, Kim-Claire’s favourite. And I knew Quin liked koala bears best because of Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveler. So I’d buy a stuffed penguin and koala bear, and I’d buy my favourite animal too. An eagle maybe. A stuffed penguin, koala, and eagle, all in a row on the couch in the family room of our house. We’d be a family again, with our own family room. That’s what I was thinking about. I sniffled like a puss as I stocked bags of orzo, rotini, penne rigate, fussilli, tubetti. I knew the names of so many noodles. Carver appeared at the end of my aisle. He asked if I was making good time. I gave him thumbs up, but he knew my thumb meant fuck all. He reminded me about the managers in the morning, and I told him okay. And I was looking at his boots again because his face reminded me of all the ways the world doesn’t give two shits about you. I closed the picture on my phone. When I looked up, Carver was looking at my goddamn fucking boots. Second break was five am. I sat with Nash in the staff room. Nash had his trout knife out. He was wiping the blade on his pants. The kid’s thighs were like tree stumps. He was telling me what he was gonna get with his share: a PS4, patio furniture for his parents. Ryan man, he said, I’ve read about shit like this, people finding boogers on their burgers and shit. People makin mad money for motherfuckin boogers and we’ve got dick, a real live human man-dick. Holy shit that dick’s a motherfuckin goldmine. We decided I’d buy the vinegar. People knew Nash worked the baking aisle, so if it was him, things might seem suspicious. I’d pick the vinegar up myself, as well as other things, buy them, go home, eat. Take it from there. It’s a miracle, said Nash, a motherfuckin dick vinegar miracle! Back on the floor I cleared the plastic from my aisle, brought the cardboard to the compacter, and started facing up. The final third of the night was always spent facing. I was doing a damn good job too because I kept telling myself it’d be the last time. I’d be done after tonight. I’d be gone. I wanted to leave things good for Carver.

MARK JORDAN MANNER

Around seven, Andy comes strutting in my aisle. He was assistant night manager, a true ass-clown. Pompous head the size of a medicine ball, he starts dissecting what I’d done so far, bitching about it. Standing there with his ponytail and glasses and girly fluorescent kneepads, mouth breathing, pointing at the Thousand Island dressing and saying it, rudely, rude and angry as hell: Can you read, Ryan? I waited for him to make his goddamn point. But he didn’t. He stood there waiting for an answer. Waiting, waiting, the silence carrying something more brutal than anything I’d ever felt. I told him yes. He asked if I could read, and I said yes, and uttering just that one syllable made me feel shrunk to the size of a fucking orzo grain. Yes, Andy. I can read. The thousand island dressing was stocked behind a sign for ranch. I told him it’d been a mistake made by daytime staff; one I hadn’t caught, but still. The fucker didn’t care though. He asked again, Can you read? ‘Cause that’s what they should make all the applicants do before they get hired. At the interview, they should sit you guys and gals down and make you prove you can read. It’s a simple thing, Ryan. Place the product above the proper sign. Alrighty then? Easy-peasy. Kapeesh? I was squeezing my box cutter. The only thing keeping me from gutting the prick was a picture I kept forcing myself to see in my head. It was of those stuffed animals on the couch like I said, the penguin, the koala and the eagle. And it was a hundred other things too. It was a Lite-Brite, a moped. It was Heinz Ketchup and tickets to see that Bieber bitch. It was everything either of my girls had ever wanted all in one place at one time. It was them knowing it was me who brought it there. I’d corrected the salad dressing by seven forty, punched out, gone shopping, grabbing the red wine vinegar, as well as baby carrots, popcorn, a box of fish sticks, another of Bear Paws, cradled it all in my arms. I saw Nash in the pop aisle. He winked. Only the kid couldn’t wink so it was more a blink. Two litre bottle of Dr. Pepper in one hand, trout knife in the other. He was blinking like a strobe light was pointed at him. He goes, Do it Ryan man, you can do it! Cock’n’roll, baby! Cock’n’roll! On my way to checkout I passed Carver. He and Andy were with the douchey daytime managers, all circled around a long black cut in the floor. I am not happy about this, Susan was saying. I am not happy about this

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at all, at all, at all, at all. Not. One. Bit. I stood in line at the checkout. There was only one cashier because it was still so early. Andy saw me watching and glared, the fucking twerp. Then the group of them moved on to stare at another mark on the floor. Carver hobbled behind the pack. The cashier asked if I had an employee card. I paid for the groceries and walked back into the store, to the warehouse. I tossed the vinegar in the damages bin. A lot of the daytime workers were just arriving. They were all smiles and coffee like always. Most of them were white, and the ones who werenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t spoke good English, but no one said hi or good morning. I jumped off the loading dock and felt the crunch of my body sink shin-deep into the snow.

MARK JORDAN MANNER

INTERVIEW: NICOLAS BILLON WITH PEARL CHAN

What are your thoughts on the relation between film and theatre? NB

If there’s one thing I’ve learned, having worked on Elephant Song, is that they are two different mediums. They both have their strengths and weaknesses, and I’m not sure I’d be able to pick a favourite. There’s something about the intimacy of theatre that is wonderful, and something about the storytelling possibilities with film that are magical. As a screenwriter, I’m interested in exploring those various possibilities down the road. With Elephant Song, I was approached by the producer to do the adaptation. I was delighted to be asked to do it, though I wouldn’t restrict myself to doing only adaptations.

And what did you find difficult or rewarding about adapting your play? NB

I’ll start with what I found difficult. I think one of the hardest things was to open up the play while also keeping the heart of it intact. Ultimately, Elephant Song is about the confrontation between Michael and Dr. Greene. But how do you keep that without making it feel like “filmed theatre”? To a certain extent, it required an opening up of the storyline and characters. And I think Charles was very aware of that when filming Elephant Song. In the play there are only three characters, so yeah, I would say that was the most difficult aspect of the adaptation. The thing that was great about it was that it allowed me, in a sense, to under-write; so much information happens visually! For example, the ability to have close-ups makes a huge difference. It allowed me to pare down the writing and let the story happen visually, instead of just verbally. 30

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What would you say about having to write these characters who didn’t exist in the original? NB

It was a mixed bag. You have to remember that we filmed more than what ended up on the screen. Ultimately, I think the additional characters help to enrich Dr. Greene’s role in the movie. Michael, even in the play, doesn’t have anyone connected to him outside the hospital, so all these auxiliary characters relate to Dr. Greene and him a richer character. PC

I sometimes think about stories as these little nuggets that as writers we make manifest, so if Elephant Song is this nugget, are they both true to the story or different sides to the same story. NB

In a sense, they are both true to the fundamental story and they are both two different things. The play is the play with all its qualities and its flaws, and the movie is the movie with all its qualities and its flaws. And really, it’s funny because the play was written twelve years ago, and the movie was written much more recently. So in a sense, it’s two different “me” who wrote each of those scripts. I’m the same person, but not the same writer. So I think that affected the adaptation.

I also wanted to talk to you about Fault Lines. I saw Iceland and it was so fascinating. I was really interested in the role of intent in your work, the intent each character carries.

The intent of each character… I’ve seen a lot of theatre where, as an audience member, I can’t disagree with them. The character is promoting and carrying liberal ideas, progressive ideas, and I think that’s because playwrights tend to be liberal and progressive, so their characters turn out to be liberal and progressive. And I’m interested in what it’s like to write characters whose intent I cannot necessarily agree with. That’s certainly the case with Halim. I can’t get on board with his intent, but that doesn’t mean I disagree with his arguments. That’s one of the best notes

PEARL CHAN 31

I’ve received. In one of the first drafts of Iceland, the director Ravi Jain said this to me about Halim: “You know the problem is, I don’t agree enough with him.” It’s true. That’s what makes him so compelling. With Anna, the Bornagain Christian, who, though I may not agree with some of her fundamental beliefs, there’s a part of me that understands her and understands why she’s so angry. So it’s this delicate balancing act of creating characters that I sometimes agree with and sometimes don’t. I don’t know if I’m right about the things I think. I think that I’m right, but I’m not sure. So I’m interested in asking the question of, what’s the flip side? Do my beliefs hold up? I always say, you know, if I was a little bit more mathematically inclined, I would have been a scientist. I really like science, and I love the scientific method. PC

Can you tell me about your new project? NB

Butcher. This play is fun to work on because it’s a thriller. It’s not something you see a lot on stage. Weyni Mengesha is directing. We worked together at SoulPepper, and since then we’ve been trying to find a project to work on again. Finally we managed to do it with Butcher. It’s been such a joy. She’s an amazing director. The play is a political thriller, and it’s an examination of crime and punishment, and asks questions like, “How do you punish the unpunishable?” and “What constitutes justice?” It’s inspired by the Oresteia, which I used as my touchstone. ATP (Alberta Theatre Projects) is doing the world premiere of Butcher, so I’m in Calgary. Vicki Stroich read an early draft of Butcher and said, “We want to do it.” My guess is that it will be in Toronto in the next two years.

When did you start writing it? NB

Butcher has been with me for a long time. I’d say close to eight years. It’s had several incarnations. Originally, it was a play about the Rwandan genocide. Then I wasn’t quite sure that was right anymore, so I changed it. Now it takes place in Toronto. One of the interesting things about this play is that

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ten or fifteen percent of the dialogue is in an imaginary language created specifically for this play. It sounds Slavic, but doesn’t actually exist. That’s been one of the most exciting parts of the play. PC

Did you write your own language! NB

Oh no, I’m not that smart. It was created by Dr. Christina Kramer and Dragana Obradović, who both work at the University of Toronto in the Slavic Languages department. I basically just knocked on their door and went “I have this crazy idea that maybe you’d be interested in inventing a language.” And they said, “That sounds very different from what we do.” I think it was more work that they anticipated, though they certainly seem to be enjoying the challenge. PC

What is your role as a playwright in rehearsal? NB

I’m pretty hands on in rehearsal. For example, in the first production of a play, I like to sit in on the whole rehearsal process. Towards the end, I might leave when I feel the script is in good shape, but in a sense, I approach rehearsal as a chance to do one last rewrite. When you’re working with good directors and good actors, the amount of information they provide is invaluable. In Fault Lines, Ravi Jain was integral to the writing, as were the actors. Clare Calnan was in two of them. And generally speaking, the parts were written for the actors who ended up doing them. That said, I’m not a director and I don’t pretend to be. I’m not there to control what’s happen. I’m there because I want to listen to what’s going on. As questions come up, I ask myself, “Is this coming up because something isn’t clear?” PC

Are you a writer or editor? NB

Somewhere in between, I think. I’m big on rewriting. I also tend to have an outline, so I have a roadmap before going in. But really, whatever it is that I’m working on… let’s use Butcher, for instance. The draft that we went in with to rehearsal, I thought it was solid. But of course, it changed a lot in the first few weeks of rehearsal. And that’s normal.

PEARL CHAN 33

What has been your most poignant moment as a writer? The moment when you say “I’m not going to get a day job: this is it.” NB

I think when I first did Elephant Song. Being in that theatre, being in that room and having people’s attention. Having people in some cases laugh, in some cases cry, in some cases shake their heads and say “this is terrible”. I think that was the moment I said to myself, “I like doing this. I really like doing this.” I’m always thinking of the audience. I can write a play… but a play by itself doesn’t mean anything until it has an audience. The audience will tell you what you’ve done and what works and doesn’t work. If it moves them, or if it doesn’t. Not all my plays have worked. Each play is a way to fail. And in failure, you learn how to do it better next time.

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This piece is not available online. Please purchase the issue from our store.

ANNE BALDO INTO THIN AIR aching with envy over orange rinds so easily stripped clean, unpeeled. husking her own pulp, she shucked skin starved for the cold purity of bones. a worm in an apple, sweetness eaten from the inside out.

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& they never found the body.

ANNE BALDO 45

ALYSON HARDWICK IN IT

AUGUST 3 2001 (AGE 9)

Good Things: Megan came back and got me: this book, salty fry chips, milky bars, 6 lovely chocolate eggs and gave me a cool girl power thing. Bad Things: Got awful headache and mom screamed @ me

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NOVEMBER 17 2001 (AGE 10)

Weather: Snowy Good Things: Courtney slept over Bad Things: I never get a lonely weekend.

ALYSON HARDWICK 47

FEBRUARY 25 2002 (AGE 10)

Weather: icy but cozy Good Things: I got good marks on my report cards! Also no homework! Bad Things: felt weird, Dadâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not calling yet.

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JANUARY 1 2003 (AGE 11)

I have a problem that when, well I am always acting different and I don’t know how to be myself. I’m not sure who I am. Being embarrassed in front of anyone I know.

ALYSON HARDWICK 49

MARCH 10 2003 (AGE 11)

Today I went out and bought: new paint, new paintbrushes and a paper holder thing for my art. They work really good. It’s not perfect but it’s a start! I also changed around my room and I have a lot of space now. Leanne is kind of bugging me these days. She keeps on coming into my room and I don’t want to be mean but I want to be left alone sometimes.

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APRIL 22 2003 (AGE 11)

Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m student of the week. Spencer told Alex and Alex told me that Spencer loves me.Yeah right, I think he said that by accident. It is kind of cool though. It was so weird around him when they were talking about it. I avoided him!

ALYSON HARDWICK 51

JANUARY 29 2004 (AGE 12)

Mom avoids Dad. Dad said to me that he feels sick every morning. Dadâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s moodier than usual. I just wish they would do something about it now so I could avoid the awkward silence every time theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re in the same room.

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MARCH 21 2004 (AGE 12)

Did I jinx him when I got this button for his birthday that said Midlife Crisis and I asked Mom what it meant? Why can’t he just be happy? I’m not making it any better I think. When I said “Like my old do? Dad?” He said “What?” so I said it again. and he said I can’t hear you. So I said it’s alright and you know what he said? I CAN’T HEAR YOU. So I said it louder and walked into my room. Now I feel bad. And sometimes Dad gets mad at me for not hearing him so Mom gets mad at Dad saying that I couldn’t help it. So then there’s this big argument all over stupid little me.

ALYSON HARDWICK 53

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ALYSON HARDWICK 55

CASSIE GUINAN REVIEW: HOT, WET, AND SHAKING KALEIGH TRACE, INVISIBLE PUBLISHING, 2014.

About a month ago I was walking down Quinpool Rd. and overheard an older man on a stoop say with disgust to another man that he had overheard two girls1 talking about sex at the grocery store. I don’t know if he was disgusted by the sex, or by the fact that he had overheard the conversation in the first place. So now I hear him reiterate, and I’m disgusted at him for being disgusted with them while doing the same thing they were really doing — talking about sex in public. The irony! Kaleigh Trace leads an important discussion on sexuality with the grace and lure of a dick and fart joke. Even though Hot, Wet, And Shaking combs through some challenging topics: ignorance, abortion, identity; anyone can get it. Trace’s conversational writing style, humour, and self-awareness make this a very accesible read. The title is Trace’s first partnership with the reader. Hot, Wet, And Shaking is the intrigue and How I Learned to Talk About Sex is the explanation,

women

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the subtitle. While a description of an orgasm grabs most of our attention, the honest talk about sex doesn’t. Sex can be understood as a text book description; but it isn’t something that is easily defined because it can mean so many different things. And sometimes dick-shun-aries are big dusty liars. As a sex educator, Trace will tell you about it all with more eloquence — just open up her book. Hot, Wet, And Shaking is an important read because the most accurate description of sex is going to be found through personal narratives. Trace shares her encounters, and as a queer disabled woman who teaches blow job classes, these experiences will be different from yours and mine. This book is sex positive. It will not define sex for you, but it will invite you to talk about it. While not everyone is able (for a whirlwind of reasons) to publicly divulge their relationship to sex, it is through public discourse on sex that opinions will change.

ISSUE 1:2 57

ANNE WHITE THE SHAVE

On the steps of an unnamed cathedral, a priest appears. He could exist in a black and white world. His face is pale and doughy. His cheeks and mouth droop with wrinkled folds of skin. His eyes are small behind his black, square, thickframed glasses. His cassock sits on his body like a lampshade. The priest moves gingerly through the mid-morning light, descending the stairs slowly. When he reaches the foot of the steps, he tugs each sleeve of his cassock, then begins to stride more confidently along the sidewalk. He looks up, away from the street, just above the shop windows. He pays little attention to what is in front of him and eventually collides with a man who is exiting a shop. The priest’s glasses are knocked from his flabby face. Squinting, the priest suddenly feels the frames placed in his trembling fingers. He puts them back on his nose and a moustache crystallizes before him. So central, so thick and dark. From nostrils to the corners of the wide mouth. This is a moustache. The moustache.

“Forgive me, Father. I wasn’t paying attention.” The reply falls from the priest’s lips like drool: “God bless.”

The man smiles then darts around a corner. The priest stares at the corner where the moustached man disappeared. Then he raises his chin and begins to walk again. After a block, he sees the red and white lollypop colours spinning above the shop he needs.

A stout unsmiling barber indicates to the only chair in front of the only mirror. The priest sits stiffly and touches his face with his hands.

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“A shave.”

The barber glances at the priest’s face: it is as smooth as a baby’s. He shrugs and tucks a white napkin into the collar of the priest’s cassock. The barber uses the soft round brush to froth shaving cream in a small metal bowl. He puts it on the counter next to the priest who looks straight ahead at his reflection in the mirror. The barber opens a drawer and takes out his razor. Holding a leather strap taut, he moves the razor back and forth, back and forth. Bottles of aftershave and rubbing alcohol and lotion gleam from the shelf. It is dead silent when the razor begins to move over the skin. Harvested shaving cream ripples before the razor’s edge. One stroke. Two strokes. Three. Now half the face is visible again. Small decisive strokes in the groove connecting the large nose and peaks of the upper lip. The barber sprays the priest’s face with water and the shave concludes. The priest puts on his thick-famed glasses and moves his face slowly from side to side, inspecting it closely. He pulls parts of his face taut, piercing his reflection with his tiny eyes. As he turns to the left, the priest sees him outside. There, the moustached man sitting on a bench across the street. He is reading a newspaper, holding it with one hand. He strokes his moustache with the other. One stroke. Two strokes. Three. Then he peels the moustache off his face, and as though it were chewing gum, pops it in his mouth.

ANNE WHITE 59

DESIREE JUNG THE BURGLARY

I want to touch his flesh. Carne. I draw an invisible line on his right arm, then another on the left. “Are you trying to open me in the middle?” He asks. I explain that my impulses are violent, but my gesture kind. What do I do with my desire? I question myself. Outside, Susie the dog barks, when hearing his voice. I can’t stay longer. A police officer in the line up asks for a coffee and comments that the heat increases the probability of burglaries. I nod, unsure if I understand why. When he walks away, part of me is already taken.

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This piece is not available online. Please purchase the issue from our store.

JAMES CEDARHILL SOMETHING ON You show up everyday to the office to see her wrapped in dresses, subdued vests, heavy-heeled shoes. Each outfit responding to the last outfit as if she was wearing them all at once clomping around the office. As you sputter off lines of legal like troubadour verse, the electric kettle sweating in the Break Room, stands ready to light you on fire. Her long floral shirt asserted by a belt almost makes you feel like this vocation could be your life, your story’s end; spurs you by virtue of the fact you will never see each other completely naked. Always something on, always one more mystery beyond the conclusion that is work. Those impossible vacations. Moses could only see God’s back. Never His face, though theologians swear he’s wearing the quizzical almost-comical look of a bellybutton mouth and eyes of breasts.

ISSUE 1:2 65

ALAN HILL EARTH HOUR

The planet rations me a little of its darkness: Just sixty minutes with the blinds open on a workday evening watching the neighbour opposite his house a Dresden of bright light a knit of takeout pizza that he is unpicking from the fabric of his freshly pressed sportswear as he rocks the pale blue crib of his fat baby girl who is in training exercising her legs on thin air moving herself to the beat of Hockey Night in Canada to the TV that is throwing out its sticks of light in aggressively angled tackles on to the exquisitely tinted wall space to spear her father a suburban Saint Sebastian framed in silence between their house and mine haloing him in a private heat

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in a tableaux of tenderness rising.

POVERTY

New Years Eve

in the already dark

I walked across fields to town.

My feet and fingers stretching in slow negotiation of wire and wood in sonar settlement of tight muscled movement between small pastures mean stone walls. Just turned twenty dressed in other peoples cast offs a Cohen blue raincoat not famous not fashionable parading myself to the scent of fox the sound of an owl emptying its war cry over silence. Three miles later I made it to the road hitchhiked picked up by a drunk doing penance for his year of bar fights stub fingered drug deals who left me at the start of houses under brick buildings tinted in deoxygenated red the lazy eyes of incendiary skinned street lights. I got to the party late. The ten room boarding house already inflating itself on weed. Later I gratefully fumbled with a stranger whose name I will never remember. The sharp dash of our come tattoeing a tired white bed sheet

punctuating midnight.

ALAN HILL 67

WINONA LINN PINK

Her boyfriend, the whiteman goes to see Tribe Called Red at the Quai Branly exhibition of Indiens des Plaines. He doesn’t know what to expect. The last Indians in Paris could have been Red Shirt and Iron Tail for all that city remembers and the ethnic museum inexplicably littered with palm fronds and Maori heads seems intent on outdoing Buffalo Bill’s humiliations. Authentic Native Canadian deejays in Paris for one night only. The band, well versed in surviving racist otherings electrifies the culture-starved French. The whiteman feels guilty: seeks to hug the girlfriend after wants to apologize for his nation and for her last name — but she boards the night-train bound for Toulouse, the pink city, with little French children who think Pocahontas is her grandmother.

ISSUE 1:2 69

BETRAYAL

It is only in humans that decay feels like betrayal. That the body has been lying hiding toxic spores for decades hiding family histories of weakness unseen sick unscanned illness. As far as botanists are able to deduce wild orchids donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t complain when their fragile roots, over-moistened and drowning begin to rot. Even when mosaic viruses found only in cultivated plants freckle and mar the blooms and whole frames must be culled, too soon to save the rest from contagion. I surprised a doe in the Crown lands as she lay, near death, and panting wet fur matted with maggots coiled in broken skin. Who mourns deer?

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The housepet consents to hip dysplasia and diabetes itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s his time to die, heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s seventy in dog-years. Humans, born dying curse and seethe when teeth blacken and bones spur. No lifespan is long-enough. The dwindling health we recognize coming to everything is an affront to our perceptions of immortality. The universe ages, crumbles withers, but only we cry foul. Oh treacherous body how dare you give up!

WINONA LINN 71

STEPHEN CHOI THE DANCE OF UZUME

A Starling on her Shoulder:

Hitomi was sitting on the edge of her bed anxiously looking at the needles of her clock. She was playing with the cap of a USB memory stick, putting it on and taking it off, each time with a click. It was the hottest time of day in mid July and her sweaty hands slipped on the plastic. She went over in her head everything she would need, and looked around the room to see if there was anything she had forgot. There obviously wasn’t; she had gone over them a hundred times. Her bags were already waiting for her in the garage, where she had placed them the night before. The only thing that was not in the bags was the USB. She wiped the sweat off of it on her T-shirt and tucked it in her pocket. 「You’re going to regret it 」said a starling on her shoulder. It was a high pitched voice but it wasn’t quick. It said each word slowly and lazily, and had the unnerving strangeness of a discernible murmur.

“No, I won’t.”

「They’ll miss you」

Hitomi got up and stood in front of the mirror. “I’m not leaving forever.” She ran her fingers through her hair and rubbed her cheeks with the backs of her hands. She had just turned seventeen. She could still ignore make-up. 「Did you write a note?」

Hitomi pointed to the desk. A square piece of notepaper sat in a corner, face up. ‘I’ll be back before the Fall. Hitomi’

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A starling on her shoulder couldn’t read.「It looks short.」

The clock showed 1:55. Hitomi looked out the window to the far corner of the street. He wasn’t here yet. 「Do you really think you can trust him? He doesn’t want you to bring any money. And he’s taking you to some remote cottage in the middle of nowhere. A smart girl like you should know what that means. You don’t get nothing for nothing 」 Hitomi raised her shoulder to her ear and rubbed them together as if something foul was making her itch. Her spine tensed up in a firm grip and she shook her head, her arms, and her legs, like a puppet doll on strings to try to loosen it. After a minute of shaking, the tenseness slowly let go and she could relax. She kicked the floor with her heel like a soldier and straightened herself out. It was fine; it was gone. She glanced at her clock; it was time. She rushed out of the room. When she got down the stairs, she could hear the television in the living room and her mother moving about the kitchen. Her travel bag and backpack were just as she left them, on the far side of the fourby-four they never used anymore. When she got to the street corner, Eugene was already waiting in his car.

She woke up as the sunlight was just beginning to creep into the cottage. She crawled over to the edge of the loft and peeked down to see Eugene curled up on the couch. There was no bedroom in the cottage. There was a bathroom and a kitchen below the loft and the rest was open space. Hitomi walked down the stairs as quietly as she could and crouched down beside Eugene to look at his sleeping face. His black hair was covering his eyes, and his mouth, half open, had a thin stream of drool running from it. They had been here for almost two weeks, and he had been good to her. She did wish that he would get along with Edward, but she asked too much of him already. There weren’t many men who possessed the understanding Hitomi required.

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After washing up as quietly as she could, she changed into her yoga pants and threw on a light jacket over her tank top. She took the USB from under her pillow and zipped it up inside her jacket pocket. A chill morning air blew in from the sea as she started on her long walk to Edward’s house. It usually took her a little over half an hour to get there. She walked on the paved road that ran a little ways away from the sea. It was surrounded by trees on either side, and she always got the feeling that this could be anywhere. Without the Atlantic Ocean and the little square houses to distinguish it, the road was just like any old road, leading to any old place she could imagine. She heard a car behind her and stepped to the side. She walked on the gravel expecting it to pass her, but it didn’t. It was following her. She could hear the rumbling of the engine and the crunch of the tires. It was a familiar sound, even though she would have argued any day that such things could not be told apart. Its familiarity scared her. She was scared of the confrontation. Nothing had ever scared her as much as standing face to face with another person and speaking the truth. She was scared that her truth would not be good enough. She walked on without turning to see, and it followed her. 「Are you going to ignore him?」said a starling on her shoulder. Hitomi didn’t answer. 「He’s the only one you have, other than that weird old man. Or are you going to live with him now? Edward? The dancing Edward? Who’s it going to be after him? You’ll start ignoring him too. Until you ignore them all, the whole world, like you did Kaori」 Hitomi stopped. She screamed with her mouth shut and the sound shot through her nose and resonated inside her skull. She rubbed her ear on her shoulder and shook her entire body as if a swarm of flies were covering her from head to toe. The tightness in her spine gripped hard and was slow to loosen. She broke down and dropped to her knees, panting. Eugene ran out of the car and crouched beside her. He patted her hair and shushed her with a gentle sustaining breath. At the sound and touch of him, she relaxed a little and looked at him with eyes that had started tearing up. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you.” He said, putting his arm around her. “I just wanted to give you a ride, and maybe watch you practice.” 74

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She let him hold her like that for a minute. She sat still with her head down, but what she really wanted to do was run away and hide. It wasn’t the first time he had seen her that way, but the embarrassment was no less than the first. She sat perfectly still, fighting. She fought off the charging emotions, the rising memories, and the impending apprehensions. It took so much of her energy that when she finally stood up, she was faint with vertigo. “Are you okay? Do you want to go back to the cottage and lie down?” Eugene asked as he helped her into the car. “No, I’m alright. I can rest a bit at Edward’s house. His tea always gives me energy.” When they arrived, she was already feeling a lot better. Edward’s house was on a small open field overlooking the sea. There were hardly any other houses around and they were mostly invisible beyond the trees that ran into the ocean. The house had two doors, one facing the water and one facing the road, with a porch on each side. Edward could be found on either porch depending on the time of day or the mood he was in. This morning, the road side porch was empty. There was no driveway so they had to park on the side of the road and walk through the lawn. “I think I see why you do this every morning. It’s kind of nice to be out early.” Hitomi agreed by not saying anything. “You know, I can sense…your lack of presence, when I wake up and you’re not there. Like I know before I even open my eyes.” He laughed a little as he talked. It was an abashed laugh that Hitomi liked for its versatility. That little laugh could convey anything from shyness to condescension to irony to honesty, and sometimes served as a mask for scorn, narcissism, compassion, or some embarrassing passion. With Hitomi, it was usually shyness with a hint of passion. But with Edward, the few times they had met, it had mostly been condescension hinting at irony and scorn. “Every morning I imagine you and him like Karate Kid. He doesn’t make you wash his car or sand his porch, does he? Wax on wax off. Breathe in breathe out.” He made circles in the air with his hands. Then he pretended he was holding chopsticks, trying to catch invisible flies with them. “Man who catch fly with chopstick, accomplish anything. I mean, woman.” “Edward doesn’t talk like that.” “Neither does Pat Morita. He was just doing it for the effect.”

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“Is that his name? The old man in the movie?” “Yeah.” “I like him.” “So do I.” Edward greeted them from his rocking chair when they went around the house. “Eugene, good to see you here. I thought I heard a car drive up.” Eugene laughed. “I came to see what you guys were up to. I brought my camera too so I can film you.” “Good. Good. You can film her. She’ll make a picture. Not me though. I’m not so photogenic.” Edward was sixty something or maybe in his early seventies. He looked almost fully caucasian but said he had a bit of Japanese blood in him. You could see it a bit in his eyes if you looked very carefully; something about the lines that felt familiar, akin. They were kind eyes, Hitomi thought, full of experience and disappointments. They followed her now, as she walked up the steps to his porch. “Could you make me some of your tea, Edward? I think I need to build up some energy before we start our lesson.” “Of course. Are you ill?” “No, I’m just a little tired.” “Yeah? Oh, I see. That’s why you have your driver.” He patted Eugene on the shoulder and Eugene flinched. Hitomi laid her hand on his other arm to cancel it out, and they all walked into the house. The house was decidedly clean except for the layers of dust on some of the furniture, left unstirred for months or even years. It was furnished for a family of four, who had lived there before Edward. They left the furniture for him when they moved west. The furniture had never been moved from their old positions, and one could sense the way the family had moved about the room, how they had lived their lives. Hitomi sat down at the kitchen table. Eugene, having never been inside the house, stood in the living room, looking at things and seeing them, the way he did when things interested him and gave him ideas. He was probably imagining a scene in a film, Hitomi thought. She always imagined that he was seeing an unmade film when he looked and saw things like that. People living their lives within a framed space, the rest of the world only implied. Time jumping from cut

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to cut, the unimportant things left on the cutting floor. After waiting for the water to boil, the three of them sat down at the table and Edward served them tea. The tea pot and cups were a matching pale green with magpies playing among plum branches on the sides. The glaze was imperfect and the bottom edges were bare. Edward had explained to Hitomi that it was wabi, the beauty of imperfection. “Fancy teapot,” Eugene said. “It was my wife’s.” “Oh, well it’s nice.” “Yeah, this was her favourite set.” Eugene nodded, a bit emphatically, with his eyes on his cup. Hitomi took a sip of her tea and soon felt its warmth and bitterness ignite the engines of her body again. “Where did you say you were from, Eugene?” “I’m from all over. I was born in Korea, grew up in B.C. and now I’m living in Nova Scotia.” “Wow, Korea. What’s it like there?” “I don’t really remember.” “Yeah? How long were you in B.C. for?” “A while. Until I was twenty-one. I even went to university there for a couple of years.” “Ah. So what brought you all the way to the east?” “I don’t know. I guess it was the farthest I could go without leaving the country, or freezing to death.” Edward laughed at that. Hitomi thought it was pleasant to drink tea and listen to people talk without having to talk herself. She loved Eugene’s voice. It wasn’t deep but it resounded confident and clear. When he talked about films or his dreams of becoming a director, his voice took on an airy raspiness that scratched the insides of her ears and made her tingle. Right now, he was speaking with his good impression voice, louder and higher pitched, a hint of a smile mixed in with each pronunciation. He could be well liked when he saw a reason for it. “You’re at the right place then. You can’t go much farther east from here. Except maybe St. John’s but that’s too much of a city to feel like the end of the line.” “Is that why you moved here?” Eugene asked.

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“Sure. I guess.” Edward shrugged his shoulders. “I think you’re right, though. About cities. Halifax doesn’t seem like the end of anything.” “Well, now you’re here. You can stay.” Hitomi looked up from her cup. It had occurred to her before. They could stay. She imagined the three of them living together. The house was meant for more than one person anyways. They could have tea like this every day at the same time, like they do in England, only an ocean away. They could find jobs in Bonavista and pay rent if they had to. There was definitely enough room. The house had three bedrooms, each fitted with a bed. Hitomi could fit on the small bed, for now. And when she grew out of it – she would be old enough – she could sleep with Eugene on the double bed. Edward wouldn’t mind that. Would he? 「Of course he would. It won’t last. You’ll hate one another before long. Like a real family」 ‘Isn’t that a good thing? Being like a real family?’ Hitomi thought. 「No, because you’re only strangers – pretending. You can’t stay, Hitomi」 She raised her hand up to her shoulder as if she was massaging a cramp. Eugene looked at her apprehensively. “Let’s go do our lesson now.” She got up with a kick to the floor with her heel. “The sun’s almost out of the window.” The air had warmed with the rising of the sun. When they stepped out, Hitomi took her jacket off and gave it to Eugene, who sat down on the wooden steps and laid it over his lap. She stood in the middle of the lawn with Edward, who placed his little CD player in the grass and pressed play. She faced the ocean with her back to the house. When she slipped off her shoes, she could feel the grass vibrate with the ancient song – sounds of that faraway island that lay deep below her feet, on the other side of the world. The shrill melody of flutes and the insistent regularity of the beating drums rose up through her feet, her knees, her back, her neck, and into the sky. Edward positioned himself slightly ahead of her so she could follow his

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movements, and they began the secret dance of the ancient Japanese courts, called Bugaku.

Kaori died before spring. It had rained after what was to be the last snowstorm of the winter. Their father hadn’t bothered getting snow tires for the Honda Civic, and he had a habit of speeding up before a turn. When the ambulance left for the hospital with two bodies, one living, one dead, the passenger side of the front-wheel-drive had a tree growing out of it. Kaori was thirteen. She had always been an annoyance to Hitomi. Kaori wasn’t very smart or very pretty, so she envied her older sister, idolized her as the thing she could never be. Hitomi hated the way she hung about the kitchen, wanting to help mother. “I’m no good for other things so I should at least become a good wife,” she said. It was probably something one of mother’s friends had told her. She used to bring evening snacks up to Hitomi’s room, never forgetting to ask how things were going with her studies, and what the most recent gossip among the cool kids was. She always assumed Hitomi hung out with the ‘cool kids,’ even though they were in different schools. The truth was, Hitomi didn’t ‘hang out’ with anybody. She talked to the people she was with and said hi to people she recognized in the hallways, but she otherwise avoided them, thinking them all stupid and childish. There was nothing cool about the kids at school. But whenever Kaori asked, she told her things, mostly made up, just to make her go away. Kaori listened with her fawny eyes, stupid and loveable. Hitomi hated those eyes. She stopped talking to her father after the accident. There were a couple of times when he came into her room and sat on the edge of her bed for an hour or so. But she never turned from her computer. One day, he got up and put his hand on her shoulder. It was cold. She shrieked and shrivelled up in her chair, pushing away from him. She started to apologize but stopped when she saw his widened eyes. They reminded her of Kaori. It jolted her heart. That was the last time he came into her room.

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She thought acting would help her forget things, become someone else. Eugene was the first director she had ever worked with. They made a short film about a teenage girl trying to find a ride out of the city. It had no other story; just a girl talking to strangers. Hitomi thought it was simple and beautiful, but not much more than that. The whole crew, of about seven people, got together at one of their houses and had a party. They projected the four-minute film on a wall and congratulated themselves by drinking and smoking weed. Eugene sat with Hitomi the whole evening. He was pleasant, talking incessantly about films and his dreams. She even felt that she would be safe from her breakdowns if she was with him. And she was, then. Eugene said he wanted to go to Japan one day. He had watched all the old Japanese masters. His favourite director was Ozu. He even spoke a little Japanese. “That’s part of the reason why I was so excited to meet you,” he said, looking at her with perfectly clear eyes, even though his speech was slow and dazed with alcohol. “I don’t know if you feel the same way, but even though I’ve spent most of my life here, I’m more drawn to things that are Asian. I feel more emotion watching a Korean or Japanese actor than an American one. Do you ever feel that?” She had never really thought about it. He often made her realize how little she had thought about things. “Now that you say it, maybe.” “Have you ever seen ‘Tokyo Story’ by Ozu?” Hitomi shook her head. “Well it’s the best film ever made, no matter what anybody says. There’s this lady in it whose husband died in the war years ago. She’s still young and pretty, maybe not as pretty as you, but pretty. But she lives alone, not remarrying or anything. She still uses her husband’s name at work and still has his picture on top of a dresser in her little apartment. For years, she continues to act the part of this dead man’s wife. She even takes care of his parents when they visit Tokyo, and she’s the only one who really cares when the mother dies. Can you imagine that? A young beautiful woman, with desires of her own, wasting her life and her youth, just to be this ideal woman that she thinks she’s supposed to be.” He stopped and thought for a moment, looking through the floor – at the film, Hitomi thought, or maybe at Ozu himself.

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“You know what it says on Ozu’s gravestone? There’s only one word on it, a kanji character. Big and right in the centre. The character mu. Nothingness.” He drew the character on the table, a short slant, three horizontal and four vertical lines criss-crossed to make a fence or a cage, and four dots of fire to burn it all away. “Here’s the thing. Nobody’s forcing her to be that way. Nobody wants or even expects her to be that way. At the very end of that film, she finally tells the truth to the father. She says that she forgets her husband from day to day, and it scares her. She’s ashamed of not being fully devoted. She actually apologizes. In tears. She apologizes for nothing other than being human. Could you do that? Apologize for being exactly what you were made to be? In an American film or even in a European film, she would be fighting for her independence, and screaming and fussing over her sexuality. Only in Asia. Only in Japan. That’s why… well, that’s not only why, but it’s why I’m so glad to have met you. You remind me of her. You remind me of the way things are supposed to be.” That night, Eugene walked her home. He asked her if she would go on a trip with him to Newfoundland. She agreed even before he told her when it would be or for how long. They separated at the corner of her street. She didn’t quite expect him to, but he didn’t kiss her goodbye.

On their third night at the cottage, they were sitting on the couch staring at the floor. They only had the kitchen light on, and the room was dark except for the silvery moonlight that spread itself along the floor, not quite reaching their feet. Eugene scooted close, and Hitomi let him kiss her. 「I told you so. This is all he wanted from you.」 She let his hand rest on her knee and slowly make its way up her inner thigh. 「You believed all that bullshit about life itself being a work of art. Never acting on desire alone. Look at him now. Look down」

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She didn’t look down but she lightly pushed him away and looked in his eyes. He wasn’t there. He slipped both of his hands under her shirt and pulled it over her head. She wasn’t wearing a bra. 「Are you enjoying it? Being kissed and touched?」

Hitomi felt the back of her neck grip tight. 「Kaori never got to kiss a boy」

She pushed his face away from her chest, rubbing her ear with her bare shoulder. She screamed and kicked. Her knee landed a blow on Eugene’s side. He jumped up off the couch and took a step back. She had stopped kicking but she was shaking all over as if she was lying on a slab of ice. She felt a stream of saliva running down her cheek. Eugene stood frozen for a moment. But he soon seemed to come to an understanding within himself, and knelt down by her side, patting her hair and shushing to comfort her. It helped. The tension in her spine loosened its grip, and she breathed normally, tears rising to her eyes. He wiped the drool with his own shirt and helped her put hers back on. He put a blanket around her and brought her a cup of warm water, since they didn’t have any coffee or tea in the cottage. Then he sat down beside her. They stared at the floor again. “Is it a seizure?” “I don’t think so.” “Does it happen often?” “Just, sometimes.” “Sorry.” Hitomi shook her head. “Have you been to a doctor?” She shook her head again. “You’re all right. You’ll be all right with me. I won’t do that again.” From the corner of her eyes, Hitomi could see his resolute face. Teeth clenched and lips tight. She sipped her warm water and squirmed a little in her blanket to get snug. She could see the spot on his shirt, damp with her drool. Now that things had settled down, the horrendousness of the

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event began to dawn on her. Neither of them dared to move. The silence was deeper than any she had ever felt before. She bit her lower lip to keep herself from crying. She couldn’t sleep that night. She heard Eugene stirring on the couch for hours before his breathing got slower and louder, and he started to snore gently. She played with the cap of the USB until the sun shot its rays over the Atlantic and spilled into the cottage. As soon as she could see the whole sun over the horizon, she put the USB into her jacket pocket and went out the door. She walked out to the road and threw a stick to decide which direction to go. She walked without any thoughts. She was fully focused on walking; her whole being concentrated on moving forward. The first thing that broke her focus was the sound of foreign music playing in the breeze.

The old man and the girl faced opposite directions and circled one another in tiny little steps, from heel to toe, heel to toe. Everything was done in sync to the music, and to each other. Eugene was amazed at the precision of each movement. He realized how hard Hitomi had been working on it. She never practiced in front of him. He wondered if she practiced in the loft or in the shower when he wasn’t looking. She must have thought he would laugh at her. Without the music, the ocean, and the glare of the sun, the movements would have looked ridiculous. There was a part where they stood with their legs spread wide as if they were riding a horse. They made a small circle with the left hand and stopped it directly in front of their chests with the index and middle fingers pointing to the right. They made the same movement with the right hand and slowly touched the tips of their fingers together. Hitomi missed by a hair and quickly adjusted. “Remember. Don’t fix it. You don’t have to be perfect. Just move on and try to do better next time.” Edward’s voice was gentle, and it went well with the wind and the waves. It reminded Eugene of his father. He was Canadian, pale skinned and blue eyed. He was kind, like Edward. Too kind, he thought, his father and mother both. He was already six when he first met them, and they were so kind that one would have thought he was retarded or something. It became

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very hard for him to tell love from pity. He watched the skinny little girl with the stern look on her face. She swung her knee up waist high and softly kicked out her shin. As she brought it back down, she slid over to the side with her arms outstretched as if to hug the entire ocean. He hoped he could love her without pity. After a short silence in the music, Hitomi became unsure of the movements. She tried to follow Edward and was a moment behind on every move. They were rippling, Eugene thought. He hung Hitomi’s jacket over the railing and ran to the car to get his DSLR. When he got back, they had stopped the CD and were going over the movements one by one. Eugene crouched down on the grass and tried to find a good angle. “You gonna take pictures? Just wait until I teach her this part and I’ll get out of the way.” “You stay where you are. I’m not taking any pictures yet. I’m in movie mode anyways. I don’t think this dance was made for stills.” Hitomi loosened up her frown for a moment and smiled at Eugene. It made his legs weak but it was gone before he could press record. It seemed to him that he was always a moment too late, unable to capture the most genuine moments. He was frantically trying to save life in his little rectangular box, but it was always slipping through his fingers like running water. But this was a moment to hold, if any moment was worth holding. He would cup it in his hands as long as he could, knowing that it will eventually all leak away. He got up. “I’m going to get my lenses from the cottage. I’ll be back in about fifteen minutes. I want to do this right.” They watched him run around the house and drive off. They looked at each other and laughed. “He’s an odd one, isn’t he?” Edward said. “Yeah, but he’s the normallest one of us three.” “Maybe,” he chuckled. Hitomi stood with her head down, brushing the grass with her foot. “We had a fight yesterday.” Edward listened. “He went through my things. He said he was looking for a towel, but I didn’t believe him. He could have just took one out of the laundry basket and used it again.”

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“You didn’t do your laundry?” “I forgot. Anyways, he shouldn’t have gone through my bags, for whatever reason.” “So you yelled at him?” “Yeah, but not just for that.” “Then for what?” Hitomi hesitated, and when she spoke again, her voice was much quieter. “I have this little USB stick. He was holding it, and he asked me if he could use it.” “What’s a USB stick?” “It’s a memory stick. You plug it in to a computer and you can store stuff.” “Oh, and you didn’t want him to use it?” “No.” “Is there something in it you didn’t want him to see?” “No, well…maybe. I don’t know.” Hitomi walked away from him a few steps and crouched down, hugging her knees and picking at the poor defenceless grass. “What do you mean? What’s in it?” “I don’t know. I never checked.” Edward tilted his head and looked confused. “It was my little sister’s. I think she kept her diary in it. I’m not sure. Did I tell you about Kaori?” Edward nodded. “So you got angry. He didn’t know. You should forgive him.” “Yeah…I didn’t talk to him until he picked me up on the road, when I was walking here.” He smiled at her, and stood there looking over her a little while. Hitomi knew she was being watched and turned her back. She felt like a little child who’d done an innocent crime and was being laughed at rather than scolded. “Hey. Come inside. I want to show you something.” Edward headed for the house. “Show me what? Shouldn’t we wait for him?” “It’s something for the movie. Come on.” Edward led her inside and made her wait in the living room. He soon came back with a cardboard box and laid it on the floor. STEPHEN CHOI 85

“What is it?” Hitomi asked. “It’s a kimono. One my wife used to wear when she performed.” He opened the box and took out a wide pair of red trousers, which he said were called hakama. It was a soft bright red that was lustrous but didn’t hurt your eyes. It was a colour that drew one’s attention and held it there. Hitomi took it in her hands and admired the gleaming cloth. Edward then took out a white kimono jacket he called haori. It was a pure white, not the yellowish or greyish colour people lazily call white, but real white. When held up by Edward, it looked more like a sail or a tarp than a piece of clothing. Hitomi had seen the outfit before. They were worn by girls who worked at the shinto shrines. She used to think them very pretty. They were called… “What were they called again? The people who wear this?” “Miko. They’re supposed to be shamans, I think.” “Right, miko. The ones I saw didn’t look like shamans. They were handing out fliers and selling gifts.” “You’ve seen them?” “Yeah, when we visited. Back when I was in elementary school.” Everything she remembered about Japan was from that one trip, even though she was supposedly born there. What she remembered most were the people. She saw, in one day, more people than she had ever seen in her life. And they all looked like her, black hair and brown eyes. Her parents had taken her and Kaori to a shrine when there was some kind of festival. Most of the girls their age were wearing colourful kimonos and Kaori cried because she wasn’t wearing the pretty dress like the other girls. But Hitomi liked better the simple red and white of the mikos’ dress. “You know, I told mother I wanted to be a miko, when I saw them,” Hitomi said, as the memories came back to her. “She told me I couldn’t, because there were no mikos in Canada.” “Well, I guess we can prove her wrong.” Hitomi put on the kimono over top of the clothes she was wearing. When she had it on, Edward gave her some red and white ribbon to tie her hair with. “Do you have a mirror?” “Yes. In my bedroom.”

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She ran into the bedroom enjoying the flutter of the trailing cloth. She was surprised at how different she looked. She looked just like the mikos she had seen at the festival. It somehow made her feel strong and protected, like she was a part of something much bigger and older than her little self. The wide sleeves of the haori hung below her knees and when she moved her arms they flapped like the wings of a crane. She flashed her new found wings and flew back out to where Edward was, to thank him. But she stopped in the hallway, folding her wings to her sides. Edward was sitting down. He was covering his eyes with his hands. He breathed in short abrupt gasps as if he was trying to hold his breath. She sat down beside him and put a hand on his shoulder. He laid one of his own on hers, and she could feel his tears on her knuckles. “You look beautiful, Hitomi,” Edward managed to say after a while. Hitomi didn’t know what to say, but she wished she did. She wished she could be of help to him, as he was to her. She was so little and weak, without anything to give. She possessed nothing more than youth and beauty, and she was yet to learn just how much those were worth to men like him. When Eugene came back, he seemed to sense something but he didn’t ask. He put on his careless cheery voice and exclaimed. “Wow, look at you!” Hitomi went down the steps to him and Edward watched from the doorway. “Is it a kimono?” “Yeah, but it’s special. It’s a miko’s kimono.” “Miko? What’s that?” “It’s a shaman,” she said, playfully. “At least that’s what they used to be, a long time ago.” “A shaman? No way. You look more like an angel, or a goddess.” “Well, she is a goddess,” Edward called out from behind. “She’s Uzume.” Hitomi looked back at him and smiled. “She’s what?” Eugene looked puzzled. “Have you heard of Amaterasu?” she asked. He shrugged and shook his head.

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“She’s the sun goddess. And this one time, she hid inside a cave because her brother was being mean. The whole world went dark. And it was always night, no day.” She checked to see if he was following. He nodded her on. “So a big group of gods got together to try and bring her out. Their plan was to put on this big show. They made a bunch of instruments and gathered a whole lot of song birds. Then the birds started singing and the gods started playing their instruments. Then Uzume, this really pretty goddess, came out and started dancing, all sexy-like.” She giggled and pretended to throw off her clothes. “All the gods cheered and laughed, and obviously Amaterasu was too curious to stay in a stupid cave. So she came out, and we have light.” She pointed to the sun. “That’s where bugaku comes from. Right?” Edward smiled. “Something like that.” The sun had risen high now and its rays had become even warmer. Eugene got to setting his camera on a tripod and handed Edward a couple of reflectors. “Just watch the light on her and try to follow her movements,” he said. When he was set up, he told Hitomi to stand facing the house so he could get the ocean in the background. She stood as she was told, and soon began to feel a little nervous. Looking at the the camera and seeing the glare from the reflector, she felt as if she had forgotten all the moves. Everything felt backwards when she stood that way. She couldn’t even stand straight. She thought she must have been using the horizon to keep her balance, because she felt as if she would fall over any second. She looked over at Eugene who was taking his time fidgeting with his camera. She wanted to tell him to hurry up, but her voice had disappeared from her throat. 「Stop pretending, Hitomi. You’re not a miko, or a dancer」said a starling on her shoulder. She clenched her teeth and rubbed her ear with her shoulder. Eugene wasn’t watching and Edward was focused on trying to figure out how to use the reflectors.

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「You’re Uzume? A goddess? She was a stripper! You’re seventeen. You shouldn’t be here with these men」

She felt her back beginning to tighten up. She walked quickly over to the CD player and turned it on. The familiar music, the one she had heard that morning on her first walk alone, the one she had been listening to every morning since then, took over her body, and let her rest in the regularity of the beating drums. She stood up and began the dance without Eugene’s cue. She took a step forward and stood tall. Her eyes followed her hands into the sky and back down. She had to be in control of her entire body, even for the simplest movements. It was precisely because they were so simple that they required so much care and effort. Her fingers met in perfect symmetry in front of her chest. She couldn’t even tell if Eugene had started filming her or not. She didn’t care. She was alone; she could be anywhere. It was just her and the music and the sun. A starling on her shoulder seemed to whisper something in her ear but she didn’t hear it. She was a goddess in the middle of her dance. She was not to be disturbed. “Oh my god. Look at that!” Eugene pointed above Hitomi’s head. A murmuration of thousands of starlings flew in from the east, forming liquid patterns in the sky with their collective writhings. They folded and unfolded like a ribbon or a flag blowing in the wind. They spread out and thinned into a translucent veil, only to gather together again in bulging waves and rolling hills. They moved with a natural grace that was completely honest and true. Seeing them dance over her head, Hitomi forgot all the moves she had been practicing and let her body flow with the flight of the birds. By mimicking them, she could feel the myriad of emotions that hid themselves in physical movements. She hopped, twisted, and rolled on the grass. Convulsions of the body were convulsions of the mind. One could dance away the throes of a heart convulse. As suddenly as they came, the starlings went away toward the west. The two men stood dumbfounded, as the girl lay sprawled on the grass, heaving for breath. Hitomi looked up at Eugene. “Did you get it?” His eyes flickered awake. “I think so. I hope.” The three of them gathered around the camera and Eugene replayed what he just recorded. The little birds were hard to see in the small

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LCD screen. Only Hitomi’s head was bobbing up and down at the bottom of the frame. She laughed at her own stern face, concentrated on some grand effort, which felt so lame when seen on video. The three of them laughed it off, the whole event. The day and its thoughts and speeches and actions were all shaken off with a good hearty laugh, together. Hitomi looked down at her kimono and saw that there were grass stains on it. “Sorry, Edward. I dirtied it. And it was your wife’s.” “Don’t worry about it. You keep it.” “No. I can’t.” Edward insisted that she have it. Hitomi hugged him and ran into the house to change. She folded the haori and the hakama neatly in the box, admiring it for a long time before she went back out. On the drive back to the cottage, she thought about calling mother and asking her how to get the grass stains out. Eugene talked about how he was bummed out at failing to get a good shot, even though he didn’t really look it. He started humming some improvised song and tapping the handle bar with his fingers. After the young people drove off, Edward noticed Hitomi’s jacket hanging on the porch railing. He stood looking at it for a moment, thinking of what to do. In the end, he just left it there and went inside. The sun had risen directly overhead and the heat was rising to its peak. He knew she wouldn’t need it anymore.

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CONTRIBUTORS

ANNE BALDO is a former student at the University of Windsor, previously

published in Existere, Carousel, Lichen, and Contemporary Verse 2.

NICOLAS BILLON’s work has been produced in Toronto, Stratford, Van-

couver, New York and Paris. His book of three plays Fault Lines: Greenland – Iceland – Faroe Islands won the 2013 Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama. He recently adapted his first play, The Elephant Song, into a feature film. Nicolas grew up in Montreal and now lives in Toronto. JAMES CEDARHILL is a poet living in Toronto. He works too much, and

doesn’t write as much as he would like. When he does set his mind to writing, it often lands in and around the concept of space: suburbs, cities, dreams, and the lonely people that inhabit them. He also plays hockey, and struggles with a baseball obsession. PEARL CHAN is a writer of short fiction and plays. She is the publisher

of Paisley Chapbook Press and fiction editor of The Impressment Gang. She works with bikes otherwise and enjoys cooking. She acknowledges the support of Nova Scotia Talent Trust. STEPHEN CHOI studied English Literature at Saint Mary’s University. He

began writing fiction after reading Virginia Woolf ’s “Mrs Dalloway” in class and feeling the vast possibilities of literary expression. He is currently living in London, Ontario and has very little idea where he will end up in the future. CLAY EVEREST is from Halifax, Nova Scotia and graduated from Dalhousie

University with a double major in English and Creative Writing. A chapbook of his work was released by Paisley Press. He has worked as an editor with both Paisley Press and The Impressment Gang. Clay Everest likes boats and loves the Nova Scotia Talent Trust.

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CASSIE GUINAN graduated from University of King’s College and Dalhousie

University with a BA in Classics and Creative Writing. Nunc plurimum latinum dediscit. She is a writer of small poems and stories. Cassie is one of two poetry editors and co-director of The Impressment Gang. ALYSON HARDWICK is a Halifax photographer who has been writing in a

journal since 2002.

ALAN HILL was born in the South West of England near the Welsh border.

After leaving school at sixteen, he travelled extensively and worked in jobs ranging from renovating old graveyards to working in a jellybean factory before eventually studying at the University of Leeds. Since 2005, Alan has been living in Canada after meeting his Vietnamese-Canadian wife to be while working in Botswana. Alan Hill has been previously published in North America in CV2, Canadian Literature, Vancouver Review, Antigonish Review, SubTerrain, Poetry is Dead, Quills, Cascadia Review, Reunion- The Dallas Review and in a number of anthologies and in the United Kingdom in South, The Wolf, Brittle Star and Turbulence. His second full collection, The Broken Word (Silver-Bow Press), was published in mid 2013. He is a regular reader of poetry at readings in Vancouver and has appeared at both ‘Word on The Street’ and ‘Summer Dreams’ literary festivals. More on Alan can be found at: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/AlanHill DESIREE JUNG has a background in journalism, film, creative writing, and

comparative literature. She has published translations, fiction and poetry in Exile, The Dirty Goat, Modern Poetry in Translation, The Antigonish Review, The Haro, The Literary Yard, Black Bottom Review, Gravel Magazine, Tree House, Bricolage, Hamilton Stone Review, Ijagun Poetry Journal, Scapegoat Review, Storyalicious, Perceptions, Loading Zone, and others. For more information see her website: www.desireejung.com

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MATEA KULIĆ is a writer and literacy tutor living in Vancouver. The rhythm

in language instructs her poetry. Her work has been published in The Capilano Review, RicePaper, Emerge and The Maynard Review among others. She studied under the mentorship of poet Jen Currin at Simon Fraser University’s Writer’s Studio. Between work and writing, she makes time for swimming. WINONA LINN is a Canadian poet, performer, teacher and spoken word

artist. Linn was the 2011 poet laureate of the Federal Green Party of Canada, and wrote and performed poems on a variety of issues for the duration of the 2011 federal election. In the spring of 2013, a collection of Linn’s poems was published by Paisley Chapbook Press out of Halifax, Nova Scotia. This collection, entitled Stand Tall, was a collaboration with visual artist Sidney Robichaud and is available for sale across Canada. Linn has been published in multiple journals including The Philistine, Lantern, and Maple Tree Literary Supplement. Currently, Winona Linn lives in Paris, France where she teaches poetry to children. MARK JORDAN MANNER is currently completing his MFA in creative writing

at the University of Guelph. His stories have appeared in Grain, Prairie Fire, EVENT, The Antigonish Review, The Dalhousie Review, and others. He lives in Toronto.

DAWNA GALLAGHER MOORE is known for her cryptic, witty, and pointed

cartoons which challenge or “send-up” clichéd modern responses to thorny issues or social encounters. Dawna has a BFA and MFA from NSCAD University and studied at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She was a recipient of Canada Council visual art grants and the Brucebo Canadian

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-Scandinavian Foundation scholarship for landscape painting. Her humorous sketches have appeared in publications in Ottawa, Halifax, Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, and New York. Although her desk is often messy, she can always find her pen and paper. THOMAS O’CONNELL is a librarian living on the shores of the Hudson River

in Beacon, NY. His poetry and short fiction has appeared in Caketrain, NANO Fiction, and The Los Angeles Review, as well as other print and online journals. MARIE SOLIS is your average twentysomething year old who, by day, works

as a Quality Assurance employee who religiously follows strict protocol and guidelines for a company that does logistics for clinical trials around the world. By night, she lies down in bed and writes stories on the fly. Sometimes she attempts bad poetry (though you will not be getting any bad poetry from her). Either way, to hell with protocol. BEN STEPHENSON is the author of the novel A Matter of Life and Death Or

Something (Douglas & McIntyre, 2012). It was longlisted for the IMPAC Dublin award, and CBC Books named him one of “10 Canadian Writers to Watch.” He is currently living in Toronto and working on something else. ANNE WHITE has been writing stuff since high school, and is finally trying to

share some of it. She thinks mostly in poems but once in a while a short story pops into her head. She hopes to cultivate a more regular writing practice and maybe even call herself a writer one day. And she’s reading a lot of W.H. Auden right now.

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NOV 2014 ISSUE 1:2

MATEA KULIĆ THOMAS O’CONNELL ANNE BALDO DESIREE JUNG JAMES CEDARHILL ALAN HILL WINONA LINN BEN STEPHENSON STEPHEN CHOI MARK JORDAN MANNER ANNE WHITE MARIE SOLIS NICOLAS BILLON ALYSON HARDWICK DAWNA GALLAGHER MOORE