THE
QUARANTINE REVIEW
Without Baseball | Stacey May Fowles
Paul Vermeersch | Liturgy Words for A Heart | Samantha Garner Shajia Sarfraz | Social Distancing Almost Forty Days | Lindsay Zier-Vogel A.G. Pasquella | Haircut and more . . .
Volume 1 | Issue 1
THE
QUARANTINE REVIEW
ISSUE 1
2 3 5 6
CONTRIBUTORS EDITOR’S NOTE
Shannon Butcher | Jeffrey Dupuis
16
FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE
Without Baseball | Stacey May Fowles
Social Distancing | Shajia Sarfraz CREATIVE NON-FICTION
26
AIR MAIL
29
MAINSTREAM MEDIA
19 24
Without Baseball
Travel Memoirs | Fei Lu Art by Fei Lu
8
12
Almost Forty Days | Lindsay Zier-Vogel
Rogers Centre. Photo by Tim Gouw/Unsplash
ESSAY
31
Shannon Butcher
5 QUESTIONS
12
20
6
HUMOUR
The Haircut | A.G. Pasquella
Photo courtesy of Shannon Butcher
In This Issue
While We Were Quarantined THE ANTIDOTE
The Cocktail Cure POETRY
26
Liturgy for the Formal Exoneration of the Serpent in Genesis | Paul Vermeersch When You Don’t See Me | Samantha Garner
Words for a Heart | Samantha Garner
Travel Memoirs ON THE COVER Leftovers by Peter Hamilton FEATURING ILLUSTRATIONS BY Andrew Gordon MacPherson
EDITOR’S NOTE
I Think We’re Alone Now
W
hen the World Health Organization declared a pandemic on March 11, 2020, there was a sense of surrealism in the public mind. With no frame of reference for an outbreak of this magnitude, our minds filled in the gaps with fear, confusion, or doubt, making each report on the news approximating Orson Welles’s infamous War of the Worlds radio broadcast. By April, not only was the coronavirus here, but it was omnipresent, on every unsanitized surface and behind every mask. In this time of collective loneliness and upheaval, we wanted to launch a magazine that offers a chance to look inward and outward simultaneously. Where we can immerse ourselves into poetry as a respite (pp. 8, 19, 24), collectively bemoan the delay of baseball as the virus chips away at another simple pleasure (p. 12), or even embark on a haircutting adventure (p. 5). Our regular schedules are splintering. Days have started blending together (p. 20). T. S. Eliot’s Prufrock might have preferred coffee, but across the globe people have started measuring out their lives in spoonfuls of sourdough starters. Baking has achieved a new rank of celebrity, and mixing cocktails, dubbed “quarantinis” are making a comeback. In fact, this issue shares a couple of recipes that might help take the edge off (p. 31). We may be isolated as never before, but our loneliness and longing are felt everywhere, as evidenced by the talented contributors who made this magazine possible, giving voice to the swirling emotions inside each of us.
There will come a time to put our suits back on, to kiss our loved ones goodbye and emerge from our front doors like Superman emerging from a phone booth, ready to face the day in our offices. For now, our lives have become jazz improvisations, replacing the familiar melody and tempo with something as novel as this virus itself. With so much focus on the confinement of being at home, let’s ponder the freedom it offers. The freedom to connect with ourselves through art and literature, the freedom to connect with each other on a different level. We invite you to use The Quarantine Review as a map, a guide, a log, a message in a bottle. Join us in that interlude between answering work emails and deciding what to binge-watch or that twilight when the kids are finally in bed and before sleep comes for you.
— Jeffrey Dupuis and Sheeza Sarfraz
The Quarantine Review
3
Photo by Nick Demou/Pexels.
HUMOUR
The Haircut A.G. Pasquella
Y
ou’re looking a little shaggy there, but don’t worry, your ol’ Uncle A.G. is here to help.
To start off, you’re going to need: *A pair of scissors. Any ol’ scissors will do. Blunt-tipped child-proof? We can work with that. Rusty and old? That’s just fine. We all get old eventually. *A razor. Ideally you got an old-fashioned straight razor lying around, preferably in a big glass jar filled with bright blue Barbicide but if not, rummage through your drawers until you find an extra safety razor or two. And maybe that can of lime-scented shaving cream you only used once. Lime-scented? Why’d you buy that? *A jar of peanut butter. Chunky works best but in a pinch, smooth will do. All righty! Let’s do the bangs first. What you want to do is cut dry hair, not wet, and use tiny vertical cuts. If you cut straight across in a horizontal line you’ll end up with what the pros call a “bowl cut” that might look adorable on a 1970s newspaper boy but might not be exactly the look you’re going for. Snip away! That’s it, a little more. Now even it out. Oops, okay, now just even out that part. Um… yeah. Good enough. Let’s move on! The side of the head is no problem. What you want to do is lift up layers with a comb. Oh, I didn’t say you’d need a comb? Yeah. You need a comb. Lift up the layers and snip, using the comb as a guide. Whoa there! Start slow! You can always cut more but gluing on hair to make your
hair look longer doesn’t work for long, believe me. First rainstorm and it’s gone. Okay, good. Now do the other side. You got this! Snip, snip, snip. Keep moving the comb down until it’s just over the ear. Now the hair behind the ear is tricky. It’s hiding back there and it’s wily. Pinch it up in your fingers and snip. Don’t cut your ear off, now. The back of the head is where it gets tricky. Get out your peanut butter and reach in there and pull out a whole handful. Rub it into the back of your head. Rub it in there real good, being sure to work in all those little nut bits. Good! Now stand on your back porch and whistle for the goats. You’ll have to bend down or at least sit in that ol’ rocker over there but those goats’ll make short work of the peanut butter and the hair on the back of your head, too. Finally, spray the shaving foam on the back of your neck and shave off any stray hairs that might remain. All right! Get yourself a hand mirror and check out your new ’do! There, now. No tears. It’ll grow back.
The Quarantine Review
5
