Grub Street
POEMS & PROSE April, 2012 Contents Jerrica May Gilbert.............................IV Spencer Banfield....................................X Ben Switzer........................................XIII Evan Pebesma....................................XIV
Kerrie Winegarden................XVII Angela Herring-Lauzon.....XXIII Alex Mason............................XXVI Everett Aukema....................XXIX
HURON LITERARY SOCIETY Price, paper; 2 dollars
Vol. 1 Number 3
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GRUB STREET HURON LITERARY SOCIETY
by Alex Assaly & Michael Sparrow
Huron University College 2012
Is this high enough? -James Joyce
Huron, The house of silent poets or a refuge for the unaware and apathetic? Although its walls stand high, the bricks appear to be laid without mortar; dispassion disintegrates its foundation and leaves the structure trembling on a hill of sand. Have the painters stopped painting? The poets consumed their ink? When letter writers stand - like hypocrites perhaps - and preach before you, listen: return to art and produce, for every nation, every race has its own creative and critical minds. Turn silence into music, letters into books, and white walls into paintings. Turn your bedlam into the house of singers and players of instruments. * This will be the final issue in which we are invovled. We have suffered through the highs and lows that publishing poetry and prose entails and we have emerged all the more enthusiastic about our collective literary potential. For those who come after us, we wish nothing but luck in the hopes that the community of art in our schools never goes unnoticed. To all those holding on to a false center, we hope that our work brings you a measure of solace. For those stricken with the modernist condition, we offer our empathy. For those who create, we offer nothing but praise and adimeration. The Huron Literary Society would like to give special thanks to Adam Schwartz and Sean MacDougall, Dr. Davies, Dr. Brooks, Dr. McCarthy, Dr. Hyland, and Huron’s English Department for supporting and teaching the arts. Thanks to principle Dr. Stephen McClatchie, the HUCSC and, most importantly, the Huron students. Breathe art, produce, and support. Your Editors, Alex Assaly and Michael Sparrow
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Jerrica May Gilbert On the Floor, Take Three I believe this may call for a proper introduction – last year’s holidays were spent working in a summer student program at a local hospital as an Environment Service Worker, or ESW for short. Really, it’s a pretty cool title that makes it sound like I do something awesome and technical instead of cleaning up urine spills and blood splatters. ESW is really just a nice way for saying the person who picks up after the nurses and mops the floors. We’re really just glorified housekeepers, or at least we’re treated as such. Depending on your perspective, it’s either the best or worst job you can have as a student. You work ten hours around very sick people (some irritable jerk offs and some patron saints that try to give you their boxes of chocolates – usually the latter has cancer and the former is in for a ruptured hemorrhoid), maneuvering around pretentious doctors, hassled nurses and overly-controlling family members while dreaming about having weekends off again (sometime in September) and wondering what medications it is that make the puke on the 4th floor bright green. On the other hand, you make more money than you believed possible for someone with just a high school diploma (or an Arts degree, as I was told by a bitter thirty-something Anthropology major I was helping on 7 one afternoon). Honestly, this isn’t the most interesting anecdotal experience from last summer. Needless to say, the hospital environment allows for a lot of crazy stuff to go down and even with just four months under my belt I could bore you with pages of mishappenings I managed to witness or participate in. I don’t have enough time to write them all down, however, and sometimes I wonder whether or not some of them were actually funny or I was just drunk off of hand sanitizer. Instead, this will be about 306 – because I want her to continue here. Talking to the patient and letting them know why I was there before I was even past the bedroom was standard protocol for me, so I spoke to her as I entered the room. Even though I was just the ‘Cleaning Lady’ as some nurses eloquently called me, I wanted them to feel like I was there to help them – maybe make the IVs, wheelchairs and shitty hospital food seem a bit friendlier for a moment. And for those conscious, the illusion of choice in the matter. Unfortunately, the reality is they usually don’t give a damn why I’m there or who I am, and that room is going to be cleaned no matter what their opinion is on the matter. IV
I was on VRE cleans for the day, which I don’t actually mind despite the burden of additional precautions. In case you’re curious, VRE is the short form for Vancomycin-resistant enterococci, or bacteria that is no longer treatable by antibiotics. You probably have it in your system – it’s usually harmless to healthy carriers. To those in critical care, with weakened immune systems and in contact with patients with the bacterium, VRE can result in blood infections, urinary tract infections or abscesses (think what it would look like if a person was rotting alive). Overall, it’s not a pleasant thing to have and will definitely double the length of your hospital stay, not to mention the costs (somebody has to pay for healthcare, after all). To attempt to isolate the spread of VRE and other microorganisms resistant to antibiotics, hospitals across the province have unleashed a host of preventative measures, including restricting patient access to communal areas, mandating personal precautionary equipment for staff (gloves, gowns and occasionally face masks) and additional cleaning measures. That’s my queue. As I was saying, VRE shifts aren’t actually that bad due to a variety of reasons. You’re not tied down to one floor (and not at the call of every dropped urinal), so you can work on your own time on rooms that usually aren’t too bad. Gearing up to go into the rooms also gives you a smidgen of self-importance – hey, I’m helping to fight a potential menace to public health! – that is until you realize that the patient has three visitors that haven’t even bothered to put on gloves. Well, let’s just hope they remember to wash their hands before they head out to the grocery store. I also like gathering up handfuls of the colourful rags we use before I venture into the rooms. Pink, blue, green and recently yellow: besides the bright blue scrubs they issue us downstairs, this job is pretty colourless. Room 306, 6th floor, looked great when I gave her my preliminary scan. Bathroom hadn’t been touched (patient had a catheter), no cards or flowers on the window ledges, and overall the room was tidy. I was looking forward to an easy clean. The only thing that bothered me was the unresponsive patient. I hate cleaning in rooms where they’re either sleeping or spaced out. This lady appeared to be the latter, as she was sitting up with the aid of the bed with her eyes half open and her mouth slightly askew. After a few weeks of training, however, I knew that it’s mostly best to pretend that either the patient isn’t there or that everything is perfectly peachy. I had almost all the rooms done on my list and just under three hours to go before my shift ended. Success breeds confidence, so I leapt to the task with a full commentary on the happenings in V
and around the hospital. Just the regular chitchat that’ll work with any stranger, usually beginning with the weather. I breezed through the room (cleanest to dirtiest, that’s important), and it wasn’t until I reached for my companion’s call bell resting next to her on the bed that I noticed. Her chest lay flat against the mattress, her face pale and her hand stiff and cold through my own gloved one. I had been talking for five minutes about the weather to a dead person. Frozen, I stood next to her thin frame in the bed as the minutes ticked by. My eyes desperately scanned her body, looking for any indication of life. Could that have been a flicker of an eyelash? A twitch under the covers by a toe? Finally, I mounted up the courage to see for myself if there was anything left: I slowly raised my hand from the bedrail, hovering my finger inches away from her and then – I poked her. In the shoulder to be precise, as you would for a person that you wanted to annoyingly wake up. No movement… oh no. I won’t lie to you – I debated just finishing up the clean, mopping the floor and quietly leaving the room. As easy as that would have been, however, I felt bad leaving her there by herself. Suddenly, the lack of flowers on the ledges seemed horribly disquieting. So I went in my disposable yellow gown over my bright blue uniform and stood meekly at the door waiting for the first nurse to wander by. After what felt like hours, one eventually did. “Excuse me,” I called out to her before she could duck into another room, “Could you come have a look at this patient for me? She doesn’t look very good.” She looked up annoyed from her chart, “Sorry, not my patient.” “Just for a minute? She really doesn’t look good.” She sighed as she walked over – you can’t really blame her, they have enough on their plate taking care of four other patients let alone other nurses’. I’ve been told that their workload will soon be going up to five this year, to satisfy budget cuts in the field. I hovered in one corner of the room as she looked over my patient, searching for a pulse on her wrist. By this time, my patient’s actual nurse entered the room. “Is everything all right?” The first nurse looked up. “She called me in to look at her,” indicating me in the corner, “I’m not finding anything.” The second nurse took off her stethoscope. “I just checked her thirty minutes VI
ago, and she was fine.” Huh, that didn’t take long. They stood still as they both listened in vain for a heartbeat. “Well, guess we better call downstairs for this one.” The first nurse straightened up and left the room without another word, while the second looked over the patient’s chart one last time. Then, inexplicitly to me, she went to leave. I jumped out of my haze. “Do you want me to finish cleaning the room?” She looked around as though she had forgotten I was there. “Not unless you want to.” And with that, she left. I followed. Back in the hallway, I wasn’t really sure what to do. I mean, I knew that I should have really gone on to finish the rest of the rooms on my list, but that didn’t feel right for some reason. I wasn’t upset either, just felt oddly blank at the thought that a couple of meters away there was a dead lady lying in her bed just as the nurse had left her thirty minutes ago. Isn’t dying more spectacular than this? No one really seemed concerned. Eventually, I attracted the attention of the floor’s SSW (social support worker, or the people that bring your meals and stock the nurses’ servers). This one in particular was a middleaged motherly type from Columbia, on her way to replenish the supply of hand towels. “What’s wrong hunnie?” She asked absent-mindedly as she refolded the towels. “I think 306 is dead.” She snapped to attention. “Do the nurses know?” “Yes, they looked at her anyway.” Relieved, her expression turned to sympathy. “Don’t worry about it sweetie, that happens around here all the time. You get so used to it that you’ll stop thinking about it, especially when you’re so young. Me, I sometimes think about it only because I’m getting to that age where I can see me in that bed –” That may have been a joke to reassure me. “— but you, you’ve got lots of life in you! You don’t need to worry about stuff like that yet. Have you taken your last break yet?” I shook my head no. “You just go downstairs then and don’t worry about this then. Maybe get a cookie or something, take your mind off these things.” VII
I agreed that was a good idea, since I had lots of time to do my last rooms. I left my cleaning cart at the end of the hallway and headed for the elevators. As I got on, an older Asian doctor was dictating to a fresh resident, who was reading over notes on a clipboard. I skipped Level 3 with the cafeteria and went straight to the basement to the woman’s locker room. I still had a granola bar leftover from my lunch, and figured it would be cooler down there anyways. It gets hot on the higher floors. Retrieving my cart on the 6th floor, I noticed the doctor and resident I had passed earlier leaving 306. My SSW was now in the process of cleaning up the last trays from lunch a few rooms down. For some reason, I had a glimmer of hope. “Hey, is she ok?” I asked her casually as I passed by to my next room. She looked up and laughed. “Yeah, she’s going to be fine!” “Really?!” I’m sure I must have looked similar to a kid being told they’re going to Disney World for the first time – all smiles and bright-eyed, hardly believing it to be true. Then again, my parents never took me to Disney World so I really couldn’t know. “Nope, she’s dead: don’t you worry about it though!” Crap. I wish I had a better ending to this little tale. How reassuring it would be to say that there was a moral to be found here, or something at least a bit more interesting than a summer student finding what was a very old and sick woman dead in her hospital bed. But to say any differently would disqualify what I believe to be true: there really isn’t anything more interesting in death than there seems to be in life. I went home that day, attempted to cook hamburgers on the barbeque (my roommate did a better job once he lit the grill an hour later) and spent the remaining hours of the day looking at pictures of cats (more or less accurate of how I spend my time on the internet, sadly enough). I had decided that it was kind of a funny story to tell, a sort of initiation rite that all hospital employees go through at some point or another. Swapping experiences with other ESWs and SSWs during lunch, you discover that it really is a normal thing. You nod in acceptance when they tell you of all the heart attacks and organ failures they’ve had to clean up after, learning how to unplug breathing tubes, mop up bits of heart cartilage in the OR, and how to maneuver around grieving family members. We laugh at the silliness of a family conducting a thirty minute service in the ER for their deceased while someone else waits in VIII
the ambulance bay. We know we’re all getting there someday, but why worry about it now? This summer alone I encountered six bodies including my first, and had the pleasure with being acquainted with two more over the Christmas Break. You get used to it. That night in bed, I sobbed into my pillow.
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Spencer Banfield It Do you have it? You know, it? That which defies classification, contemplation, definition It which inclines, defies, and in us, it resides From which we derive who we are and our drive It, the force that pushed wings off the ground and man into the sky It’s the wit that affixed the places in history of those who didn’t listen to the snide and looked for truth in the mystery the roots of ingenuity, the new schoolery, it intuitively pushed those of the cliff of cowardess and prejudice to float in the stars amongst gods and goddesses It’s the bit where closure is the exposure, the stubbornness to adhere to those who’d say “what did I told ya?” and “did that get you anywhere?” Whom with the it hears nothing, the mind is free to dream because Biblically put, to attain the knowledge, Eve had to shake the tree It is a purposeful misadventure, it reenters the consciousness indentured As astonishment, it is a fire with an infinitely lit ember nonexistent in the pretender History will only remember those who took the first step on a ladder With rungs unkempt, but they never blame the inept, because one cannot blame Another, berate another, cage another for a ladder no one ever thought to respect It is a slow death greeted by a welcoming smile just as long as miles and miles and miles away, the guile and the grit of the it shines light upon the ultimate verdict until then, the adjudication is unheard, but sticking to speculation and expectation can only lead the naysayers submerged in the absurd and to resist the mind’s emancipation. It is the hammer taken to the walls of doubt, it is the thunderstorm amidst the drought, through darkness it is the scout, for every crossing path it is the reroute, it is the principle that defies the cynical, the submission of the agnostic to the spiritual. It becomes physical, literal, lyrical, hearable, the quelling of flout it is within all of us, so let your it out.
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The Light Through the pain of mortal bounds, from the existence to which we astound, Constantly running from the hounds, we flee towards the light The blood, sweat, toil, and tears, the origins of all our fears Seem in a flash to disappear, when we bare witness to the light Through the prism it turns to color, through tribulation we find in another Fellow dreamers, believers, even brothers when we look upon the light No peril shall trump the feeling, the warming comfort waning, fleeting Slowly slipping, never seething, the light is but a solemn greeting From birth to death, from wake to rest, in despair and in jest we take upon this lifelong test to purge the heart within our chest that’s worth can truly only be guessed, until we observe the light to cast away the evil within, to bring about hope to the grim, some strive to act akin to their fathers and fathers and fathers before, because they had once taken upon the chore, and thus the light had opened the gates to let them in we have inclined, amidst the expanse of time, to live vicariously from the divine, a hand on the back of the head forcing the nose to the grind, maybe sometime we’ll find through all the crap we garner strength to crack a grin, possibly then, the light won’t rescind when one day when we reach the final intent from this burden we burgeon a lifetime of earning and devout service our release from eternal yearning, insecurities constantly flipping, spinning, spiraling, curling to secure our rightful place behind the curtain, to which then we can be more than certain, in the distance the carpet unfurling, at the other end, the light to me, this cannot be, the belief that to secede from this earth of blue and green to bound across the expanse of eternity with hopes of attaining that longing feeling of the serene, surely this cannot be man’s only mystery, the light I refute, I detest, this idea that at best our world is worth nothing more or less than to leave it and so much we’d invest in love of our families and our moral candidacy as if it only mattered that in the end we would present it to the light call it ignorance, call it denial, call it abhorrence, call it primal to believe it within XI
my own power to call to trial the process of coming into, living in, then leaving for the light but I digress, perhaps it is selfish to express my resentment that the mere creation of bone, soul, and flesh, is that one day, it would be put to rest in pursuit of the light the tumultuous seas of wrong and right keep me awake many a night in contemplation of the cursed and blessed, the black and white, when one day I see the meaning beyond the hype of the light But honestly, I make this plight because I can’t stop thinking about you since you left.
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Ben Switzer Artilects of the Apostate War, war, divinity chore; prophets offer alms of gore, decorating heaven’s door in crimson shades of ever-more. Two, adieu, to false and to true.. Lie, fly, deceive and deny; price-tag princes must comply, in seeking how but never why their patriots to battle-cry. Three, decree, the one holy tree.. Fear, fear, ponder and peer; soon their whispers in your ear. If leash upon the quantum seer then surely we will disappear.
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Evan Pebesma A Drunken Dialogue “I want you to remember what I am saying to you now, because in the morning I probably won’t remember it myself and even if I do it won’t make sense to me. But it does make sense to you, doesn’t it? Please promise me you’ll remember.” “I promise and yes, it does make sense in a strange sort of way.” “Thank you.” Pause. “I really do need you to remember. There is wisdom in what I am saying, reason in madness, to steal someone else’s words, but you’ll forgive the drunk if he’s not entirely original. Drunken wisdom: I want to learn from that, for I feel there is much to be learned. I want to absorb all that my drunken self has to offer. I want sober E— to learn from drunken E—. Please remember, I know that you said you would, but somehow I don’t believe you. Remember all of it! I know I am demanding, but I need you to do this. Please.” “You talk too much when you’re drunk.” “I know I do. Hell, I can feel my voice getting hoarse, and I need a glass of water, but really I can’t help it. I know I am saying stupid things, things that I will probably regret, but frankly I don’t care. None of that matter right now. I’m honest. What did Freud say about the super-ego, how it regulates your desires? It is all that stands between man and the instincts. My super-ego is dead now, but I’m still not a savage brute or wild animal. Perhaps Freud was wrong, I always felt that he was a spiteful little man – was he little? At least in one way. Anyway, I’m not like he described at all, in fact I’m very sociable. Oh sure, V— over there looks a million times better than she did three hours ago (I’d like to fuck her you know) but besides that...” “E—?!?” “Oh, I’m sorry, but it is true. There is at least some beast in me, though I can’t help but feel that’s a good thing. But back to my point, the drunken man speaks with earnest, time’s not on his side. Back to the point: I’m not like
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Freud said. You see, normally I am a horrible misanthropist. What a word for a drunk to use! Mi-san-throw-peest. I am still intelligent when I’m drunk, perhaps more so. The words just seem to flow. Yes, I see you are angry. You know what I am going to ask of you and I do feel, even know, that most of this is nonsense, but I also feel that I have to say it and that it is somehow very important. Please remember. Anyways, the point is that I want to share when I’m drunk. I love the people. I want to give them everything, all my wisdom. There is honest love in what I say. Even in the stupid shit.” He raises his glass. “You know, I told V—she was beautiful. She gave me a funny look. I think she put it down to the alcohol, didn’t really take me seriously. But she is beautiful. I thought that when I was sober, I just didn’t say it. I am making a fool of myself ! I know that too, but it’s not important. Actually, it is important, important that I do make a fool of myself. I’d never tell her sober. I’m too afraid. I’m glad I did now, even if she never will talk to me again. The drunken man has no tact, for worse or for better, and at least he’s still aware enough to rearrange that cliché, disguise it a little. Anyway, for worse or for better the drunken man has no tact. What’s in his head comes out his mouth – and there is so very much in my head, N—. I need you to remember it. What the fuck am I saying? This makes no sense, even to the drunk! Do you understand these ramblings? Are you getting it? All of it? Please say you are. You see, I won’t remember so it’s up to you.” “Shut up, damn you! Yes, I know. I’ll remember.” “Get everything, it’s very important.” “Yes, I know: everything.” “Thank you.” Pause. “Why look, there’s L—! Isn’t she beautiful?” “That’s just the alcohol talking.” “No, no! Nonsense! I’ve always thought she was beautiful.” XV
“You said that about V— too.” “That’s because it was true!” “Look E—, you’re drunk. You’re rambling. You said so yourself.” “No, N—! That’s not it. She is beautiful. I always thought so and you can’t change my mind. You’re trying to trick me. Stop this or I’ll hit you, I will! Stop it! I said stop!” He strikes. “Now who’s drunk, now who’s rambling?” “Still you, only now you hit me. What’s wrong with you?” “There is nothing wrong with me. That’s been the point this whole time. I am drunk out of my mind, but there is nothing, N-O-THII-N-G WRONG! L— is beautiful. V— is beautiful. And you shut up! It’s not the liquor, the liquor hasn’t changed me. My mind still works the same, except now I am free. Normally I am a coward and a cynic. That is the truth about your dear friend. Of course, that’s when I’m sober, but now! Now… She is beautiful. They are all beautiful. They always have been beautiful and I love them. When you take away all the darkness, all the hatred, the propriety, and all that is heavy there’s nothing left but beauty, beauty and love. That’s always all there was. And now, now I can see it. She is so beautiful and now there is no reason to stop me from loving her. I really am a romantic drunk, in all senses of the word. Always interpret everything I say in every possible way. That is the only way to understand me. That is how you show your love for me. That is how you do the drunk justice. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go see L—.” “Leave her alone, E—.” “Shhh. It’s all just love. Love and beauty. Beauty and Love.” “E—, I’m warning you. If you don’t stop I’m going to have to make you stop.” “Don’t you get it N— it’s all just love. There is no reason to fight it.” A blow to the head rendered him unconscious. XVI
II In the morning I awoke to find that, much to my surprise, my memory was almost perfectly clear. This is a rare phenomenon for the absolutely piss drunk. For better or for worse, to paraphrase my drunken self who himself was a paraphraser of the most horrible clichés, I remembered. It struck like a dagger to the chest. I thought of V— and of L— and of poor N—who had to try to control my drunken antics. I thought of all that I had done and I broke down in tears. What a fool I was! How could I have acted that way? Overcome by a wave of anguish and a pounding hangover headache I lay in bed for hours and all that time I cursed the drunk. There was no wisdom in his words. He is a fool. I was a fool to believe him. Folly, folly I say! I made a vow, against him to forever keep him away. For me it is too late, but you! You can still escape unharmed. Hurry! Run! Stay away reader! Do not taint your mind with his foolishness. Despite what he may say, he has nothing to teach you. It is all just nonsense. Burn these pages after reading. Burn these pages before reading, yes that is much better – and whatever you do, never speak of this again. There is no wisdom in the drunk.
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Kerrie Winegarden Untitled The passage of time is now measured in increments of longing. Do I want you now as much as I did yesterday? Yes, and forever. Nostalgia consumes me. I search for you in memories, constantly. As often as I breathe, my mind works on your resurrection. Inside I have you. Outside, I have shadows that dance away as I grasp for their hands. They tease me with a cloud of your scent when no one is around. They make me see your face on a body that isn’t yours. I turn quickly, only to find that you have vanished once more. Sometimes I dial your old number. At the cottage, the answering machine still has a recording of your voice. I don’t tell anyone this. Perhaps we all keep it from one another in hopes that no one will think to move on and erase it. I kept an assortment of things that you left behind: Pots, candles, empty perfume bottles, a bracelet that I bought you for Christmas. Many years later, I realize that most of what I took was meaningless. The only think that I needed XVIII
was the knowledge that they once belonged to you. I have parted with much of it now, but I still have something of yours in every room of my house. I keep waiting, counting days and years in moments without you, for you to leave me completely. I dread that moment while also yearning for it. If I could forget then I could be free
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Untitled
He’s breathing heavily… I hear his approach. I feel his greasy hands before he makes contact. Never before have I been so repulsed. My footsteps quicken like the beat of my heart. His pace echoes mine. He’s so close and I know that I cant escape. His hands reach my shoulders, gripping me hard. I am forcefully turned to stare into the eyes of this unwanted visitor. Now he’s dragging me off the sidewalk to the sheltered and foreboding forest. I used to enjoy this picturesque trail…now I curse its obscurity. The streetlight fades. We’re safely concealed within the shadows of trees. He’s pulling me down and I fight. My strength is nothing compared to his. Each abusive thing I do seems to encourage him more. His lips abuse mine with bruising assaults.
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Harder he pulls and harder he kisses. It’s always harder. Now I am on the muddy earth with this creature on top of me. I feel myself sink into the soft terrain. I wish it would just swallow me whole. Scratching. Clawing. Biting. Tearing. Helpless. My thighs are pushed apart and a hand slides up my skirt; it pulls away the last bit of protection I had. Fabric tears. I close my eyes. as I pray for this to end. This is only the beginning. Violated. He’s everywhere. Hands are clutching me leaving pain behind. He’s moaning. Our cries mingle, an extreme contrast between pain and pleasure. With one last shudder he finishes his attack. Even in the darkness I can see his satisfied smirk. He has had me more than anyone ever has, yet I despise him more XXI
than anyone I’ve ever known. I believe that makes his victory so much sweeter. As quickly as he came he leaves me now, torn and shocked. I can hear his foot steps fade but his touch still burns my skin. He’ll always be with me. Ashamed. I crawl further from the road. I cant conceive of anyone finding me in this state. I can’t let anyone know. This my own fault. Whore. The sound of my sobbing startles me. I have to be quiet. Tears now silently fall. I sleep and hope to never wake.
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Angela Herring-Lauzon Humanity What is it that drives people to act out, to demand attention, to effectively tell the world “fuck you”? What drives a fourteen-year old boy to cigarettes and weed? To talk of prostitutes and booze? Are they cries for attention, screaming out from some deep-seated place of failed self-confidence? When, with $70,000 in a college savings account, a boy only dreams of a car, what does that say about us? About the mothers and fathers, teachers, politicians and so-called role models of today’s society? About our lives? Our parents shape us - so what can we deduce from them, with children like this? How, with so much to live for, with such a wide-open world, can people’s minds become so narrow they are fairly constricted by them? An adolescent boy makes an offhanded remark to a selfconscious girl - she stops eating because suddenly, ‘fatso’ becomes more than a rude label, it becomes her all-consuming reality. A group of teenagers, high with the joy of taunting, scream the word ‘fag’ to the rooftops. It echoes, bouncing off the concrete before cementing itself to the chest of a sensitive and artsy boy, wrapping itself around his heart and squeezing his self-confidence from it in burning drops. Bleeding with the shame of difference, he retreats into himself and wonders whether the world will ever become more than high-school cruelty. We pretend adolescence is a phase. We let ourselves believe once we become responsible, mature adults, we no longer offer petty insults and searing remarks to our peers. But what of the men and women who laugh at a blind man’s bruising encounter with an unseen door? The fear of the poor, the tattooed, the pierced, that we try to explain away as valid. After all, men in crisp business suits don’t rape or steal, do they? Those crimes are left to be committed by the bearded nobodies who reek of body odour and sickly tobacco smoke. It is they who corrupt our children, who beg for our hard-earned cash, who spend their lives poking holes in their paper-thin skin with dirty needles. Right? It’s certainly easier to believe this myth - our lives, after all, are about ease. We have no time to consider that maybe, that man on the street corner has a face under the scraggly beard, a worthy story under the illusion of worthlessness. Everybody has a story. Everybody has a life. Everybody has that one thing that wraps around their heart and just doesn’t let go.
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Ignored
Why won’t you see? See their faces, lonely and scared and devastatingly beautiful. Feel their pain as you ignore them, shun them, tease them, kill them. Yes, kill them. Maybe indirectly, or maybe by beating them bloody until they are unrecognizable. Unrecognizable in their anguish, in their pulped up faces and sad sad eyes Tied to a fence-post left to die. How could you? How could I? How could we stand idly by and let this happen? How, in such a scared and lonely world, could we diminish ourselves and our capacity for love? After all, don’t we need it? Dying and living and fucking and crying are just about all we’re good for. But not for killing. Mess, red, bloody mess that does us no good. How, with so evident a fear, so abhorrent the feeling, can we ignore our inner logic and pummel someone to death? XXIV
Because we don’t see. We don’t hear their voices, see their faces, recognize their strange ethereal beauty. We blind ourselves and them with our fond prejudices, our fears, our hatreds, our self-love and despicable, terrifying, brutal ignorance. Because after all, who are they to live and love? More importantly, who are we?
XXV
Alex Mason casanova shitfaced casanova arrived shitfaced before almost passing out on a bedspread of trimmed roses dirt still in his eyes in the midst of a lover’s dream snapping out of it long enough to catch earthworms in his hands from digging in the garden.
XXVI
come, cassiopiea come, cassiopiea I have constructed your chair; misconstrued of golden locks and blonde hairit was once a throne, I was told but It is a queen’s greatest curse that she may be left alone, and an hourglass body turned counter-clockwise left the grains of sand from Adonis beaches to drift and fill the constellations of your headthe blood rushing forth, fleeing from where it had once ebbed and flowed before, powerless now, even with my Samson strands entwined in your hands they will fall from where they once were held as the light that once could reach me remains now only in the death of an ornament hung in the sky, as far as I can tell.
XXVII
song for someone born in a bucket of oil in the twenty first century they decidedly left the umbilical cord attached and have since plugged it into all of my major appliances; by the time I had my first taste of the Apple its seeds had already festered in me with no need for Adam to rhyme off its numerous symptoms casually— In a white doctor’s office America post-war post-everything soul still in tact but utterly useless to anyone, anywhere but here (so I began reading) with timepieces in my eyes I had scanned the major works and found them rusted, aching dust in my lungs from hacking up the old formula still lodged in the recesses of the still beating-niks that harvested their pills and glory but found themselves at a loss for words nothing short of a decade later the apocalypse has come and passed without a whisper if the rapture already occurred well, I’m still here.
XXVIII
Everett Aukema Harsh Truth I was fifteen when the hatred first took a hold of me. I was seventeen when it was solidified for the rest of my life. When I was fifteen I lived in a ghetto. Not the ghetto, London prefers to spread its rampant poverty throughout the south and east ends. And, to be perfectly honest, calling it a ghetto is a bit generous. I did live, after all, in London. But both my brother and I have been jumped, and cops got beat up a few years back. Anywhere that beats up a couple of cops gets some hood respect. We worked hard and fought hard. ClichÊ? Probably. But it holds some weight. Most of my friends had found a job of some sort by the time they entered 10th grade – dealing drugs, stealing and pawning valuables, or working at some exploitative minimum wage grind. To this day, I am not sure which of the three is the most despicable. One of my friends bought a truck. He was framing all day and working at a fast food joint most nights. We used to go flying down rural highways doing fishtails or smashing mailboxes. One night we decided to fuck with the rich kids in the Masonville area. We were all used to getting egged and threatened. For once we wanted to turn the tables. We hated them. I am still not sure why. I had friends in the north end; I liked their big houses and their limitless, decadent food. I liked their hot tubs and their pools. They some how seemed like golden children. Like I said, everything is relative in London. But we hated them, the otherness about them. I think I hated them for the same reason I liked them. The pools and the decadence seemed obscene to me. I worked at a fast food hole next to a strip club that couldn’t convince the cops to check on the sketchy dude in the truck who eventually robbed the place. Seventeen though was the point of no return. The rich kids were to be my eter XXIX
nal enemies. Though now, I must admit, the target had shifted to the Richmond Row kids. You know, the drunk assholes who try to fight everyone who looks poor or different or whatever; the drunk girls wearing short skirts and high heels in the winter Fuck them. I hated them in a vague way. In a keep your head down and drink in the park sort of way. You learned quickly to keep your mouth shut. There is always twenty of them and not nearly enough of us. One time, though, we did not keep our mouths shut. It was the breaking point. Some bro – probably a future lawyer and definitely a Western kid – made a threat to rape our friend. That was it. Fuck it. No more keeping cool. No more keeping the head down. Done. I swung, hard and aimlessly. I unleashed every ounce of fury and fear in those fists. I pounded at his head. His teeth. His gut. His friends hit back. Three of us and an avalanche of them. A brute grabbed my friend and threw him through a window. Glass shattered. Hearts froze. They sauntered off. We grabbed our friend and fled. I guarantee that if the cops showed up, no amount of logic or evidence would get us justice. At the end of the day we were always to blame. XXX
The craziest part is that now I sit in class every day. I am a good student with decent marks. I work to pay for school hating every asshole who gets cheques from daddy and beats the shit out of homeless kids on Fridays. I sit on the edge of my seat with a chip on my shoulder wondering if the smiling preppy kid next to me gets off to beating down the strange kids downtown. The strange kids like my friends who don’t worship useless degrees or suicidal consumerism. So fuck it. I sit in class hating every day, knowing that I will hate just as passionately tomorrow, wanting desperately to let my schoolmates know that not everyone loves them; in fact, a lot of people hate them.
XXXI
Harsh Truth: A Rebuttal I submitted this piece to a short story contest held by “The Regis,” a King’s student magazine. They changed the ending without my consent or prior knowledge (I think I read the email the night before the issue hit the news stands). Frustrated by this lack of journalistic integrity, I confronted them and they agreed to publish an apology in their next issue. However, I still feel that it is essential that my art be presented in its original form. I am grateful to Grub Street for giving me a chance to publish my art the way it was meant to be published. The following is a brief explanation as to why I wrote it the way I did. It also attempts to articulate why I was so frustrated that it was changed without my consent. My story was supposed to end with an aggressive declaration. It was supposed to be a slap in the face. It was supposed to drag the reader out of their slumber and into another world. I wanted desperately to make people uncomfortable. I knew who the target audience was supposed to be and I articulated my anger specifically for them. I wanted to – however briefly – shake the minds of people who never left the middle-class dream world. My homeless friends have been beat up and urinated on by students. My poor friends have been jumped and harassed. My female friends have been assaulted. Something is wrong. But it is so much bigger then that. The working class that I have long toiled alongside and counted myself a part of is tired of the academy. They are sick of the elevated social status granted by an expensive piece of paper. They feel left out. My question is twofold: What is the role of the university? And why are so many people alienated by it? XXXII
I just wanted to make people think about the world outside of the smooth, manicured lawns of St. Pete’s, outside of the shiny, clean libraries and offices of King’s, beyond student housing, Masonville Place and Richmond Row. I want people to see the realities of the disenfranchised. We owe it to our community to be a constructive and positive institution. We are funded by working class taxes, headed for middle-class jobs, and embedded in struggling neighbourhoods. We are no longer children. We must see university as more then an inside track to good jobs, as more then a chance to party, as more then an opportunity to network. It has to be a place where the human intellectual discourse is expanded, where social structures are challenged and refined, where the status quo is not good enough, where questions are just as valuable as answers. I know this is all tired and clichÊ. I know that we all pay lip service to an idealized institution. I urgently hoped that my story about the violence of homelessness and poverty would shake the complacency of the average student, awakening a discussion that is long, long overdue.
XXXIII
Brought To You By Alex Assaly & Michael Sparrow
Grub Street