RCLAS OCT 2015 Wordplay at Work EZINE

PLEASE WELCOME OUR NEW BOARD MEMBERS

RCLAS Board of Directors James Felton; Candice James; Janet Kvammen; Manolis Aligizakis; Antonia Levi; Aidan Chafe; Dominic DiCarlo; Alan Girling RCLAS Board Advisors: Renee Sarojini Saklikar; Sylvia Taylor RCLAS Events Coordinator: Sonya Furst-Yuen RCLAS Board Assistant: Deborah L. Kelly

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POETIC JUSTICE --- OCTOBER 2015 Calendar and Bios at www.poeticjustice.ca HERITAGE GRILL, BACK ROOM 447 Columbia St, New Westminster, near the Columbia SkyTrain Station Co-Coordinators—Franci Louann flouann@telus.net & James Felton jamesfelton52@gmail.com Media Manager/Photographer—Janet Kvammen janetkvammen@rclas.com Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/groups/poeticjusticenewwest/

October 4 Sunday 3 – 5 pm Poetic Justice featuring DEBORAH L. KELLY & HAZEL MAMARIL

Host: Alan Hill

http://poeticjustice.ca/event/poetic-justice-featuring-deborah-l-kelly-hazel-mamaril-alan-hill/

October 11 Sunday 3 – 5 pm Poetic Justice – CLOSED for Thanksgiving Weekend

October 18 Sunday 3 – 5 pm Poetic Justice featuring JODIE ORTEGA & SASHA WILEY

Host: Candice James

http://poeticjustice.ca/event/poetic-justice-jodie-ortega-and-sasha-wiley-with-host-candice-james/

October 25 Sunday 3 – 5 pm

Poets Wanted: Dead or Alive!

Extended Open Mic with Host Janet Kvammen showcasing your own dark, eerie, mysterious poetry or a dead poet of your choice.

Costume Contest and the ‘Ghosts of Poets Past’ with plenty of Halloween fun! http://poeticjustice.ca/event/halloween-event-poets-wanted-dead-or-alive/

November 1 Sunday 3 – 5 pm Poetic Justice featuring ALAN GIRLING & KYLE MCKILLOP

Host: Franci Louann

http://poeticjustice.ca/event/poetic-justice-alan-girling-and-kyle-mckillop-with-host-franci-louann/

Write On! Contest 2015

October Special Feature RCLAS WRITE ON! CONTEST 2015 NON-FICTION WINNERS Non-Fiction First Place CHRISTINA MYERS – LUCKY GIRL Second Place: Donna Terrill – Sugaring Season Third Place: Marylee Stephenson – Parking Lot Waltz

Non-Fiction Honourable Mentions Elizabeth Schofield – They Wear the Red Paint P.W. Bridgman – Virginia Woolf and Pete Seeger Lausanne Yamolky – Surviving the 1991 Kurdish Exodus

Non-Fiction Winner Christina Myers reading excerpts from “Lucky Girl” at the LitFest New West 2015 “Written in the Stars” gala showcase, April 25, 2015 at Douglas College Muir Theatre. *** Copyright remains with the author. All rights reserved. Do not publish or use in any form without the author’s permission.

3rd Annual RCLAS Write On! Contest 2015 First Place Winner Non-Fiction LUCKY GIRL © CHRISTINA MYERS We’re at a large art gallery and shop in Mystic, Connecticut, the kind of place with framed pieces on the walls, handmade pottery on shelves and tables, and arty little bookmarks at the till. Another rambling summer road trip has somehow landed us here: a quiet and elegant place, with thick velvety carpet to dull the thump of feet, and a twisting staircase edged with a polished wood banister that winds up and up to a second and third floor above us.

Despite its upscale appearance, the place is full of less-than-elegant tourists – our noisy little travel-stained clan included – each keen to find a special something to bring home from the coast, something they can hang on the wall and tell friends they “picked up in a little place in Mystic.”

The shopkeeper is about to draw a raffle for a prize, and my father, in a bright and lively mood, looks at the person standing next to us, nods his head downwards towards me, and says: “Watch, she’s going to win. She’ll win it. Just watch.” His grin is infectious, his eyes sparkling; I feel filled up to bursting at his enthusiasm, his belief that there is, in fact, something special about me.

I’m the lucky one, in this family: I always choose the scratch-and-wins for my dad at the lotto store, pointing at this one, that one, and the one over there. More often than not, they’re winners; more often than they should be, statistically. I’ve won colouring contests, baskets full of easter candy and prizes at toy stores. I won the contest to name the mascot at the library’s summer reading club.

One time, my grade school teacher had an extra picture of herself from the school photo sessions. I didn’t particularly want one - she wasn’t a huge fan of my work (what with my dreadful skill in cursive writing compared to the

other girls) nor I of hers (she was grumpy and stern in that way of teachers who are past ready to retire) but I did want to win that photo, simply for the sake of winning it.

All the students put their names on slips of paper. I gave mine an irregular fold, hoping that the unusual texture would help it stand out during the draw, would increase its chances of being snagged by grasping fingers. I looked at it an extra second, attempting to imbue it with some magical knowing of itself, a charm to make it fated, then dropped it in the can.

Once every entry was submitted, my teacher shook them up, spinning her hand around and around inside the jar, and then pulled one out. We were entranced, thrilled at floating in this moment right before knowing, when everyone was wishing for the same thing at the same time. She held it up a moment, high enough for everyone to see, then opened it as we watched, our eyes pinned on the drama unfolding (literally) before us.

I heard the first syllable of my name whisper out over the quiet expectant silence and leaned forward to stand, my body lifting up off the seat.

But she hadn’t even spoken yet; I’d only imagined it, or pre-heard it, or known with some sort of deja-vu that it was about to come. She looked at me, mouth open as though on the verge of speaking, an odd glint in her eye, and then, finally, there it was, like a proclamation and question at the same time, my name, spoken in a sudden boom.

I knew I’d won before I’d won. Because I always did. ~~~ I have no idea what kind of prize the gallery is giving away is but I want this win like I’ve never wanted another one. They’ve been collecting names and phone numbers in a raffle box for weeks, and you don’t have to be in attendance at the draw to get the prize but we just got lucky. As out-oftowners, there’s no way we could collect from home, hours north from here; we just happen to be here today of all days, in the very last window in which we could enter and win and collect, all at once.

My dad had quickly stuffed an entry in the fancy gold cage (after he had me write my name on it, of course) and then we lingered among the art and the pottery, waiting for the show to begin.

~~~ Everyone knows that “good luck” is nothing more than coincidence with meaning attached to it.

The person who survives a car accident has no more good luck than the person who didn’t. The person who wins the lottery doesn’t have fate on their side. The person who misses the plane that will later crash into the ocean has no mystical force shepherding them away from harm.

Being lucky is nothing more than sprinkling one’s optimism with a dash of magic, so that it feels like good things – intentionally good things – are taking place all the time.

Still, all those scratch-and-wins. The colouring contests. The draws. Seems unlikely, overall, to have been simple coincidence. ~~~ Somehow I’ve ended up on the staircase, standing next to my dad. I’m on edge in the in-between time, the name-entered-but-not-pulled time. As we kill the last few minutes before the draw, I am both a winner and not a winner, lucky and not lucky. I try on both, imagining how I might react, trying to soften the blow of a loss and relish a win, all at once. I feel a mixture of achy dread and fierce pride: pride because my dad thinks I’m going to win, simply because I’m special, and dread because the disappointment if I do not win will be harder to swallow than scratching a dud lotto ticket or losing out on a teacher’s photo. The stakes are bigger now: he’s voiced this prediction to another person, and voiced it confidently at that, brooking no disagreement. A loss will be all the more awful with this audience of one.

At last, finally, the shopkeeper makes a regal announcement and steps to the wide entry foyer at the foot of the stairs: time for the draw. People gather, talking in soft tones, then whispering, then falling silent altogether as the gold raffle cage is spun and spun.

Standing next to my dad, his pronouncement that I will win echoes like a dangerous endearment around me. My fingers tingle. I stand as straight as I can, knowing the stranger and my dad are both keeping me in the corner of their vision, one skeptical, the other insistent.

I want to win so much I can already hear my name, hear the clapping as the group realizes that the winner is in the store – how lucky! what a sweet girl!

I can already feel my father beaming down at me, the relief that the surprise ending to our drama is no surprise at all.

We wait for seconds that feel like hours, the shopkeeper drawing out the process as though she enjoys the rare power of having the attention of the crowd, being a master of destiny.

And then, there it is, the slip of paper in her hand. She unfolds it, looks at it, squints, and says my first name – loud , staccato (but it could be another girl with my name) – then my last name – loud, staccato again (there can’t be another person here with the same full name, surely). My name booms out again, solid, real, certain, and I know: it’s me. It’s definitely me.

I grin a furious grin and the strange silly fear that this would be the time I’d disappoint, is burst like a soap bubble landing on a blade of grass. I’ve won.

Again.

The stranger is staring at us, mouth open, forehead furrowed, pointing between my father and me.

“Wow,” he says, baffled.

And then, I see it: the glimmer in his eyes. He’s just seen something that is a little beyond probability and therefore magical. He smiles, congratulates me. I know he’ll tell this story later, about a lucky little girl in a shop in Mystic, to friends at a dinner party. He’ll be lucky to have seen it.

My father is beaming, his pleasure as evident and bright as the sun at noon in the desert. I have not failed. I’m still special and magical. Good luck – not chance or probability or logic – has laid another small kiss on my forehead. The test has been passed, and I can relax in the comfortable window from now until the next one.

“I told you she’d win, didn’t I?” he says with a grin, eyebrows quirking at the stranger.

He loves having a lucky daughter.

He loves even more being right, in front of a stranger.

I’m relieved to have provided both.

------------------------------------------------------- Copyright Christina Myers

Watch the video of Christina reading “Lucky Girl”, LitFest New West, “Written in the Stars” gala

Christina Myers - Lucky Girl - April 25, 2015

3rd Annual RCLAS Write On! Contest 2015 Second Place Winner Non-Fiction SUGARING SEASON © DONNA TERRILL The snow-covered cemetery kept a silent vigil at the edge of the village. At one end it sloped down to a row of weeping willow trees with swampy ground beyond. At the other end it shared a fence with George’s family farm. Elinore decided to take a short cut through the Murdoch’s hardwood bush, a stand of sugar maple trees. Although the February thermometer dropped low at night, now the days warmed with the suggestion of spring and the watery blue sky stayed clear. The ‘shortcut’ took much longer than planned. Each step Elinore took found her breaking through the melting crust of snow, knee-deep, with her rubber galoshes starting to leak.

Warmed from the exertion she paused, pulled the red woolen scarf off of her head and relaxed her attention from putting one foot in front of the other. A comforting scent of wood-smoke hung in the air and from somewhere nearby she heard the sharp crack of an axe as it split rounds of fir or birch on a chopping block. And something else -- a soft dripping, the plunking sound of drops hitting a metal bucket. Elinore had been too busy with her struggle through the melting snow to notice that many of the maples nearby were adorned with the collection spiles and buckets used for tapping sap. It was early this year but only Mother Nature could decide when the sap would run. It was good to see that George’s family were clinging to the comfort of their farm routines, that ‘sugaring-off’ wouldn’t be lost to their grief this year. Tapping the maples suggested an optimism, a re-birth, some solace that life would go on.

The door to the weathered ‘sugar shack’ stood open. She could see the huge iron kettle sitting in wait on the old wood cook-stove. One night last winter she and George had been assigned the task of keeping the kettle of sap at an even boil, stoking the stove so the kettle of clear sap would condense down into the precious golden syrup. The sweet tang of maple

syrup would forever summon the steamy, sensual memory of that night, their first declaration of love. Elinore had aged much more than a year since then – she was no longer the wide-eyed, trusting girl, planning a future with the young man she loved.

She shifted her sheaf of boughs from one arm to the other. She had gathered wild winterberry, holly and mountain ash, rich with orange and crimson berries, two bundles to adorn the graves of the two men she had lost in her life. First, her father. She laid a bouquet at the base of his grave marker… Sargent James Leach…fallen at the Battle of Ortona…loving husband and father… 1905 – 1943. Elinore patted a kiss on the polished granite. “Don’t be sad, Daddy. You didn’t miss the chance to walk me down the aisle after all.”

There were other footsteps in the snow leading up to George’s grave and the dried greenery of a funeral wreath on a metal tripod stood guard, marking his burial plot. The headstone would be mounted in the spring once the ground had thawed.

Elinore placed the boughs upright in the snow. She stood, expecting to feel the familiar sadness and loss, to mourn the wreckage of her dreams of a life with George. Instead a red, hot anger bubbled up from her core. She fell to her knees in the snow and screamed in a guttural voice, “I HATE YOU! HATE YOU!” A pair of startled crows perched on a nearby monument rose, took flight and swooped over Elinore as she sobbed her agony to the silent grave. How could he abandon her like this? Like a reservoir of resentment breaking free from a dam she hurled her anger at the injustice of it all. Here, away from the watchful eye of her mother with her stoic martyrdom, she purged her pain.

Her well of tears seemed bottomless. During the three months since she had received the news of George’s death Elinore had shed a small ocean of salty tears – tears of heartbreak, of rage and of the fear of her future. She had lost weight and her usual healthy appetite. Her mother’s efforts to tempt her with warm, fresh baked goods or to berate her for ignoring her health had little effect.

“Wouldn’t you like a slice of lemon pound-cake with your tea, Elinore? It’s your favourite. And isn’t it time to get out in the fresh air – those sheets

need to be brought in off the line. There is a time for mourning but we women must accept our lot and keep soldiering on.”

There was one thing that temporarily lifted Elinore out of her misery – she became obsessed with the details of the derailment and crash. She rarely missed a news broadcast, sitting cross-legged in front of the floor model radio in the corner of the sitting room. Her mother fretted that the nap on the sitting room carpet would be forever flattened. Elinore searched their daily copy of the Toronto Telegram for articles on the rescue and the inquiry. She carefully snipped out each item with her manicure scissors and glued them into the scrapbook she had planned to use for all of her wedding cards.

Elinore’s knees began to go numb as melting snow saturated her pant legs.

She stood up stiffly and soaked up her tears with her red headscarf. Poor George didn’t deserve her anger. He had no say in his assignment that saw him being shipped to Korea, that put him on that shabby, wooden-sided train car that was destined to de-rail. Her anger was misdirected. She missed him, his teasing smile, his assurance that he would always look after her. For the first time since she had received word of the accident the heavy ache in her chest lessened to a quiet anguish, a sorrow of manageable proportions.

Elinore turned her back on the grave and headed out of the cemetery. She chose the sanded roadside for her return journey. The snow-plough blade had levelled a wide, packed shoulder. As she passed the Murdoch mailbox she vowed to stop by soon, to take them some of her mother’s Brown Betty. She had been little comfort to them in the past three months.

Twilight was beginning to darken the sky and to sharpen the chill the air.

Elinore stepped up her pace and took a deep breath. Even with her wet knees starting to ice up she felt a slight exhilaration and an unfamiliar hunger for the warm meal that awaited her at home.

Three months of tears was a long time – it was a welcome sensation to begin to feel a little like the old Ellie. Even her body rhythms were off.

How long had it been since her last period? After the funeral? She couldn’t remember. Each painful day had seeped into the next. Any semblance to

regular life had disappeared. Dental appointments were missed, Christmas was skipped altogether. So was her monthly cycle, at least twice.

The air smelled of snow. A creeping dread lurked in the edges of her mind as she trudged homeward in the purple dusk. Now, when she had finally begun to shake off the spell of suspended animation that had gripped her since the news of George’s death it was replaced with an icy chill that ran down her spine. There was always the possibility that her body was thrown off by the shock and depression it had suffered in the previous months.

Maybe she needed more exercise, a better diet and everything would return to normal. The morning nausea might leave but what about the tenderness in her breasts she had noticed as she leaned over the bathtub to clean it this morning?

With a dreadful certainty she knew that she was pregnant.

Mechanically, her legs carried her homeward. Her mind was immobilized by the enormity of her realization. She rejected even the slight possibility that she would ever bear this child. The means that would aid her in avoiding this horror surfaced in front of her – the railway track level crossing with its daily 6 am freight train on its way to pick up new Chevys in Oshawa, the thundering icy water of the millpond spillway chute, the wrought iron spikes of the fence surrounding the library, only a swan dive away from the village water tower.

The image of seeing herself impaled on the library fence for all of the village children to see on their way to school the next day brought her to her senses.

“Get a grip, Elinore!” she said aloud. There had to be a more civilized solution. Who would question her decision to move to Toronto to enroll in the next semester of college? There’s probably some kind of church-run home for unwed mothers where she could stay. By the end of summer it would all be over, someone would have a new baby to love and she could return to her life.

By the time Elinore walked up her back steps and stood stamping the snow from her galoshes she had made a decision. Steeling herself for her mother’s stern rebuke, maybe even a condemning scripture to support her

position she sat down at the kitchen table in the warm, welcoming kitchen and said, “Mother, there’s something I need to tell you.”

-------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright Donna Terrill

3rd Annual RCLAS Write On! Contest 2015 Third Place Winner Non-Fiction PARKING LOT WALTZ © MARYLEE STEPHENSON

He is a druggie and a dealer. I’ve known him, and known about him for 18 years now. My office is on the Drive, the old Italian area of Vancouver, replete with cappuccino bars, up-and-coming residents in renovated homes, and beggars and pit bulls on every block. The office was below his flat, and secretive characters would slink up the stairs now and then. He must have been the main supplier to his wife, who seemed to move in slow motion, eyes glazed, permanently guilt-ridden and cringing look on her face. He was wiry to the point of gaunt, with un-braced canine teeth that made him look more cunning and rapacious that he was. But of the latter I can’t be sure, because once we heard crashes and then a thump from above that actually shook our ceiling that was their floor. I called the police, thinking of his wife, alone with just him.

The police came, quickly. When they left, he arrived at our door, screaming in outrage that we had dared to invade his privacy and call the police. Somehow holding my voice steady I returned a yell that said if I ever know there is a woman alone and I hear noises like that I will call the police no matter what. He is a bully but I was brave and he backed away and from then on he was somehow supplicating when our paths crossed. I went back to my usual explanation for behavior, that he must have been terribly abused and bullied as a child and when someone showed some strength he would turn to trying to please them. Oddly enough, he turned out to have almost courtly manners, perhaps drawing on the formality of his Italian forebears, a kind of gallant courtesy that I receive from the older men in shops and cafes, as we greet each other after my working in the neighbourhood for 18 years now.

He works for the City, driving a half-ton truck, for repair work or gardening, I’ve can’t tell exactly, but it takes him from place to place and I suspect from buyer to buyer. And he has an old, no-name American car, cheap in its day and surely worthless now. But not to him. He cares for it meticulously, washing it in the shared parking lot for all the apartment and office tenants. He even waxes it, surely an effort approaching the delusional for any effect it may have.

It was one of those long Vancouver evenings – the rare sun blasting down still, and full daylight at 8 or so. I came out the back of my building to get to my car. He was stripped down to shorts, his body lean but not conditioned. There’s no hose, so he had buckets scattered here and there, and he was singing. Rough voice, not strong, but certainly audible. From My Fair Lady, it was “On the Street Where You Live.” He finished a few words and saw me smiling. It was one of those few days when I was dressed up for meetings, wearing high heels even, a great contrast from my usual cargo pants and t-shirt. I felt very “up” myself and rather tuneful.

He stopped swabbing the car and called out, “is that Tony Bennett that I hear? Could that be Tony Bennett?” No, I said, searching back for other Italian singers of by gone days, “I think I hear Vic Damone!” Laughing, he went on with the song, quickly running out of the words, but humming loudly.

By then I was well away, near my car – but I know all the words to the song. I thought, “what the hell, you’re a performer!” So I turned and singing at a near yell, so he could hear from a distance, began….”but the pavement always stayed beneath my feet before.” I walked closer, keeping up with the song, so he would hear the words, and see I was joining him.

“All at once am I/several stories high/knowing I’m on the street where you live.” Amazement came across his face, along with a huge smile. He tried to join in when he could, mostly humming and clearly delighted.

“People stop and stare/they don’t bother me/Cause there’s no place else on other that I would RAHTHER be. Let the time go by/(BIG note now): I-I-I-I-I don’t care if I/can be here/on the street/where you live. And OH the towering feeling/just to KNOW somehow you are near/the Ohver powering feeling/that any second you may suddenly appear……”

By then I was running out of words and he had come near to me, beaming.

Suddenly, he reached out, took me in a very formal waltz position, arms outstretched, no contact except hand to hand and a light guiding pressure on my back. With that he began twirling me round and round in that filthy, needle-strewn parking lot. His hand and shoulders sweaty from his work, me going back to the first verse and still singing, only a little softer this time, as we were face to face, hand to hand. Round and round and round – the blur of beat up cars, dying weeds, garbage bins flashing past my eyes as we whirled.

A few more turns and then our laughter broke up the song and the dance.

With a slight, gentlemanly bow, in his raspy almost shouting voice he said, “thank you for being romantic.” The dance ending, I went to my car, he went back to sloshing his.

Previously published: A Little Romance You never know when it might waltz into your life.

By Marylee Stephenson, 14 Feb 2007, TheTyee.ca http://thetyee.ca/Life/2007/02/14/Romance/

------------------------------------------------------ Copyright Marylee Stephenson

3rd Annual RCLAS Write On! Contest 2015 Honourable Mention Non-Fiction THEY WEAR THE RED PAINT © ELIZABETH SCHOFIELD

Medicine Woman carries Sage Bowl from its place of honour at the bright heart of their home into the cold, black empty beyond the naked window.

Quiet, dignified, she climbs down to the fire with kindling and fuel, chanting the welcome with soft urgency.

Eyes adjust to the dark. Candles strain against the rising breeze. Kindling cosseted and wheedled ignites cedar. Smoke encouraged, billows.

Guardian of the Earth on which her home rests, Medicine Woman is acute, tuned to the needs of her guests, sensing mood and state. She invokes friendship, medicine and healing from within herself, her home, Mother Earth.

Medicine Man is a journal, a work in progress, the pages of his character ready to be filled with another experience. A moving pen, he covets the next encounter, seeks out the challenge and confronts it, anxious to begin the healing.

Together they are emphatic that their home be a place of rest and nourishment, of beauty, solace and quiet comfort. They crave it’s sharing with others, blossoming with its gifts of healing and rest.

Cold wind off Mother Ocean, cold stone ledge underfoot. The sharp sky is peppered with pinpoints of long-ago dreams. The fire’s one-sided heat broils cheeks and hands. All turn away to be slashed instead by gathering wind.

Cedar resin mixes with pine cone kindling. Earth essence fills the air. Sage is lit, coaxed into a glowing cloud as the living are brushed off with sage smoke in sight of the ancestors, before the challenge of the coming healing.

Pungent smoke sears the nose and mouth, scours tender skin, flavours tears. Coming forward from the shadows to bathe in its blue haze, the Ancestors frame the scene.

The Sick One, once hearty, is a tiny woman now, rigid with anticipation, swaddled and seated for warmth. Blanket briefly unwrapped, smoke caresses her limbs and cloaks her body from sight. Brushing off cleanses her body and spirit.

Chanting begins, low, unworldly, deep baritone with a cushion of alto.

Another plane is exposed, a door opened, passageway made. We strain to sense the unfamiliar language. Stealthily, it changes to a common tongue.

All hear the call to the Ancestors, sense their intercession and begin to relax in the promise of healing from those who wear the red paint.

Behind the fire pit trees start to move. They undulate from top to bottom, branch to tree, a sine wave of approval for the ceremony from nature, exhaling acceptance from the spirits of the earth, welcoming the coming physical prayer.

Medicine Man and Medicine Woman together focus the blight of pain and suffering, channel, pull it away. Coughing and spluttering with effort and toxicity, Medicine Man forces his spirit into the space left by the malignant.

Medicine Woman soothes and coaxes the Malady with teasing, honeyed tone and massaging hands, catching It off guard. Beguiling the pain.

They work together at Sick One’s core, coaxing, wrenching at the engine of pain and suffering. Filaments burrow into the fabric of her being, poisoning, tasting of ash and decay, impeding the gentle rhythm of her heart and breath, of her sleep and dreams, smothering her life.

Pushing, pulling, loosening it from Its comfortable niche, bringing It to the edge of gone. Tug, grab, wrench and rock It back and forth, break its roots and throw It out into the cold night. Chant the prayers, frighten the evil spirits and yell at the ocean: Its coming!

The four at vigil offer no resting place for the Uprooted; cocooned in sage smoke, their bodies remain immune to the Evicted.

Behind Medicine Man, as he blows away the debris, are lives lived, solid, benign. A scaffolding of fifteen generations of spiritual guidance, the

wisdom of a people long transcended from the pragmatic. They watch in quiet affirmation at the continuance of healing and tradition. Lifetimes of prayer and support blow the Unwanted onto the breeze. The Elders disturb tree branches into action and sweep it into the ocean.

Mother Ocean cools and cleans, swallows Evil whole. Refreshes herself with coming sun and moon, Fire dies, chanting slows, Sage smoke billows over heads. All are cold now.

Hard rock underfoot, emotions plucked until vibration hurts. Clearing breeze frigid, proud follows Sage smoke into nose, eyes and mouth, chilling from the inside out.

Help Sick One; hold Medicine Man and Medicine Woman exhausted by effort and emotion. Brew herbal tea. Warm, grassy, soothing. Sick One is shaking. Recently cavitated sites of malevolence are raw and glistening, debrided. Effort is etched on every face.

Warm tea, warm fire, quiet smiles, fruit and berries for sustenance. Sick One smiles, relaxes, unbends from the weight of illness. Outside, in the dark, ink sky and frigid stars look down on the trees. Trees, sweeping into Mother Ocean, brush the air clean.

Inside the cocoon of Home, Sage Bowl is back at its heart and hearth.

The author would like to thank Jonathan Coleman of the Quw’utsun People, for the opportunity to participate in this Healing Ceremony, and for his gracious permission and the permission of the Ancestors to document the experience.

------------------------------------------------------- Copyright Elizabeth Schofield

3rd Annual RCLAS Write On! Contest 2015 Honourable Mention Non-Fiction VIRGINIA WOOLF AND PETE SEEGER, INTER ALIOS : A MEANDERING RANT ON TRUTH, BEAUTY, LOVE AND TWITTER © P.W. BRIDGMAN IT’S NOT OFTEN THAT YOU WILL FIND Virginia Woolf and Pete Seeger’s names mentioned in the same sentence. We have recently passed through the 133rd anniversary of Woolf’s birthdate in 1882 (on January 25th). Sadly, Seeger’s death last year came just two cold, January days later (on January 27th). He was 94. These important milestones in the calendar ‘got me to thinking’ (as Seeger might have put it) because I greatly admired them both.

Woolf and Seeger were many things to many people but one strains to see much that they had in common. I will venture that one thing Woolf and Seeger shared was a healthy suspicion of those who claim to be able to see past myriad shades of grey and discern bright lines and stark blacks and whites in the human condition. In their very different forms of art, both Woolf and Seeger explored and savoured intricacy, contradiction and nuance; each recoiled, instinctively, from smug, self-congratulatory, ex cathedra expressions of certainty.

Seeger lived to see the world—our world—grow technologically more complex and, paradoxically, more simple at the same time. In a race to the bottom, technology now both overwhelms us indiscriminately with information and then struggles to find ways to strip it down to manageable thought pellets that can be received and reviewed on hand-held devices.

Of course, intricacy, contradiction and nuance are the first casualties of such reductive processes. What remain behind—the “leavings” if I may be so indelicate—are often the illusory blacks, whites and bright lines that can be fitted onto small screens and digested in transit between meetings in the course of run-ragged days that leave too little time for contemplation or reflection.

Rebecca Solnit lamented the loss of time for the contemplative not too long ago in an article in the pages of the London Review of Books. It is at once a nostalgic and a sobering read. She said, among other things, this: ‘That bygone time had rhythm, and it had room for you to do one thing at a time; it had different parts; mornings included this, and evenings that, and a great many of us had these schedules in common. I would read the paper while listening to the radio, but I wouldn’t check my email while updating my status while checking the news sites while talking on the phone. Phones were wired to the wall, or if they were cordless, they were still housebound. The sound quality was usually good. On them people had long, deep conversations of a sort almost unknown today, now that phones are used while driving, while shopping, while walking in front of cars against the light and into fountains. The general assumption was that when you were on the phone that’s all you were.’

Unlike Seeger, Woolf did not personally witness the depredations that Solnit so lyrically describes. Woolf left us too soon for that, dying in 1941 (a full five years before the Dick Tracy watch made its first appearance).

Can you just imagine what she would have to say about Twitter? And texting?

Pete Seeger was, unlike Virginia Woolf, plainspoken. When he heard a man proclaim to have discovered the truth, he was apt to answer the claim with a bit of the homespun wisdom that had been passed down to him by his father. For example: ‘The truth is a rabbit in a bramble patch. All you can do is circle around saying it's somewhere in there as you point in different directions. But you can't put your hands on its pulsing, furry, little body.’

Woolf, too, sometimes turned to the animal kingdom for imagery when she encountered a smug poseur who claimed to have in his possession precise coordinates for the location of the Holy Grail. Her central message—as it appeared in The Waves—was the same, though:

‘Let a man get up and say, Behold, this is the truth, and instantly I perceive a sandy cat filching a piece of fish in the background.

Look, you have forgotten the cat, I say.’

Bravo, Virginia, I say. And Bravo, Pete. I just know that if you were both living now and had the chance to converse, you’d have recognized in each other a robust skepticism. Worlds apart in so many ways, you most assuredly would not have been Facebook friends. And you’d have abhorred the tyranny of the 140-word tweet—the quintessential thought pellet.

The ‘tweet’: its name alone should cause grown-ups to cringe with embarrassment. ‘If I had a hammer.’ If only. Yet, by day, those who govern us now communicate with us about public policy in precisely this way. And then, of an evening, they are just as happy to share with us (and all the wide world) their ticky-tacky photos of what they’ve ordered at chichi restaurants for their dinners. Banality in excelsis. Will you be having the rabbit or the fish?

But let me circle back one last time to the elusive notion of truth and its first cousin, beauty. In all forms of art, as Keats famously put it, ‘Beauty is truth, and truth beauty,—That is all’. But is it all? Is truth not bound up in some way with notions of love? I think it must be, in some surpassing way.

Importantly, as Auden said in a poem entitled ‘The Common Life’, ‘… though truth and love / can never really differ, when they seem to, / the subaltern should be truth’. The key to that passage is ‘when they seem to’.

Beauty and truth register instantly within the discerning mind and heart, both. We know them on our pulses when we see them, hear them or otherwise sense them.

Before being truly in love, I had a premonition of love’s transcendent power when, as a very young man, I first read James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I can still feel an echo of the primal shudder that crept up my spine the first time I came upon the paragraphs reproduced below. Like Vaughan Williams’ spiraling meadowlark in The Lark Ascending, this pure, crystalline piece of writing—truth, beauty and love conjoined and indivisible—has relinquished none of its ability to uplift and transport, all these years later:

‘A girl stood before him in midstream, alone and still, gazing out to sea. She seemed like one whom magic had changed into the likeness of a strange and beautiful seabird. Her long slender bare legs were delicate as a crane’s and pure save where an emerald trail of seaweed had fashioned itself as a sign upon the flesh. Her thighs, fuller and soft-hued as ivory, were bared almost to the hips, where the white fringes of her drawers were like feathering of soft white down. Her slate-blue skirts were kilted boldly about her waist and dovetailed behind her. Her bosom was as a bird’s, soft and slight, slight and soft as the breast of some dark-plumaged dove. But her long fair hair was girlish: and girlish, and touched with the wonder of mortal beauty, her face.

She was alone and still, gazing out to sea; and when she felt his presence and the worship of his eyes her eyes turned to him in quiet sufferance of his gaze, without shame or wantonness.

Long, long she suffered his gaze and then quietly withdrew her eyes from his and bent them towards the stream, gently stirring the water with her foot hither and thither. The first faint noise of gently moving water broke the silence, low and faint and whispering, faint as the bells of sleep; hither and thither, hither and thither; and a faint flame trembled on her cheek.

—Heavenly God! cried Stephen’s soul, in an outburst of profane joy.’

These words are like holy wine to me. They are almost scriptural. It would surely be a mortal sin to allow even one of them to spill onto the cutting room floor. Which 110 of these 250 words would you be prepared to sacrifice in order to shoe-horn Joyce’s perfect lyrical fugue into the arbitrary, 140-word straitjacket that so many today slip into now every day, like a comfortable cardigan, without complaint?

In Finnegans Wake Joyce declared: ‘This is me Belchum in his twelvemile cowchooks, weet, tweet and stampforth foremost, footing the camp for the jinnies.’ In Ulysses he spoke of watching the ‘southing sun’ through ‘peacocktwittering lashes’. In Portrait of the Artist he wrote:

‘A bird twittered; two birds, three. The bell and the bird ceased; and the dull white light spread itself east and west, covering the world, covering the roselight in his heart.’

Could it be that Joyce was giving voice there to a foretaste, a foretaste of the earth slipping on its axis? Did he have a premonition of the sun slowly setting—perversely in the south, 140 words at a time—on the the literate world that so animated him, and Virginia, and Pete, inter alios?

Previously published: Mulberry Fork Review, 2014

------------------------------------------------------- Copyright P.W. Bridgman

3rd Annual RCLAS Write On! Contest 2015 Honourable Mention Non-Fiction SURVIVING THE 1991 KURDISH EXODUS © LAUSANNE YAMOLKY ‘This is not happening; this is not happening!’ I kept telling myself as our family RV rolled slowly out of the driveway of our house. I watched from the back window as our house became further and further in my sight. It was moment after the sun had set on the city of Sulimany, Iraq in early April 1991.

Voices of people filling the streets around us as our RV slowly rolled out of the lane into the street. Nearly everyone is leaving it all behind just like us leaving their homes with whatever belonging they can carry for the long journey. Some in cars, most on foot and some used donkeys and mules to carry their things and their children. We all were leaving it all behind running away with our lives as the powerful army of the regime of Saddam Hussein battled to taking back the liberated zone of Northern Iraq where the Kurds uprising took place just days after the desert Storm ended.

There was an eerie silence inside the jam packed RV. That motor home was designed to comfortably accommodate 2-3 adults. On that journey, there was 35 people in it include a partially disoriented 90 year old grandmother who also suddenly lost her sight and a severely wounded brother who fought alongside the Kurdish Peshmerga’h injured by tanks of the Iranian (Mujahedeen Khalq) who fought with the Iraqi army to take control of the north. My brother was pulled out of the hospital along with many others against doctors wishes due to severity of this injury and risk of amputation of his leg. Our dad had to decide between taking him with us for a chance to live or leave him behind where the government was killing and destroying everything in their path even setting hospitals on fires as they gained back their territories.

No lives were spared as the government stepped close and closer from the city of Kerkuk towards our city of Sulimany; they killed fighters, civilians

and even livestock. Everything was destroyed. Some people left their homes with the clothes on their backs. We were fortunate to have an RV and managed to stock up food and supplies inside and a trailer we pulled behind.

I am the fifth of ten children; I was 19 at the time. For the many painful sights and experiences I seen and lived through, I would never forget for days I slept with my knees to my chin in the small foot space at front of the RV. That was the only spot I could find to call my own. From the kayos, children crying, wind, mud, pouring rain and hail on the outside to the awful smell of our brother’s decomposing massive leg wound and through the screams and shouts of our confused –blind grandmother who could not understand why she is shoved into small space with so many people nothing could have prepared anyone for this. ‘this is not happening!’ I kept whispering to myself with tears streaming down my face. ‘this is but bad, a very bad dream’.

Add to the sad conditions, the sound of the army shelling and bombing our town; sounds of their fighter jets ripping through the sky and helicopters hovering all over in the city behind us in the distance. We could see smoke rising from every corner of our city. The constant sound of bullet never stopped… at night it was much frightening with the massive, absolute massive traffic jam that moved like a turtle up ahead and the red tiny lights of bullets and of bomb exploding from afar behind us. Our dad could not have a moment of shut eyes as every moment the line of cars moved. A nearby village that typically took half an hour to get to, it took us nearly 24 hours to reach.

All night the voices of fathers and mothers shouting in desperation for their lost child is a haunting sound that can never ever be forgotten.

Kurdish fighters begun to run towards us; we were at the near end of the massive traffic nightmare trying to escape to the Iranian borders. Seeing the heavily armed fighters was ever so frightening sight to see because it meant the army had taken over our city and it meant our fighters have lost the battle. It meant the Iraqi army is closer to us than ever. This is a regime that used armed military men to take us out of classrooms to witness public execution of youth who deserted the army; the young men where in

pajamas and slippers. This is a regime that made us young school girls watch in a giant sports arena how men in Special Forces chase two live rabbits, capture them and tear them apart with bare hands and eat the flesh to show their strength. This was a dictatorship that issued execution orders to a man who laughed at a funny joke about the leader. We did not want to be back under control of that regime.

The news came through that the government have taken over the major cities and creeping towards us. Worse news came of the Iranian government not only closed its borders to the massive refugees, some soldiers shot live rounds at the crowed of people trying to escape into their land killing and injuring many.

One morning I recall we were all asleep, it was still dark, it rained all night dad started the RV to move as the lineup moved, suddenly we hear heavy violent banging on the RV walls for my dad to stop! Some women and children took refuge from the rain and slept under or RV. Our dad almost drove over some of children if no one has yelled. Some of the children had their heads leaning against the back wheels and their extremities sticking out from under the RV fast asleep.

Nearly two weeks have passed with countless sights of devastation and pain. We saw parents burying their children, elderly dying and women giving birth on the side of the road with rain pouring over them. By the second week, after our extra food supplies and gas was looted from the trailer we pulled over for good after a man sold our dad some gas for the RV that had water in it. We were stranded with everyone passing us by. We had hardly any food and our brother’s wound turned green. The tank shell that exploded next to him threw him up in the air and injured him from the bottom of his foot to his buttocks. It was a horrific wound to witness. He was in agony as we ran out of medicine for his pain and dressing for wounds.

A man graciously volunteered his small car to help get our brother rushed to the borders. Few men carried my brother by a blanket into the backseat of a car that drove off. At the borders an Iranian soldier gave our dad few pieces of gauze, few bandages and handful of Aspirin pills. Our dad and our wounded brother were not allowed to cross the borders.

With all the cash we had and the help of a farm tractor, upon the disappointing return of our father from the borders, our dad had the RV towed all the way home. There was no other option left as we ran out of everything and we would’ve died waiting for help; the RV was turned around and pulled back into the government territories.

The government of Saddam in mid-April, after it took back control of the Kurdish region issued over the radio a general amnesty for people to return. We didn’t trust the government of Saddam one bit but there comes a time were we had to pick one evil over another.

We approached the first check point of the heavily armed Iraqi military with scary Republican Guards at front and center of the road block. We were frozen in fear not knowing what to expect. I heard myself whisper as the RV approached the military men staring at us as the tractor that pulled us gradually came to a complete stop, ‘This is not happening; this is not happening!’ I caught myself whisper.

------------------------------------------------------- Copyright Lausanne Yamolky

2015 RCLAS Write On! Contest BIOS: Non-Fiction Winners & Honourable Mentions Christina Myers worked as a community journalist in the metro Vancouver region for more than a decade, covering beats as diverse as federal politics to families. She continues to work as a freelancer and columnist, and is slowly pursuing several book projects. She was a shortlist winner in the 2015 Voices of Motherhood writing competition, and a past winner of provincial and national community journalism writing awards in history, business and column writing. She is also a current member of The Writers' Studio at SFU Vancouver.

Donna Terrill Born and raised in Ontario, Donna moved west in the ‘70’s, making her home in the Slocan Valley of the West Kootenay region and in Vancouver. She has attained degrees in social work and education and more recently, participated in many creative writing courses throughout the lower mainland. For five years she hosted regular episodes of The Storytelling Show on Co-op Radio.

Now, happy to reside in the rich, literary world of New Westminster she is active in local writers’ groups and is working at compiling a collection of memoir-based short stories, though one or two seem to be insisting on becoming novels. “Sugaring Season” is part of a larger work, set in 1950 in a small town in southern Ontario. She has received recognition for her submissions to the Burnaby Writers’ Society and RCLAS.

Marylee Stephenson is a frequently published author of “vignettes” such as the prize-winner for RCLAS. She is a storyteller and standup comic. She also is the author of a very current guidebook to the Galapagos Islands (Mountaineers Books, Seattle). Marylee has her own blog, coming stories and photos – onthejog.wordpress.com.

2015 RCLAS Write On! Contest BIOS: Non-Fiction Winners & Honourable Mentions Elizabeth Houlton Schofield writes about the mundane and the everyday, who doesn’t have a little drama in their life?

Liz’s stories have appeared in the Globe and Mail, and been published in Drunk Monkeys and in Hearing Voices, the Bareback Anthology, 2014. She won the Honorable Mention at The Surrey International Writer’s Festival, 2013, and 2014 and was published in the conference anthologies. Shortlisted for Literary Writes 2013 (Federation of BC Writers), and Room magazine’s Reader’s Choice Awards 2012, she won the RCLAS Write On! 2015 fiction contest, came second in the same category and won honourable mentions in creative non-fiction and fiction in 2014 and 2015.

Liz lives and writes in Pitt Meadows, British Columbia, travelling regularly in Britain and Europe.

She is currently working on the first of a three novel trilogy and compiling two books of short stories.

P.W. Bridgman is a writer of literary fiction and poetry living in Vancouver. He has won prizes or been a finalist in fiction competitions both in Canada and abroad. Some of his writing has been included, or is forthcoming, in anthologies published in Ireland, England, Scotland and India. Mr. Bridgman’s book of short fiction, entitled Standing at an Angle to My Age, was published by Libros Libertad Publishing Ltd. in 2013. You can learn more about P.W. Bridgman by visiting his website at www.pwbridgman.ca.

Lausanne Yamolky was born and raised in Baghdad, the fifth of ten children. They are Kurdish from northern Iraq. In 1993 they lived in Turkey illegally as asylum seekers, migrating to Canada in 1995.

Lausanne threw away preteen poems. Her uncle (poet, musician, singer and songwriter) inspired her to share.

RCLAS WRITER OF THE MONTH Kathy Figueroa

Canadian poet, Kathy Figueroa, takes great delight in writing poems that for many years have entertained newspaper readers and audiences alike. Written in a clear, direct style that is easily understood by everyone, and frequently depicting aspects of rural and everyday life, her work has often been described as “people’s poetry.”

A resident of the Bancroft area, in the northern part of Hastings County, Ontario, her frequently humorous poems have been published a combined total of ninety-nine times in the "Bancroft This Week" and "The Bancroft Times" newspapers (as of September 24, 2015).

Her work can also be found in a variety of different mediums, including regional magazines, numerous blogs and e-zines (many of which originate in other countries), dozens of anthologies, and her own four published books: “Paudash Poems” (July, 2012), “Flowertopia” (January, 2014), “The Cathedral of the Eternal Blue Sky” (March, 2014), and “The Ballad of the PoeTrain Poeteer: Winnipeg to Vancouver” (May, 2015). In 2012, she self-published ten small chapbooks - nine of poetry and one containing her locally staged short play, “Conflicted About The Wolf.”

Kathy’s adventures in poetry have led her to read her work to folks in communities across southern Ontario, including Bancroft, Belleville, Kingston, Marmora, Maynooth, Ottawa, Peterborough, Roblin Lake, and Toronto. Venturing further afield, she’s also participated in readings in Edmonton, New Westminster, Vancouver, and Winnipeg.

In addition to prolific versifying, Kathy Figueroa has contributed articles and photographs to a variety of Ontario publications for over a decade. These include the Bancroft newspapers, as well as the Belleville Intelligencer and the Haliburton Echo. Though not Native, she’s also contributed articles to the Mohawk Nation Drummer and the Anishinabek News (including the annual Pow-Wow Guide). On occasion, her poetry has been printed in magazines such as The Link, Country Roads, and The Country Connection Magazine.

In September, 2010, Kathy created and founded the “Poets’ Society of Hastings County North,” which has evolved into a monthly poetry, short story, and theatrical play group that has just celebrated its fifth anniversary by joining the Algonquin Arts Council as a “contributing member group.”

On another note: Born in a mountainous region of southern British Columbia, Kathy Figueroa was raised on the West Coast, as well as in the interior of B.C. After residing and working in Toronto for many years, she was happy to move to a beautiful rural region, outside of Bancroft, Ontario, which is often known as “Cottage Country.” Along with writing and photography, gardening, hiking, and travelling are among her favourite activities.

The Macabre © Nancy Pilling

We like to be spooked, Is this not true?

Gruesome images play out On screens big and small, The tales that are told are oh so dark and oh so tall!

They titillate, entice and enthrall, They make us scream, gnash our teeth and groan, Hairs now raised on our skin, As the beast releases a blood chilling moan!

It’s unearthly and evil In every way!

We try to avert our gaze, Yet still our eyes stray Back to the scene now unfolding, So grizzly and grotesque.

Adrenalin runs high, When you’re the one being chased.

Your breath comes in gasps, As you search for your path to escape.

Trying to compose the fear racing through you, A cold sweat breaks out.

Eyes now dart in every direction, As a thought occurs— You’ll hide, Yes, that’s it…

The silence is deafening, Just your own frantic wail, As you dash up the stairs To hide in the attic.

Hopefully, your quick wit and stealth will prevail.

You dash through this hell, The dust now blinds you, And you utter a sneeze, This isn’t going so well.

Diving behind a moth eaten cover,

You feel a deep shudder and become so still, The beastly assailant draws nearer, And you wonder why you came up to this room.

What kind of plan was this your consciousness screams at you, Once again you are gripped by paralyzing fear, How the hell are you going to get out of here?

He’s so close now that you can smell his stench, Awkward movements as he begins to advance, A strength overcomes you that you’ve never known before, A bookcase you push— A bookcase so full Of trinkets and trunkets and God knows what else— Toward the bad man whose axe is held high.

That he wants to kill you, You haven’t a clue as to why.

You run for escape when the villain falls back, The basement, the basement!

That would be a much better trap, It’s dark and gloomy, Why he’ll never see!

And with this new plan in place, You sprint to your fate, The basement, the basement, So the audience should know, Has no windows, no door, No exit to speak of just a stained concrete floor.

But then the audience has likely anticipated this scenario before.

As you dive behind piles of 2x4s, You ponder for a moment why they’re here.

Was there a project to be done?

Perhaps a room to be built?

These would be perfect for those planters you wanted, And you could put them out on the deck, That would be nice!

And as you momentarily daydream of garden reconstruction, The thump on the stairs reminds you of your imminent destruction.

The sweat pools beneath your pits, You feel as though you’ve wet yourself, It’s that damp in your groin, Your face glistens in the dull light, Like an old copper coin, Your hands tremble and your mind races,

Oh, what to do?

The basement was a bad idea, It always is, But this, the audience already knew!

Now should our victim live or die?

We could do it now, We could play it out with another scene or two, As we know what’s to become of this poor unfortunate anyhow.

Should our victim flee one last time?

Should we allow him to get past the brute?

He’ll race up the stairs, And jiggle the doorknob, Shake it just so, Glancing over his shoulder to gauge his time.

He’s running out, Does he think to unlock it?

Hmmm…I don’t think so.

Our evil doer approaches, Not a word does he say, And our victim will make one last attempt.

The vase by the door Becomes airborne you see, Dazing our maniac but for a sec.

Our victim makes for the stairs.

Done this before, Yes, I know.

And as our pitiful victim makes his last appeal, He falls going up the stairs, And his fate is now sealed.

The camera pans to the axe swinging down.

We don’t see the bludgeoning, Just hear the sound Of the final scream that wrenches the night air.

And as we leave the theatre, We glance over our shoulders, At the slightest sound, And find ourselves checking the closets and under the bed.

Before we let sleep claim us, Hopefully we’ll not find any dread.

We like to be scared.

The Alter Ego Revolt

© Donna Terrill

Good evening folks – you’re listening to CMOR public radio, at 103.6 on your FM dial and this is the Sunday night Women at Work show. Tonight my guest is a selfemployed professional dominatrix who calls herself Mistress Mariah. Welcome to the show and thank-you for lifting the veil of mystery about your chosen field.

My pleasure, but I must say that the profession seemed to choose me, not the other way around.

Could you elaborate on that for our listeners?

Certainly. I experienced a transformation, an opportunity to leave my old life behind. It was like glimpsing another dimension, then being sucked into a vortex that took me where I was meant to be. It started on Hallowe’en night…

The crock-pot of chili was turned to low and the beer bucket was filled to the brim with ice and Kokanee. My old Victorian rental house looked wickedly haunted. I had used a recycled reel of old movie film to transform the front picture window into a massive spider web, hung with rubber bats, rats and spiders. A life-sized Alfred Hitchcock cut-out was ready to greet my guests on the front porch and the windows winked and flickered with candle-lit jack-olanterns. Right on cue a full moon loomed above the north shore mountains.

The only thing left was to get into costume and prepare to greet my guests.

Every Hallowe’en I would add a few extra touches to my favourite disguise – a slutty, vampish outfit which always began with the black lace merry widow bustier I had ordered – while in a hopeful mood – from Frederick’s of Hollywood.

Along with black net tights and thigh-high stiletto boots, I piled on studded belts and lots of punky jewelry. With a few quick snips of the scissors a long, full, satin skirt from Value Village became a swirling, black cape. I stood in front of my bathroom mirror, pinned back my hair and pulled on a long, raven ‘Cher’ wig.

As I applied white make-up and smudged contoured shadows under my cheek

bones, I wondered why I was always drawn to this type of costume. Could it be some kind of alter ego, “the other I,” if my high school Latin was correct? I glued on false eyelashes and outlined my eyes with heavy black liner. I stood back and surveyed the mirrored reflection of my transformation.

Now, costumed in an uber sexy manner with a dangerous evil edge I felt inspired to play a role that was the polar opposite of my everyday social-worker self. Gone was the buttoned-down schoolmarm look, the safe, blunt-cut coif, the faint touch of lip gloss. There was no remaining sign of the ‘good’ girl who pleased parents and bosses, who never rebelled but strived only to meet others’ expectations by getting good marks and maintaining, as much as was humanly possible, a virginal demeanor. The woman looking back at me was not the same office drudge who would agree to take on-call time on the weekends so others could be free to party and carouse. I could never seem to refuse a request – I fed cats for vacationing friends, bought raffle tickets for soccer teams and calendars for environmental causes and had a freezer full of Girl Guide cookies.

As a final touch I applied a rich coat of Awesome Aubergine lip colour. I stood there, lipstick tube in hand, mesmerized. The doorbell rang and I took a quick backward look in the mirror as I exited the bathroom. I felt stunned but exhilarated – it was more than a transformation, it was a metamorphosis. And now I was in charge.

I swung open the door and struck a sultry pose with a curled-lip look of disdain to greet my co-workers. They looked at me in disbelief. Little Bo Peep and her sheep – her Aussie boyfriend, dressed in sheep skin rugs pinned at his shoulders and who had obviously needed a few stiff scotches to get in the party mood – did a double take. Behind them, a couple of longtime friends, dressed in fishermen hip waders and sou’wester hats, with a fishing creel full of gummy worms showed absolutely no sign of recognition on their faces. Then came an assortment of Blues Brothers wannabes, black leotard-clad cats, gangsters, fairy godmothers – all gripping wine bottles but slack jawed and speechless as I greeted them. Tamara, our office receptionist, wore a full English riding habit complete with ruffles at her neck and a riding crop. She took one look, registered shock at my new persona, then handed me her riding crop and said, “Here, you need this more than I do!”

It was so easy and felt so natural to keep in character all evening. There were lots of jokes about being ‘disciplined’ and Wyatt Earp, our office accountant even offered up his handcuffs for my use. My inhibitions disappeared, my confidence was off the charts, I felt fantastic! My posture even improved, stilettos and all. I was arrogant and bold enough to proposition all the men and a few of the women.

I was still basking in my success while sending off the final stragglers well after two a.m. when Myrna from HR, dressed as a gypsy fortuneteller, stood on the porch and looked up at the full moon.

“If I was Wiccan,” she said, and we all suspected that she was, “I would be very leery of being out at the witching hour on the night of a full moon. That's when Wiccans believe the veil between the living and the dead is the most transparent. It’s a night like this when black magic is the most effective… not that I believe it! Heh, great party, hon, thanks,” and she trudged off to her ride.

I leaned over the railing on the verandah and watched a dark wisp of a cloud crawl across the face of the moon. When it was again fully revealed, it shone so bright that it dimmed the brilliance of its backdrop of stars. If ever there was a time to make a wish, this was it.

So I held out my arms to the universe and made a plea – to kill off the existence of my former mousy, pushover self.

As soon as the thought was formed I felt an overwhelming sadness and emptiness. Then a wolf, or maybe the neighbour’s hound, began to howl at the moon, keening in a long mournful lament. A warm, moist breeze scented with jasmine wafted through the crisp, October air. It wrapped itself around me. I felt protected, newly born, that I had finally come home. I was not alone.

After that, everything changed. The old me was gone and before long Mistress Mariah was born. My alter-ego became….dominant, shall we say?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- copyright Donna Terrill

Carried Into The Storm

Š Glenn G. Wootton

Gordon Tannerman hopped onto the chairlift for another run down the Blue Mountain summer bike trails. It was halfway through his post high school graduation summer holidays and Gordon was having the time of his life. He looked up along the line of chairs and discovered that there was only one other person. They were about five chairs ahead of him.

Then he looked back down to see nobody had hopped on behind him. Only the chairlift operator and one other attendant were there. His android device buzzed. The text message from the top of the lift told him there was a storm coming. He sent a text message asking if they could back the chair lift down the slope. A text came back telling him that there is no reverse on the lift system, only forward and stop.

There was a loud crack of thunder, and a rolling percussion of the sound echoed off the surrounding landscape.

Gordon suddenly realized he was sitting on a giant lighting rod of metal towers, electric powered cables and metal chairs.

He tried to shift his body off of the metal, touching only the non-metal cushion and wondered if that would be enough to avoid electrocution.

There was a bright blue-white flash above, another crack and roll of thunder. The storm was moving toward the lift and he was moving up toward it. He was being carried right into the oncoming electrical storm. The very air around him felt like a threat, ready to pulse a high power current through him in the blink of an eye.

Gordon thought of jumping off. He looked down to see if there were soft areas. He pictured himself pushing off from the chair and plunging to the ground. He visualized his acrobatic tumble landing and coming out with a bad ankle and a few bruises.

That changed to visions of smacking into branches and fallen trees strewn around unseen and maybe even landing straddled across some rough logs and rocks he could not see. It would be stupid to drop to the ground from this height. He could land on something that would break his back or wind up severely injured. That would not be a better option than taking his chances with the storm.

Stress came calling now. Gordon felt panic slip into every part of his being. His heart began to race and his body tensed. He had to make a conscious effort to breathe.

Another blinding flash of blue-white lightning grabbed his attention, snapping his eyes to the top of the hill.

He was a human offering to the gods of the elements, lifted to the heavens.

The ride from base to top was only about fifteen minutes. But this time it felt like an eternity.

He thought about how he could go down in Blue Mountain history as “The guy who died of a lightning bolt electrocution that summer”. He wondered how many outside of his own friends and family would actually remember his name.

Lots of people survive lightning blasts. And maybe it would not hit him directly. That moment of comfort was rudely cut short by a bright blue-white flash and crash of thunder.

He absorbed the sensations around him. He gazed around at the old stands of trees and underbrush that endured many more of these storms. They were tinder sticks, waiting to be ignited any moment.

Suddenly he was at the top of the lift and the attendant was yelling at him. “Come on, you’re here!”

He was grabbed by the forearm and went quickly along willingly in the direction he was being led.

The ski lift hut was packed full and he found himself up against at least two others. There was a flash and zap sound. A woman yelled in pain and moved back from the doorway.

“What happened?” the attendant called from the doorway side.

“I was touching a metal part and got shocked!” the woman called back.

“Oh, that was close, Gord,” one of his friends said from somewhere in the hut. “You just made it by seconds”.

“Did it hit the lift?” Gordon asked.

“Yes it did,” the attendant replied. “They told me they saw it arc along the cables.”

They all stood in silence waiting for another fifteen minutes while the storm passed over the peak and away from putting them in harm’s way any further.

Then the attendant turned her system back on and was given the all clear to come out.

So she opened the door and let everyone out. She took a look at the woman who had been shocked and applied some standard first aid then told her to go see a medical expert on getting to the base of the trails.

“Wow!” Gordon laughed out his relief. “What an experience that was!”

------------------------------------------------------------------- copyright Glenn G. Wootton

Fabulous Halloween memories!

Last year at Poetic Justice “Poets Wanted: Dead or Alive” Please join us this year for another fun afternoon. SUNDAY OCT 25, 3 to 5 PM at the Heritage Grill, Back Room, 447 Columbia St, New Westminster.

Check out the videos from last year HERE

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WATCH VIDEO HERE

LADY LAZARUS POETS WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE 2014 WATCH VIDEO HERE

sylvia

Sylvia workshop

carol

WORDPLAY AT WORK FEEDBACK & E-ZINE SUBMISSIONS

Janet Kvammen, RCLAS Director/E-zine janetkvammen@rclas.com Antonia Levi secretary@rclas.com

Open Call for Submissions - RCLAS Members Only Poems & Prose Call for Submissions on the following themes/features November Themes: In Remembrance, and Autumn. Deadline Oct 15 December Themes: Winter, Christmas, and Peace. Deadline Dec 5 Open Call: Poems, Short Stories, Book excerpts & Songs are welcome for submission to future issues of Wordplay at work.

Submit Word documents to janetkvammen@rclas.com

Please send us your latest news, feedback on our e-zine and any ideas or suggestions that you may have.

VOLUNTEERS NEEDED!

If you would like to participate in a single event, or make an even bigger contribution, please contact our volunteer coordinator.

RCLAS Events Coordinator: Sonya Furst-Yuen sonya.yuen@rclas.com

SAVE THE DATES Saturday NOV 21, 2015 Fred Cogswell Award For Excellence in Poetry / Membership Drive Event at Anvil Centre, 1 – 3:30 PM Saturday Afternoon DEC 5, 2015 RCLAS ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING/CHRISTMAS PARTY New West Public Library

Thank you to our Sponsors 

Arts Council of New Westminster



Judy Darcy



The Heritage Grill



New Westminster Public Library



City of New Westminster



Renaissance Books



100 Braid Street Studios

Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.

- Edgar Allan Poe

See upcoming events at www.rclas.com www.poeticjustice.ca Facebook

October 2015

Wordplay at work ISSN 2291- 4269

Issue 28 Contact: janetkvammen@rclas.com RCLAS Director/ E-zine Design