Soliloquies Anthology 21.2

Soliloquies Anthology 21.2

Copyright Š 2017 Soliloquies Anthology Soliloquies Anthology retains first North American Serial Rights.

Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this anthology may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

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Contents Poetry Shaken Landscape – MW Jaeggle 10 Spruce and Pollen – MW Jaeggle 12 s'up, void? – Nicky Tee 13 not so flexi – Nicky Tee 16 dear nora – Nicky Tee 19 bucket list – Nicky Tee 22 George Michael II – Matthew Walsh 24 Love in the 21st Century – Genny Doyle 26 SPF 50 – Sophie Panzer 27 Heat Wave – Quinn Mason 28 Downed, You Have Me – Adam Haiun 30 My Grandfather and Ernest Hemingway Were Both Ambulance Drivers – Adam Haiun 31 Pyre – Sarah Bigham 32 nothing nothing nothing burns – tala e 33 Wolfhouse – Clementine Morrigan 34 Don Valley – Clementine Morrigan 35 Anyway – Clementine Morrigan 37 [untitled] – Mariah Lynne Dear 38 Tucked – Mariah Lynne Dear 39 soupfucker666@gmail.com – Tessa Romanow 40 Incubate – Darrell Dela Cruz 41 On a Day Like Today – Brynjar Chapman 42

A lady who's been to the moon – Emilie Lafleur 44 Something about connection – Emilie Lafleur 45 The Second Last Chapter Is the Climax – Gabriel Wainio-Theberge 47 Shiver – Gabriel Wainio-Theberge 48 Shiver 2 – Gabriel Wainio-Theberge 50 An Aubade for December – Alex Custodio 51 Third Cat – Ryan Tellier 52 Ode to the Pigeon – Ryan Tellier 54 Who Will I Love After the Bomb? – Mitchell King 56 Prose A Juice Cleanse – Nathalie Agostini 59 Wunderhorse II – Fawn Parker 68 I don't know anything about anyone: a sometimes fiction – Leona Nikolić 74 Breakfast – Jennifer Mancini 77 Janie's House – Jay Merill 80 Dave's – Thomas Molander 90 Leaked Excerpt # 5 – Matteo Ciambella 96 Contributors

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Editorial Team Editors-in-Chief Jake Byrne Meredith Marty-Dugas Layout Design Jake Byrne Managing Editor Theo Pappas Artistic Director Ali Pinkney Poetry Editors Ali Pinkney Annah-Lauren Bloom Julia Weber Adrian Ngai Fiction Editors Zaynab Solange Midgette Sarah MacKenzie Gabby Vachon Media Editors Oliver Skinner Tyra Baltram

Foreword This year has brought with it many changes to our personal and collective identities. Our notion of political progress has been challenged, unveiling more truths than we'd like to admit. Soliloquies Anthology 21.2 stops to reflect on how our paths have led us here, to examine what is revealed in a photograph, a taxicab, or at a breakfast table. It is important to mourn the funeral pyre without so much nostalgia that one forgets the flames.

This second issue returns to the river, returns home, returns to the shade to question our own responsibility here. What is all this? Who does it belong to? How do we cleanse ourselves of it? Seeking reflection and reprieve does not free us from our present, but it gives us the possibility of something more for later. We must decide what we really want; whether it is the Mystique in our hand or a real chance at crying, to devour or dance, or just sip coffee without choking on it. When one finds themself in dirty waters, when morning comes and still there is separating to be done, we have to ask what’s next. Soliloquies Anthology remembers, regrets, and wonders at whatever sky is left, about who we are going to love after.

It is with great gratitude that I introduce the second and last issue of Soliloquies Anthology’s twentyfirst year. I would like to thank all of the writers that

have submitted and contributed to our journal. Without your care for us, there would be little here to share.

Instead, we are able to proudly present our affection woven into your work. This team of editors has been focused and faithful to their duties of promoting, creating content, and editing for this journal. I am indebted to them and thank them for their commitment. Kailey Havelock, our previous Editor-in-Chief, deserves thanks for her expertise and patience. We would be unable to create these journals without the generous financial support of Concordia’s English Department, the Concordia Association for Students in English, and the Arts and Sciences Federation of Associations.

Lastly I would like to thank Jake Byrne, who has not only been my co-editor, but also my co-conspirator. His intelligence, support and friendship have made this experience a remarkable one. Dear reader, I hope you find the same laughter, tears and tenderness in these pages that I do. These voices have joined here in search of answers, and I hope that you keep looking with us.

Meredith Marty-Dugas Editor-in-Chief

Poetry

MW Jaeggle

Shaken Landscape There is a cabin in this photograph there it is – over there you must focus to see it starts here on the mountainside deep within the trees where the cabin hides behind that tree line down by the lake’s surface where the loons cry out confused as to what is left and right And there was no reason to believe in vertigo throwing us pioneers forward where survival pits the nation between confusion

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Over by this sinuous path in the middle of the photo the old game trail overgrown by the only way to the shack once we took the trail alone that ran sparse around the lake we realized once near the shack on the mountainside: shaken by a two-fold landscape drowning fog and loons in towards the fork in the trail back east and out west between sense

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MW Jaeggle

Spruce and Pollen A dozen robins rise from the salmonberry patch,

ochre before a timid sun.

The spruce, its mess of knots, grooves, signets of life speaks through the earth dotted with dandelion seeds.

The spruce tells me I am the wind between thistle needles, that you are the waves joining Haida Gwaii and the mainland;

it tells me that the runoff from your palms is a

salve for distance.

I heed the spruce, and sow the dandelion seeds into

my hand. The honesty of pollen is the tilled palms of your wish.

Here is the virtue that grants symmetry to a handful of flowers, what seals our hands when we cup water for another’s lips.

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Nicky Tee

s’up, void? while people are sober stressed, playing candy crush, solitaire or watching an adam sandler movie, i’m here with a glass of whisky and ice filled to the top, and i’m doing great i’m in an airplane i’m travelling through time and clouds and the rivotril is kicking in vacationing alone is a brew of confusion and short term memory loss and going to the back to talk to the stewardesses without realizing this pen blew up so i have to decide now to go and wash my hands and stare at myself in the mirror

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like i owe myself a lot of money i apologize to the two men sitting next to me for falling asleep and spilling and having them pick up my food and empty plastic cup twice i lose track of time too busy wandering around duty-free cause i care about my friends that made me late but i didn’t care cause i need smokes i need things and i got ‘em so beats me now i’m home in bed with a radio on beside me 15

playing just like heaven and i try not to keep this dream journal directly next to me so that i don’t pressure myself some people say they feel like cowboys on a journey in some desert i feel like i’m standing in a corner with my memories stacked like cards in a little box and i hand them out to people or like i’m standing in an oasis with one palm tree and a tiny blue lake that looks like it could’ve come out of a windows xp wallpaper

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Nicky Tee

not so flexi getting used to living & shopping at eden most of the time free friday w whoever waggy-waggity doggy tail and brown fur all over my face it’s early, the view from my window doesn’t look like a vaporwave city anymore i’m rinsing off the previous coffee from my french press and i feel like invisible bugs are crawling on my skin or fast miniature bug sized cars are driving on me around my neck around

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my ear and on my skin & stuff everything tickles it’s the big bad buzz i luv everyone in my art class now more than ever they’re having so much fun at one point we all get quiet and don’t say a word so we can focus on our little projects and you can always hear more than 1 person breathing thru their mouth pretty loud cause of the weird toxic art smell in the room that really gets to us after a while but that’s why i love ‘em 18

i love hearing ‘em breathe like that cause i’ve known them for more than a month

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Nicky Tee

dear nora my eyes, they’re closed. the dots are all connected and the thoughts, i guess you can say, make sense. they stop by and then switch to something else. the mind isn’t giving a f*ck, and it’s good at it. small dark brown room with a window to the left. *sips coffee* helicopter in the distance, like the purr of a thousand kittens. the buildings at night from a distance look like an old pixelated video game all of their tiny flickering square windows with a light. each window representing a life, a life that was once a baby,

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an insignificant figure of speech that grew and imagined things. a baby that became an 8-yr-old child that came home sweating one night at 8pm from playing with a water hose outside with a friend. a child that had no past or future to base any facts on and was just stoked to turn on the TV and crawl into the room temperature bedsheets while still being a bit wet from the water hose. a child that experienced nothing but dopamine rushes from knowing that tomorrow is saturday morning. you’ve convinced me that it’s okay to lose a bunch of weight overnight and still own the same clothes. you’ve also convinced me that

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wearing potato bags as clothes can be stylish because i gotta admit that you looked pretty cool in your oversized coat. and you’ve also convinced me that any segment of Sylvia Plath’s writings can be a lot like a Joy Division song. i had this epiphany when i realized there are so many things i could talk about to you in order to connect all of these dots linked to my pre-sleeping moment. so i felt this need of asking you if you wanted to get coffee but by then, i would have forgotten it all and the epiphany would therefore mean nothing. this is why it’s useless to tell me you have a bf.

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Nicky Tee

bucket list i wanna say i was drinking a mystique and that i felt like, so awkward i wanna have a friend with a strong devoted passion for making airplane music i wanna be in a good mood and wear a beanie at the same time i wanna have enough room in my jacket for a bunch of cute pups or a whole friend i wanna imagine an angel showing an image of an older me with an okay beard from the outside of a train window in the middle of a field no one cares about like some harrypottergoingtoschool sort of vibe i wanna look up ‘why do i have’s of stuff i do not think that i have i wanna wear a big dumb hat so that my 23

neighbours recognize me more often i wanna ask the void ‘wassup?’ i wanna tell people that the best kind of drunk is me getting up in the morning to make coffee and i wanna make a post about why i don’t celebrate thanksgiving cause i’m not up to date with things in general and i want it to say on the bottom that it was ‘sent from my iPad’ everything tickles cause life is the big bad buzz i laugh at my own bars cause i’m an idiot and i’m still waiting for 2003 hillary duff to turn my heart into crushed fava beans while she punches me to sleep

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Matthew Walsh

George Michael II When I kissed my first boy it was in the bathroom of a Tim Horton’s. My teeth scraped his teeth. It was satisfying. These ice skates.

I would dance, triple sow cow with the mop to the stall and he would follow my lead I wanted him to dance also, to take my whole mouth in his mouth. I had no idea what was happening in me. Never felt heat before. Still September.

I was quite scary.

I had woken one morning just growing and growing hair. How could I explain other than it was Easter, the time of year Jesus came back from the dead and cursed you. I called myself dog. I obeyed myself.

I wanted the fur to take me over. I wanted these animal feelings.

The first thing that was mine.

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This boy was the type of boy to attend art galleries and touch all the paintings.

In the stall he would discover little things in my painting. The way he held my love handles, discovered pieces of me I considered not exactly material of study. My appendix scar to this day I cloak as long as possible. I have secrets. This boy, he was born in a bathroom, did not police my body, held my breasts against his breasts, his teeth scraping my teeth, me born with him. This bathroom.

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Genny Doyle

Love in the 21st Century Turning the pomegranate in my hand, I try to decide the best direction to slice.

It’s not like the lemon, where slicing downward versus sideways gives the fruit different purpose: this is about personal preference.

I go at it lengthwise, bursting past the first layer of juicy jewels but get stuck on some tough rind in the middle.

I push harder and the fruit snaps open a mosaic of red and white, in what must be a pattern but does not look like one.

I pluck the pebbles of ruby, only managing to extract a few clusters before they scatter to the counter and I must place them in a bowl and start again.

Shouldn’t there be a machine by now that does this for me?

I want to devour without thought.

It takes too long to tear something apart properly.

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Sophie Panzer

SPF 50 In April, we let the Sonoran sun bake winter from our bones.

Here my capillaries burst in the dry night and my sleep is not deep enough for dreams.

One sister serenades a cactus on her ukelele and the other rescues bees from swimming pool graves.

Our mother murmurs “sunscreen� with all the fervour of a prayer as she anoints our freckles.

In her dreams she pares away our burns, our spots, our nascent tumors like she carves bruises from battered fruit.

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Quinn Mason

Heat Wave The day was so hot her ice cream cone started to melt

before it was even in her hand, And once there, it ran in semen-white rivulets over her

chipped-glitter thumb, Across the vastness to the wife-beater-white toe of her sneaker, Where it bled and she promptly forgot about it.

It was so hot that she had called in sick to her call-center

cubicle; a half-truth.

Her mind feverish with the unpleasant swirl of ideas

and sweat, A swirl that resembled the sad green-brown whirlpool Of bled-together sprinkles, sprinkles she now realized

had been a profound lapse in judgement.

It was the hottest day in recent memory Which meant the playgrounds were shimmering and empty.

The ice cream man, after their perfunctory business

exchange, had fled for his life, And several unattended elderly would most likely die.

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Her iPhone, when pressed for music, politely declined, Indicating inclement temperatures with the forthright

flash of a thermometer; She gracefully acquiesced, despite the fact it displayed a

stock image Rather than a numerical meteorological truth.

Because it was so hot, some emotion in her was stirred, Unfrozen from the back of her thoracic cavity, Where it had lain undisturbed since the last time she felt

heat like this, mobilizing her limbs, reddening her vision.

It was so hot the emotion pumped faster and faster like

once before, Molecules knocking against one another like knobby

knees knocked against the floor, Away from hair yanked up, and shoulder blades spread- eagled, Faster and faster until the liquefied emotion picked up

enough momentum to transform her into

a puff of vanilla-scented humidity.

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Adam Haiun

Downed, You Have Me There are lamps along the thoroughfare. You have me.

Even the alleyways smell of candy. Here, you have me.

The dancing in the streets conflicts with my lunch plans.

In the stone place I see you walk in heels, and you have me.

They covet us at parties more than we covet ourselves.

Peel back velvet skin in unrelated bedrooms. There, you

have me.

You dream of open-concept kitchens (even the fruit are

stainless steel).

I dream you shoot at me with a flak gun. Downed, you

have me.

Morning, and the throatfeeling that comes with it;

you have me.

Tomorrow, and the mindfeeling that comes with it;

you have me.  

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Adam Haiun

My Grandfather and Ernest Hemingway Were Both Ambulance Drivers

A hundred failed attempts to learn shesh besh The box inlaid with pearl collects its dust The trail behind a jeep to Tel Aviv My Saba and a young Moshe Dayan

An urchin stealing bread from English trucks When Mussolini stopped delivering buns The school bells rang all day in Tripoli But Saba learned his maths in mountain caves He’ll tell you where you’re from through black shark’s eyes And speak tongues learned beneath Egyptian guns Preach Abraham saw all atop his hill The olive trees, the surface of the Sun Then he drove a taxi, then he sold shoes Now he softly sits, now he quietly chews

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Sarah Bigham

Pyre We buried you at evening’s depth, trowels on sedge.

The pup heels without sound, slack lead, stilled tail, as cicadas in a creel of grass sound salutes.

We tamp the Earth and lie above, on pooled shirts, watching for meteors that never come to pass.

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tala e

nothing nothing nothing burns little girl hiding in heavy grey sheets tasting peach jams and bread don’t tell anyone u were so scared of moving at night u were a little girl in a little house made of grey bricks and u could only see the shadows of the grass blades reaching the window maybe that’s why u liked to set so many fires and then u burned the

inside of ur thighs and they splashed them with vinegar and u grew up gritting ur teeth in ur grandmothers

kitchen where it smells like peach jam and burning and burning and burning on ur skin i want

it to burn again and be the little girl w the small brown thighs vicious white and red marks caked w vinegar n salt n i want to cry again and stare into their faces and say nothing burns like a country in flames (nothing burns like all the little girls like me)  

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Clementine Morrigan

Wolfhouse Rotting wooden structure collapsed in on itself Your great grandmother lived in the Wolfhouse with sixteen children Rusted wheels of horse drawn plows Your ancestors were farmers they put their shovels in the ground to find rock Dynamite blasting roads into existence Way in, way out never a way back

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Clementine Morrigan

Don Valley We walk the length of the train bridge way up in the sky, spaces between planks as big as our feet, the Valley, the highways below That river, growing wide and fat after rain, murky, brown-grey, I climb down the river’s edge running shoes sinking in mud try to get close, to touch water Later, we sit on the divider in the middle of a six-lane highway afraid to cross to the other side or go back We stop a cyclist on the bike path beg him for water, say: We’ve been in the Valley all night We’ve had nothing to drink We can’t figure out how to leave The man unhooks a bottle of Gatorade from his bike—gifts us

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We sleep in red ants, bodies on fire, wake to wander through branches— these woods are small but they are woods, this river polluted but persisting, the birds who make their home here, the way I keep returning

 

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Clementine Morrigan

Anyway Knee-deep in shit-filled water The river rises, he jokes that everyone in the city flushed at once My feet make contact with river floor I don’t know for sure how much poison I am standing in but I love the water like I love myself: anyway  

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Mariah Lynne Dear

I was IDed for a 14A movie in the shirt I wore the night I was sexually assaulted.

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Mariah Lynne Dear

Tucking there is a white bottle of rum on the table baby bottle, no lid we nurse each other like foals, baby and brown we suckle and we try to sleep, we suckle, and we try to sleep.

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Tessa Romanow

soupfucker666@gmail.com I stay inside because I am allergic to experience. Going out makes me nauseous. My neighbour calls me housecat, and he is not wrong, but I resent him for it. I eat alphabet soup and vomit sonnets that leave bad tastes in the mailboxes of literary editors. I wonder if you can overdose on minestrone— I hope you can overdose on minestrone. I tug at femininity until it fits, it never fits, I always end up nude.

Nude rather than naked because naked means watched and watched means leaving the house, which I have stopped doing. I am a pretty girl but only when I am looked at. I am looked at in the Dollar Store, buying cans and cans of 79-cent survival. The cashier looks at me like, are you sure you need this much soup. He tells me the sugar content is astounding. I tell him wearing fishnets in below-zero weather is also astounding, but I am one Committed Bitch.

I say keep the receipt. I don’t plan on returning.

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Darrell Dela Cruz

Incubate I stole your cells and membranes until my eyes formed and I could see myself disfiguring. My arms—stubs, then branches, then small leaves. A sapling you couldn’t nurture. The result: a tree will always be a tree.

The circles inside spreading outward; the design seeping out of the bark a cracked aging that would always show, that would always need the sun. How you felt love smother you from within.

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Brynjar Chapman

On a day like today the banana in my bag— no matter how hard I try—will become mushy.

I’ll eat it anyway, disgusted and sad, listening to sad music on my phone and on my right, a guy is doing the exact same thing: hosing down his car in the rain.

It is gonna get so clean and the top button on my jacket will fall off any day now, and I won’t do a thing. I will have to get it replaced but the sun has come out now, the clouds that remain are too close and cling to

the light, so I slip into any patch of shade that will have me: under a tree, under a boathouse on rotting stilt legs, under James’s giant peach.

In the shade, I like the feeling of being out of things, able to see people on their way maybe to the airport or one of the hotels beside it or the launch pad, where a shuttle awaits them to go colonize Mars

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along with their assigned group of people who are also embarking on a suicide mission to this new red planet where I can’t imagine there are phone contracts, music on those phones, or bananas.

The downside of the shade is water never having a chance to dry, railings rusting. It gets on my hands, so eventually my white shorts will turn the colour of rust, the fence to dust, the people on Mars will get covered in it too, and they will constantly be wiping it off their space suits. The engineer counts down, garbles something into his radio and it’s still comfortable here in the shade.

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Emilie Lafleur

A lady who's been to the moon But the Leader, he cleans my hair with his feet And my desire gets stuck between my teeth I can’t stop him from eating the fruit But I won’t let him digest it The garden drops off into the highway I smoke and he says, “You look healthy” I smoke and the Leader says, “You look like you’re out of breath” But the Leader, he cleans my hair with his teeth And my desire is somewhere under his feet

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Emilie Lafleur

Something about connection You ruin the city and the city ruins my calves and

that’s the way these things go. Something about correlation, something about colour.

I ruin your life and your life ruins me. Something about

causality, something about colour.

You tell me you’ve lost and I tell you you’ve definitely lost,

but you mean this game and I mean something else, something like an object, something like

something precious. Something like a colour.

It follows, you say, that I’ve won and I agree that I’ve won,

but you still mean this game and I still mean something else, that I’m the object, something

precious. Something about connection.

Something about light.

There is a line for the bus in the city and I can see that line

from my home in the city.

The line is a colour and you are not that colour.

Something about winning, something about losing.

You say I have nothing to regret and my regret says how

aspirational of you. I say you have nothing left to say and your voice says how bold of you.

Something about line, something about light.

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I scatter you like salt on the steps and this is what we call

winter, and this is the way it goes. Something about correlation, something about colour.

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Gabriel Wainio-Theberge

The Second Last Chapter Is the Climax autumn having come into its own a process, not a premonition incorporating snow, sleet, bombs every cloud an eclipse wind is HAPPENING at a breakneck pace giant umbrellas scud across the Earth like magicians ballooning from out-of-control experiments every parking lot is the disappointment at the top of the sage's mountain angelic purple flame breaks through the clouds richer than the blue sky at the horizon raw ember lights the clouds the moon is a delicate pink on this day, we remember the dead on that day, the honoured dead death hangs between autumn and winter ideologies

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Gabriel Wainio-Theberge

Shiver a flat blue-grey sky leans—if anything—forward against the city light: night’s chalkboard menu traverse the brittle boxes of gloaming-powder stacked across the street at 2:00 in the morning take a seat next to your spectating body as your mind wears itself down in circles a race-car night-rat you never go all the way never get a face full of mystery slush, ride the brutalist roller coaster into the brutalist ball pit. // lit cloud-banks flat as streetlights a sandy pink stretches over the featureless side of the city. trees arch.

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close your eyes you can see out over the full extent of history: a vast slope there are no people left. please please please please please please please please take my hat away!

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Gabriel Wainio-Theberge

Shiver 2 I drag myself home at midnight, alone with tall things.

Steam pillars and streetlights.

Forced to choose between music and science fiction.

My walk sounds smart but the click of my boots doesn't.

Presence is something that taps you on the shoulder.

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Alex Custodio

An Aubade for December I am left with nothing but the scent of you, ripe peach flesh in sultry August orchards, and the shape your lips made as you spoke your first promise beneath a cusp of starts. Tasting of bitter chill, each melted fractal spread the lashes ‘round your umber eyes, and had me yearning for the scent of you, the scent of ice chips in your hair while shoulders bared, hesitant, to a hungry gaze. The wanting beads on back of neck with recollection of the shape your lips made as you whispered greetings with your fingertips on nape, on calves, on hips.

Hello clavicle. Hello ilium. By now, it’s hello sun, which leaves me left with nothing but the scent of you and the pain of window frames requesting my presence in the light of day. Tiptoe away from thirsty thoughts of the shape your lips made as you gasped.

Across the threshold: a superior ache in vena cava, soothed

each time I map the seven birthmarks on your thigh in my mind’s eye.

If only I was left with more than just the scent of you and the shape your lips made as you said— 52

Ryan Tellier

Third Cat you could say these birds, esteemed carrier pigeons all, wake me, forget me, that we are forged from their flight that the cat among them, lithe half-sleeps to hunt when he might hunger but I remind myself of the man amidst thunder, a buddha between two tigers who, hanging from a mountain’s side, spotted, swung and ate a lone wild berry who fell and, in falling, 53

outmatched that burning symmetry whose lips still, still,

the teeth

in their redness, still find joy for joy for joy—

 

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Ryan Tellier

Ode to the Pigeon who sees itself in a puddle and flies

reflected on the street up.

look: its brain crowds out the owl yet hooks the parchment consonant and vowel prefigured in paperfanned wing-beats about the grain; watch the pigeon as the cat, black laps its milk under tenement roofs in the rain a paperback pawed down at the spine dog-eared and splayed like a mouse. thus purged hear it purr out its earnest coo. the cock and the clock do not meet nor match this quick shift of foot and weight do not match its unsexed feathers 55

for it feeds and needs no Darwinian schemes though oil-slick or velveteen rainbows worn at the neck leave it complicit with asphalt and the grey clouded and the blue clouded sun-splintered sky.

Pigeon, your eyes lit by lighting Tesla’s gaze

find lobes find fiery in love.

Pigeon, you alone happily in Paris New York among a million likewise strangers wing to and toe cathedrals, their steeples and towers modest beyond what we know.

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Who Will I Love After the Bomb?

Space heaters or one bed between

Mad electrons spinning around some terrible star. Are we holding everything together? Or is everything keeping us in place like a destiny? What is your role and what is mine?

Soon we must choose over our wounds—new and old—black coffee or milk? How should we live?

we are a nucleus.

All of this happened by accident: space and this body. There are other people at the party but in the atoms of this queer time where others outside of ourselves do not exist to spill champagne on my new shoes

but my own.

What does your silence mean? Or mine for that matter—at the edge of what will come and what has not healed holding not your hand

Mitchell King

58 melting in the sunlight of your impounded red car.

let us become as one in a new star. Let us vibrate and make light.

All of this happened by accident anyway: the colour of your eyes and my hair. The water forming from the sky to become a lake. The earth cooling in that first winter. Why should my heart outlast all that? After this accident ends—let us start another—

opens the heart to all others. Atoms to atoms. I don’t think we have escaped. And why should we?

When this death promises to be obliterating: dust to dust, glitter to glitter—finally no resurrection— reducing me to composite parts like hot glue and rhinestones

as an explosion outside the body

the two of us where we are together like a country? Perhaps the party has ended by now and we have spent the evening outside of it and this apartment and these bodies and this city.

I don’t think we have escaped. The newspaper says we should love the bomb

Prose

A Juice Cleanse Nathalie Agostini June 28th, 2015

Call - no answer Call - no answer Call - no answer

3:47 PM 4:23 PM 6:21 PM

Galicia was tending to her social media on a languid afternoon when the inconvenient Skype banner popped up in the upper-right corner of her screen and the default sound of an incoming call played until it was auto-rejected. Eb-BbEb, Bb-D-Bb. Five beats of artificial sound played for thirty seconds, first once, then less than an hour later, again.

Galicia had learned not to answer. Like a virus to which the immune system is predisposed, the calls would never go away completely, but they could diminish when managed with care. The call in June was the beginning of a recurrent episode that she could try to appease when it came up, but was never truly in control of.

A single mistake in high school had followed Galicia for years. When she was younger, like many of her peers, Galicia had experimented with Chatroulette, a website that facilitated the interaction between strangers. Thrilled by the gamble that the website afforded her, she had once spent bored days clicking through faces and naked torsos from across the world, in real time, to find her match. At the time, in a rush of adrenaline and lack of foresight, she had

Prose given her phone number and Skype contact to a stranger she found intelligent. The effects of this mistake had followed her over the years, breeding an obsession and burning a hole in the pocket where she kept her phone.

The Skype sound rang until it stopped again.

June 29th, 2015

Call - no answer Call - no answer

11:28 AM 11:28 AM

His username was Juice. In the six years that they had been in contact, he had never told her his name. Though she knew he was a janitor somewhere in New York State, living in his mother’s basement, at the time of meeting he had only instructed her to call him “Master.�

To some people Galicia admitted Juice was her longest-running boyfriend. He had made her cry, he had made her want to talk to him. He would forget about her, leaving her alone for long stretches of time, and he would come back, dialling her number obsessively on Skype, or attempting to reach her over the phone. Taking delight in the attention, she had developed a real intimacy with him but, out of prudence, had developed systems of avoiding him.

There were times when he would call her in the middle of the night, four, five, six times from an unknown number that she could neither call back nor block. It was during this time that she got into the habit of turning her phone off at

61

Nathalie Agostini night in order to sleep in peace, and began using Skype as minimally as possible. She started dreading the label “Unknown” on her phone screen, and avoided unidentifiable calls as not to hear the voice she had gotten used to hearing on the other line, the one that greeted her with a lusty “hey sexy,” and whose owner was unconcerned with the insults that were about to come his way.

Six years later she had learned to ignore his calls, and hoped that denying him attention would make him forget about her for another little while.

August 25th, 2015

hey sexy lady

have you been getting laid?

I know what a slut you are, have you been getting treated like one?

3:52 PM 4:28 PM 4:37 PM

Early on, she had talked to him about her sex life.

Albeit shy, she had been a promiscuous teenager, seeking low-stakes outlets for her sexuality online. The Internet had allowed her to experiment with various sides of her personality, and was a place where she could exercise her control over people she deemed stronger than her, particularly men.

It was the tactic of cyberbullies and cybernymphets; behind a veil of anonymity, Chatroulette was a place she and her friends returned to when bored, experimenting with their commands and their keyboard’s commands, teasing the ogling men until the very last second, then control-quitting when they felt the need to drop the conversation.

62

Prose

She had met Juice one night on a solitary amble through Chatroulette, when she had thoughtlessly given him her contact information. Seeking diversion and a channel for her confessions, she had used his consistent presence over the years to talk to him without feeling judged, to feel listened to. A few threats that he was coming to visit her had terrorized her in the mid-point of their relationship—but, she decided, for her peace of mind, to classify him as a dog that barked but didn’t bite. Never, to her knowledge, had he come to the city she lived in; nor had he ever showed any signs of true stalking: she had not received any bothers via social media, and he seemed only able to communicate with her via phone calls and Skype.

When she was bored, Galicia wrote back to him, entertaining his desire and stimulating her own imagination. But on days like August 25th, when she didn’t answer, Juice threw gross insults her way: you are a piece of shit dirty fucking whore and you know it

fucking dirty worthless piece of shit whore

6:08 PM 6:08 PM

Such words didn’t make her feel anything. On the contrary, she found it healthy that he should want to vent, and in a perverse way she felt as though she was helping him.

She understood his frustration, his projections of anger onto the screen, like screaming into a pillow. Putting herself in his place, she thought she would probably do the same.

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Nathalie Agostini August 25th, 2015

Call ended - busy Call started

6:08 PM 6:09 PM

When she felt like it, sometimes she answered the call and hung up immediately, simply to get him to understand she was busy. Other times she would pick up, without saying a word, only to hear him struggle. He certainly wasn’t stupid, and, with a weird kind of creative force, he came up with solutions to his own frustration and flaunted them proudly, often involving other conquests (whether online or off mattered not).

August 25th, 2015

yo i found a new slut i don't need you anymore u r a used up whore anyway

6:11 PM 6:32 PM

But the relationship, of course, was not unwarranted. As well as using him as a springboard for her desires, in high school Galicia had confessed to him her emotional needs, and he had listened – or so she imagined – with a special kind of tenderness. She had told him at length about her depression, and he had been helpful in the manner of a faraway friend, offering her the kind of tasteless, generic advice of cheap television that she would never follow but that made her feel tended to, and, to her own surprise, managed to make her laugh in the small window of her computer screen. She remembered with fondness the time he had divulged an exhibitionist fantasy about being together on the Eiffel Tower, and, though the cliché was far removed from

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Prose her own fantasies, she was touched by the ambition of that dream.

After sharing her feelings with him for months, things changed in her day-to-day and so did her attitude towards Juice. When he called during the day, she got mad, picked up the phone and yelled at him to stop calling her, insulting him in the grossest language. If he messaged her at night, during the late and lucid hours of creativity, she wrote back in mocking commentary that frustrated him, like “lol” and “ok”, which provoked him to attack her with a rupture of back-to-back calls and insults. And if she happened to be in the company of like-minded people, years later when she was beyond the shame of having him as cyber-parasite, she would sometimes taunt him with a “hi” and make him perform in his messages, exhibiting him to her friends and entertaining her party with him as though he were a dancing bear.

Sometimes her friends began to play along, but often they found the interaction overwhelming and gave Galicia her phone back in disgust.

“This person is ill,” they said, “and you are taking advantage of him. How can you treat someone like this?”

Other friends were perturbed by the horrible language Juice used, and felt concerned with Galicia’s safety.

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Nathalie Agostini September 17th, 2015

Are you still getting passed around like the dirty lil slut you are?

2:10 PM Call ended - no answer 2:11 PM

But sometimes, imaginative friends took her place and wrote back, in turn revealing the facets of Juice that had been latent otherwise. One evening in late September, for instance, a friend of Galicia’s took the steering wheel, continuing the conversation.

September 28th, 2015

no I haven't but it sounds like Ive inspired your inner slut though 8:39 PM You should try having someone come on you 8:58 PM I think you'd like it you filthy whore I think you might be right.

8:58 PM I am a filthy whore and will do whatever you like mistress You fucking know me so well 9:04 PM Show me baby 10:01 PM

The remarkable part of this evidence, when analyzed, was that Juice didn’t notice any nuances in tonality.

Or, if he did, perhaps he didn’t care that there was a laboratory of people talking to him, passing around Galicia’s phone in a circle and having their hand at Juice. For him – who knows – chatting with strangers in the dark folds of his imagination was the only release from an exhausting day.

What are you wearing?

Givenchy.

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10:02 PM 10:05PM

Prose I have a strap on, would you wear that and fuck me

10:06 PM Treat me like the dirty lil fucking pig slut I am like all the guys do to you?

Hello?

I really miss you Can we be on a regular basis like before? I truly miss you Please mistress I want you rape me with your big hard cock

Maybe it was wrong of Galicia – Galicia who knew better now, Galicia who was more prescient – to entertain herself with a stranger she had met on the Internet six years prior. Perhaps rationally speaking her younger self could not be held accountable for her mistake, but her present self could choose her actions responsibly, and decide to put an end to the conversation, by changing her Skype username and continuing to ignore the unanswerable calls. Yet, while she felt powerful, she did not want him to disappear completely…

Can we play baby

10:07 PM

Call ended – no answer 10:07 PM Call started 10:07 PM I want to cum for you so bad mistress Please let me Stop teasing me play with me baby like you used to, I loved you Lets go back to how we were I really miss you baby for real I think about you often Not only your gorgeous body but also your pretty smile and how much fun you are

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Nathalie Agostini

After all, he had been good to her, and they had cared for one another‌ Call – no answer

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11:34 PM

Wunderhorse II

M

Fawn Parker

y office was moved from the second floor to a split room by the front entrance of the factory. They said it was so I could be more readily available to offer my wealth of knowledge. You might not believe it but I was one of the best and most precise at Wunderhorse II, despite my being moved and consoled. I had the steadiest hand in the factory and sometimes I even painted other employees’ copyrights and years on their horses' bellies for them.

You also might not believe it because I didn’t look the part. I didn’t have anything eclectic going on with my clothing. But that’s how us true professionals are, we don’t always look the part. We don’t hone the aesthetic component because we’re busy honing our craft.

I painted the small plastic horses in such a way that I could have gained international recognition, if not for the Wunderhorse II company name overshadowing the identities of its individual employees. When Gary Malkez from my same floor came to me and confessed he was having trouble with the gradient pattern on the dapple gray, I got him doing it in an afternoon.

That was the first day Gary Malkez kissed me, in my old office on the second floor with the paintbrush still in his hand. He held it behind his back like he was embarrassed and when he left the room it was still behind his

Prose back, all the way back to his office like a pair of crossed fingers.

Gary Malkez was somewhat of a hero in my opinion. He had it rough growing up, as he was born in the middle of a lake. He floated up one day, a full grown man, and now a buoy marks that place, marked "Gary Malkez". He took the hardship of being born out in the middle of a lake and turned it into a talent. Gary Malkez was one of the best swimmers you’d ever meet.

Me and Gary Malkez did some fine work at the Wunderhorse II factory. You would have been impressed had you snooped on us painting the small plastic horses.

When the others’ office doors were shut, me and Gary Malkez would paint our horses together and come up with made up names for new horse breeds. Gary Malkez would joke that he would start painting them on the horses’ bellies and wait for them to become integrated into normal horse-lovers’ vocabulary. When I thought of a really funny one he would laugh for a long time and then kiss me.

Sometimes I would ask Gary Malkez to tell me the story of his birth, at least what he remembered from it. He did such a good job telling it that most times I would start to cry, and then maybe once in awhile Gary Malkez would start to cry, too. His tears came out not salty at all, but like lake water. I would kiss his eyes, left and then right.

I loved Gary Malkez. The women on the second floor of the factory didn’t like me for loving him, but I didn’t care. The women at the Wunderhorse II factory didn’t like the men at all. You should’ve seen their quips

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Fawn Parker in the newsletter and their faces and their middle fingers in the photographs. *****

My new office was beside the receptionist’s office, Sarah. I should mention my name is Sarah, but I am a painter of the small plastic horses. Sarah the receptionist was in charge of answering the telephone to let companies know when the small plastic horses were being shipped out and what colours were available and how many was the minimum amount and was there a discount if one were to buy a sufficient amount of the small plastic horses so long as they were all one colour?

I liked Sarah the receptionist because she got to go through the returned shipments of small plastic horses and pick out all the defects, and if I asked her she would give them to me.

Me and Gary Malkez set up a shallow shelf in his office on the second floor and lined up my defect plastic horses all in a row, and labelled them with the funny new horse breeds. He gave me a spare key to his office so I could go in and see the defect horses whenever I wanted to.

One evening I stayed late and re-painted a defective plastic horse sky blue and painted “Gary Malkez� on its belly. Gary Malkez had already gone home so I used my key to go into his office and put the sky blue horse on his shelf.

All of the defective plastic horses looked very beautiful up on the shallow shelf all in a row. One of them near the end was a palomino missing one of its front legs, which I had not seen before. I took Gary Mal-

71

Prose kez’s mystery palomino and put it in my purse.

The next day I saw that Sarah the receptionist was in her office with the door open so I went in with the defect palomino and said, please please other Sarah, tell me about this palomino horse. She refused to look at the horse but she told me Gary Malkez had kissed her.

I went back into my office and dropped the defect palomino out of the first floor window. On my smoke break, instead of having a smoke, I went to the staff bathroom and made myself orgasm thinking about Gary Malkez kissing the Sarah girl who answers the phone.

I wrote Sarah a note that said thank you for all of the defective plastic horses, and slipped it under her office door.

I kept my mouth shut around Gary Malkez. I brought him more horses but I stopped painting them beautiful colours like the colour of the sky. When he saw the sky blue defective plastic horse, he kissed me for a very long time.

Me and Sarah became good friends and it was easy because I’m nice and she’s nice and we’re both very pretty. She invited me over to hang out and we sat on her living room couch and put our hands in each others’ pussies. She had a way of smoking a cigarette that didn’t crinkle up her mouth, and when I pointed it out she said that it was on purpose.

When I got home I cut up my driver’s license and my library card and all of my pieces of paper and plastic that said Sarah, Sarah, Sarah. *****

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Fawn Parker Gary Malkez sent me an email while he was in his second floor office and I was in my new office on the first floor. He attached a spreadsheet with all of our made up new horse breeds and number from 1-10 rating how good he thought they were.

I went up to visit Gary Malkez in his office and we laughed about the spreadsheet and then we kissed.

In the factory an alarm began to go off and the lights were flashing. The receptionist Sarah called up to Gary Malkez’s office and told him that a pipe had burst and employees were evacuating the building. Gary Malkez felt upset thinking about all of that water and how it related to his miraculous birth in the middle of a lake.

I waited in Gary Malkez’s office while everyone evacuated the building. I got up close and looked at the photographs on his walls, of different angles of Gary Malkez sitting at the desk in that very office. I opened the drawers in his filing cabinet and pulled out all the pages with handwriting. In his desk drawers he had notepads and journals and a photo album. I looked through all of Gary Malkez’s documents one by one.

A woman came onto the second floor with a stack of plastic buckets, and brought one to Gary Malkez’s office. She said, use these to catch the water.

I followed her up and down the halls placing buckets down by leaks in the ceiling and then I went back to the first one that had half-way filled up, and I brought it back to Gary Malkez’s office.

I went to Gary Malkez’s window which was spattered with water. The flood was starting to pour out of the front entrance to the factory, and the level was

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rising past people’s waists. The women from the second floor were doggy-paddling with their dresses ballooning up at the surface of the water. Gary Malkez’s body floated in the shape of a star.

I poured the water over Gary Malkez’s documents and I felt like I’d eaten him and swallowed him up whole. I paged Sarah who wasn’t in her office because she’d evacuated but I’d already swallowed her whole too, anyway. I’d made both Sarah and Gary Malkez cum and I’d read both of their diaries. I sat down like a three-headed monster at Gary Malkez’s desk and gathered the sopping wet documents into a clump. Then I went to the shallow shelf with all of the defect plastic horses and I paired them up in twos so that you’d think they were kissing.

I don't know anything about anyone: a sometimes fiction

I

Leona Nikolić

tell Sofia I’m really into run-on sentences right now. I saw her read last night at poetry night and now she’s at the store I work at. Ashley told me she has a friend that works here, I guess she was talking about you. Yeah, I reply. I tell her I’m really into run-on sentences right now and that I really liked that part last night when she was reading and told all the male-identifying people in the room not to look at her for the last poem. She’s holding a bundle of dried flowers and tells me to write more and tells me to say hi next time I’m in Toronto.

We can’t do drugs anymore. Ian looked at me when he said this. We sat on a bench eating fresh bagels in the dark. There’s fentanyl in everything now, he continued. It’s everywhere and I don’t want to die. But, like, no one we know has died from it, you know? I knew my response hardly made a point but I couldn’t help myself.

I mean, it’s all on the west coast, right? It hasn’t made its way over here yet. It’s all coming from China, right?

Later on my balcony we sat shivering in the new autumn night, sipping tea. This blend is called Woman Power, I announced. I don’t know what’s in it though, probably chamomile or something. We talked about

Prose people having babies and I said that it was a fucked up thing to do and Gabi said the world is changing and it would be beautiful to grow a human in it. She said I don’t know maybe that’s selfish and I agreed that it was.

It’s Friday night and there is a man in my community that is violent to women. It’s Friday night and there is a big party that this man is throwing and everyone is going to it. Some people don’t go because they know and I tell all of my friends and they don’t go. Some people don’t know and they go and I am surprised at how many people don’t know. Braden tells me he is going and I tell him I don’t understand. He tells me he is going because there will be good DJs that are not from here. I tell him I can’t support that. But there will be good DJs he tells me. The conversation ends and I remember that just two nights ago he told me he had seen with his own eyes the slimy things this man does and that too many people have spoken against him and why does the community still support him but there will be good DJs.

We are drinking the Woman Power tea and someone mentions Amy Winehouse but I don’t remember exactly why. She was too fucked up, Ian says. It’s so sad. It’s like Lindsay Lohan, I say. Yeah, she’s fucked up.

It’s so sad. And like Britney, Gabi adds, you know? Britney’s not fucked up, I almost yell. Britney’s doing great she’s in the prime of her life. Yeah but she’s stupid, Ian adds. You know what’s stupid, I say. It’s stupid that you think she’s not intelligent based on our public percep76

Leona Nikolić tion of her. She’s got two kids and a show in Vegas and the best Instagram and she’s happier than ever. I even read a Vice article about her. That’s like saying Paris Hilton is stupid. Female celebrities aren’t stupid. Yeah but Paris Hilton is actually a genius, Ian says. You can just tell. Britney is stupid.

I read an essay on an online art publication about Pantone co-opting internet subcultures. I read a Vice article about fentanyl and how it’s almost impossible to get the antidote for it, even in Ontario where pharmacies are supposed to give it out for free but there is too much confusion and pharmacists are confused. I read a Vice article about Paris Hilton being a genius and another one about Spencer and Heidi and how everything is fake but their love is real.

I read all these things and I feel them and I have n ightmares. I dream that the oceans have finally become so large that they swallow us whole. I dream about Kim Kardashian’s ass and maybe it will swallow us whole before the earth does.

77

Breakfast

C

Jennifer Mancini

licking spoon against mug. I sit here and he sits there playing his 600th crossword. He’s just another person at the table. He looks down and I look down. Leave us alone. My fingers click click click against the mug.

I take the old newspaper apart. Ten sections on Saturday, three on Monday. They’re trying to conserve paper so no issue today. I take five of them, read, eat. Silent besides the click of the pen on the table. Click click.

“What does IMHO mean?”

“In My Honest Opinion.”

The sound of the word honest written out: an "e", an "s", a "t". I read and split my hair at the ends.

Haircut. Scissors. My stomach and head feel light. I make another slice of toast. Toast, knife, click, chew.

Another long morning. Later in the day there’s more noise, increased volume, less described living and less clicking. Everything just clicks in the morning, getting back together from the disconnect of sleep. But there’s still a feeling of disconnect from sitting spaceless and hearing everything click around me.

It’s shit outside. The porch is a crop of dead potted plants. I told my mom to stop buying so many plants;

Prose we have a fucking Amazon on our porch. My mint plant has gone to a tundra hell. That must be hell for a plant, the tundra.

It’s shit outside. Not even the cats are here.

Their food bowls are under the table covered in plastic and when the wind passes it’s just clickclickclick against glass and when the cats eat, the food falls onto the porch and it just clicks! I feed twelve cats and even though it’s cold, I still expect at least two more today.

“What’s Gatsby’s first name?”

“Don’t know.”

I do though. It’s Jay. The same phonetic sound as the first letter of my name.

“Did you ever read it?”

“Yeah.”

“You have the book?”

“Yeah.”

He slurps in air. My morning pet peeve. It reminds me of dirty camp children drinking water from the fountains. Slurp water dripping down their faces and drenching their shirt collars. But they wipe with their wrist and it’s okay.

Sigh, click of the tongue. Click of the thermostat, the fridge, the branch outside on the porch against the floor. Drunken, broken branches, clicking on the floor.

My tea tastes like malt and rum cough syrup.

I like to think it’s cough syrup repressing something

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Jennifer Mancini in my stomach. Sometimes I think it’s just fat rising up my throat that I need to purge. This tea makes me dizzy later on in the day. He drinks half a cup of coffee. Makes a full cup, but only drinks half. It smells better than it tastes. He inhales half with his liquid oily nose and dumps the rest.

Click of a lock. The bathroom: I hear pissing sounds. It’s too close to the kitchen or the walls are just a knock off of real walls. I hear it. Toilet paper and flush.

She washes her hands and the oomph of the pipes goes oomph. The water’s swallowed hard by the pipes. Click, locked door opens. She’s baggy pajamas on a plus size mannequin and a blown-out wig.

“Hey Mel,” he greets.

I stare. She rubs and clumsy-overs to the fridge.

Click click rummage milk carton and cereal box, Kellogg’s Eat-Your-Fiber-Constipated-Woman. It goes clickclickclack into the bowl. A spoon from the jammed drawer. God forbid anything works around here. Our TV broke so we got the early 2000s tube TV from the cemetery in the basement. Already feels like there’s less radiation. I’ve forgotten about fuzzy sports and TV figures that look like clay-dough.

He sits and I sit and she sits too. We all look down, so leave us alone. Crunch mph crunch. Everyone eats like there’s too much morning silence in the room.

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Janie's House

I

Jay Merill

’m lying on Monique’s rumpled bed looking out at sky. Sun shimmers the window glass, shadows have crept into the corners of the curtain. It gives me a warm glow to think of this time always being here. I’ll be able to draw on it now and again maybe, when I’m down. If I’m ever really low about something there it will still be, like one of Monique’s teddy bears; a comfort thing.

I can see the teddy bears from here, lined up on Monique’s windowsill like a collection of happy memories. I doubt she ever looks at them, but I know for sure she’ll grab one and hug it to her face when she’s in trouble. I’ve seen smudged mascara on the fur of more than one of those bears lately.

Monique is what you’d call beautiful. I’d agree to that myself, even though her thighs are a whole lot chunkier than they ought to be. She can look unbelievably old sometimes too, especially in the mornings with that creased up frown of hers, but then she’s nineteen, nearly twenty. Monique is the au pair this summer for Janie Pears, my mother’s friend. My name is Layla. Because I’m twelve now, I am Monique’s helper. This was

Prose my mother’s idea. She said it would be fun. The children here are a pain but Monique keeps 'em happy with sweets and promises, so there’s some peace left for listening to music in between the squabbles.

It’s eight o’clock in the morning and Janie Pears is dashing out of the door as I come up to it, but then she rushes back in after me, remembering things. She rustles in this stout plastic package, pulling out a clutch of springy sanitary pads. I turn my eyes away, not wanting to think of them stuffed between her legs and soaking up blood. Soon she’s gone again, in her woven brick-red boxy jacket that looks the colour of drying meat. Ew, it makes me shudder. Janie’s the good-humoured sort so she gives me a beaming smile as the door closes. The house is all quiet now she’s left. There’s no sign whatsoever of Monique.

But next minute it’s all happening. The kids are yelling, Monique’s on the stairs in her washed out blue scrag of a nightie, her hair billowing and cascading in waves. Sun catches at the off-blonde gingery ripples.

There’s this sheen about her. She’s like a girl in a Renoir painting, except she has her cross, morning look. Her lips are pasty, her eyes shadowed. The usual commotion, that Monique always seems to be surrounded by, has started up. The dog barks and the kids run round her feet. At first she doesn’t register, then ignores, then shouts about.

I’m going to be an artist. I study carefully the

82

Jay Merrill exact blended browns and yellows of Monique’s hair.

No, not Renoir, I take that back. It’s pure Botticelli and she’s the Birth of Venus. I imagine her stepping out of a silvery fanlike shell as the phone rings. She flails her arms wide to subdue little Roddy, Gillie and Sig, shrieks to high heaven, flings her curtain of hair. She’s halfway down the staircase, yawning, smearing her hand across her mouth as she coughs. And then she’s crying out in French as she sees the time on the hall clock. I wonder if she’s swearing; I must get her to tell me some French swear words.

The kitchen is soon a furnace of singeing toast, of bells going off on the cooker before the eggs are done, making Monique announce that today it will be cereal.

Roddy, picky and six years old, complains about Gillie being allowed to feed the dog when it’s his turn. Gillie’s a stolid girl of five, sweet but aggravating, the child version of Janie. She drops the cereal packet, from which corn-coloured, frosted fragments burst. The dog is happy. Cereal dust clouds the air. Sig, the youngest, gets blamed in error. Monique screeches; he cries.

Then it’s out to the garden with the lot of 'em, all griefs and grievances unaddressed. So there they are, in a tumble of unresolved differences, about which Gillie and Sig have short memories, but Roddy will later grumble to his mother. They stand at the door wheedling for cookies. Monique and I turn up the music, drink coffee with our bodies lolling across the chairs.

83 83

Prose

It’s a Friday. We always go to the beach. Usually there’s an upbeat note to Monique on Fridays, end of the week, coming up to the Saturday night disco where she’s the star performer. Today she’s quiet, even miserable, I’d say. She won’t tell me why, she just broods and snaps at Roddy whenever he asks her one of those serious little questions of his. She tells him to run off and play with Gillie – as if he’s capable of playing. He’s one of those kids who likes to hang round the adults plaguing them with queries, very low on smiles. This grates on Monique’s nerves, I can see. I don’t ask Monique what’s wrong but I know there are still thirteen tampons in the economy size packet on her shelf next to the last teddy bear and expect that’s the reason.

Now and again she lets out this sigh, and tells the kids to shut up because she’s got a headache and she’ll get them lollies later if they build a sandcastle like normal children do, or play Sleeping Lions or something. The sun comes out briefly and Monique peels off her t-shirt, underneath which is a bikini, and plasters herself with smelly amber coloured oil and throws herself back onto her blanket. The sun is very off and on, and when it’s on it’s weak. I know that oil is never going to blend in but I don’t say anything. I’m not into sunbathing so I take Sig down to paddle while the other two have fun jabbing fingers into Monique’s unabsorbing back and flinging handfuls of sand across her shoulders. When we get back I glance at Monique’s bikini

84

Jay Merrill bottoms to see if there’s any sign of red. There isn’t.

Monique is bored by now and she’s started noticing there’s more wind than sun today. She’s bought some bubbles for the children and she searches through her bag for the giant tin of gluey liquid and blowing loop. She blows the bubbles, holding her head back and letting out a slow continuous exhalation of breath so that the bubbles will be the best and biggest possible.

There they go in a succession, round and perfect, the colour of rainbows. Gleaming bubbles, going up, up!

“Let me, let me, let me,” The children call and clamour, hands twisting up to reach them as they fly and burst on the wind. “Let me!”

I close my eyes and the bubbles are still with me, their after image floating and twisting into the sky just the same.

It’s eight o’clock in the morning in the hallway again. Janie Pears has forgotten and remembered everything she needs, has given me her hearty goodbye smile and gone. The door is closed, I’m alone, there’s not a sound to be heard anywhere. Then all at once it’s mayhem: both the phone and the doorbell going at once, doors banging, kids screaming, the dog barking, fit to burst your eardrums. Everything. Monique’s emerging all sleepy in her crumpled nightdress. I answer the door. It’s Kevin, her English boyfriend. His eyes look past me, searching for sight of Monique in the gloom of the inner hall. There’s a pinched haught-

85

Prose iness to him, which is massively unattractive, it seems to me. He’s pale and thin, quite tall, and carries a short umbrella with a rounded handle. I can’t think what Monique sees in him. Today, he’s quiet and desperate, some smoking craziness in his eyes. He hangs the umbrella at the bottom of the stair rail.

The kids have gone quiet for a second, at the arrival of the English boyfriend. Roddy is practising how he will pass on the information to Janie that the boyfriend has come here. The boyfriend’s face is bloated with secret communications. The same with Monique.

She’s no longer a part of us but separated off, with her private commitments. I tell the trio of kids we’ll go into the kitchen, make some popcorn. I’m the only one who knows how to work the popcorn machine. They are happy, treat me with reverence because it’s a special thing. As we go off, I hear a spurt of ferocious shouting bursting out of the two on the staircase. I’d like to stay to find out more, but I too look forward to the popcorn.

Kevin and Monique rush up the stairs together as I close the kitchen door. I feel sour and grave. The children become silent.

When I go to listen in the hall I hear another blast of angry voices, then it turns very quiet. The kitchen clock ticks, we all eat the popcorn, the smoke in the kitchen subsides, the dog begs with his eyes. Still she does not come. I think of Kevin, the English boyfriend, lying on top of her, his penis stiffening into her vagina.

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Jay Merrill If she is bleeding, will it turn the tip of his penis red?

Will he mind?

Then, after a while, I hear the front door closing. Monique walks into the kitchen, distraught but calmer in some mysterious way. I notice this pale pink flush at the base of her nose, see a tight rim of deeper pink around her eyes. She sniffs once or twice. I feel a thrill at witnessing all this adult and unnecessary emotion--the mystery of it, the drama. Later, before we leave for the beach, we discover that Kevin forgot his umbrella, and Monique and I laugh together, she tenderly, me with irritation. She’s so amazing. Why can’t she see what a feeble specimen he is? I twirl the laughable object in my hand suggestively, hoping she’ll be influenced by my disdain. Now seems the time to ask her about French swear words.

“How d’you say wanker?” I ask her, secretly shocking myself at saying a word I’ve never used before, a word that still feels too old for me. “Do you have that word in France?”

Monique goes off into peals of tinkling giggles.

“You, little girl!” she says.

The next day is Saturday. I am wearing my new white shorts. I eye myself carefully in Janie’s long mirror to see if my bum is too obvious. I try a few poses.

It seems alright. When I go downstairs Jacques, Monique’s French boyfriend has arrived, plus two of his mates. They sit and smoke heavily, roll a spliff or two. All

87 87

Prose of them wear dark glasses and sit sideways in the chairs with their legs up over the arms, taking over the place.

The French boyfriend gives me a “charming” smile.

“He likes little English girls,” says Monique, not quiet enough for him to miss. The charming smile increases. He’s got greasy hair and is quite a bit shorter than Monique. I don’t like his smile. It’s too corny, his teeth brown from cigarettes. He’s got a pimple on the side of his neck, which makes me not want to look at him. When I do look, I keep seeing it. Swell of purple, bursting white at the tip. It makes me gag.

“See you tonight,” he says to me, winking.

Monique looks amused.

I go into the garden, surprising the kids who are being brattish and are about to throw a stone at the kitchen window to see if the glass will break. I send them in to Monique, laughing under my breath and go upstairs to her room to count the tampax. Still thirteen. I count twice to be certain, a cold shiver passing through me. Monique’s room has this sweetish scented smell. A mixture of soap and makeup. It’s sort of musty and strange to be in, but not unpleasant. I like coming in here to daydream. The teddy bears seem to blink their glass eyes at me. Monique’s bed is in a mussed up state as usual and I go and lie down there for a minute, as I usually do. Just for the experience, I suppose. As I’m lying there I notice a sticky sensation in my knickers. Spreading my legs apart, I look down and see a cir-

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Jay Merrill cle of red, bright as a geranium petal in the crotch of my white shorts. It’s a startling contrast of colours. I undo the zip and work my hand down inside, bringing out my forefinger deftly so it won’t wipe against the inside of my shorts. There’s a smear of red liquid. So, it’s happened.

That night at the disco I hang out with a circle of mates from school. We dance at the edges, feeling too young and unimportant to be here properly. Then I see Monique some way off, ablaze with light, looking stunning, shimmering in that way she does. “So you know her?” one of my school friends says in disbelief.

I nod but keep quiet, shutting in the mysteries of Janie’s house, which are too precious to be squandered for the sake of trying to impress, however alluring that may be. I stare at Monique, at her lithe dancing figure, unable to tell from her movement or the expression on her face what the truth is. I imagine her pregnant with a butterbean tucked up inside her womb, then I picture a tampax fitting snug against her dark inner flesh, moving with her as she sways to the music, the little interior cord moistening. Either could be true. “And where d’you know her from then, Layla?” one of the school acquaintances asks me.

“Oh, that’s Monique,” says this leathery looking boy with blotches, one of the hangers on, his voice cool with stuck up pride at knowing. “I’ve met her. She’s an au pair.”

I shrug. It’s for them to guess and me to know.

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Prose The words “mystery” and “madness” slip into my mind like shadows, unspoken secrets which belong to me alone.

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Dave's Thomas Molander

I

t finally began when, one morning in the shower, I noticed I had run out of shampoo. A nearly-full bottle of Dove had been sitting there in the corner of the tub and I’d never touched it. “Whose shampoo is that?” was one of the first things I had asked Sara when, a few months back, we decided I should move in and share her apartment. “My ex-boyfriend’s,” she told me.

“Should we throw it out?” I had asked, laughing.

“No, that’s ok,” she had said.

So I poured a little into my hand and applied it to my head area, kind of glad we hadn’t thrown it out back then because my hair now needed a wash and anyway it was nicer shampoo than I usually bought for myself. As I massaged Dave’s shampoo into my hair, hot water blasting directly onto my face like always, I thought about the other things in the little apartment that belonged to him. There was that Bill Clinton bobblehead on the bedroom windowsill. A picture of Dave was on the fridge, next to a note he’d written Sara on her birthday a couple years ago. Two pairs of his shoes were by the door, and a landscape painting he’d done of the Arizona desert hung in our living room.

I wrapped a towel around my waist and, tracking droplets of water across the floor, went to the bedroom and tapped on the bobblehead. I laughed at the former president’s vibrating head and tapped it again, harder this time.

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Prose Now the head was really moving. I walked quickly to the kitchen and started reading the birthday note on the fridge, sometimes pausing to look at the photo of Dave on a wharf by a lake. I’d never read it before; it was a nice note. Dave really had a way with words. I heard the front door slam, so I spun around.

“What are you doing?” Sara asked, coming into the kitchen.

“Hanging out,” I said, making my facial expression extremely casual. She walked over to where I was standing and hugged me.

“Oh my god, you smell so good,” she said, pressing her face into my hair. “Oh shit, wait.”

“Can we please throw his stuff out now?” I said. “I don’t understand why we can’t throw it out.”

“Do you really want to have this fight again?” she asked. “I’ve told you so many times.”

I had to get out of the apartment for a little while, so I hurried to the door and put on Dave’s cracked old Blundstones before leaving. As I walked down Notre-Dame, crunching the snow with Dave’s boots and feeling my socks getting wet from the holes in the soles, Sara called. I ignored the ringing the first time, but she called again and I answered.

“Why is the bobblehead moving?” she asked. “And are you wearing his boots?”

“Woah, that’s a high quality bobblehead,” I said.

“And yes. Either we throw his stuff out or I’m going to use it every day.”

“Fuck your ultimatum,” she said, hanging up.

The next morning in the shower, I squirted a glob of Dave’s shampoo into my palm without hesitation. As soon as my shower was over, I ran into the bedroom and

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Thomas Molander smacked the bobblehead, spent a few minutes looking at Arizona in the living room, and then read the note on the fridge, which I had almost memorized already.

I was standing in the bedroom closet looking for something to wear when I saw that brown box in the back left corner. I had seen it back there when I first moved in, and a few times after that when I was running low on clean laundry and had to really search the depths. The box had always seemed ominous, like opening it would have been an invasion of Sara’s privacy somehow. I bent over, picked it up, and noticed the words Dave’s Thing were written on the side in Sharpie. I snatched off the lid and looked inside.

The thing was smallish and black and round, matte and loofah-sized, with little perforations all over it like a golf ball.

I lifted it out of the box and it was heavier than I expected.

I threw it up into the air experimentally. Then I rolled it on the floor like a bowling ball, and was surprised when it didn’t make a sound as it moved.

I quickly opened my laptop and Googled confusing round black ball but none of the results looked anything like it. The closest thing I could find was a colourful, bean-shaped Swedish vibrator. I Googled ambiguous ball shaped thing and then reasons to have a small round heavy item and then closed my laptop. I shoved the box back into its place in the closet but left Dave’s thing on the bed. I ran over to the window and punched the bobblehead, which was still moving from the last time I had touched it. I squirted a bunch of Dave’s shampoo into the toilet and flushed, and then read the birthday message out loud like a prayer while wearing his boots. I went back into the bedroom and picked up Dave’s thing again. I heard the front door open, so I opened the window and tried to toss Dave’s thing out onto the lawn. Since it was heavy, I lobbed it underhand like

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Prose a little kid shooting a freethrow. I missed the window and it smashed into the wall, making a little dent, and bounced loudly a few times on the floor before settling beside one of the desk’s legs.

Sara stood silently in the doorway. She looked at Bill Clinton, bobbing wildly. She looked at the dent in the wall and then her eyes rested on Dave’s thing.

I ran across the room, boots clomping on the floor, and picked it up, putting it under my shirt.

“I’m pregnant,” I yelled, leaving the bedroom.

Natalie and Taren, two of Sara’s work friends, were sitting on the couch dipping tortilla chips into salsa.

“Hello,” I said, waving with my right hand while my left hand supported Dave’s thing in its place under my shirt. They nodded and mumbled, not really making eye contact. I felt Sara walking up behind me. I felt worried that she was going to smell my head again, so I backed away, almost tripping over the coffee table.

“I’ve got to step out,” I said, and left the apartment without putting on a coat.

As I walked down Notre-Dame I took Dave’s thing out from under my shirt and held it in front of me. I saw a woman wearing a large parka approaching.

“Would you like this?” I asked, presenting it to her, but she shook her head and continued walking.

“Would you like this?” I asked three guys sitting on the curb eating pizza but they looked at me without saying anything.

I walked into the pizza restaurant. “Do you know what this is?” I asked the guy behind the counter. “Or how to use it?”

He said no and gestured toward the pizza menu, so I quickly left.

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Thomas Molander

I tried to roll Dave's thing out in traffic so that a car would crush it, but it made it across the street without being hit, so I had to cross the road and pick it up again. I put it into a trash can, but after walking for a few blocks, I knew I had to go back and get it. Luckily, it was still there, nestled into a brown fast food bag. I picked it up and walked until I saw a pawn shop.

The door buzzed loudly as I entered and the guy behind the counter looked up.

“What have you got there?” he asked, and I held up Dave’s thing for him to inspect.

“Well, nobody is going to want that,” he said.

“I don’t want it either,” I said.

“Throw it out then.”

“I can’t,” I said, placing it on the counter. “Come on.”

The guy picked up Dave’s thing and threw it at me and it struck me on the side of the head. It knocked me over and some blood began to trickle out of my ear, but I felt no pain. I started laughing. I picked up Dave’s thing and smashed myself right in the nose with it. I could feel that my nose had moved from where it usually was on my face, but it felt fine. I retrieved Dave’s thing from the corner it had rolled into. I left before the guy asked me to and on the way home I stopped in to a pharmacy and bought myself the third most expensive type of shampoo they had, Bermuda Sunshine.

When I got back to my empty apartment, Sara and her friends had left the chips and salsa out on the table. I put Dave’s thing back in its box in the closet, and then held Bill Clinton between my fingers until he was completely still.

I went into the washroom and faced the little mirror. The blood and bruises looked very bad but still it did not hurt.

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I mean, it scared me to look at it but it felt entirely fine.

Contributors Nathalie Agostini is primarily a documenter of new media and the Internet, secondarily of anxiety and desire.

Sarah Bigham teaches, writes, and paints in Maryland where she lives with her kind chemist wife, their three independent cats, and an unwieldy herb garden. A Pushcart nominee, her poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have appeared in Bacopa, Entropy, Fourth & Sycamore, The Quotable, Rabbit, Touch, and other great places for readers and writers.

Find her at www.sgbigham.com.

Brynjar Chapman studies English at Concordia University.

Matteo Ciambella was born in Assisi, Italy, in 1993. He is currently pursuing a BA in English Literature at Concordia University. His fiction and poetry has previously appeared in Headlight Anthology. Matteo's "Leaked Excerpt #5" contains lines from Czeslaw Milosz's "The Captive Mind".

Alex Custodio is a graphic designer, writer, and editor living in Montreal. She is currently an MA candidate in English literature at Concordia University where she works as an editor for Headlight Anthology and an organizer for the English Graduate Colloquium. Her research areas include fanfiction, video games, and queer theory. You can find her creative and academic work in Spectra Journal and The Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Sexuality.

Mariah Lynne Dear is a student at the University of Brit-

Soliloquies Anthology ish Columbia. She hopes to graduate with a BA majoring in Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice and minoring in Creative Writing. Her spoken word poetry has led her across Canada competing both individually and as a team representing the city of Vancouver. She was pleased to be crowned the Grand Slam Champion of UBC in 2014 and the Youth Grand Slam Champion of Vancouver in 2015.

Darrell Dela Cruz's work has appeared in The William & Mary Review, Grasslimb, Rock & Sling, OCA Enizagam, and Thin Air. Darrell's blog can be found at retailmfa.blogspot.com. Darrell graduated with an MFA in Poetry from San Jose State University.

Genny Doyle is a fourth year Creative Writing student at Concordia University. She grew up in Vancouver and Ottawa, but is currently living in Montreal. She has left a little bit of her in each of these cities, and her work is informed by this coming and going. tala e is a muslim syrian artist. they study english literature at concordia (they forgot which year), write poetry and try to do performance art but most importantly, they eat at least three mcdonalds juniors a week. they are currently working on developing a map of all the montreal establishments with pink soap that smells like candy. their works focus on their identities and struggles as a syrian in exile from a homeland under destruction and occasionally, they can be not too depressing.

Adam Haiun is a writer studying creative writing at Concordia. He enjoys long walks in the slush and mentioning that he is Jewish as frequently as possible.

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Contributors MW Jaeggle is a graduate student at McGill University.

Previous work has appeared in (parenthetical), The Veg, ditch, BALDHIP, The Claremont Review, and on his mother's fridge. He is from Vancouver, unceded Coast Salish territory.

Mitchell King is a runaway witch living in Kansas City.

Emilie Lafleur is a writer based in Montreal. She is currently studying English and Creative Writing at Concordia University. Her work has been published on Metatron's Omega blog and is forthcoming in Spectra Journal.

Jennifer Mancini's work has been published in Subversions: A Journal of Feminist Queries and Headlight Anthology. She was co-Editor in Chief and Creative Writing editor for the Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Sexuality. She resides in Montreal.

Quinn Mason is a writer/tree-planter/perennially awkward human currently based in Montreal.

Jay Merill is published in 3:AM Magazine, Berfrois, Epiphany, Hobart, Per Contra, Prairie Schooner, Toasted Cheese, Thrice Fiction and Trafika Europe. She is a 2017 Pushcart Prize nominee and winner of the Salt Prize. Further work appeared recently in Anomalous, Blue Lake Review, Corium, Literary Orphans, Spork, Wigleaf and other great publications. Jay lives in London, U.K. and is Writer in Residence at Women in Publishing. She is author of two short story collections published by Salt – God of the Pigeons and Astral Bodies – which were nominated for the Frank O’Connor Award and Edge Hill Prize.

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Soliloquies Anthology Thomas Molander is 24 and from Vancouver Island but living in Montreal, studying Creative Writing at Concordia. He's the fiction editor of BAD NUDES Magazine.

Clementine Morrigan is a writer, artist, and witch. Their work explores trauma, madness, addiction, sobriety, gender, sexuality, magic, re-enchantment, environment, and more-than-human worlds. For more of their work, please see clementinemorrigan.com.

Leona Nikolić dreams often about being a cloud. Sometimes she doesn't dream at all. Last night she had an unpleasant dream but it wasn't real so it's okay.

Sophie Panzer is an undergraduate at McGill University.

She served as a 2015-2016 fiction editor for Scrivener Creative Review, earned a national medal from the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, and attended the Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and appeared in carte blanche, Inklette, and YARN (Young Adult Review Network). She enjoys long walks with dogs, friendly arguments, and reading aloud.

Fawn Parker is a writer and editor based in Montreal. Her collection, Looking Good and Having a Good Time, was published by Metatron Press in 2015. She is co-founder of BAD NUDES Magazine and edits fiction for The Void.

Tessa Romanow is an undergraduate student in the Creative Writing program at Concordia University. She is trying her best.

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Contributors

Ryan Tellier is in his last semester at the Liberal Arts College of Concordia. He has been previously published in L'Organe and Soliloquies Anthology.

Nicholas Tyrakis, aka Nicky Tee, is a full-time student, writer and musician. Nicky lives in the mile end where their main hobby is to focus on my collection of urban poetry, conventional and loaded with metaphors, which is very local and about the plateau-bohemian part of the city with a close-up and intoxicating view on a side of Montreal that maybe people don't know about.

Gabriel Wainio-Theberge is a recent graduate of the Liberal Arts College and Creative Writing programs at Concordia University. His first collection of poetry, Small Hallows, was published by Baseline Press in 2012. His writing has also appeared in The Void, The Blasted Tree, Ottawater, Over The Red Line and on his blog. He is a member of the publishing collective Acute Press (@acutepress). Find him on Twitter @basedkei or Tumblr: baroquespiral.

Matthew Walsh is a poet/short story writer. His work has appeared in The Malahat Review, The Winnipeg Review, Carousel, Arc, The Puritan, Matrix, Hoax and as part of anthologies BafterC and Writing the Common, poems about the Halifax Commons. Find him on Twitter @croonjuice.

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