text magazine is a Canadian bimonthly publication of poetry, poetic social media epigrams, flash fiction, photographs, artwork, and other interesting culture. It is not-for-profit, free to read, and published six times a year. EMAIL // textlitmag@gmail.com WEBSITE // www.textlitmag.com Contents Copyright Š 2015 text magazine for the authors COVER ART // Arlen Hogarth title // Snaek Luv website // lunglessart.weebly.com FIND IT HERE // The Buzz Coffee House, Bocca CafÊ, Serious Coffee at Beaufort Centre, Perkins Coffee Company, Mon Petit Choux, The Vault, Literacy Nanaimo, Iron Oxide Art Supplies, Jumpin Java Cafe, Vancouver Island University, Nanaimo Arts Council Gallery, Nanaimo Art Gallery SUBSCRIPTION // If you wish to begin subscription, please email us at textlitmag@gmail.com. A postage fee may apply. SUBMISSION GUIDELINES // Submit interesting writing and works of art, such as poems, flash fiction, poetic social media epigrams under 200 characters, instagrams, or other photography or art, to textlitmag@gmail.com. We will respond as soon as possible. As a new, free, not-for-profit publication there is no reimbursement for publication. We ask that you please supply a biography under 200 characters with your submission. If you are accepted, your piece will be available on our website. Please note if your submission has been published elsewhere or is a simultaneous submission, it is suggested you read an issue to decide if your work fits our magazine. We reserve the right to not publish submissions we deem not fitting to our mandate. If you wish to advertise with us, or distribute our magazine at your business, please email our managing editor Shaleeta Harper // shaleetaharper@gmail.com
textlitmag.com .
1
SHALEETA HARPER // editor in chief & publisher PHILIP GORDON // editor ANTONY STEVENS // online content manager COBY MCDOUGALL // graphic designer JOY GUGELER // publishing advisor KELLY WHITTON // advertising manager
BIG THANKS to the friends of text magazine DISTRIBUTORS Bocca Café Iron Oxide Art Supplies Java Expressions LTD Jumpin Java Cafe Literacy Nanaimo Mad Rona’s Coffee Bar Mon Petit Choux Nanaimo Arts Council Gallery Nanaimo Art Gallery Perkins Coffee Company Serious Coffee at Beaufort Centre Smitty’s, Nanaimo The Buzz Coffee House The Old Crow The Vault Vancouver Island University Woodgrove Centre
2.
text magazine
ADVERTISERS & DONORS Cascadia Poetry Festival Funk your Fashion NY LA Fresh Threads Pro-Print Express Susan Juby Tina’s Yorkie Treasures WordStorm Society of the Arts
To the Reader, Thank you for dipping your toe into the third issue of text, a bimonthly literature and arts magazine. Accidental naps in front of whirring laptops and long frustrated sighs were the hallmarks of this issue, and yet I’m already excited for issue four. I’m mostly going to tell you how we’ve been doing so far. text has been growing wildly since it’s inaugural issue in October 2014, and it’s hard for me not to think of it as a huge part of life in Nanaimo. text has tripled its number of distribution spots since it started, and stretched its way over to Gabriola Island. Philip and I spoke at a Self-Publishing conference in January (hosted by the Federation of BC writers) with an overwhelming audience turnout, and have been featured on Shaw TV. Philip Gordon and I have made connections with other like-minded locals, and had people jump on board to join the text team. One thing that I’ve certainly learned after a few months with text, is that it really does take a village, or at least a small mob. As great as it is to know a wide variety of skills, it’s nearly impossible to publish a successful magazine with just one or two people. The more people we meet, the more successful we become. Antony Stevens was the first person to join our duo, back in November, and he brought with him expertise in web design, video editing, and journalism, as well as a love for poetry. With his help we updated our website, chose the right pieces for issue three, and made the video for our crowd funding campaign. Our newest member is Kelly Whitton, who joined the team just a few days before this issue was due. She brings with her a long history at the Chamber of Commerce, and a broad knowledge of business and advertising. We’re really excited to have her on board. At the end of the day, it’s all about that literature and art. We will keep trying to find new, unusual, and eclectic talent, and bring it all to your morning coffee, at no extra charge. Shaleeta Harper Editor in Chief
textlitmag.com .
3
Lush JOHN NYMAN I just thought of something terrible but I’m going to say it anyways. Pork-barrelling with you, I admit this feels like it’s a summer. Lush, lucky, lupis. Because the critique is susceptible to the critique, they have been looking for a staff writer for over a year. Pointless, anyways. Sheep, clay, wood and wheat, locked up and in the bank and brought up out of a hole by your unsoberness. What will be there when you turn over another rock? Try our delicious new item. With these sturdy shoes, I promise I’ll be unstoppable.
4.
text magazine
Sharon's Next Move KYLE HEMMINGS What the affair boiled down to: dry leaves. The emails have stopped. So have the dripping tap of apologies. Nobody was wrong after all, And nobody was right, either. It was just egos flaring and stubborn as a flamenco dance, not quite the artistry. She throws away the pills. She watches a movie on her Kindle Fire, where a Japanese woman masturbates into oblivion. She'll take up rubber stamping and grow a plethora of petunias. Or she'll move to the city and squash ants in a cheap efficiency apartment near East 6th, and will dream of salamanders squirming in Path Train stations, offering themselves to oncoming circles of light. She'll catch up on O, Pioneers by Willa Cather while sitting in a cafe; she watches out the window at all the little girls she could have been. She thinks interim and limbo are not necessarily the worst places to be stranded. At night, from her window, the city offers up its shadows. She can fill in their day faces, body type, hair color. She'll choose the one that looms closest, offers the best hope of sleeping with her, keeping her warm and forgetful, overnight.
textlitmag.com .
5
Who Needs An Appendix Anyway? SILVIA PIKAL 148 of my closest friends ‘liked’ my status after the surgery, but none of them dropped by. I sat alone in my hospital room; my phone buzzing. Boys Will Be Boys He pulled her pigtails, hard, but the teacher said, “He just likes you.” Years later the neighbours called the police from behind gauzy curtains. Next morning they asked, “Why do you keep taking him back?” The best part of me Twenty days into treatment, I start shedding hair like a dog. In group that night, they tell me to shave it all off. Emily says the bald patches are unbearable, especially after a shower. Claire tells me I’ll find a wig just like my real hair. The electric shaver in my roommate’s bathroom is bulky and emits an angry buzz, like a swarm of bees. I can’t bring myself to do it so I drive to a salon painted in lurid pink. The owner’s perfume fills my nostrils. She extends a manicured hand covered in gold rings. “You’ll fight this, you’ll beat this,” she tells me in a soft, hushed voice. That kind of talk is supposed to make me feel better, but I’m not in a boxing match. What I’m doing is filling myself
6.
text magazine
with poison and praying the right things die. I try on wig after wig. “You can look like whoever you want, even Kim Kardashian!” The hairdresser tells me. “I don’t want to look like Kim Kardashian,” I snap. “I just want to look like myself.” “Oh, of course. That’s nice too.” Before the diagnosis, we took turns modeling for each other in my photography class. My instructor pulled me in front of the class and made me do the hair flip you see in commercials. “You have The Hair,” he said. “It’s better than Farrah Fawcett’s hair, better than The Rachel!” It was The Hair that brought admirers, the ones who watched it swing back and forth behind my shoulders. The morning before the salon I blow-dried my hair. Soft curls cascaded down my back as she brought the razor to my head. When she was done, nothing was left. I watched as she swept away my former life with a broom. In my head my instructor was shouting, “Perfect! You are a vision! A model!” This has been the worst thing; losing what the world thinks is the best part of me.
textlitmag.com .
7
SPENSER SMITH // Dino Hunting
ANONYMOUS // Facebook Translation
8.
text magazine
Jason Heroux
@jason_heroux In my current role as a toasted crouton in the kitchen pantry I believe I’ve developed the skills needed to become a seasoned breadcrumb.
textlitmag.com .
9
B.J. BEST I almost took the job at the balloon farm until the farmer showed me the heavily guarded steel room with its arsenal of pitchforks, tines gleaming. Before I could ask, she said, “Trust me, you'll know.�
10 .
text magazine
Cumbustible BRANDI MAY God comes to us in a stable, built from tilled earth and mule shit. It’s common to mock believers, to comb tubs of compost, to lift and turn worms that burrow into dung. To cuss and lob bombs, bursting stiles to bits. Must we suss like this? He’s still there, busting his butt, mustering his best, mucking out Babel. He tiles the bauble, subs for Mister, bites the lime, blows the bull out of the building. Lub-dub, lub-dub, still mocked, still clubbed. Lift the bit from the mouth before it cuts the tongue, before it stems the time, before it ebbs. Muse, cum, bloom: dust’s miles.
JODI LUNDGREN // Cumbustible textlitmag.com .
11
There Are No Rocks in California KYLE HEMMINGS My cousin, who once lived as a hermit
holding it down. Like the time we were
in an old bomb shelter, writes me to
kids on swings and we swore off our
say hi to everyone. He then goes on
mothers' voices and tried to make a
to say that there are no rocks in
complete circle around the long metal
California. I'm not sure from what
bar. I was so immersed in my sense
distance he is writing this, from what
of almost-flight of the laws of arc and
space, from under what cloud is
pendulums that I forgot myself and
causing him to become geologically-
landed on hard dirt with a broken
challenged. Or maybe he is writing
back. My cousin came to visit me in
from some vast desert where there
the hospital bringing several Get Well
is nothing but cactus and the carcass
cards scrawled with an Arabic font.
of wild dogs, the skulls of misguided
At the time, he was under the spell
thieves, missionaries. Maybe he is
of both Jesus and Lawrence of Arabia
making some profound statement
and I tried to tell him that neither may
about the future or that California has
have existed in the sense that people
become very light without any rocks
living without suitcases think they
12 .
text magazine
have existed. I meant the how and the
said nothing about the lack of water or
fact behind the fiction. The fact may
the job situation. Perhaps California,
have been much skinnier, lighter. And
or our idea of it, is no longer part of
cold. What I do know is that this is the
the continent. Perhaps it has risen and
first letter I've received from my cousin
has assumed the shape of the air we
in over a year. Before that he wrote
breathe. Perhaps the rocks we see are
from a city that I never heard of or one
what people took from California and
he may have misspelled. Before that
placed elsewhere. Perhaps this is why
there are only fragments. What I do
in such a big state, you can become
know is the letter he sent me was writ-
incredibly exposed. These were all
ten on both sides and the handwriting
things I had to consider when reading
had a very noticeable forward slant
my cousin's letter. I had to sift through
with subtle, but mind you, very pro-
the fat surrounding his intent. I had to
nounced loops of exact proportions.
read between our eyes. I had to ignore
It was the style of his looping that first
the shudder of past earthquakes.
caught my eye. When I reached the
That's where the rocks were. I had to
middle of the letter I realized that he
reach down between the cracks and
was still writing about California. He
find them.
CAROL LOIS // Untitled textlitmag.com .
13
bus ride ROBIN A. SAMS My stomach churns from the movement of the bus. It’s been a long time since I moved toward something. You and I spent years running away from universes.
14 .
text magazine
ARLEN HOGARTH // Hole
textlitmag.com .
15
Domestic Expeditions, LLC B.J. BEST For years I worked for a company that would show people things they never noticed in their own homes. But we were not tour guides. The CEO was adamant about that: “You are not a tour guide,” he said. “You are an archaeologist, a spelunker, a submarine.” He worked only from his house, as if to prove some point. He got the idea for the company when he found a bag of clay marbles in the wall of his living room during remodeling. Not that we were encouraged to drill through clients' homes, of course. It was easy to point out a corner of some cramped closet, and that's all the entry-levels did. It was harder to show the everyday rooms which, through habit or boredom, clients ignored. Here is how the coffeepot always drips three perfect drops at the end of its brewing. The crystal you hung in the bedroom window when you were first married still throws rainbows when there is a full moon and you are asleep. I became Employee of the Month for showing an elderly couple a framed picture of a young man in a military uniform, now cloaked in dust. As such, I was entitled to my own showing. I was required to do it myself. There wasn’t much I hadn’t seen: these cupboards, that cabinet, this credenza. Then I noticed the girl who was little when I started this job was now sixteen and borrowing my car on Friday nights.
16 .
text magazine
Afterlife HOWIE GOOD They say if you meet your double, you should kill him. A full clip holds thirty bullets. “Shoot me in the chest!” Mussolini demanded, and the firing squad did before he could take back his words. Sometimes I’m forced to communicate the old-fashioned way, an empty speech bubble hovering just above my head. That is, she could lie by the side of the road for hours, bleeding to death without anyone knowing. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that there is such a thing as an afterlife. Wherever the angels poop, the landscape turns cold and white. EDDY GRAHAM // Untitled
textlitmag.com .
17
Extra B.J. BEST I was an extra in vintage picture books: the cop with a billy club and hat popping off my head upon seeing the zebra riding a bicycle, or the man in the rowboat who’s caught a fish as big as he is. Easy work. I’d duck behind the two-dimensional post office to sneak a smoke; catcall the housewives who always wore pearls, even when vacuuming. But slowly ... you begin to notice the neatness of the streets, the sweetness of the fields. The candy store owner in his white apron. Bows on the tail of a red kite and down the braids of the grocer’s daughter. And here is a foal who has lost his parents. Hello, horse. Come here, horse. Oh, horse. Oh, horsey. It will be okay. I will help you. Dry your eyes. I will help you. Let’s turn the page. I promise. We will find your parents by the end of this book.
18 .
text magazine
Jason Heroux
@jason_heroux A patient tangerine taught us how to peel off its skin, but it died before it could teach us how to fill the jug drop by drop with its juice.
Jason Heroux
@jason_heroux In Houston it’s so hot the hotel clerk said only tourists and the homeless walk.
Intro to Public Relations B.J. BEST The marketing firm hired me to design really obvious scavenger hunts to get people interested in their clients. There’s a million dollars hidden in this bank. All you have to do is find it.
textlitmag.com .
19
WIDE EMILY LU Universes pour into my mouth, open wide. The night waters are a couple whose thunderous arguments rise and ebb to resolve in lovely murmurs of tenderness. I see the stars and their tiny twinkling. I may be a fat man, many times folded into my cruise chair, but I eat hard to maintain my weight.
for my boat lily JOHN NYMAN Bald cry: I want to take you to a planet where shape is the prime ingredient in the language. Flutter haphazardly, baby, speedier than weighing a sound; get me in this whole other way, tilted to the blue trees.
20 .
text magazine
Anthem CHRISTOPHER EVANS God command thee: guard thy home and keep native land! free the love and keep the land all our sons stand for free glorious love our hearts rise, glowing and wide sons on sons, free love we keep the love far from native land patriot sons with hearts on guard the native, strong patriot sons on sons free love! free love in the far north! free land with true love in glorious Canada see our sons rise strong see the free native, Guard! CAROL LOIS // Untitled
textlitmag.com .
21
In the Apple Tree ALAN HILL At eighteen I smacked into the apple tree. It had appeared overnight at the bottom of my parents garden. Already fully grown, regimentally breasted with a labia red universe of fruit just out of reach each apple labelled with a future academic, lover, lawyer, strangler poet. Every time I climbed to pick one the lower braches snapped the non grip coating someone had had painted on would make me slip, tear my skin rip my nails. In the winter when the tree was bare the lungs of summer out of breath, I could see the solid body of its wholeness. I pressed my hands against the trunk felt the company of the persistent pulse.
22 .
text magazine
Temp Work: Atlas B.J. BEST For three months, it was my turn to support the Earth on my shoulders, but to most of the beachgoers it just looked like I was doing handstands in the surf.
SPENSER SMITH // Blanket
textlitmag.com .
23
ROBIN A. SAMS // Hazard Zone
CAROL LOIS // Untitled
WORRY BEADS BOB BROOKS A person can work the same set of worry beads for a lifetime. Why should I write one poem after another?
24 .
text magazine
Alan Hill Arlen Hogarth B.J. Best Bob Brooks Brandi May Carol Lois Christopher Evans Eddy Graham Emily Lu Howie Good Jason Heroux Jodi Lundgren Joe Milford John Nyman Kyle Hemmings Robin A. Sams Silvia Pikal Spenser Smith
textlitmag.com .
25
pays for cover art send high quality artwork or photography to textlitmag@gmail.com with the subject 'cover art'
26 .
text magazine
textlitmag.com .
27
YOUR AD HERE email shaleetaharper@gmail.com and reach thousands of potential customers
28 .
text magazine