The Continuist 2015

NOTE FROM THE EDITORS So you’ve picked up a copy of our zine. If you are reading this because your work is within these leaves, congratulations on your publication, and thank you for your amazing contribution; this project wouldn’t be possible without you. If you are reading this because you just bought it, enjoy the fruits of local and international creativity, and thank you for supporting us so that we can continue to pick the ripest fruits we can find. If you are reading this and you haven’t bought a copy, thank you for your interest in our publication.

While we print several zines throughout the year, this is our most carefully crafted zine of them all. It is comprised of submissions received throughout 2014 as well as a few submissions from 2015, making the selection process a daunting but joyful task.

There are so many people that have made the 2014-15 year amazing, and The Continuist team would like to give a special thanks to: the ACS program director Stéphanie Walsh Matthews and program administrator Nicole Florecki for their constant support; PFACS and the Faculty of Arts for their generous contributions; Ryerson University, Oakham House, Lou Dawgs, Zine Dream, NXNE and all of the amazing places and events that we have partnered with; TPH and Copyrite for their print services; and of course, all of you. Much love.

The ContiNuist is an online and print publication run through Ryerson University’s Faculty of Arts in Toronto Ontario.

We aim to provide a means of expression and exposure for local artists, with a specific focus on the Ryerson community.

We accept all mediums of art and we are always waiting for new submissions, so send us your latest masterpiece today at:

thecontinuist@gmail.com

Not sure what to submit? Check out all of our online platforms to learn more.

www.thecontinuist.wordpress.com www.facebook.com/TheContinuist www.issuu.com/TheContinuist Love Always,

The ContiNuist

Metaphysics #4

Jes Cervoni

Metaphysics #1

Jes Cervoni

[a headstone]

joseph james cawein a headstone is a symbol for the mighty phallus of an uncaring god blithering and decaying in the afternoon sun

[anxiety]

joseph james cawein anxiety: the plurality of spider bits in the bathtub signifies the end

Amanda Spinosa

Tiny Pains

William Kasurak

Acid Test Press

William Kasurak

into

Jennifer Huynh

Creativity

Allison Grayhurst Peeled of my own death, entering a corridor of dawn, heat without fire, a staircase into the void, buried in the gas furnace, this guest that never comes, eats bread or slips into the cradle of a comfortable home. Pen and beauty, an inevitable loneliness that victory cannot solve, a transitory opera, bird songs, fragile, almost breaking, vibrating at a desperate but soft speed.

A woodland to walk through that inherits a shadow canopy darkness. Walk through regardless of doubts full-blown, regardless of scrapes across your tender surface.

Love is just an image as you walk, sound are menacing but never reach crescendo, never sustain the heavier beat that leads to ecstasy’s blackout.

Leaves become teeth.

Impressions are unkind.

Your husk is broken and your blood is a heap of dead violets crushed in a celebrated summer.

Carmen Huber

from Double

Vision

Aaron Mohr

From The Hallway Paul Harper

The clutch tightened & released to reveal a movement that had been nestled behind into the background. Reminiscent of a detached landscape bellowing. The fluctuation fierce, I sniffle from the petroleum jelly slathered within both my nostrils. From the hallway you spill the drone. Helplessness washes over both of us. In this moment I have nothing enlightening to ease the unified. Simply, there is no way for a new perspective of lovely looking lines to be drawn. I understand it. I understand you.

The consistent environment amplifies your worries. I sit on the toilet in the bathroom and the white tiled floor glistens perfectly in all it is and was ever meant to be. Lucky in its supposed lack of awareness towards existence. You tell me, that I, that I'm, I'm the reason you continue. The only thing that has kept you from kneeling down onto the graceless floor to join it.

I return to the bed, the unread “Great Expectations�, one Kleenex box and crumpled tissues are scattered upon it.

cripple effect Cand Torrance

hahahaha

Cand Torrance

Taylor Parkinson

Ben O’Neil

Linens

Lauren Matera

cherries rest on wooden mantles and the plump woman sits restlessly in the non space between lemony tea bags, two lumps of sugar cane red oak ashes brushed over the bones of the old plump woman with toes inverted, bulged belly, cheeks full of apple sauce liver brimming with mahogany cherries, plum red pea coat a saucer of silky milk chai placed for the tabby satiated, lapping its dinner “it occurs to me madam� a half baked tea cozy so you can stop burning palms redirect your thought redirect your speech pleasantries only please wipe that bit of lie you have hanging from your lip watch you don’t spill that sobriety on the linens

from Anna

Sadie Dempsey

Brittany Grayson

Watering Can Laura Pallen

It all starts from a seed In the pit of your stomach that sprouts, and blooms, and gives you the fruitful pleasure of knowing better.

With a little elbow grease, rejected bruises turn out to be juice stains with your kindness as water, we can wash them away.

I wish you could stay But gardeners wander; And my flesh is unmoved, As they soon discover.

Elana Delaney

Megan Stulberg

Loss of Self

Betsy Olaussen

At 5:45 AM, Before Work Austin Curtis

You run your fingertips along the back of my neck, with the same grace that the needle seduces the vinyl.

Accustom to the records rotating temperament, the grooves moan with the same fluidity of lovers lying in and on and around love.

At 6 Am, Before Work You whisper to hurry along, not to be late.

But I get lost now and then in space and time– when I live inside your smile lines.

At 6:15, On the Drive to Work I listen to the same old CD’s –Morrissey’s Your Arsenal, Kill Uncle, Viva Hate.

We could live off fate, if we didn’t fancy failure.

We would believe in an afterlife, if it wasn’t for each other.

Tried and True Sanita Fejzic

Tried and true as the saying goes the tri cycle of domesticity the tri umph of desire the tru ly madly deeply do the tru est part of a lie the tri bute to surrender the tri be called family the tru mpet sound of old age the tru st in forever Tried and true like me and you

Anna Avitsian

Sydney Myles

I think I’m losing signal

David Warner

Handfuls of hope thrown into a wishing well like slurry into a pig’s trough.

Soulless automatons moving in and out of subway cars, punching in and signing out; autonomous monotony.

Robotic aspirations; going through the motions because “I don’t know,” is scarier than a dead end.

I’ll write you a letter saying, “I can’t feel,” because I’m afraid it’s true and you’re the last one I can turn to.

untitled love poem #1 David Warner

let’s go to a fair and eat greasy foods until our stomachs are as full as our hearts and we fall asleep to the sound of distant fireworks.

Italy

Nick Vo

Ireland

Nick Vo

Night Moves

Cassandra McCann Somber nights grow still beneath the starlit sky.

We sink back into an alleyway, hidden behind the stone walls of this invisible city.

We crawl into each other’s nameless bodies, and our bones scrape together as we force ourselves into each other.

We go deep – until our skins tear and our mangled bodies lie scattered along the narrow path, waiting to be discovered by the Venetians who will wake to take in the laundry at the first light of day.

WORD VOMIT

Geraldynn Lubrido “Let’s talk about space” you said.

“It’ll be fun” you said.

Okay then.

“I plucked the stars for you Pulled them from their sticky surroundings Of swirling dust and melting sunlight Burned my hands for you Comets bashed me in the head Voiceless whispers left unsaid Words that could’ve shredded me Black holes in my memory Helping me stay in denial Of your soft neglect.

And still did I… Why did I? What was the point Of reaching so high?

No guarantee Of a chance to be free Painlessly I Want to exist But the sun swallowed me whole And now I’m trapped In a burning hell For all eternity.”

You look at me uncomfortably.

I shrug.

“It’ll be fun” you said.

Holly Chang and Bryce Julien

collecting fragments

Quinn Flom

Layah Glassman

Highway

cameron macdonald Black tongue tar of tomorrow pulling teeth at 120 kph into the fruit punch sky with our candy apple motor movement until our fingers are sticky wet with caramelized sun until the clouds flip over like a page of Kerouac And the manuscript of stars rattle in the dynamo of cosmos sprinkle the tongue crinkles foreign and native red green blue satellite words of the license plates where they probably have Kraft Dinner just like you and me in the lonely kitchens of college dorms or with mothers in the backseats of our minds no seat belts just the dotted line on our paper trail ready to cut into the midnight convex Where do these rolling horses take us?

It’s all syntax from here—under the wheel and spilling off our billion tongues the taste of licking the envelope of Time in the champagne cherry of dawn

Traveling Folk

Arthur Chayka

Untitled

David Eatock your mother calls at 3 a.m. cracking your voice like a record player the hum of the dryer is covering silence as you get your things to go i wait in the dingy corridor with pictures of your father, young and heartened in his demeanour your mother is reaching in her pockets with one of those photo smiles leaning her head on his shoulder as you play with toys on the ground i smoke on the balcony and think of the one time i met your dad he told me he didn’t like poetry and said he wasn’t one for romance you walked ahead with your mother and told her how much you loved the city and didn’t miss home at all your father and i kept smoking while you saved a table he told me that if he had to be poetic he hoped it would be in death he stared at things like sewer grates and the ash of his cigarette before patting my back and heading inside

from Crowded

Spaces

Emily Sylman