ART | POETRY | PROSE
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Dear Ultraviolet Readers, First and foremost, we’d like to thank our incredible Editorial Board for making our first year as co-editors so infinitely special to us. Without the creative energy and dedication each and every one of you brought to our meetings, this year and this magazine would not have been the same. We would also like to thank every person who supported this edition through donations. Without their contributions, this magazine would not have been printed. Finally, we’d like to thank the writers, artists, and photographers whose amazing work you will find on the following pages. The arts are such an important part of the Kingston and Queen’s community and we are so proud to be able to shed the spotlight on the many talented artists in the area. With that, we are pleased to present the twenty-first issue of Ultraviolet Magazine! Sarah & Virginia
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EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS 2016-2017 Co-Editors: Sarah MacCormick Virginia Toole Editorial Board: Kay Chen Massimo Hertzer Nathalie Illes Myisha Siddiqui
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TABLE OF CONTENTS SEDICI by Serene Nekoui JAILBIRD, JAILBREAK by Pamoda Wijekoon ROSE by Bruno Jennings CHURCH BELLS by Jessie Read UNTITLED by Massimo Hertzer UNTITLED by Hannah Edson LANCIANO by Serene Nekoui UNTITLED by Sebastien Duff-Mailloux PHANTOM DREAMS by Kay Chen TORONTO NIGHTS by Katherine Gall UNTITLED by Sebastien Duff-Mailloux THORNS by Sarah MacCormick NOT FOR ATTENTION by Jessie Read NEW WORK by Myisha Siddiqui REFLECTION by Virginia Toole LONDON REFLECTIONS by Katherine Gall REMAINS by Serene Nekoui UNTITLED by Sebastien Duff-Mailloux AN APOCALYPSE OF THE MIND by Sarah MacCormick TRINITY by Bruce Courtin PARIS NIGHTS by Katherine Gall ROSES ARE RED... by Kelsey Newman-Reed SOMETIMES by Nathalie Illes THE NIGHTS I THINK OF YOU by Virginia Toole RAINBOW COLOURS by Kelsey Newman-Reed UNTITLED by Sebastien Duff-Mailloux
Cover 6 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 17 18 19 20 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 30 31 32 33 34 36
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FIND US ELSEWHERE Email ultravioletmagazine@gmail.com Facebook Ultraviolet Magazine at Queen’s Twitter @ULTRAvioletMAG Instagram @ultravioletmagazine Online Publication http://issuu.com/ultravioletmagazine
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JAILBIRD, JAILBREAK | PAMODA WIJEKOON I drank black coffee in the car the day I heard on the radio that an eagle had escaped from the park on Saturday morning. There had been frost framing the windows, and the black exhaust stained snow set a path straight to town, as the dark spruce still wore their winter coats that fed on midday rain and midnight ice. In my cocoon of sliding droplets and cigarette scraped voices rattling out the dashboard, I huddled against the window close enough to feel the echoing steel wool sting of January in the bleeding image. The gas station lights, as we passed by, burned like golden ports through the sleepy morning, wrapped up still in her blanket of wispy fog. The streets were empty and we were quiet, because the dawn had rubbed out the distinction between the sea and the sky, with only the black shadows of the lanky evergreen island there to anchor the shores. And atop the clouds of that grey kingdom swooped a proud yellow beak. She flung her wings out wide to whisper on the rippling surface, paused, and ate her breakfast too.
7 Wednesday country roads in the winter overtake the past and the future, they exist more keenly in the expanse of night than they ever would under the eyes of day. driving home the sky looks like anything and everything. (when it hits, my mind tickles with the notion of god.) and so it begins June’s light promises reflect in the watercolours of the sky, they wrap blades of shadowed grass around your pinkies. slivers of soft light glimmer across cups of hot tea, still on the lawn table, carefully held above fresh summer whites, turned electric blue in the ultraviolet sunset. reality is closing doors one by one, as the days pass the light stretches longer and longer, pulling us away.
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ROSE | BRUNO JENNINGS
CHURCH BELLS | JESSIE READ Value sinks its teeth into our skulls feels like spitting up cacophonous flesh stings like the heavy repetition of addiction is never champagne lit glamorous addiction is the dull tip of your calligraphy pen when venom turns to blood when blood turns to ghost ask the mortician if what’s illegal is synonymous with morality? are we condoning bloodshed if we don’t do everything in our power to stop it? if I refuse to feel this guilt will the shackles break? will I be resurrected? will judgement bare its teeth? people who see church bells ring every Sunday do not hold more worth, then syringe needle junkies that is to say what is a junkie, if not a burnt out flicker of hope a car that just ran out of gas people dealt the wrong set of cards It’s hard to rest when church bells sound like sirens when shooting up sounds like gunshots/flesh and rotting the grim reaping bearing his teeth to a deserted wasteland my heart a deserted wasteland that doesn’t want you to go just wants you to be okay, because someday we will all decay but i refuse to let that someday be now because this body feels grief heavy i see a noose as a halo/ when life is harder than death i won’t write your obituary there won’t be an obituary like drug addiction a sea of broken, a lost glimmer of hope that is to say i miss you how your mouth curled into a firework, ignition sparked when our mouths clanked like church bells miss the way we held each other wide eyed/ fireflies in a mason jar sparking up a kindling, into your star crossed veins fire lite you up and your light brought me home you being alive brings me home i want you to stay good at being alive to be more holy than church bells
because you are enough.
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UNTITLED | MASSIMO HERTZER
UNTITLED | HANNAH EDSON
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12 LANCIANO | SERENE NEKOUI
UNTITLED | SEBASTIEN DUFF-MAILLOUX
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PHANTOM DREAMS | KAY CHEN
He spends long days with his elbow on the windowsill. The clouds in the sky come in a multitude of shapes and sizes, forming and deforming, warping when the sun rises and sets, twisting, curling, always distorted. It is never rainy when he gazes; his brother will gently pull him away from the patterned curtain when the skies grow dark or whenever the clouds send their spears to attack the ground. His brother will light the candles when the days are dark and play a tune from the disk player in the living room until he does not notice the difference between a sunny and a rainy day. His brother will take his favourite fairy story from its place on the shelf and place it in the younger boy’s hands, smiling faintly as the boy flips to the second page where Alice’s face, sweet Alice’s pale face, will be smiling at him, imagined blue eyes blinking back at him. Brother is always there. Sister is always there, in fading brown ink on parchment paper. Yet they should not be. He sees flickering shadows in the flames of the candles instead of clouds in the blue sky. Candle wax spills on the linen patterned tablecloth and the boy mops up, noting soft shadows on tan-yellow, bright triangles of light on the material. It is not disgust that possesses him; he parallels Jack’s curious face peering around the immense doorframe to the giant’s lair, gaping at the feast and candles set on the table, at the vast treasure chests. Colour is a mysterious, enrapturing thing and he’d like to paint it someday. At once his head is gripped in his hands as he watches Alice fall down the unlit rabbit hole, her limp body impaled by a spike only meters from the ground. He watches her companion, the Cheshire Cat, beheaded, half a riddle spilling from his teeth as the white knight calls out after him, backwards, useless when he is next. He sees the walls of the Pumpkin Carriage dripping with blood, the hilt of a knife protruding from the outer wall, Cinderella’s glass slipper shattering on the hard granite staircase where her prince stands helpless. For no reason, the images spin in his head like a mantra or perhaps for all the reasons entirely. He is made up of this puzzle entirely. At night the shadows on the canvas tablecloth create monsters, frightening creatures take shape on the map of the world, and he yells, running, farther and farther from the big bad wolf. He
15 can see the house at the end of the forest, but the mist shrouds it, and he recedes into his red covers, trembling. The orphanage haunts every one of his steps, his father’s shouts fill his ears, and the dark lonely streets wet his eyes with tears, and he can do nothing.
“Little Brother, open your eyes…”
When he opens them and Big Brother holds his hand gently, sleeping beauty’s prince imbued in his smile like after a long nightmare. Brother strokes his pale fringe as he props his head on the headboard. He is accustomed to the boy’s nightly fits; he has bandaged his wounds every day that Father broke a bottle, places tea and lunch on the trolley at the bedside after Mother was sent away, soothes his soul with the gentle strum of a mandolin and the warmth of his voice and the song Uncle taught them when he first saved them. There is nothing malicious in Brother’s smile, nothing forced or sardonic in the upturn of his lips; he does not want for money or things. He does not speak in cat’s riddles unless he is the wise old man in the stories they roleplay, together. Brother’s hands never break or tear anything; his hands exist only to aid him, but one day Little Brother will be free, and forever a young boy but not a lost one, no, just flying. Then no one will be troubled.
“Brother? …Will you read to me?”
It no longer needs a question, and that is the root of the problem. Uncle will join them often, teaching the boy to play chess. He will lift his twelve-year old nephew in his arms and swing him onto his shoulder, and they will summon the pieces to wage war and banter teasingly with the nineteen-year old brother, and later they will climb the ladder to the treehouse together and spot the next ship on the horizon. Brother will look over his shoulder, always smiling. They have always been there beside him.
16 He will at times pretend he does not see the bags under Uncle’s eyes, the cigarettes twirling between his fingers ready for a light, the pile of work on the kitchen table in the dead of night, the debt to save them that he is still repaying, or he will ask and be unable to answer. He will put out the lantern outside Brother’s room and pretend he does not hear his pain, but he will be there. He does not dream or dread the day he will find the halls of the mansion empty and his voice echoing. His gazes wanders at the stagnant self he has become in the mirror, and figures he should hurry and learn to help them as well. During that dark time they were drawn, like two children to a house of candy they made up enough lies to stretch their noses and they said trust no one. The world in which he lived and what he was made to sacrifice on those streets when the outcome was uncertain become part of him. So he will be the martyr his uncle was for others now. He will steal from the rich and give to the poor as all beings do. Brother and Uncle are always there and he will be there soon, on the next train. He realizes that is enough for now.
TORONTO NIGHTS | KATHERINE GALL
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18 UNTITLED | SEBASTIEN DUFF-MAILLOUX
THORNS | SARAH MACCORMICK 19
20 NOT FOR ATTENTION | JESSIE READ (Trigger Warning For Rape )
They say survivor but when you are forced to relive your trauma every day did you you really survive? or have you just stopped trying to scrub the taste of him off your body torch this body, gasoline matches, i want to willow away in flames because if i die, the any memory of him would to he taught me no is a silent prayer written on a wailing wall nobody will ever read they will never hear the nails on chalkboard scream coming out of your mouth breaking silently words are vulnerabilities, and he hopes he made my skin crawl like leeches sucking everything out of you bones cracking in places they were never meant to he still carries pieces of me jumping out in every corner i’ll see him in the solar system the stars may never seem holy again in every man, mirror, hear him in every footstep, he never wants me to feel safe how do you think this is for attention? because people don’t get raped for attention because i don’t feel safe, don’t feel whole just chipped paint, curdling into forgotten when scrubbing off the memory of him doesn’t take away the venomous, snake, reminisce taste he left in my mouth that no amount of mouthwash shrinks the taste of him just makes me more women a marionette with his puppet do you think this is for attention? light fire to these bones, burn this skull to rotting i am living proof
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every time you make a rape joke, you are telling someone that the one of the worst thing they’ve been through is funny to you that their scar tissue, should be twisted and tangled rusted burnt metal, glass shards should be crushed into vagina, into private parts because your private parts will never be private to you this body will never be home to you this body no longer is mine i am fucking tired for wearing myself like guillotine, like angry feminist like do i even have to be discussing this like attention sounds like rape like what god, would want us all to be sinners, wants us all to burn i am burnt, and crumbling and longing and what good is fire when you can’t get over what lit you in the first place? do you still think this poem is for attention?
22 NEW WORK | MYISHA SIDDIQUI
1 Clutter, Art of Hoarders, Classic and common, Mutters passive, builds borders, To smother The Fresh. 2 Soon, Clutter leases To The Fresh some galleries. And Future creases Artlessly to Past.
REFLECTION | VIRGINIA TOOLE 23
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LONDON REFLECTIONS | KATHERINE GALL
REMAINS | SERENE NEKOUI 25
26 UNTITLED | SEBASTIEN DUFF-MAILLOUX
AN APOCALYPSE OF THE MIND | SARAH MACCORMICK 27
It’s not enough anymore. Things that once painted her days with the glittering hues of summer have faded and leached their brilliance from her soul. Her life isn’t even stained with a poetic inky blackness, it’s instead sapped of energy. A damp and draining gray. She broods too much, her mind a hellish spiral of madness and melancholy. She ponders life’s meaning and its lack of meaning. She cannot silence the vast, crashing ocean in her heart. She wants, no needs, to see the world. Experience it. Hear it. Taste it. Feel it. All of it. But she’s trapped here, in her mind and in this physical plane of existence wherein she doesn’t see her people. She doesn’t mean those of her colour, her creed, or her country. No, she means those who are not satisfied with living under self-imposed rocks of ignorance of the grief and horrors that permeate this world of placated and uninformed masses. She’s surrounded by a self-cannibalizing society and like a disease, it is slowly infesting her mind. She was alive and now she exists. She’s trapped between two worlds and doesn’t have the courage to cross over. When was the last time she saw a sunrise? A sunset? The sea of stars at night? She can no longer recall when she last felt beauty touch her eyes. She hates this. She’s exhausted and her body aches with desuetude, while her mind and spirit are restless. Her soul yearns for change and passion, but she’s drowning in an abyss of meaninglessness and misery of too long spent immersed in the same views and points of views. She does not want to seize the day, she wants to seize everything. Carpe Omnia. She needs something to rock her, ruin her, and raze her fragile hold on reality. She will let her world fall, her life implode. And from the ashes, she will rebuild something new.
28 TRINITY | BRUCE COURTIN I. Don’t Think I Could Write a Love Song O I am such a striking tapestry Of earnest lies that You believe in it You believe in me While my scalpel makes pedantic work extracting the pieces of you that I lust after to replace the <pieces> I’ve had to Snip Chop Cut out of myself only for art my art is me Lies is art & Bloodletting; let’s Lie Together with Lies, together let’s Paint this canvas, baby Red II. Universe of Two When I told her to look at the cotton candy sky, I only had you in mind, With silvering locks and sapphire eyes.
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Do you recall those sweltering days, Named Julius? A heat barbaric, of a Roman ilk. The blades of grass underfoot were as permanent as summer rains. My heart drank what bubbled up from your bones while Blackbird sang an elegy for jaundiced stalks. Now, your words float between space Between time And you plead your case. I will listen, loved one I will care, my sun. The moon, the stars, and nebulas alike explode With softest touch, With arched spine, With dripping brow, With trembling flesh. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve become a galaxy in you. III. Old Haunts On the map I see my ghost A-walkinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; In the wires his past is present Electricity
30 PARIS NIGHTS | KATHERINE GALL
ROSES ARE RED... | KELSEY NEWMAN-REED
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32 SOMETIMES | NATHALIE ILLES
Sometimes I miss you. The calm way you spoke to me; The way you calmed me. The safe way you helped me The way you saved me. But other times I HATE YOU The way you lost me. The feeling when you me. Dropped Sometimes I see you Reflected in my mind You donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t leave it I hate you. I miss you. Leave me alone, But come back to me. Please. Sometimes I cry because I miss you.
THE NIGHTS I THINK OF YOU | VIRGINIA TOOLE 33
34 RAINBOW COLOURS | KELSEY NEWMAN-REED
UNTITLED | SEBASTIEN DUFF-MAILLOUX 35