Portal 2022

2022

NITTU PRASAI refuses to choose in What Kind of Mother TAMMI CARTO meets us at a family crossroads in Inter/section SHAWNDA WILSON reconstructs a portrait of an artist in Reject SARAH STIRLING surprises the boy next door in the Portent-winning Be My Neighbour ISABELLA RANALLO AND SOPHIA WASYLINKO ask A.F. Mortiz if Before Poetry There Was Illiterature

2022

© 2022 by the authors, artists, and photographers

We are privileged and grateful to be allowed to work and study on the traditional territories of the Snuneymuxw First Nation of the Coast Salish Peoples and pay respect to their rich cultural heritage and natural environment each day we live and learn on viu’s Nanaimo campus.

Creativity that conveys, carries, and conducts. Explorations that elevate, enchant, and entrance. Prose that provokes. Stories that spellbind. Tales that thrill. Portal offers a gateway to accomplished short fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, scripts, interviews, art, and photography by emerging artists. What makes Portal so portentous? It is a portrait of literary talent in the making, a portable guide to the view from here. Enter Portal’s literary universe and discover worlds and futures ready to unfold.

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Centennial Skyscraper Isabella Ranallo

LETTER FROM

After an extremely challenging two years for both students and faculty—last year producing our larger-than-life 30th anniversary issue with a masthead entirely online, and the year before delivering the freshly-minted edition to doors locked tight against Covid—Portal has finally come back to life, real life. As our campus reopened, we were reminded of the unquantifiable pleasures of working in person. Every task was accomplished more quickly, the dialogue was lively, and morale was (the only thing) infectious.

Portal 2022 reflects a second year living in conditions that defy summation in one sentence. We stayed at home, we imagined, we wrote new works: fiction, poetry, scripts, and nonfiction. Though we might refer to it as a “skeleton year,” with patience and sanity stretched thin, it was also one of resilience and a return to essentials. In our 31st issue of Portal we respond to the magnitude of events in the last two years by returning to our core values and mandate in a paired-down edition.

The issue begins in the Himalayas of Nepal with “What Kind of Mother,” when a young Hindu girl attends a Buddhist boarding school far from her family, until she has one of her own. We move from motherhood to fatherhood in the screenplay “The Talk” also testing ties that bind or leaving loved ones behind. In the poem “A Loss for Words” a young writer has a conversation with a stranger who asks if her voice is brave enough to rise above the fray.

Internal/external strife also feature in the poem “Inter/ section” when a family is turned upside down after a lifealtering accident changes a preschooler’s life forever.

In “One Way or the Other” we hear the voice of a young boy when others don’t, one who refuses to be defined

by Asperger’s; his quiet resistance is heroic even when misunderstood. Finally, we pass the torch to a tween girl caught between repenting for her abuser’s sin and a crisis of faith that resists the “Refiner’s Fire.”

As we delve further into the issue the theme of connection only deepens. A stroke victim who has lost both speech and memory struggles to recall her granddaughter’s name in “A Spoonful of Sugar.” In the poem “Her Vivarium” an aging attendant at a butterfly museum contemplates her own, equally slow, metamorphosis. In “Still Life” a granddaughter revisits the decline of her troubled grandfather, shooting with cameras and guns, until an unspoken event costs him her respect.

Mid-issue we pause to speak to the philosophical A.F. Moritz, this year’s Gustafson Distinguished Poet who contemplates the source of “illiterature,” poetry before it knows it’s poetry. We also pause to contemplate the gravity of looking simultaneously backward to the past and casting an eye forward to a prospective future. In “Only Human,” a young academic must come to terms with her faulty memory chip, no longer able to access the last days she had with her mother. In “After Abaddon” a black hole absorbs everything we have been, or could be, as space itself implodes. In “A Different Quiet” a young boy disappears into the phosphorescent stars glowing on his ceiling each evening, until one night his journey defies imagination.

Brennan O’Toole: Two of my friends passed a copy of Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance between them and laughed. “Knowing Brennan,” they said, “this is probably an incredibly boring book.” I read the bulk of the novel on the rocks in Campbell River, looking across the strait to Quadra Island. There were bees humming around me and I had to keep moving from rock to rock. A seal bobbed his head in the water and for four hours I sat and read. I was trapped in Campbell River with nothing but a book. I read to feel both anchored and transported; this is the only way you can be in two places at once. We share the plot of the book, our thoughts, criticisms, but we read because we want to be somewhere else. Books are a portal to places and people we may come to know even more intimately from the armchair travel we’ve done in fictional landscapes.

THE EDITORS Hornby Highlands Jenna Cronshaw

The Portent Prize-winning script “Be My Neighbour” also features nightly visitations, though of a different variety as a new tenant, intrigued by her oddly enigmatic apartment dweller next door, awakes to a late-night knock on her door.

In “Life of the Party” a favoured guest briefly escapes the crowd for a moment of silence that presages a longer silence to follow. In “Unmoored” a woman takes a sabbatical, painting on the Welsh moors, only to find herself drawn to a strangely alluring muse and the sea beyond. In “Split/ Second” a young woman struggles to rescue a loved one from the raging river and to find her own footing.

leaving the harsh cold and her punishing past without remorse. The issue closes with a battle to end all battles in “Godzilla Complex” when the titular lead takes on King Kong in a play for coveted fame and fortune.

“The Whole Truth” explores an equally reckless act when an imposter crashes an aa meeting. “Like a Noose” tightens its focus on addiction to the nationwide fentanyl crisis as seen through the eyes of the survivors left to bury the dead. “Yellowhead” is an excerpt from a script set along this infamous stretch of highway where Indigenous women have gone missing for decades while their families’ pleas for justice have gone unanswered. The Portfolio Spotlight shines on Zeel Desai and Susan Garcia, writers of Indian and HawaiianIndigenous descent respectively, who share stories from their cultures that have made them proud ambassadors of a heritage they are still uncovering.

2022 has ushered in changes as well as new books; we are excited to have Natasha Rozmarniewich at the helm as our new designer, putting her unique brand on the issue to bring it to life. We’ve also moved our Portfolio series from the coffee shop to YouTube this year, but hope to be once again live and in-person in September. However, despite having few fundraising opportunities in the age of Covid, we are going ahead with a live launch now that restrictions and masks have been lifted, so follow us on socials and check out our website for details and teasers, including the October Portent Prize deadline for nonfiction entries.

In the final pages of the issue we come full circle, not at a loss for words, but for hope. “Reject” is a portrait of an artist in a series of escalating emails, purchase histories, and dating app conversations with a startling conclusion. In the anthemic poem “Take Xour Gender and Run,” a woman who refuses to be defined by others’ expectations laments the cost she has paid for a priceless identity. In the poem “No Forwarding Address” another woman crosses borders,

Like the characters in these final pieces, those working on the issue, and who have submitted to it, want their names in print to be the start of something extraordinary, something that might one day have a spine. Until then, we’re privileged to review six titles by authors who have reached that milestone.

Meanwhile, we’ll close this letter with a reminder of what Portal opens, namely doors. Portal is a class, and a job, but it is also a conduit that transitions authors from the solitary pursuit of writing to working collaboratively with editors by gently easing them into the world of publication. It puts education to the test: can we produce a magazine that demands to be read? We’ll let you be the judge.

Brennan O’Toole and Chris (Seabacola) Beaton Managing Editors Portal 2022

Chris (Seabacola) Beaton: I’m driving to my grandmother Ada’s house, brothers screaming and fighting. I stare out the car window as the trees wave goodbye. A single drop of rain curves in abstract patterns on the windshield. Our parents tell us to be quiet, listen. Since the moment I was born, I’ve listened—to parents, adults, stories. I love stories. They bring me comfort, joy; they teach me how to be. I read them and hear them from books and family: words ripe with drama, uproarious laughter, love. I want to tell stories too, but I realize my life isn’t that interesting and I’m not a good liar. I know what makes a good storyteller is seeing things differently, like that raindrop. It is time making its way to the bottom of the glass before slipping into the past. When it’s gone, all that’s left is this story.

MASTHEAD Managing Editors

—

Brennan O’Toole, Chris (Seabacola) Beaton

Acquisitions Editor

—

Ben Weick

Fiction Editors

—

Tammi Carto, Isabella Ranallo, Kirsten Dayne

Poetry Editors

—

Erika Parsons, Sophia Wasylinko, Jack Corfield

Script Editor

—

Soren Van Helm

Nonfiction Editors

—

Hannah Willden, Brendan Wanderer

Gustafson Feature

—

Sophia Wasylinko, Isabella Ranallo

Book Review Editor

—

Kirsten Dayne

Art Director

—

Brendan Wanderer

Designer

—

Nat Rozmarniewich

Web Designer

—

Christine Walker

Portfolio Coordinators

—

Soren Van Helm, Christine Walker, Jack Corfield

Social Media

—

Erika Parsons, Christine Walker, Tammi Carto

Advertising

—

Isabella Ranallo, Soren Van Helm

Publisher

—

Joy Gugeler

FRIENDS OF PORTAL chly viufa viusu viu Theatre viu English viu Foundation viu Food Services

view Gallery viu Media Studies viu Graphic Design viu Creative Writing & Journalism viu Arts & Humanities Colloquium Gustafson Distinguished Poets Lecture Series

Geist ARC Event Freefall Fiddlehead Frank Moher Rhonda Bailey Natalia Nybida Mackenzie Clarke Longwood Brewery

subTerrain The Navigator The New Quarterly The Malahat Review Federation of bc Writers

virl TouchWood Editions Nanaimo Arts Council ubc Masters of Fine Arts sfu Masters of Publishing

Neckpoint Park Ocean Ella Ostrikoff

Koi Fish Kaleidoscope Isabella Ranallo

TABLE OF CONTENTS FICTION

POETRY

18 One Way or the Other Santiago Dominguez

15 A Loss for Words Erika Parsons

24 A Spoonful of Sugar Hannah Willden

16 Inter/section Tammi Carto

34 Only Human Kirsten Dayne

27 Her Vivarium Brennan O’Toole

39 A Different Quiet Luci Edwards

38 After Abaddon Jack Corfield

47 Unmoored Sofia Morano

46 Life of the Party Kaiden Coughlan

52 The Whole Truth Ashley Smith

54 Like a Noose Chris (Seabacola) Beaton

62 Reject Shawnda Wilson

68 Take Xour Gender and Run Rue Burgoyne-King

70 Godzilla Complex Henry Osborne

69 No Forwarding Address Lisa Kremer

NON-FICTION

SCRIPTS

8 What Kind of Mother Nittu Prasai

11 The Talk Brendan Wanderer

21 Refiner’s Fire Lisa Kremer

42 Be My Neighbour Sarah Stirling 56 Yellowhead Patrick Wilson

28 Still Life Ashley Smith 50 Split/Second Hannah Willden

FEATURES 30 Before Poetry There Was Illiterature: A.F. Moritz on the Hidden, Lost, or Scorned Aspects of Self Isabella Ranallo and Sophia Wasylinko

60 Looking Back, Pay It Forward Zeel Desai 61 Wrapped, Unwrapped, and Wrapped Again Susan Garcia BOOK REVIEWS 72 The Prairie Chicken Dance Tour by Dawn Dumont Reviewed by Sophia Wasylinko

73 We, Jane by Aimee Wall

Reviewed by Isabella Ranallo

74 Humane by Anna Marie Sewell Reviewed by Hannah Willden

75 Kill The Poor by George Walker Reviewed by Soren Van Helm

76 A Natural History of Unnatural Things by Zachari Logan Reviewed by Brennan O’Toole

77 Is This Scary? by Jacob Scheier Reviewed by Erika Parsons

WHAT KIND OF MOTHER Nittu Prasai

I

was two years old in Taplejung, a district in Nepal

tucked between the lush terai jungle and 40 of the highest peaks in the Himalayas (including seven UNESCO designated World Heritage sites), when my mother took me to the rice fields. She was paid to remove stones and turn over soil that would make the land more productive.

My parents were Brahmins, part of the Hindu faith. In our village of nearly 4,000 people, children were deprived of fundamental human rights like access to clean drinking water and food. There was no electricity, healthcare, sanitation, or schools with qualified teachers. Despite this, my parents invested in my future, facing many challenges to access education.

My mother worked hard to educate me as a preschooler and, when I was five years old, I got an opportunity to study at Shree Mangal Dvip school (smd) in the capital Kathmandu, as one of my relatives was a teacher. He had been teaching there for the past six years, so was able to recommend me for enrollment despite being Hindu. It was a non-profit Tibetan Buddhist school founded in 1987 that provided free education to me and 500 other students from the Himalayan region of northern Nepal, all funded through international sponsorships. The school offered classes from Kindergarten to Grade 10 for students ages five to 15.

The founder of the school, Thrangu Rinpoche, wanted to preserve Himalayan culture, language, and Buddhist practice by educating needy children. He also established monasteries and nunneries across Nepal where young monks and nuns could study Dharma (Buddhist universal truths).

My parents had to leave me at the hostel attached to the school where those of us from small mountain towns lived together. This is not what comes to mind when Westerners think of hostels; my hostel life was different.

Warden Mam, the hostel warden who oversaw the children, held my hand as she led me to a crowded dorm with six bunk beds. The room was not large or fancy, but had windows and airflow on hot monsoon nights. Each child had just enough space for one box of personal items. She showed me my bed, wardrobe, and introduced me to my roommates. I got the bottom bunk with one blanket and one pillow.

I slept there with 12 other girls; few new girls came, and fewer still left. I was the only Hindu girl in a Buddhist school. It was established to preserve Buddhist culture, there weren’t any other Hindu students admitted during my stay.

When a girl approached me in my room and greeted me in Tibetan with “Tashi delek,” I replied, “Namaste,” in Nepali and she rushed over to her friend and spoke in her own language, which I couldn’t understand.

(I was already an outsider.)

pictures of David Beckham instead, much to the chagrin of Warden Mam, who was far from impressed.

To learn the Tibetan language, I had to endure being hit on the hand with a stick when I made a mistake, easily over 150 times during my tenure there. These moments were extremely painful and frustrating. I wasn’t a failure, but I wasn’t as good as the other classmates.

Sometimes the loneliness landed like one of Beckham’s kicks.

I received calls from my parents on the school’s landline, but my mother always cried, which made me cry too. Neither of us talked much. I had one month of winter vacation in which to meet them, but this didn’t happen every year.

Every night for 45 minutes we prayed in a big hall for the prosperity of all living beings. The curtains swayed in the evening breeze and the smell of roses wafted in from the garden. Soft Buddhist music like “Om Mane Padme Hum” played and candles twinkled all around us. I took a deep breath and tried to ignore the other children who stared at me while I repeated a chant I couldn’t understand.

It took three days by bus from my village to the city, but sometimes my parents could not afford the time or money to pick me up. The roads weren’t well-paved or accessible all the time, so transportation was unreliable and there were few alternatives. I thought of running away, but I had no one else nearby I could run to, so I reluctantly accepted Buddhism, forgetting my own religion, at least temporarily, out of necessity.

The school gave us one to two hours of outside play each day. We ran around the playground or sat on the floor braiding each other’s hair and gossiping. There were hundreds of children living in the hostel, so I started involving myself in sports, acting, painting, music, hoping for a connection.

After almost a year and half, I was able to understand Buddhist culture and eventually I made a friend named Maya. We would hide under the slide to eat chips so that we wouldn’t have to share with anyone. Our school didn’t have a swimming pool, so we used to fill a bucket with water and climb in during our breaks.

Those days transformed the hostel from a school into a home, even when I felt trapped, living from one bell to the next. The trick was bending the rules where I could. Most Nepalese schools focused on academics, but smd focused on sports, acting, painting, music, and other creative pursuits.

I played football and badminton to the point of exhaustion.

My roommates had posters of Guatam Buddha, but I had

My mom had taught me to be selfless and give to those in need from an early age. She’d led by example. She gave up on her studies to look after me so that I could build a brighter future. She had always wanted to study medicine and work in the health field as our village didn’t have enough medical facilities and staff.

This motivated me to achieve the highest grades every year in primary and secondary school. For 11 years, I worked hard to convert my loneliness into success, studying so that my parents’ sacrifices would be worth it. smd was too crowded to offer Grades 11 and 12, so my parents sold their village properties and bought a house in the city to support my further education. It was overwhelming to move back in with my parents after 10 years. I was so happy to feel their love in person every day.

I giggled with my mom like we were both teenagers and told her about my school adventures so she could experience them vicariously. I enrolled at an English language and computer science institute named St. Lawrence College, studying two years until I graduated with good marks.

Triple Peaks Mountain Ella Ostrikoff

What Kind of Mother

By then, I knew I wanted to explore the world from a different vantage point and comfort zone. I loved my country, but the chaos of overcrowded public spaces, where people and vehicles meant pollution and disregard for nature, were becoming unbearable.

Even so, switching from student to fulltime mom was difficult. I became depressed and couldn’t concentrate on anything except the flaws in my life, which I thought was over. My friends’ pictures on social media showed them having adventures—how would I ever be able to do the same?

I looked for opportunities 10,000 kilometres away, but my parents thought I was too young to travel abroad, so they arranged a marriage before I enrolled in university. In Nepalese families, daughters marry at an early age. I was 19 and not keen on the idea, but I didn’t protest.

I insisted on continuing my education at a foreign university. My mother made sacrifices for me, and because of this I was in a position to do the same for my child. I saw foreigners visiting Nepal, but I had no idea what their part of their world was like.

(I was mature enough to understand that marriage wouldn’t stop a woman from pursuing her career.)

My husband agreed to stay and raise our son with our parents’ help for 18 months, or until Krizal turned three.

Posh and his parents were by my side and helped me to process my visa application. I am forever grateful to him.

My family chose Posh, a 29-year-old investment advisor, for me. He was a good man and I liked him too. His family welcomed me and treated me like their own. My father-inlaw was a senior government employee in nea—the Nepal Electricity Authority. In our culture, after getting married you and your husband move in with his parents.

Shortly after getting married, I got pregnant. I had our son, Krizal, in Kathmandu on March 30, 2017. When I held him for the first time it was surreal. I was overcome with happiness and my love for him knew no bounds. It was a feeling of wholeness unlike any I had ever experienced.

10

Feature Tranquility Ashley Smith

When I left Nepal, Krizal was just 18 months old; it was one of the most difficult days of my life. Both sets of parents, Posh and Krizal came to the airport to say a final goodbye.

Everyone held back tears so Krizal wouldn’t react. Everyone I valued most was there on the tarmac, but what lay ahead was of value too, and it would justify this separation. I didn’t look back because if I had, I wouldn’t have boarded the plane.

People may ask what kind of mother would leave behind her husband and infant son, but what kind of a mother would I be if I stayed and failed to provide him with a decent life? ( )

THE TALK Brendan Wanderer

int. neil’s house—living room—morning (A wind-up alarm clock ticks on an end table. A man lies

slumped on a couch wearing only a t-shirt and boxer shorts. The alarm goes off. The man pushes himself into a sitting position. He scans the room. He stands and turns off the alarm as he stumbles past it. Is this really where he sleeps?)

int. neil’s house—neil’s bedroom—morning (Morning light pours through a window onto a spotless bedroom. A queen-sized bed is untouched. The man walks over to a wardrobe. His finger hovers indecisively over three nearly identical grey suits. He chooses the one on the left, begins to walk away, stops, then returns to exchange it for the middle one.) int. neil’s house—kitchen—morning (Dressed in a suit and briefcase in hand, NEIL, 40, walks to the

fridge. Inside are stacks of food storage containers. The fridge begins beeping. He closes and reopens the fridge door and the beeping ceases. This sequence repeats.)

match cut to:

(He opens a lunchbox, arranges, then rearranges three apples, two fruit bars, a banana, and a water bottle.

Feeling a buzz, Neil checks his phone and finds a text message:) TAYLOR:

hi dad. i’ll come by after school. favour? i forgot a stack of notes on the kitchen counter at mom’s.

(Neil checks his watch and sighs.)

NEIL: TAYLOR:

can’t your mom get them to you? i’ve been trying her at home and can’t get through, as usual. i owe you big time.

(Neil pauses before responding.)

NEIL:

sure tay, see you later.

(Neil shakes his head. He gathers his lunchbox and briefcase to leave, carrying his water bottle under his arm.) ext. kathy’s house—day (Neil rings the doorbell. From within we hear high-heeled footsteps. A blurry figure

approaches in the full-length window beside the door. The door opens. KATHY, 40, elegantly dressed, stands with a phone in hand and a surprised look on her face.)

KATHY:

(to neil) Neil. Hi. (Neil waits. Will this ever get any easier?)

KATHY:

(into receiver) I’m sorry, just a moment.

NEIL:

I’m—Tay forgot some notes on the counter.

KATHY:

I swear. That girl…. (Kathy turns down the hall to the kitchen. Neil follows hesitantly.)

Script

11

The Talk

int. kathy’s house—kitchen—continuous (Kathy walks quickly, pointing to a stack of binders and assorted notes on the counter without breaking her stride.)

KATHY:

(to neil) Over there. (Kathy returns to her phone call.)

KATHY:

(into receiver) Midge? Hi. Sorry. Where were we? (Kathy walks to her desk. Neil looks down at the counter.

He rifles through the school binders and papers. Kathy covers the receiver.)

KATHY:

(to neil) Neil, have you had a chance to look for my guitar? (Neil looks up.)

NEIL:

No, sorry. I haven’t had time. (Kathy rolls her eyes. As Neil speaks, his hand grazes a handwritten letter.)

KATHY:

(into receiver) Oh, that’s fine really! (Kathy covers the receiver.)

KATHY:

(back to neil) Can you bring it next time?

NEIL:

Yeah. I’ll do that.

KATHY:

It should be in storage downstairs. (Kathy returns to her phone call.)

KATHY:

(into receiver) What’s that? Oh no, it’s fine. It’s just the mailman. (Kathy laughs. Neil cringes, then gathers the stack of binders and schoolwork—including the letter—and heads down the hall to the front door. Just the mailman?) int. neil’s house—entryway—later (Neil stumbles through the front door with his briefcase, water bottle, lunchbox, and the stack of schoolwork.) int. neil’s house—taylor’s bedroom—day (Neil walks into Taylor’s bedroom, placing the stack on her desk. The letter floats to the floor. Neil picks it up. Its contents catch his eye. “My sweet…” Neil looks around as if he’ll be caught in the act and scans the letter. )

NEIL:

The night we spent together….Can’t wait to see you again….Love, Rodney? (Neil folds the letter. He tucks it in his suit jacket’s inner pocket. ) int. neil’s house—kitchen—night (Neil stands in the kitchen. TAYLOR, 15, in a school uniform, sits

opposite him on a barstool, speaking animatedly. Neil appears distant, drinking his tea.)

TAYLOR:

And then Andrew says, “Mr. Jeffries, there’s ink on your butt” and Mr. Jeffries totally freaked out. It. Was. Hilarious. (Neil smiles and nods mechanically.)

TAYLOR:

Dad, come on! This is comedy gold. What’s up? (Neil stalls, his eyes dart around nervously.)

NEIL: TAYLOR: NEIL:

12

Sweetheart, you’re just growing up so….I expect you have some….ok, so, when I was young.…

Dad? I saw your letter. I wasn’t snooping. It was there and I thought we should talk about—boys. They’re going to be interested….in you, and they’ll want.…but unless he’s really special—

TAYLOR:

Dad stop. You don’t have to say….whatever you’re trying to say. Mom and I had “the talk” a long time ago. You’re off the hook. Wait, what letter? (Neil takes the letter from his jacket pocket and hands it to her sheepishly. She reads it over, then looks at him apprehensively.)

TAYLOR:

You weren’t supposed to see this.

Script

Brendan Wanderer

NEIL:

I know, I shouldn’t have read it. (Taylor stares at Neil for a moment.)

TAYLOR:

Dad, this letter belongs to Mom. (Neil looks embarrassed and sad.)

NEIL: TAYLOR: NEIL:

Oh. It must’ve gotten mixed up with my— No problem, it’s fine. (Neil walks to the fridge. Taylor folds the letter and adds it to her schoolwork pile on the counter. There is no way that he is fine with this.) match cut to: int. neil’s house—living room—night (Neil stares into the fireplace from the couch. He takes a drink

from a glass of wine.)

int. neil’s house—taylor’s bedroom—night (Taylor is asleep. A loud crash followed by several other thumps can be heard overhead. Taylor opens her eyes. The clock on her bedside reads 2:37 am.) int. neil’s house—hallway—night (Stepping into the hallway, Taylor sees the hatch in the ceiling to the

attic is open with the ladder hanging down.)

int. neil’s house—attic—night (The overhead light reveals Neil on his knees, furiously rifling through a

box of papers. The contents of several other boxes lay strewn about. Taylor climbs the stairs so that her head appears at attic floor level.)

TAYLOR: NEIL: TAYLOR: NEIL: TAYLOR: NEIL:

Dad? (Neil pauses for a moment to open an envelope, unfolds a letter, then drops it. He continues shuffling.) Dad, it’s so late. (Neil begins to root through another box of photos.) Dad? We never unpacked any of this. We just put it up here and forgot about it.

Dad. (He stops, finally acknowledging her.)

What?

What are you looking for?

A picture. A stupid fucking—It’s fine. Did I wake you?

TAYLOR:

Is this about Mom’s letter?

NEIL:

I thought I was past this.

TAYLOR: NEIL: TAYLOR: NEIL: TAYLOR:

Well, maybe this will help you let it go.

I don’t want to let go! (Neil closes the box.) I want her to be happy, I do.

She is happy, Dad. (Neil nods.)

Hey, I’m sorry. It’s late. I’ll do this later. Go back to bed. (She starts to climb down, then notices a family photo on the floor. Neil, Kathy, Taylor…together.)

I miss how it was too. (She catches Neil’s eye.) We might not look like a family, but we are.

(She climbs down the ladder. Neil smiles.)

Script

13

The Talk

int. neil’s house—bedroom—night (Neil walks into his bedroom toward the bed, then turns to the

wardrobe. Inside behind the suits is a guitar case. He opens the case on the bed to reveal a beautiful acoustic guitar. As Neil takes it in, he notices tucked along the edge is: an old photo of a much younger Neil and Kathy, and a handwritten letter, wrinkled and dogeared: “Kathy, you are my favourite song. Love, Neil.” Neil smiles.

He softly strums the strings, now out of tune. Suddenly, one snaps. From the other room...)

TAYLOR:

(o.s.) Goodnight, Dad. (Neil replaces the letter and closes the case.) delayed match cut to: ext. kathy’s house—day pre-lap: (A doorbell rings. Kathy opens the door. Neil stands in front of her holding the guitar case.)

NEIL:

Special delivery! (Kathy smiles warmly.) int. kathy’s house—living room—day (Neil hands Kathy the case. She opens it and admires the guitar.)

KATHY: NEIL: KATHY:

Hard Case Soren Van Helm

14

Script

Remember when you gave this to me?

Every time I look at it. (The moment lingers.)

I’m giving it to Tay for her birthday. (Neil looks surprised.) Maybe...you could come to the party. It could be from the two of us. (Kathy smiles. She does look happy.) ( )

A LOSS FOR WORDS Erika Parsons

A stranger gave me a rose while I waited on a street corner.

It was dark; I was tipsy.

He was searching for something, someone.

“Why do we fail to read the stories written by those with so much to say?”

He waited for an answer I didn’t have, his words staggering.

Had anyone, would anyone, ever listen to me?

My cab arrived and the man with the rose asked for change.

I left, wondering if my voice was too quiet, when would I find the courage to raise it?

Locked Out

Lauryn Mackenzie

Feature

15

INTER/SECTION Tammi Carto

We pedalled away from our parents’ Sunday sleep-in that sunny February morning, —my brother seven, and I five— helmetless and free.

Glee echoed off the school’s stucco walls as we claimed the quiet playground, wheels looping figure-eights on the basketball court before heading home to cereal and cartoons.

At the intersection, he looked left, right, while I raced straight through unchecked.

Dad takes the alley.

The crowd parts.

Sirens puncture the air, breath suspends, as his body is strapped to a stretcher.

Ambulance doors slam, terror a cloak that wafts down from the trees while a neighbour takes me to a home not my own.

Three weeks in a coma, skull-shaping surgery, his eyes raccoon and vacant.

He learned to walk again, talk again, learned who we were, again.

He wore homemade slippers, a gift from the wife of the 70-year-old-man who just didn’t see him.

I heard the crunch, saw him fly, land skull against pavement, a wood-panel station wagon screeched to a stop— crumpled, his body steals my breath.

The scar on his forehead, silvered with time matches the one etched into my heart.

He would never drive, never have a job, or family— would seize often and untriggered, need so much medicine.

Mom, so happy to see me “There you are!” the hallway an e n d l e s s t u n n e l.

A tug on her blue velour housecoat, auburn curls framing her face in the tilt to hear my whisper He got hit by a car.

That day, which began with speed and glee, would end in a life that slowed right down.

Her sharp wail pierces the fog.

I am trembling.

My small fingers pinch in her grip as we run, her slippers staccato against the asphalt.

16

Feature

World Upside Down

Lauryn Mackenzie

ONE WAY OR THE OTHER Santiago Dominguez

“J

ames, come on! we have to get moving or you’ll be late for your doctor’s appointment!”

It’s lunchtime and I’m playing on my Windows xp in the quiet downstairs suite. Why do we have to go now?

My mom always picks the worst times to interrupt me. I’m in the middle of a strategic battle and about to win! Why do I even have to go? The doctor will just say I’m bad and I need pills to be good.

“Let’s go!”

“Why do I have to go?” I call to the hallway, hand hovering over the computer mouse. “I hate the doctor. She makes me feel bad every time.”

My mom peeks her head into the doorway. “Because it’s how I take care of you. You need the help. Where’s your jacket? Come on now, let’s put on your shoes.” She disappears, but calls behind her, “Did you brush your teeth?”

I turn off the computer and drag my feet into the foyer. My mom scrambles around, making sure we have everything we need, never making eye contact with me. I put on my jacket and shoes as my mom puts on her click-clacky heels.

“Let’s go. We can’t be late!” My mom grabs the car keys from the basket by the front door. We close the front door behind us and get into our gold minivan.

“If everyone hates you, then why did that tall boy say ‘Hi’ to you yesterday?” She’ll never understand. No one will.

How long will we be out? It’s hard to tell. I turn on my Gameboy and become lost in a world where I am accepted and free of judgement. “ok, James, we’re here! Put your videogame away.”

We’re in the parking lot of the clinic. I’ll bring my game; it always takes ages before the doctor calls us into her office.

I hold my mom’s hand as we walk in; it’s always warm. She has short black hair that goes to her chin and brown eyes that light up when she sees me, and her voice is always gentle.

(I see all this, but I also see how she’s hurting me.)

The building is a new structure somewhere downtown. I don’t know the city too well, but it is next to a fun-looking playground. We enter through a narrow doorway and walk up carpeted stairs to a hallway with several doors.

Birds chirp in contrast to the roar of the engine. It’s comforting to hear the clicks and beeps as the doors lock, the dashboard lights up, the seatbelts snap, and a green arrow blinks.

In the clinic’s white waiting room my mom talks to the lady at the desk. Her glasses hang from her neck on a string.

I don’t care what they’re saying. I’ve learned to ignore these conversations because they just remind me I can’t do anything by myself, because of my disability. I would only get in trouble for speaking up anyway.

“How’s school, my love?” my mom asks as we turn off our street.

“Honey, go find us a seat.” I can’t say no even if I want to when she asks so nicely.

“Awful.”

I sit in the blue chair beside the water cooler like I always do. The chair has a hard leather seat that feels rough to my small hand as it glides across it. The frame makes a sharp sound when I scratch it with my nails.

“Oh, it can’t be that bad. Everyone loves you there! You have so many friends.”

Why does she always think that everything is fine? How many times do I have to tell her it is not fine before she understands?

“No Mom, everyone hates me. All the teachers treat me like I’m dumb! I just want to be in the same class as all the other kids my age.”

18

I just want to be normal.

Fiction

“James! Don’t do that; it’s disruptive!” My mom walks over and sits in the chair next to mine. She places her purse in the chair next to her and picks up a stupid magazine about clothes. Why would anybody read that? I wish they had magazines about videogames instead; that would actually be fun.

This place reminds me of all the other places for dumb people. The room is boring and white, everybody looks sad.

It has pictures of happy kids saying positive things, animal posters, and the irritating sound of fingers tapping on keyboards—click, click, click. Just as I’m about to switch my game back on, they call my name.

“James Alameth? The doctor would like to see you.” A secretary with blonde hair speaks from behind a plastic clipboard.

Let’s get this over with.

We walk into a small room filled with books. There’s a little window peering onto a construction site. The doctor is looking at some papers when she notices us.

“Hi James, please take a seat.” The doctor’s voice sounds nice, but that just makes me feel worse.

“How has he been?” As usual, the doctor directs the question to my mom.

“Well, he’s better. I think the medication is working,” my mom says, speaking in a firm, calm voice. “But he’s still getting angry, and he struggles to get along with his sister.”

Sometimes I wonder if they even know I’m here.

“How often has he been taking the medication?”

“Every night. I make sure of it.”

“Great, we should see some improvements then. So, James, how are you enjoying school? Has that boy stopped bothering you?”

Brutus. “No.” “The next time he picks on you, tell a teacher.”

Like I’ve never tried that.

“How about your sister? You must know she cares about you.”

“No! She is always doing things to annoy me, and she does them on purpose!” Does nobody see that? Everybody says I’m the bad guy, that I’m mean to her. I don’t even know what I’m doing wrong, but nobody cares. They just yell at me anyway.

“I’m sure she doesn’t mean to. Just ignore her if you find yourself getting bothered.”

The session went on for ages. The doctor kept asking me questions and offering useless advice like ‘Just try to not think about it,’ or ‘Think positive thoughts.’

“I think we can lower the dosage a little,” the doctor said at the end of the appointment. “If he doesn’t improve, then we’ll go back to his current prescription.”

Love is Key Ashley Smith

Fiction

19

One Way or the Other

“Why do I have to take all those pills!? They only make me feel bad. I’m better without them. I did it before!”

“Mom, why am I so broken?” She sits taller to compose the answer.

“James, you need the medicine so you can get along with your schoolmates,” the doctor said. “Your Asperger’s will make it difficult for you to make friends without the medication.”

“James, you are exactly as you were meant to be, and God loves you—we love you—exactly as you are. You are not broken, just misunderstood.” She flicks off the switch, and I see the light from the hallway slowly disappear as the door creaks to a gentle close behind her.

(Why doesn’t she understand that the pills don’t help me!)

“If you keep taking your pills, you won’t get sent home from school so often.”

“I hope lowering the dosage will still do the trick,” my mom says before thanking her and telling me to grab my coat.

Finally, I can go home and play! I don’t have homework because Mrs.Thana doesn’t give us any. None of us learn anything, and most don’t want to. I shouldn’t be there.

When we get home, I put my sneakers in the shoe closet and go upstairs; maybe Pokémon is on tv. Unsurprisingly, Sophie is watching Hannah Montana.

“Hey, I want to watch Pokémon!”

“Too bad, I was here first,” she says.

“I just got home, and I want to watch tv. You’ve been home all day!”

“James! Stop yelling and let Sophie watch tv. Just do something else!” my older sister Gavi yells from the other room. She always takes Sophie’s side.

I go to the suite, the magical room where people can’t yell at me, Sophie can’t hog the tv remote or sing at the top of her lungs, and I can’t hear fights between my mom and my sisters. I’m always alone even when I’m at home with my family. One of these days I’ll just run away.

“James! Time for bed,” my mom calls. “You have school tomorrow! Did you remember to take your pills?”

I don’t want to take them. They make me somebody I’m not!

My mom walks me to the bathroom to make sure I brush my teeth.

“James, do you know how much I love you?” she says, putting her arms around me from behind and resting her chin on my shoulder while I brush my teeth. “You are my special boy.”

Why am I so angry at the only person who cares about me?

Mom tucks me in and says a prayer before I sleep.

20

Fiction

I wake up at six. My bare feet touch the soft carpet on the way to the bathroom. I brush my teeth. I get dressed. The house is quiet.

Nobody is awake and nobody can take the remote from me.

I sit down to watch my favourite cartoons. The characters on the tv are babbling incoherently, but I tune it out as I do the world.

The soft couch goes from light to dark as I rub my hand across the fabric one way and then the other.

I stare mesmerized by the changing fabrics, feeling every fiber tickle my hand. Watching its shades change, I wonder why everything has to be one way or the other. ( )

REFINER’S FIRE Lisa Kremer

“F

or the wages of sin is death.”

It was 7 pm on a Wednesday night and 30 teenagers were packed into the makeshift sanctuary for the weekly youth group at Victory Evangelical, located at the corner of Centre Street and Highway 1 in northwest Calgary. I was a new initiate, leaving behind the childish Bible stories of Sunday School to become a holy woman of God. I knew my success as a believer depended on my ability to avoid “the devil, as a roaring lion, who walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.” It wasn’t enough to simply listen to sermons about sin, purity, repentance, and the “End Times.” At 12 years old, I had to learn how to guard against the forces of darkness.

Some of the girls forced to attend youth group by their parents wore heavy make-up and tight, revealing clothes.

Likewise, the cool “bad” boys slicked back their hair and talked about skateboards, some with a package of smokes tucked inside their jackets.

I hung out with the crowd of kids who were “radically saved,” as Carman, a contemporary Christian musician, crooned in his latest hit. Following Jesus gave me purpose and direction. I’d been called to save a dying world and speak to a lost generation of sinners, even if I didn’t feel I was an ideal witness. The weekly youth group was known for recognizing potential world-changers, provided we could control our sinful flesh.

“The thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy,” Pastor Lang yelled. His eyes bulged as he shook his fist in the air. Pastor Lang reminded me of Snoop Doggy Dog. I’d seen his picture on the front of a cassette secretly passed around by the skater boys. Before meeting him tonight, I’d only seen Black preachers on tv. His southern drawl and animated gestures were a novelty.

At church last Sunday, he preached to a full house. It was an urgent, fiery message, contending that “the time is now”

for salvation. When the offering plates were passed around, well-dressed men tossed in $20-bills to support his mission.

I wondered how many of them would join us to preach on the street, a witnessing activity scheduled over the next two weeks before Pastor Lang left Calgary to continue his ministry tour of Canada.

Pastor Lang told us he used to be a bouncer at a nightclub in the States and his old life was one of lust, debauchery, and selfishness. I pictured him in a dark alley, muscley arms crossed, head bobbing to the grinding beats emanating from the dance floor through the open door behind him. He said he’d had popularity, money, and more women than he could count, yet he was miserable and lost. Then he found the saving power of Jesus.

“If you don’t control sin,” he warned, “sin will control you.

As you know, the devil’s favourite way to destroy God’s children is to tempt them with sexual sin.”

I squirmed in my seat, then glanced around the room to see if anyone else reacted. The dark sky through the wall-to-wall windows provided a stark contrast, making it easier to see who was fidgeting, who was taking notes, who was secretly holding hands, and who looked guilty. Way in the back row I spotted Clint’s stringy dirty-blond hair as he bowed his head over a comic book. I felt my heart skip a beat and turned my focus back to the front of the room, to Pastor Lang.

(“Do not let lust overtake your heart!

You might think you’re strong enough, you might think you deserve a little bit of fun, but you’re deceiving yourself.”)

Pastor Lang paced back and forth on the turquoise carpet, stopping just short of the drum kit that sat in the corner of the room. He opened his large leather-bound Bible and flipped through the highlighted and well-worn pages with his index finger. “Everyone open your Bibles to Matthew 5:28.”

Non-Fiction

21

With speed and precision earned in a childhood spent memorizing the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments, I pulled up the verse: “But I say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.”

Pastor Lang read slowly and with emphasis. Usually, kids in the back row whispered or snickered, but now the room was abnormally quiet.

“Do ya’ll know what that means?” No one answered. “Maybe you’ve been fooling around with your boyfriend or girlfriend.

Maybe you’ve only thought about it. Either way, lust is lust.

If you’re having impure thoughts, it’s as bad as having acted upon them. You need to repent.”

I could feel my face flush. I stared straight ahead and focused on the whiteboard behind Pastor Lang, which read: wave pool friday, october 9th, 1992 $5. no two-piece swimsuits.

“Tonight, you have the opportunity to make things right with God. If you’re feeling nervous that’s a sign the Holy Ghost is working within you. That’s conviction.” Pastor Lang set his Bible down on the music stand and walked down the aisle. “This is your chance. What sins have you allowed to poison your life?”

He stopped in the middle of the room, then looked slowly to his left, then his right. Some teens looked up at Pastor Lang, wide-eyed, while others slouched with their heads bowed as if they were praying or taking notes. I heard a faint sniffle in the row next to me. Stacey, one of the popular girls with perfect hair, hot pink lip gloss, a lacey low-cut top and skin-tight acid-wash jeans, wiped her eyes, smudging her blue eyeshadow.

My notes from Pastor Lang’s sermon filled half a page of my well-used prayer journal. I’d written: “What sins have you allowed to poison your life?” Beneath that the letters “CL.” I quickly scribbled over them to black them out.

“Don’t let lust take hold of your heart and ruin God’s plan for you.” Pastor Lang walked back to the front of the room and nodded at Rowan, a youth leader in training who oversaw the worship team. Rowan quietly picked up his guitar and sat on a stool in front of the crowd. He began to strum the chords of Refiner’s Fire.

“I want every head bowed and every eye closed,” Pastor Lang commanded.

I hunched over in my chair, covering my face with my hands. My long brown hair fell forward and curtained my face. I was familiar with the protocol. At the end of every service, the congregation was given an opportunity to respond to the preacher’s message. Bowing my head would make it more difficult to ignore the call of the Spirit.

“I want you to search your heart.…” I could hear Pastor Lang’s footsteps pacing up and down the aisle again. “You might think you can keep your sins a secret, but God will not be mocked. Luke 12:3 tells us what’s done in secret will be shouted from the rooftops. Maybe you’re thinking, ‘But Pastor, I haven’t gone all the way, so I haven’t sinned.…’

Remember what Jesus said in Matthew—if you think it in your heart, it’s as good as done.”

I didn’t have a boyfriend, but....

(“Maybe you’ve gone too far, you’ve slipped up. It’s time to come clean before the Almighty God.”) For the past year, Clint, my older brother’s friend, had forced himself on me, made me the object of his lustful attention. Three years older, and at least a foot taller than me, Clint’s “adult” behavior had made me grow up overnight. I knew how important it was to stay pure as a woman of God, but I couldn’t stop him. I needed cleansing in the Refiner’s fire.

“I’m gonna give you a chance to do just that in a minute, after we sing this song.”

Rowan began to sing and play his guitar. “Purify my heart.

Let me be as gold and precious silver.”

I felt Clint’s body push up hard against mine.

“Refiner’s fire, my heart’s one desire, is to be holy…”

Rowan sang. I was sinful, too.

Rowan finished singing the chorus and quietly strummed his guitar.

“Alright holy men and women of God, it’s time to repent, to turn from your sin and control your flesh. If you want to do this, raise your hand.”

Who would be brave enough to confess in front of the group? I wiggled my toes inside my Doc Martens to deal with my nerves.

“I’m gonna wait a little longer. I know you are out there.”

Soft music lilted from Rowan’s guitar. “Your heart is pounding. Don’t deny the work of the Holy Ghost in your life tonight. Let me know you hear me.”

I opened my eyes to make sure my friends still had theirs closed. I put my hand up.

After a moment, Pastor Lang said, “Yes, thank you. I see you.”

My arm dropped and I clasped my sweaty hands on my lap.

“Alright, that was the first step. Now I need all who raised their hands to come up to the front so I can pray for you. If you really mean it, ask for forgiveness.”

Why was he making us walk to the front of the room?

Everyone would see me. Clint would see me. They all would

know that I had lustful thoughts. I wasn’t surprised to see Stacey and Jenny walk up the aisle together, as if they were on their way to the bathroom, but I could tell from their mascara-stained cheeks they regretted what they’d been doing. A couple of the skater boys sauntered up the aisle behind them, joining the line. I was impressed they were taking the message so seriously. I could hardly breathe.

“There’s more of you, I know it.” Pastor Lang looked beyond the row of teens and inspected the room.

I stood and made my way to the front. All the confessors had their eyes closed and weren’t making space. I could feel everyone watching. I stopped in front of the drum kit and my face flushed when I realized Blake was sitting there, ready to play. What would he think of me?

Thankfully, the band started up and drums and a keyboard joined Rowan on the chorus of Refiner’s Fire. The voices behind me sang louder. Pastor Lang made his way down the line, praying for those who had repented.

I kept my eyes closed and tried to sing despite the lump in my throat. Images of Clint invaded my thoughts, making it difficult to focus: Clint jumping at me from behind a tree, pants down. Clint in the treehouse jacking off. Clint describing what he wanted me to do to him. Bile rose in my throat. I hated the things he did to me, as if I was a Barbie doll to bend and pose for his gratification. I hugged myself and tried to shake him off.

“Be free from the power of lust!” Pastor Lang shouted at Mike standing beside me in the prayer line. My heart sank.

I needed to be free. Lust had taken hold of me. If I couldn’t stop it, I would never be a holy woman of God. I raised my hands toward heaven in surrender and felt a hot tear roll down my cheek.

Pastor Lang stepped in front of me. I would be delivered. ( )

Sunbeam Tofino Mountain

Ella Ostrikoff

A SPOONFUL OF SUGAR Hannah Willden

I’

m trapped inside my own head, relegated to the

solitary confinement of a body that doesn’t work. I am entirely dependent on this girl wheeling me into a strange hotel lobby, angling me so I have a view of the tv. Is she plotting to ruin my eyes too? Just leave me here to rot?

call me that. That’s Jared.” She gestures under the table where he’s hiding. “And that’s Daddy, but to you he’s just Ben.”

I open my mouth, but nothing comes out, so I nod and smile. She’s my granddaughter and her name is Becs. The other two are my son and grandson, and their names are….

“I’ll leave you here to wait for your son, ok, Roberta?” the girl says.

“Her face is wrong,” the boy says, peeking out from under the table.

My name is Bertha, not Roberta. She must know that. She probably said it just to get on my nerves.

Becs whips around. “Shhh Jared! You’re not supposed to say that!”

The girl sashays toward the kitchen, high brown ponytail bouncing against her blue t-shirt. It keeps time with the cuckoo clock on the wall. The small wooden hatch has been sealed shut, its hourly coos muffled in a wooden casket, but the tick, tick, tick still reminds everyone their time is running out.

“Can you two sit down, please,” my son says with a sigh.

They claw onto a couch across from me.

I try to interlock my fingers, but my right hand resists. My left snatches it up so that both pile in my lap. I fix my eyes on the tv, ignoring the other hotel residents.

“Baba!” squeals a girl about eight. She tramples the brown carpet and throws her red-and-black polka-dotted arms around me. Following close behind her is a boy who looks to be two. Her clammy little fingers make me squirm. Who is this strange child? The strawberry scent of her long, curly black locks floats up to me. My heart lurches. I know who she is, but….

“Becs! You know you have to introduce yourself to Grandma, first,” says a skinny young man with curly brown hair. He is about 35 and is breathing heavily. “Sorry, Mom,” he says, righting his skewed glasses in front of exhausted eyes.

The girl’s arms fall back to her side. “I forgot.” She holds out her right hand.

(His sigh says, ‘It’s too much work coming here to see you. You’re not worth it. This may be the last time.’)

The man goes on to talk about their lives and plans. None of it involves me.

I want to scream, ‘No, no, please don’t leave me here in this strange hotel. I swear I can speak, just give me time. I’m still here.’ I want to give him a vice-like hug.

I remember him so clearly as a child, a cherubic little face with ruddy cheeks as he ran up to me on the beach.

“Mommy look! I found a wock!” I hoisted him up and spun him around before pulling him onto my knee. I took the rock from his chubby fist, smooth and green. “It’s beautiful,” I said, turning it over in my fingers as he raced off down the shore to find another.

The little boy, who’s trying to climb over the back of the couch before being tugged back, looks just like him.

“Becs…” says her dad.

My right index finger twitches. The bouncy ponytail comes back with a platter of cakes, cookies, and muffins and four little plates. She places half of a banana-nut muffin in front of me.

Becs pulls my right hand into hers and shakes it. “Hi, Baba. I’m Rebecca, your granddaughter, but I like Becs better, so you can

“Here you go. Enjoy,” Ponytail says with a wide smile.

“Somebody will be over with tea shortly.”

I stare at it. My right hand twitches, but nothing more.

Memories of Blue

Althea Rasendriya

I shakily raise my left hand and try to break off part of the muffin. It rolls across my lap and plops onto the floor, butter side down.

“Here, you can have some of mine,” the little girl says. She breaks her blueberry muffin in half and darts over to pass it to me. I lift one blueberry chunk and deposit it into my open mouth. I grin blueberry mash. She giggles and runs back to her seat.

He pours the tea. I reach my left hand for the…not a fork, for eating soup and stirring tea. I slam my hand down on it, to the teacup’s displeasure. What’s it called? I know it, but I can’t find the word. I want to scream.

I clench my bony fingers around it and shake my fist at the sky, but all that comes out is a muffled “Mmgah!”

“It’s a spoon, Mom,” says the skinny man, concerned.

Clink. An older woman places silverware, a teapot with a yellow rose design, and matching cups and saucers on the table before us. Her blue eyes meet mine, and she smiles.

Her wide grin and sun-kissed face belies years without shade.

The little boy reaches out and pops a sugar cube into his mouth, his cheeks dimpling in a goofy grin. I wave my spoon at him and he giggles. Spoon. I wrap my mind around the word, reshelving it in my mental library. Spoon.

I used to live splayed out on the beach, bare toes digging into warm sand. My long platinum blonde hair would tangle in the wind as I threw my head back in a shameless laugh that echoed down the beach. I only had eyes for the man across from me. His bright white teeth flashed in the sun. I miss the beach.

(I can almost remember the way it feels on my tongue.)

“Mom, can I pour you some tea?”

I want to say, ‘No, it hasn’t steeped yet,’ but when I open my mouth to do so, my tongue is thick and heavy, a giant lump of meat.

Start by touching tongue to teeth and retract, puckering the lips as if in a kiss. I decide to try it. “Thoom.”

“What did you say?” asks the man.

It’s useless. I can’t even say spoon. I open my fist and release it. It bounces off my leg and under the table.

“I’ll get it!” says the little girl, hopping up from her seat.

“Here, Baba.”

Fiction

25

A Spoonful of Sugar

I used to take her out for long walks in the park and tell her the names of trees and flowers. Then I fell on one of those walks, and she ran up to strangers crying for help. More and more strangers gathered around, watching her climb into the ambulance beside her grandmother’s body on a stretcher. The sirens howled as the flashing lights burned the image into the girl’s memory forever. What is her name?

“I know it’s only been three months, Sir, but if she doesn’t start to progress soon—” says a woman, muffled by the wall.

“You said she would continue recovering up to two years after the stroke,” says a familiar male voice.

Listening, I stare angrily at the popcorn stucco on the ceiling above my bed. Why can’t they go somewhere else? I just want to be left alone.

“Yes, but most of her recovery will be in the first six months.

The fact is, if she doesn’t start improving soon, it will drastically affect her overall recovery.”

“What are you saying, then?” asks the male.

“I believe taking her—” “Don’t say taking her home is the solution. I can’t. Please, I already have two children to raise alone after their mother….

Look, I can’t afford to leave my job and they shouldn’t see her wither away like this. Who would take care of her? She can’t be left alone and it’s not like I can just drop her off at daycare in the morning!”

“Sir, please don’t raise your voice.”

“I’m sorry. I just… I’ll try and visit her more often. Do you think that will help?”

“No, no, I’d better not. I’ll come back.”

Their footsteps retreat down the hall. My cheeks and the pillow feel wet. Tears, too, are leaving me behind.

The little girl stands on her tiptoes in front of me, a yellow buttercup tucked behind her ear. The skinny man waits at the reception desk, fussing over the little boy who’s trying to climb onto it. It’s been a while since I’ve seen the kids.

Lately, it’s just been him, sunken eyes boring silently into his teacup.

“Hi Baba, I’m Becs. Stay right here,” she says before she skipruns up to Ponytail. With knowing grins, they head toward the kitchen. My eyes drift to the cuckoo clock in the corner.

(It has stopped dead, but the wooden door has sprung open, setting the little red prisoner free.)

Ponytail and the girl prance over, having hatched a plan.

This may be the last time I see her. I used to sing her to sleep, “Bayu Bayushki Bayu.” Her eyelids slowly blinking, staying closed longer each time she fluttered them open to check I was still there.

Ponytail pushes me out the lobby doors. Daisies, peonies, and roses! I can almost smell the rich, freshly turned soil as I dig my fingers into the soft dirt in the greenhouse behind the shop. A bell chimes and I wipe my dirty hands on my jeans and enter to help my next customer.

The girl unzips her sweater and drapes it over me. Ponytail pushes me down the cobbled garden path. I recognize the plants even from their bare branches. We stop by a bush full of pale, yellow roses. The little girl hops up and down.

“It might. She doesn’t seem very motivated. Is there no one else who can help?”

“Baba, look. It’s a rose bush,” she says, beaming.

“No. Her husband, my dad, died two years ago and I’m— Well, I’m all she’s got,” he said in a choked sob.

I smile and manage to wave my left arm, calling her over.

What is her name? I clench my shaky fingers around her own and fix my eyes on the girl.

“Sir, would you still like me to see if she is up for a visit while you’re here?”

“Becs.” ( )

HER VIVARIUM Brennan O’Toole

She has an oral fixation, coral skin, silk, floss.

She’s trapped in the café bathroom at the butterfly museum.

Her sensitive teeth gnaw the webbed door hinges till she erupts, wet and triumphant, from her sarcophagus cocoon.

She shivers, flexes magnificent translucent wings, imagines spider webs in teacups, caterpillars sporting spun sugar stirrups and cowboy hats of honey.

The attendant, fascinated, watches this bathroom revival transfixed, inspired. She stretches a gum trapeze between pincer fingers and glossy lips.

She winks a glistening teal eye-shadowed eye and whispers I’ll be back in one moment to no one in particular.

A Fish Tale Feature Hannah Willden

27

STILL LIFE Ashley Smith

W

hen i was young, perhaps eight or nine years old, I decided I wanted to be just like my grandpa when I grew up. He had been a nature photographer, and told stories about the lengths he would go to for the perfect shot.

He described golden eagles high above the peaks, and mountain goats clinging to cliff faces like Velcro. There’s a picture of a bighorn ram hanging on the wall in his living room, and another of a wolf stalking silently through the snow. I loved to look at those photos when I visited. They were less intimidating than the elk heads with their unseeing glass eyes staring as I passed them on the way to the kitchen.

Not all of his pictures had taken so much effort, though.

Sitting on the homemade board-and-rope swing hung from an exposed beam in the garage, my grandpa told me about a photo that had apparently won him second place in a prestigious wildlife photography contest. He’d been sitting in his truck out on a backroad, his camera on the passenger seat, when a squirrel darted across the road ahead of him.

He was able to shoot a couple of quick photos before it disappeared into the brush. I imagined it to be carrying a nut, scuttling off to stash it for winter.

I spent many summer days on that old swing while he sat in his wheelchair and pushed me closer and closer to the ceiling.

He’d been an active man until he broke his back in a logging accident and was paralyzed from the waist down. I’ve tried to imagine him as the man my family tells me he was; the man who loved to camp and hunt, and feed the wild elk hay in the winter, but I can only see an old man in a wheelchair. I think of his useless legs, and his white hair trapped beneath a toque, even during the heat of summer, because his poor circulation left him cold.

His feet were curled and misshapen beneath his thick woolen socks, and his legs impossibly thin. Unable, or perhaps unwilling, to leave the comfort of his home, he put seed out to attract birds and peanuts for the red squirrels.

He spent his days photographing them as they greedily hoarded their windfall. He kept his camera with him at all times, now across his dead legs instead of the passenger seat.

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Non-Fiction

For Christmas 2005, he got me a bird-watching book identical to his and a long sheet of stickers to put beside the names of birds I’d spotted. I didn’t use many, but I did mark the pink-legged gull (the most common gull in British Columbia), Canada goose, mallard, turkey vulture, pileated woodpecker, and barred owl. I was particularly excited to spot a great blue heron, because that entry got two stickers.

Yet every summer I spent spying birds and amassing splinters in my bare feet padding across his old wooden deck, my admiration for him faded.

“Jays are greedy birds,” he told me as he watched a Steller’s Jay gobble up all the seed, leaving none for the other birds.

They’d break into the squirrel feeder to steal the peanuts, too. His solution to this problem was to shoot and kill the stunning blue Steler’s jays, despite being the provincial bird of British Columbia. Their lifeless bodies lay on the grass, stolen seed or peanuts still lodged in their beaks.

By 13 I had stopped spending time with him. The rope swing I loved so much hung lifeless in the garage, collecting dust until someone cut it down.

As we grew apart, I grew further from nature. I spent more time inside, retreating to the online world with the blinds drawn and the door shut.

Next door, my grandpa sat on the deck with his camera in his lap. If I went outside, I would surely have to explain that I didn’t want to spend time with him anymore. The birdwatching book sat abandoned in a corner.

(After a while, I forgot what fresh air smelled like.)

In the 10 years since, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how it is both a blessing and a curse that children see the good in everyone. They don’t understand what it means for someone to be egocentric, or narcissistic, or inappropriate. Children don’t suspect ill will. I didn’t expect to be taken advantage of, but when my grandpa asked me to keep his secrets, I did.

Entangled

Ashley Smith

As an adult, I gradually rediscovered my love for the outdoors and put distance between who I was then and my current desire to explore the world, with or without a mentor to inspire me. Now, hiking among the trees, sitting on sun-bleached logs, and listening to the ocean waves lap at the shore, I am mesmerized by the beauty of the sun filtering through the rich green leaves.

People are not always as they seem, but nature does not lie. It remains a steady constant—the rivers will flow, the leaves will change, and the sun will rise again. Today the sun is brighter after a long winter of rain, sleet, and snow. I breathe in deeply and exhale those secrets, reminded of the Steller’s Jays who outlived him, like I did, and are still no more. ( )

Fluttering Song

Hannah Willden

Non-Fiction

29

BEFORE POETRY THERE WAS ILLITERATURE: A.F. MORITZ ON THE HIDDEN, LOST, OR SCORNED ASPECTS OF SELF Isabella Ranallo and Sophia Wasylinko

A

.f. moritz has published 23 books of poems that have been awarded the Griffin Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Award in Literature of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the Ingram Merrill Fellowship, selection to the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets, Poetry magazine’s Bess Hokin Award, Southwest Review’s Elizabeth Matchett Stover Award and the ReLit Award. Three of his books have been finalists for the Governor General’s Award.

change much, but I put in some wording to bring it up to date and to relate it to the George Floyd murder. sw:

What is it about this concept of time that intrigues you as a poet?

am:

Time is the thing that fascinates and troubles everybody. William Blake says, “Time is the mercy of eternity.” We’re going much farther than physicists trying to find a definition when we say these poetic things. If you concentrate on poetry, you find it really is the substance of life. Poetry is the art of language and rhythm.

Moritz is the Poet Laureate of the City of Toronto (20192023). He has translated seven books of poetry and a novel from Spanish and French, and in collaboration with Theresa Moritz has written biographies of Emma Goldman and Stephen Leacock, and The Oxford Literary Guide to Canada.

He holds a doctorate in 18th and 19th-century British poetry.

We sat down with him on March 2nd to talk about gardens, George Floyd, Rodney King, Redpath Sugar, and illiterature and this is what he said. sw:

am:

You wrote the long poem “The Garden in the Midst” and the essay “The Poet’s Garden” in 1992, and the coda in 1993. Why did you decide to publish them in The Garden 2021, nearly 30 years later?

ir:

I was passionate about writing them, but the struggle to make ends meet was such that by the time I might have been able to publish them, it was years later, and I was on to other things. In 2020, I was convalescing after a health issue and I couldn’t do anything for almost the whole summer. I live right in central Toronto, so I was watching the George Floyd protests on television and hearing them right outside my window.

In “The Garden,” you refer to the poem as the model for the “fraternity of all things in the universe of humanity.” In As Far as You Know’s “Before Definition” you say, “Let poetry have a place before definition.” Later, in the afterword, you call the hospital workers’ burgeoning humanity “poetry and the germ of poetry.” Can you talk a bit more about these connections as a central theme in your work?

am:

When I talk about poetry’s exalted role, I don’t mean that only the poet has it, or we only have it when we read or write poetry. When I talk about the way poetry is in conflict with the evil things about technology, I don’t mean you find the opposition to those things only in poetry. I think you see the struggle between poetry and the technical spirit appearing in many places.

At the time of the LA so-called Rodney King “riot” in 1992, I had participated in the Toronto echo riot. I thought, “I can’t go out and join the protests, but I’ll look at that book.” I started rewriting it in dialogue with some African-diaspora friends of mine. It didn’t

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If we think about language as words laid out, poetry puts them into a singing flow, which restores them to what they really are: a great, creative, cooperative, ongoing dialogue. The element of language that is analytical and pins things down in space, and tends to falsehood, is contradicted by poetry. That’s one of the things that makes it the greatest art, the greatest human endeavour.

Feature

Let’s say you go to a lecture and you hear a technologist saying, “We must use science and technology to help with the climate crisis.” Any technologist saying technology can be used to clean up the rivers or save the whales should say, “Thank you poets; we’re sorry we paid no attention to you for hundreds of years and because of that we have ruined things, but we’re now putting you, poetry, in charge of the head and the heart.” It’s typical not to say “thank you” to the prophet.

am:

The essay has a subtitle: “The poet’s garden is the people.” We tend to think of a garden as something that is perfect and where everything is pleasant, but the garden means creative growth, not reengineering nature according to human desires, but human interaction with nature. When I look at struggle and bitter experiences in childhood, I remember it wasn’t all sweetness and light, but that doesn’t stop it from being a particularly brilliant, rich, and in a sense perfect moment of life.

When you think of the poetry of an individual’s bravery or tragedy—the poetry in life, not written down—humour, joy, often comes out of sadness and human defeat. How many ballads are about abandonment by a lover? That poetry, which shows so often that the most beautiful songs are the saddest, shows us grasping for mysterious beauty, pleasure, gusto, even in what seems to be the most difficult experience. We can’t explain intellectually how all of life, with its good and bad, is good, but the poem grasps that, sometimes, and it’s about the only thing that does.

ir:

How would you describe “illiterature” to a non-poet?

am:

AM: “I thought of a great poem yesterday and I had it half-composed in my head and I didn’t write it down and now it’s gone.” That’s illiterature, poetry without the technique of writing. I think that’s not only noble, but fundamental. I always use the word “primitive” in an honorific sense: without it, nothing else would come later. It’s parallel to nature.

Say you have a city whose whole reason for being is a river that goes through it, and yet the river is lined with factories and filled with garbage and pollution.

We treat our own origins the same way. Most people are in a constant hustle to get more education, more skills, and they don’t ever think, “I really did learn more when I was three years old than I did at any time

Ste

ve

P

ne

You write about the poet’s garden, describing it as “the place where the somatic experiences of childhood… are ever renewed.” What have you drawn from your own inner garden?

by

ay

sw:

photo

subsequent to that.” Everything else is built on that.

So, poetry is a place where we sense this hidden—and often lost because scorned—major aspect of ourselves. sw:

In As Far as You Know, you reference the poets Blake and Whitman, while in The Garden you have Yeats, among others. How do these influences inform your work today and are there more recent Canadian or international poets who do so as powerfully?

am:

Great poetry from the past, or a different culture, may be ignorant of the problems of today and include ideas we would not think are proper, but its main thrust is liberational. It is exiled within a brutal society, protests against it, and it’s universally available to everyone. It’s a great flag thrust high for freedom.

I wanted specifically to include European poets from the traditional so-called “canon” and assert that they are just as liberational as a blues or rap poet. Yet I also quote from Joy Harjo, Canisia Lubrin, Ken Babstock, George Elliot Clarke to show how they continue the dialogue.

One of the big influences for me is Czesław Miłosz.

In his 1980 Nobel Prize lecture, The Witness of Poetry, he looks back at his life to witness everything wiped out by World War II, including his ability to live in his own country. I teach from his book Rescue, which is all about tyranny imprisoning you, driving you underground, out of your own home so you can’t write poetry except in the basement—oppression and elimination. He used poetry to make sense of this.

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31

Before Poetry There Was Illiterature

ir:

am:

You’ve done translations of poetry by Ludwig Zeller, Gilberto Meza, Goran Simic, and Benjamin Peret in Spanish and French, some with your wife Theresa.

What is it like working on other authors’ works in a different language?

You were chosen as the sixth Poet Laureate of Toronto in 2019. What are your duties as Poet Laureate and what stands out as a highlight of that experience?

am:

I wrote a memorial poem for the March 2019 oneyear anniversary of the van attack on Yonge Street. I wrote a poem about the declaration of the pandemic in March 2020. I wrote a poem for Redpath Sugar and its anniversary, which mentioned the sugar trade’s mistreatment of Indigenous Peoples and slaves. They didn’t end up using it and somehow the CBC got wind of it and they published the poem on their website and on three prominent radio programs. The Toronto Star also put it on the third page of their Saturday edition. So rather than having me read this poem to 200 people at Redpath, it was seen by a million people.

ir:

Many of us aspire to have poetry published as part of a variety of genres we’d like to see in print. What advice do you have for my peers in a writing program, looking at the current publishing landscape in Canada?

am:

Don’t scorn little magazines, including online magazines. Publish wherever you can, as long as you respect them. You don’t want to go with something if you don’t like it, but there’s plenty out there that are run by either really good veterans who have stayed in the small press scene, or who are aspiring hearts starting out like yourselves, and grow as a publisher as you grow as a poet or a novelist. Even if it seems to be an obscure publication, it’s a publication, and you should be proud of it. It’s like illiterature, or oral verses; it’s where writing starts. ( )

Translating and even just trying to understand a little of a poet in their language is precious. When you translate, it’s from a language you know well enough that you think you access that other world with some completeness. If you translate the poem well, you will say something in your language that your language could say, but not on its own, not without the help and addition from the other language.

You would not want me to translate you into my account of you. The account itself conveys there is such a person. We want a poetic translation to be a poem, but that’s not always the case. You may have a translation by a scholar who is not a good poet, and it might be a perfect report of what the original poem means, but it’s not very interesting to read. Poems can’t be reduced to reports on them, analyses of them.

Likewise, you are probably used to living in a world which asks writing students, “Why do you do that?

It’s not very useful. You’re not going to make any money.” That descends from the idea that what’s important is the analysis of reality: ie, you’re not so much a person as you are an anatomy. This is the truth of the universe. But atoms and molecules are only the particulars; they’re just components of you. Poetry knows that. The rest of civilization has forgotten it or is doing its best to.

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sw:

Feature

Bibliography Here (1975) Signs and Certainties (1979) Music and Exile (1980) Black Orchid (1981) Between the Root and the Flower (1982) The Visitation (1983) The Tradition (1986) Song of Fear (1992) The Ruined Cottage (1993) Ciudad Interior (1993) Phantoms in the Ark (1994) (with Ludwig Zeller) Mahoning (1994) A Houseboat on the Styx (1998) Rest on the Flight into Egypt (1999) Conflicting Desire (2000) Early Poems (2002) The End of the Age (2002) Night Street Repairs (2004) The Sentinel (2008)—winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize The New Measures (2012) Sequence (2015) The Sparrow (2018) As Far as You Know (2020) The Garden (2021)

Foggy Day Feature Lauryn Mackenzie

33

ONLY HUMAN Kirsten Dayne

P

apers spill out of my arms as the proximity sensor slides open my office door. The lights turn on to illuminate the mess in the small office I was assigned as teaching assistant. I hurry to stack them before anyone walks by.

I set the tidied bundle on my desk and my screen materializes with the load pad lit up beside it. I pick up the first essay with a red ‘d’ in my writing. I let out a slow breath, put Hale’s essay on the pad, and manoeuvre to the grading app. The grade is added automatically and the essay uploads from the digipaper for Professor Sykora to review. I add an audio file for her ears only.

“Hi Professor Sykora. We should talk with Hale again to see how he’s coping with the workload since his mother’s funeral last week. I know he wants to finish his undergrad this year, but we may have to recommend that he take more time off.”

One click ends the recording and I slump in my chair.

If my mother had died when I was in university rather than primary school, I wouldn’t have earned even a d. I sit up straight and continue inputting the grades.

Saturday morning a knock wakes me up. I snatch a cardigan off the chair and run a hand through my short, coiled hair. I turn on the one-way viewer, opening the door.

“Dad?” I’m too confused to return his hug. “I wasn’t expecting you today.”

He looks at my pyjamas and raises an eyebrow. “We planned breakfast weeks ago, May. Did you misread the date?” His lips are pursed.

I blink, trying to pull up the memory of a text exchange or video call with my chip. I shake my head. “Come in, I’ll check my phone.”

When I return, my dad is on the sofa, looking out the window. I clutch the oval screen and plop down beside him, starting to scroll through our conversation.

“There it is,” he says.

34

Fiction

I scroll back up to the message where it clearly says: ‘How about March 27th?’ followed by my agreement. How could I have missed that? Or misread it?

“Maybe it was misfiled or mistagged?” my dad asks, bumping his shoulder against mine.

I snap my eyes closed and search.

After their chip surgery, everyone is taught how to search through their memories to find what has been misplaced.

After several moments, I reopen my eyes.

“No?” he asks, putting his arm around me and pulling me into a half-hug. “It’s ok. Maybe you just forgot?”

I shake my head in frustration. “Forgot? People with chips don’t forget.”

He rubs my back. “It’s ok, Mayflower,” he says. “Maybe you should make an appointment with Dr. Gadot? I’ll go with you.”

I quickly do so online, two weeks away, and add a reminder on my phone with an app I’ve never had to use.

When my dad leaves, I curl up with some tea and close my eyes, bringing forward the memory I want.

(The last one I have of my mum is from my eighth birthday, a little over a year after my chip surgery.)

My seventh birthday was spent recovering, so my parents went all out for my eighth.

My cousins Stella and Sorel were over, as was often the case back then, and we were watching old home videos of our parents as kids. Stella was three years older and had started knitting. She’d made me a scarf in my favourite colour, coral blue. I wound it round my neck despite the midsummer heat. Sorel, two years younger than me, had made a card.

He’d covered it in glitter, and it had gotten everywhere.

Electric Neuron

Brendan Wanderer

My dad made his famous crème au chocolat, and my mum braided my hair. Immersed in the memory, I can taste the dessert, feel fingers weaving through my coils, the scratch of ill-chosen yarn, hear everyone’s laughter….

(It was great, until it wasn’t.)

I stop the replay, tears on my cheeks.

“Miss Hollande?”

My dad and I stand as Dr. Gadot enters the room, tablet in hand as the door closes behind her with a soft click. They don’t use personal proximity sensors in clinics and hospitals, for patients’ privacy. The examination room is both familiar and unsettling. I’m usually only in this room for my annual check-up, but today we’re going over the brain scans taken last week.

“Miss Hollande,” she says, bringing up the first mri image and turning her tablet to face me. “The images from your scan indicate no injuries to your brain itself.”

She swipes to the next image. “You say that you haven’t had any major head injuries since you were eight, and the images support that. Your brain isn’t damaged—” The third image, much closer, shows my hippocampus, my chip prominent.

“—your chip is.”

“What does that mean, exactly?” my dad asks when my own voice fails.

“The damage means that the chip’s max capacity is approximately a sixth of what it should be. She’s begun

36

Fiction

forgetting things because, without a chip, her brain is only human. Remember,” Dr. Gadot says gently, her eyes holding mine, “people lived without chips for millennia, and they got on fine.”

“That’s why I’m forgetting things, like appointments?”

“Reaching the damaged chip’s full capacity seems to have triggered something.” She swipes to another scan. “This image shows a high volume of activity around the chip, not that we can access the data on it—” Until you die.

“—but we believe the memories on the chip will begin to degrade. Based on the experience of others in similar situations, it may take years, even decades, for all the memory on the chip to be lost.”

“Lost?” I ask, my voice trembling. “Why can’t you just re-do the chip surgery and fix it?”

“It’s been 18 years since the surgery. The chip is too bonded to the brain to be removed without severely damaging the tissue.

Even three years after implant, this is the case. Our growing understanding of brain function doesn’t change that.”

I knew that, but….“Three years? You mean if this had been caught when we had the accident, just a year after the implant, it could have all been avoided?”

My dad’s warm hand on my arm brings me back down to earth.

“These resources,” Dr. Gadot says, handing several booklets to me, “outline some ways to reinforce memories without relying on your chip, and how to form new, lasting memories.”

My dad takes the booklets.

Kirsten Dayne

I stare out the window as my dad drives me home. I wish that just replaying the memory of the accident would let us go back, fix the chip, but if that was possible, I’d undo the accident itself.

It’s an old thought, one I’d hoped my therapist had dispelled years ago, but I can’t stop thinking about it. I avoid closing my eyes for too long for fear of bringing the memory to the forefront.

There are open books and academic journal articles about pre-chip memory scattered across every flat surface. They’re full of things I either already know, or jargon I have no hope of understanding without a doctorate. My notes are everywhere. Reminders are stuck to cupboard doors, and the booklets from Dr. Gadot are open on the counter.

“Don’t worry,” Dad says. “They’re here to help.”

“I know you’re not ok, but how are you feeling?”

“With what, Soren?” I ask, looking at him as he puts down his second box.

I pull my gaze away from the window and look at my dad in the ‘driver’s seat to the right of me. “It feels surreal,” I say after a long moment. “How can I just forget?”

Except this time. He looks away when I meet his gaze, but Stella’s hazel eyes meet mine. Her big hair casts a silhouette on the wall.

He got his chip at six, too. “If you want, we could visit Nan in France in the next few weeks? She got her chip when she was older. She knows what it was like, before.”

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

A weak smile comes to my lips. “Sure, I’d like tha—”

“I-I’m sorry.” I reach a hand up to my face. I’m crying? “It was just a slip of the tongue.”

My words are cut off as the car slams on its breaks and my eyes reflexively squeeze shut.

I look around at the crumpled wreck, pinned in my seat.

I can feel the heat on my face from the flames outside the shattered window, can smell the smoke. I look over, and know this isn’t happening, not in real time, anyway.

I open my eyes to loud honking, and my dad, alive and well, sits where my mother did that day.

“If they can’t drive, they shouldn’t turn off auto-drive. Idiots!” he grumbles, clutching at the safety handle with one hand, his other extended across my torso. The car starts moving on its own when it has deemed it safe to do so.

Will I be relieved if that memory disappears?

Three days later, my dad shows up at my flat, this time with Stella and Sorel as back-up.

“Dad? What are they doing here?” I ask in a harsh whisper.

“It’s not family dinner night, right?”

“Nice to see you too,” Stella says, shouldering her way inside with a large box in her arms.

Sorel follows his sister in, carrying two more boxes. “Love what you’ve done with the place.”

“It’s Sorel, Mayflower,” my dad says.

Stella takes my hand and pulls me to the couch between her and Sorel. “You don’t have to do this alone, May.” Stella takes my face in her hands and wipes my tears with her thumbs. Sorel clears the rest of the coffee table in front of us, then takes the top off the first box and pulls a handful of papers out.

(“You brought me pictures of Mum,” I say, voice cracking.)

Stella puts her arms around me and pulls me close. “We got everyone in the family to send us their pictures of her, and we downloaded them all onto permapaper.”

Sorel spreads the pictures out on the table, then taps the oval screen of his phone and holds it out. “We have digital copies too.”

“You don’t know how much this means to me. I’m so afraid I’ll forget her,” I say.

“We won’t let that happen,” my dad says, squeezing my shoulder before sitting down.

The memories of her laughter, of her fingers weaving through my hair, the way her hugs felt, or how her perfume smelled may fade, but at least I’ll never have to forget her face. ( )

Fiction

37

AFTER ABADDON Jack Corfield

Black Hole

Jack Corfield

A DIFFERENT QUIET Luci Edwards

J

amie didn’t tend to remember his dreams; the excitement in a five-year-old’s day far eclipsed anything that could happen at night. Sleeping was merely a reprieve from his adventures of being a cowboy, superhero, or astronaut. But one lateAugust night, just before he started Kindergarten, proved to be an exception.

Jamie’s breathing and pulse grew louder, thundered in his skull. He tried to call for his mom, but his mouth and vocal cords were paralyzed. Unable to turn away, he stared at the plastic stars on the ceiling, their green light gently pulsing.

Jamie became aware of a steady hum in the air, a noise like his grandfather’s guitar string after a note had been plucked.

He felt his skin prickle, the downy hairs standing on end.

After it happened, Jamie lay in his bed as his window brightened with the icy blue of dawn, the events of the previous night still replaying behind his eyelids like the afterimage of a video game.

Jamie’s gaze rested on one star in the center of the array and he was shocked to realize it seemed to be moving farther away from him, as if the ceiling was ballooning upward. The surrounding stars began to dance and spiral around the focal point, falling forward and backward in the three-dimensional space. His heart beat at a hummingbird’s pace, now out of excitement instead of panic. He abandoned earlier fears and instead delighted in the cosmic show playing out before him.

The night had begun like any other. Jamie’s mother had tucked him into bed, pulling his quilt snug up against his chin. Her hair was messily pulled back into a knot, and when she smiled the lines in her face deepened, making her look more tired than usual. Jamie thought she was beautiful all the same. She leaned forward and softly kissed his forehead before turning off the lights and closing the bedroom door behind her. The harsh afterglow of the yellow overhead gave way to the phosphorescent green light of the plastic stars that adorned his ceiling, a novelty Jamie had begged for when he saw them in the store.

He did not know how long he lay there watching, nor could he remember falling back to sleep, but in the morning, Jamie awoke to birds chirping outside his window.

(Though he had regained the ability to move, he did not do so.)

He had been enamored with the idea of space for over a year thanks to the National Geographic documentary Journey to the Edge of the Universe he’d watched at his grandfather’s house. Since then, all birthday and Christmas gifts had been variations on this theme. Jamie’s most recent treasure was the orange-and-blue rocket ship clock on his bedside table, which projected the current time—7:36 pm—in blocky digital numbers amid the stars. He watched the time blink rhythmically against the popcorn ceiling before yawning, closing his eyes and snuggling deeper under his blankets.

Instead, he lay there lost in wonder, trying to figure out if the events of the night before had been a dream. Eventually, Jamie became aware of his mother’s footsteps nearby, and the smell of bacon and eggs drew him out of bed. He padded into the kitchen where his mother stood over the stove, the phone sandwiched between her shoulder and ear. They had recently gotten a cordless landline—now she was never free of its tether. She was an editor; Jamie wasn’t entirely sure what that was, but he knew it meant she spent a lot of time at the computer and on the phone. If she wasn’t on a call with a client, she was talking to Jamie’s grandfather.

After hours of dreamless sleep Jamie suddenly awoke, his eyes snapping open to read 3:33 am projected on the ceiling above his head. He tried to lift his hand to rub the sleep out of his eyes, only to discover he was incapable. He tried again, willing his legs, his arms, his head to move, but his body refused. He was splayed on his back in the center of his bed, completely rigid.

“I know, Dad,” she sighed, stirring the scrambled eggs. “If you want to take him you can, but stop acting like it’s because I can’t handle this myself.” The toaster popped as Jamie hoisted himself up onto the stool at the kitchen island. “But you are though,” she continued, slathering the toast with butter and jam before setting it in front of Jamie with a passing glance. “ok Dad, I’ll ask him.” She hung up and set the phone on the counter before turning to Jamie with a smile. “Morning Sweetie. Do you want to spend tonight at Grandpa’s?”

Fiction

39

A Different Quiet

Jamie loved his grandfather. He loved the telescope they took into the fields on cold winter nights, and the warm smoky smell of his hugs. He loved listening to his rich Irish accent as he told stories about tricky faeries that lured children away to play, never to return. A “changeling” child took their place. Jamie knew faeries probably weren’t real, but his grandfather seemed so serious he played along.

Still, Jamie couldn’t stop thinking about the swirling stars he had seen last night. He wanted to see if it would happen again. Jamie shook his head no emphatically.

“No? ok, I’ll let him know. I’m sure he’ll be disappointed.”

Jamie felt a pang of guilt, but his resolve was strong. He could see his grandfather anytime.

Jamie’s commitment was rewarded. For the next few nights he was treated to a cosmic spectacle, each more dazzling than the last. Every night he would snap awake at 3:33 am and watch, transfixed, as the stars flitted and twirled while everything else melted away. He floated, dancing with the stars through the cosmos.

Sunday morning, after a particularly exhilarating ride through the Horsehead nebula, Jamie wandered down to the kitchen for pancakes, anticipating their weekend ritual with less enthusiasm than normal. How could it compare with interstellar adventures?

“Good morning, Sleepyhead! You snuck up on me,” his mother laughed. “This morning, I have to make two phone calls, but after that I’m all yours! I was thinking we could see that new Pixar movie, the one with the robots in space?

It seems like something you’d like.”

Jamie didn’t answer, but the shrill digital cry of the telephone answered for him.

“I have to take this, Sweetie,” his mom said, grabbing the phone and walking into her office.

Jamie ate his pancakes, chewing methodically, then carried his plate over to the sink. Their cat, a fluffy orange tabby named Chester, skittered into the room, batting around one of his mother’s hairbands. As Jamie sat to pet him, he noticed a glimmer of light on the wall beside him. It was small and bright and darted erratically. It was like a laser pen, or the light that bounced off his grandfather’s watch.

He watched it zig and zag, leaping off the microwave, trailing across the countertops, and up and down the fridge.

Then it began to pulse, first white, then orange, then pink, growing steadily.

Jamie became aware of a noise like a siren wailing in the distance. The light continued pulsing and slowly floated toward him. He felt his breath quicken, his heart hammer in

40

Fiction

Imagine Van Gogh

Althea Rasendriya

Nittu Prasai

his chest as the light slowly crept toward his face. The siren grew louder, and the light grew brighter, but he couldn’t make himself look away.

“Jamie! What are you doing?” his mother cried, the phone clutched in her hand. Jamie blinked and the light was gone.

He looked down at Chester who was struggling to free his tail from Jamie’s white-knuckled grip. He let go and Chester scampered off, cowering in the corner.

(Jamie brought his hands up to his face to inspect them; they were covered in scratches.)

“Well?” she asked. He looked up at her, blank. “Aren’t you going to explain yourself?”

“I saw a light.”

“You saw a light? What does that mean?” She looked dismayed, but Jamie couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“Look, I need to get back to this call, but we are going to talk about this later. In the meantime, leave that poor cat alone,” she said, before bringing the phone back to her ear.

“Hi Denise, I am so sorry about that. Where were we?”

Jamie didn’t get to go to the movie that afternoon. He was being punished, but he didn’t really mind. He had other things to look forward to.

That night, sailing between star systems, a pulsing pink light approached him as it had that afternoon. This time there was no one to get in the way. Just as before, the light pressed in close to his face and touched his nose. As it did, he heard a playful child’s voice ask: Wouldn’t you like to do this forever?

Jamie said, “Yes please,” surprised to hear his voice aloud.

In the morning, Jamie’s mother stood outside his bedroom door on the phone with her father. “I don’t know, he’s barely speaking to me now. I think something might be wrong with him.”

She paced back and forth on the shag carpet, twisting her hair around her finger as she talked. “Yes, I know he’s quiet.

This is a different quiet. Hold on, I need to wake him up.”

She slowly pushed the door open and poked her head in.

“Jamie? Are you awake?” She entered and sat gently on his bed, placing a hand on his forehead, which felt unnaturally cool. The phone thudded softly against the carpet. She put two fingers to the side of his neck, then shook him lightly.

“Jamie? Jamie?” She pulled her son’s lifeless form to her chest and began to wail, her father’s concerned voice muffled through the phone on the floor.

Their cries couldn’t reach Jamie. He was elsewhere, soaring through the stars. ( )

Feature

41

BE MY NEIGHBOUR Sarah Stirling

int. apartment building—hallway—day (JOANNA, 23, a sunny but lonely student, carries a cardboard box under one arm. She drags a large black suitcase behind her. She approaches apartment 507. The unit’s door is surrounded by stacks of boxes and miscellaneous decor. Her cell phone dings.)

JOANNA:

OTIS: JOANNA:

OTIS: JOANNA: OTIS: JOANNA:

Shit. (She drops the suitcase, struggling to fish her phone out of her pocket. We see six missed calls from BEN and a text from him that reads: please call me. i’m so sorry. i love you. She rolls her eyes and puts her phone in her pocket and retrieves her keys. She props open the door with the box under her arm.) (o.s.) Whoa. (Joanna turns to see OTIS, 26), captivating and effortlessly suave, standing among the boxes.)

Hey. Just moving in?

Hi! Yeah, I’m so sorry about the mess. I figured I’d at least get everything up to the fifth floor….(She surveys the pile of boxes blocking his door, unit 508.) Now I’ve taken over the whole landing with all my shit. I’m so sorry. Just one second. (Joanna quickly begins to clear boxes in front of Otis’ apartment.)

I’m Otis. (She looks up and sees Otis smiling and holding out his hand. She smiles back and shakes it.)

Joanna.

Here, let me help. (He grabs a box and walks toward Joanna’s apartment.)

Are you sure? That’d be a huge help. I really appreciate it. (Box in hand, Otis follows Joanna into her unit.) int. joanna’s apartment—living room—day (Joanna and Otis carry boxes into the living room. Otis helps

her move a few pieces of furniture while he’s there. Joanna brings two glasses of water over and hands him one.

He smiles gratefully and they both sit on the couch. Otis glances around the room.)

JOANNA: OTIS: JOANNA: OTIS: JOANNA: OTIS: JOANNA: OTIS:

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Script

Does it look a lot like your place?

Yeah, just reversed. So are you new to town or just to the building?

To town. I don’t know anybody here, except you now.

Well, I’m glad to have a neighbour again.

Did you know the former tenant?

Mmhmm. Hey, I’ve got to get going, but it’s great to meet you Joanna. If you need anything, I’m right across the hall. (Otis gets up to leave. Joanna blushes.)

Bye, Otis. Thanks again. You were a huge help.

My pleasure. (He heads toward the front door. Joanna smiles as he leaves.)

int. joanna’s apartment—bedroom—night (Joanna is asleep in bed when a loud knock startles her.

Confused, she tries to go back to sleep. Another knock at the door. She looks at her phone: 2:03 am, 16 missed calls from Ben. Another knock. She gets up.)

int. joanna’s apartment—living room—night (Joanna turns on a lamp and walks to the front door. She

looks through the peephole and smiles. Hesitantly, she unlocks the door and opens it.)

JOANNA: Otis? What are you doing here? (Otis stands in the apartment hallway. His eyes are glazed over.)

OTIS: Hey, how’s it going?

JOANNA: Is everything alright?

OTIS: Yeah. Do you mind if I come in?

JOANNA: Um, it’s pretty late, but I guess I’m up now…. (Joanna gestures for Otis to come in. Otis, almost in a trance, walks straight to the couch and sits.) Can I get you anything?

OTIS: I just wanted to see you. (Joanna, now blushing, sits on a chair facing the couch.)

We should go to that coffee place around the corner later.

JOANNA: I don’t know it. I haven’t really had a chance to explore yet.

OTIS: I’ll take you.

JOANNA: I’d love that. (Otis starts to laugh. Joanna looks confused.)

Are you sure you’re ok?

OTIS: I’m great.

JOANNA: You seem tired. Do you want to go home and get some sleep?

OTIS: No, I want to talk to you. int. joanna’s apartment—living room—morning (Joanna wakes up in the chair, a blanket draped over

her, and looks at the clock: 5:46 am. It’s barely light out. Two cups of tea sit on the coffee table. A mussed blanket is on the couch where Otis had been.)

int. apartment building—hallway—day (Joanna walks toward her apartment door with a bag of groceries.

She’s unlocking her door when she hears the door across from hers open. Otis, coat in hand, is coming out of his unit. Joanna smiles at him.)

OTIS: Oh, hey. How was your first night in the new place? (Joanna’s smile fades and she looks confused.)

JOANNA: It was fine, thanks.

OTIS: Glad to hear it! I’m in a bit of a rush, but I’ll see you around.

JOANNA: ok, see you. (She watches Otis descend the stairs, a disappointed look on her face.) int. joanna’s apartment—bedroom—night (A loud knock wakes Joanna up. She

checks her phone: 1:54 am, 12 missed calls from Ben. She gets up to answer the door.)

int. joanna’s apartment—living room - night (Joanna looks through the

peephole and hesitates. She opens the door to let Otis in. Joanna and Otis sit across from each other and are soon laughing and deep in conversation. )

Be My Neighbour

int. joanna’s apartment—living room—morning (Morning light shines on Joanna as she dozes on the

couch, a blanket thrown over her. Otis is gone.)

int. joanna’s apartment—bedroom—night (Joanna lounges on her bed with her laptop. She’s Googling:

“Can people develop feelings while asleep?” She checks her phone: 12:48 am, 18 missed calls from Ben. Joanna closes her laptop lid quickly. She gets up and leaves the room.)

int. joanna’s apartment—living room—night (Joanna, dressed up, brings two cups of tea into the living room and places them on the coffee table. She takes a seat in the chair across from the couch. She looks expectantly at the front door.) int. joanna’s apartment—living room—later (In the dark, Joanna finishes her cup of tea. The other

remains untouched.)

int. joanna’s apartment—bedroom—night (Joanna sits up in bed anxiously looking at her phone: 2:57 am,

10 missed calls from Ben. Joanna fidgets impatiently. She hears a car outside.)

ext. street—night (A yellow cab pulls up in front of the building. The door opens. Otis stumbles out onto

the curb, drunk.)

int. joanna’s apartment—living room—night (Joanna, looking out the window, sighs with relief, then freezes. A WOMAN stumbles out of the cab after Otis. She’s drunk and dressed as if she’s been out clubbing.

Otis puts his arm around her and kisses her. Together they walk into the building. Joanna’s eyes well with tears.) int. joanna’s apartment—living room—morning (The sound of keys and muffled voices in the hallway

wakes Joanna. She gets off the couch and quickly moves to the front door. She looks through the peephole to see Otis and the woman talking by his door while he struggles to lock up. She leans her ear against the door.)

OTIS: WOMAN:

(o.s.) —and I know a great place to get coffee right around the corner if you’re interested. (o.s.) That sounds perfect. int. joanna’s apartment—bedroom—night (Joanna lies in bed with her eyes open. She hears a loud knock

at the door. She lies unmoving until the second knock comes. Reluctantly, she gets out of bed.)

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Script

Sarah Stirling

int. joanna’s apartment—living room—night (Joanna walks slowly to the door. She stops herself.)

OTIS: JOANNA: OTIS: JOANNA: OTIS: JOANNA: OTIS: JOANNA: OTIS: JOANNA: OTIS: JOANNA: OTIS: JOANNA:

(o.s.) Sweetheart? Are you there? (He knocks again.) I miss you! Open up! (Joanna opens the door. Otis stands in the hallway, smiling at her.) Can I come in?

I guess. (Otis walks past her toward the couch.) Otis, who is she? (He freezes in his tracks.)

Who do you mean?

The woman you brought home last night.

I’m sorry. It was a mistake! A one-time thing. It didn’t mean anything! I love you, Edie!

Edie? I think you should go.

No. Please don’t do this. Don’t kick me out. I can change! I’ll be better this time.

Please leave, Otis.

No! Let’s talk this through. (Joanna takes Otis’ arm and tries to guide him to the front door.)

Edie— I’m not Edie! (Otis stops abruptly and looks around.)

What the fuck? Joanna? What’s going on? (Joanna looks at him, shocked.)

You were asleep. You came over here. I was trying to bring you back to your place.

Oh no, I’m so sorry. I thought I’d kicked this. Have I done it before?

No, first time. int. joanna’s apartment—bedroom—night (Joanna lies in bed on her side, crying, listening to the loud knocks coming from her front door. She reaches behind her and grabs a pillow. She places it firmly against her ear.) ( )

Now/Then, Now

Brendan Wanderer

LIFE OF THE PARTY Kaiden Coughlan

4646

Life of an Abandoned Boat Feature Fiction

Jenna Cronshaw

UNMOORED Sofia Morano

M

ira’s brush traced the cliffs that framed the Welsh countryside down to the beaches below.

From her vantage point on the moors, it was hard to imagine the ocean would ever end. As she painted the scene before her, cattle and sheep grazed on a sea of grass overlooking the Atlantic.

Unlike other places in the world, the Welsh reserved the most desirable oceanfront property for their livestock. She felt tiny as she took in the plummeting cliffs before her, bordered by tall hedgerows.

Her skirt brushed against her legs in the breeze, tickling her lightly. She leaned over to rub her ankle and bumped the easel, sending one of her paintbrushes tumbling into the grass.

As she knelt to pick it up, a hand lifted it from the ground.

Mira looked up to a mass of wavy red hair, glossy with sunlight. It framed a feminine face, full of severe edges and slopes. The sharpness of the woman’s pronounced cheekbones was matched only by the defined shape of her jaw. Her beauty was otherworldly.

Realizing she had been staring, Mira scrambled to find something to say. “I’m so sorry, I thought I was alone uphere.”

The woman handed Mira the paintbrush and wiped her hands on the skirt of her dress. Her eyes were the colour of a stormy sea.

“I was just passing through. I’m sorry I startled you.” Her voice was strong, and her distinct Welsh accent carried on the wind. “Are you staying around here?”

“Yes, I’m on vacation. I wanted to take some time to paint again.” Mira suddenly felt self-conscious of her unfinished painting. She had always been passionate about her art, but years working as a graphic designer had sapped the joy from her craft. To rekindle it, she left her job and told everyone she was taking a sabbatical. Now she could hardly imagine going back.

“I live close by, but I’m a traveller as well.” The woman paused. “People don’t often come up on the moors anymore.”

“I can’t imagine why. It’s gorgeous up here.”

The woman looked out toward the sea and gently wrapped her arms around herself. “People don’t appreciate old things anymore, and the moors are very, very old.” She turned back to Mira. “I hope we see each other again. My name is Gwyn.”

She spoke her name like an ocean current. Mira sat dazed for a moment before she responded. “Mira. Nice to meet you.”

Gwyn nodded, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

She turned and wandered on the moors until she fell out of sight. Mira exhaled deeply and returned to her painting, but couldn’t seem to regain her focus.

Mira spent the following week painting in other locations, but she felt distracted and left every image unfinished. She couldn’t stop thinking about her encounter with Gwyn. Her heart hitched in her chest every time she saw a flash of red hair.

Finally, in an effort to finish at least one of her paintings, Mira went back to the moors. She had only just set up her easel and raised her brush to paint when a voice spoke behind her.

“Hello again.”

Mira spun around. Gwyn was standing in the grass behind her, as if she had materialized out of thin air. “Oh, hello!”

“I was wondering if I’d see you here again. I’m glad you came back,” said Gwyn.

Gwyn’s gaze was steady, and Mira could not tear her eyes from her face. The sharp curve of her jaw was an artist’s dream, and her hair was wild around her shoulders.

(She wondered what it would feel like to trace her fingers along the curve of Gwyn’s mouth.)

The thought came to her unbidden.

Mira broke the silence. “Would you mind if I sketched you? I need to work on my portraits, and I haven’t really met anyone I could ask since arriving.” Her cheeks flushed at her own boldness.

Fiction

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Unmoored

“Of course, I’d love to.”

Mira nodded and took out her sketch pad. Gwyn sat in the grass and locked eyes with Mira, who dropped her gaze to her pencil. “Hold still,” she said.

As she outlined Gwyn’s frame and started working on the details of her features, Mira lost track of time. At some point, Gwyn started to hum a tune and Mira fell into a trance studying her subject. The wordless melody crept inside Mira’s body, calming any tension within her mind.

Her hand developed a will of its own, as if the pencil knew intuitively what to do.

Gwyn sat still as Mira worked, a slight rise and fall in her chest and steady blink of her eyes her only movement. A bead of sweat dripped down Mira’s temple as she worked.

She didn’t realize how much time had passed until the light started to fade and a chill bit the air.

As if observing that Mira had emerged from her trance, Gwyn stood up and brushed the grass off her skirt. She walked over and stared at the drawing, looking pleased.

Gwyn turned to her and stepped close enough that Mira could smell the saltwater breeze clinging to her hair.

Gwyn handed her a piece of rolled-up parchment, leaned in, and spoke in a whisper. “Meet me at this spot tomorrow evening, I’ll wait for you there.” She inhaled deeply and kissed Mira’s cheek.

Mira’s blood rushed in her ears as Gwyn pulled away, turned, and left across the moors.

(Mira unrolled the parchment and found directions leading down to a small cove.)

She gently folded it up and placed it in her pocket, her heart still pounding.

Mira did not remember walking to her car or driving home.

Her thoughts were clouded with Gwyn’s piercing gaze.

It was almost dark when she arrived. She went inside the house, turned on a few lamps, and unpacked her supplies.

She placed the drawing on the easel with quiet reverence.

While Mira made dinner, she kept glancing at it. She couldn’t believe her own craftsmanship; it was the most beautiful work she had ever produced. When she wasn’t admiring the image, she was staring at the parchment Gwyn had given her, reading and rereading the instructions before putting it in her bedside drawer.

48

Aerial Tofino Waves Fiction

Ella Ostrikoff

As the night grew darker, so did the drawing; something was off about it. The eyes, once pleasing, now glinted with an ominous hue. The smooth skin shone with inhuman iridescence, and the mouth tilted into a slightly unsettling smile. Under the dim light cast by the lamps, Gwyn’s hungry eyes seemed to follow Mira across the room.

Disturbed, Mira turned the easel toward the wall to avoid the feeling of being watched.

Mira slept uneasily and dreamed of Gwyn swimming circles around her in dark waters until she woke in the dead of night.

Mira woke in the morning to sunlight streaming through her curtains. Upon entering the kitchen, she turned the easel to face her and found that the drawing had lost all sinister qualities from the night before. She breathed a sigh of relief and chided herself for letting her imagination get the best of her. Still, she felt apprehensive every time she glanced at it.

In the late afternoon, Mira left the house and set off according to the instructions that Gwyn had given her.

She drove past hedgerows and fields until she arrived at a steep cliff face where a number of paths meandered down to the sea. She parked her car and descended an obscure trail downhill.

She looked back at the expansive moors behind her—at the flowers blowing in the wind and the seagulls gliding overhead. The earth was bathed in golden light. She paused for a moment to breathe the salty air before continuing down the path.

It became increasingly steep, and she found herself slipping in a few spots. The beach was further than she had expected, but soon the path gave way to rocks as she reached the shore. Ocean spray caressed her cheek as she carefully navigated her way over the slippery stones. Glancing one last time at the parchment, she rounded an outcropping and found Gwyn waiting for her by the shore. She was barefoot and facing the tide.

Mira lingered for a moment, balancing on the uneven rocks before drawing closer. A lone honeybee briefly stole Mira’s attention and danced around her in midair, before landing on a wobbly dandelion sprouting from an unlikely crevice. Pulling her gaze away from the bee, she looked up and jumped. Gwyn stood right where Mira had been about to step.

She reached out and tucked a piece of hair behind Mira’s ear.

“I’m glad you came.”

“So am I,” Mira said breathlessly.

Gwyn grasped Mira’s hand and led her across the rocks to the sand, then released it as she waded into the sea. Gwyn fell back, spread her arms, and floated freely among the waves. She beckoned Mira forward. Entranced, Mira took off her shoes and socks and placed them on a nearby rock. She stepped into the murmuring waves, startled by the cold ocean currents.

Gwyn’s dress was loose around her shoulders, exposing a sharp collarbone. Her long red hair was slick and clung to her torso. Gwyn looked as if she belonged to the ocean, that she could not be distinguished as anything other than a creature of the deep. Gwyn held her hand out to Mira, whose heart beat faster as she drifted toward her.

Gwyn’s clammy fingers wrapped around Mira’s, and her breath caught in her throat as Gwyn pulled her closer. Gwyn stared at her intently, lips parted ever so slightly to reveal a set of pointed teeth. She started speaking in what sounded like an old Welsh dialect, chanting in steady tones. It struck Mira that she should perhaps feel afraid, but the emotion was quickly subdued by a profound sense of peace.

Mira’s eyelids fluttered and her body swayed back and forth as she listened to the creature’s chant. This close together, Mira could smell Gwyn’s salty breath as she leaned in to kiss her. Her head continued to cloud as their lips folded together, until everything was covered in a pleasant fog.

Gwyn’s scales shimmered in the fading light as they fell back into the sea. ( )

SPLIT/SECOND Hannah Willden

I

touched my toes into the ice-cold river. My father had

warned me to be careful around the water, but it was the one place I felt invincible. Even so, I’d forgotten how cold and high the water got when the glaciers melted each April. Even a minute with my head under the water could lead to hypothermia, but I wasn’t about to let a little ice ruin my plans.

I was 11 when my mom’s boyfriend, Kent, took me and his son Adam to the Nanaimo River with two black labs, a Shih-Tzu Yorkie-Terrier, and a Maltese mutt in tow.

Mom stayed home. Normally, I would’ve flat out refused to go with them, but in the two years I’d known them I’d perfected the art of striking out on my own, avoiding Kent like a ninja. He was rude, mean, and assumed he could dole out commands. His son, who was the same age I was, wasn’t much better.

Mom was often too sick at home to take me out, so I hadn’t been able to go far since moving out of Dad’s place a few months ago. Besides, I couldn’t pass up the river.

I was already wearing my swimsuit under my clothes. I’d settled for the public pool for seven months while I longed for the rush of nature’s cool, clean waters against my skin. A day on the shore was always a good one. I could spend hours swimming and diving, coming up for air only to see how many laps I’d done holding my breath.

The only people around when we’d arrived were two middleaged ladies on the small rocky shore that bordered a large pool extending under the bridge. A short distance off, the beach ended abruptly in steep tree-topped cliffs. In the middle of the river was a long island.

My eyes lit up. I could ditch them and go off on my own.

I stripped off my pants to make the crossing waist-deep in freezing water. I loved the thrill of bracing against the torrent as the rush tried to sweep me under, the desperate tug against my bare feet on the slimy rocks.

Roscoe, the five-pound Shih-Tzu Yorkie-Terrier stayed as far from the river as he could, but my Molly was fearless even at six months. She had never seen a river. Her soft, black-tipped curls were already flattening in the damp air.

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Feature

Kent was an adult; surely, he could manage them while I took the plunge.

Once I got across to the island, I could see downriver to where it sharply turned left. Like a missing slice of cake, there was a tiny indent of beach where the cliff had crumbled to sand before the riverbend. I dreaded the idea of wading back through the icy current to where Kent and Adam were playing fetch with the labs, so I started picking my way along the island’s long rocky beach.

Upriver, they tossed the bright red rubber toy a little too close to the swift waters and it was swept in my direction.

The river claims another victim.

Then suddenly there she was 10 feet behind the toy—Molly had chased the labs into the river, but was being swept along with the current. Given the choice to fight, fly, or freeze in the face of this, I fought. I raced down to the end of the beach and headed into the water, wading deeper into the cold torrent. I pushed desperately against the water’s thieving fingers; if I could get to the middle in time, I’d be able to snatch Molly mid-river.

I couldn’t lose her.

(Everything else had changed, but she was my one constant.)

Her love never wavered.

Soon, the water was at my shoulders, then my neck. The red toy, like three stacked berries, was coming toward me. I reached out as it flew by, but was focused on Molly, fighting the river’s grip every step of the way.

“Molly!” I called out. She was coming to me and—I wasn’t going to make it. A few feet from my fingertips, she too swept past me and downriver. I leapt along the rocks, fighting for stability while making my way downstream. Her bobbing, bedraggled head seemed further and further away, heading toward the bend in the river.

My dad’s voice echoed in my head: “Don’t follow anyone, or anything, into the river to save them. That’s how people

drown.” Well, I would live by my own rules now. I was alone, no safety line with one of my parents on the other side to pull me back. There was just the current, Molly, and me.

Molly struggled toward the tiny patch of sand below the cliffs. My heart sank even though I was gaining ground. I knew I shouldn’t follow her around the corner, so I lunged through the icy water, and somehow, just before the corner, I caught her.

Her frantic, quivering claws scraped against my numb skin.

The time it took to reach Molly had passed in mere seconds, but the time it took to fight upstream 15 feet, neck-deep in the icy water, holding a sodden five-pound puppy above my head, felt unbearably long. Pushing against the wall of water felt impossible. I gained only inches and with each step I grew less sure I was going to make it.

Finally, I collapsed onto the beach clutching Molly to my chest.

Black and Blue

Lauryn Mackenzie

I couldn’t tell if she was shaking through my own chatter.

The dirt cliffs towered above me. How was I going to get up there? My fingers couldn’t wrap around the roots. Kent and Adam appeared at the top and Kent barked angrily at me.

Mom would not be happy when she heard about this. I didn’t care. I handed Molly up to them, was dragged over the edge myself, and then we all marched back to our spot on the beach.

“You were so brave,” the two ladies exclaimed before taking Molly up to their car to warm her. They loaned me a large, green-plaid shirt in exchange.

I sat on the shore with eyes locked on the rushing river. I considered what I’d learned, while they continued playing fetch. The natural world could rip everything away in a split second. Yet, from that day forward, whenever anyone warned me to play it safe, I would defy them and fight for what I wanted. I’d do it all again without a second thought. ( )

Non-Fiction

51

THE WHOLE TRUTH Ashley Smith

“H

i. my name is everly Jones and I’m an alcoholic.”

It’s so cheesy I briefly wonder if it’s fake.

“Hi Everly,” the group replies in unison.

“My daughter,” I reply. I don’t even have to think about it.

“I felt so guilty about bringing her into this world when I couldn’t care for her, couldn’t even care for myself… I drank through my whole pregnancy. I felt like a monster.”

All eyes are on me. I want to tell them my story, but what is my story?

I was born in Ohio to two perfectly ordinary parents. My mother was a secretary, my father a stockbroker. We lived in a cozy suburban home in Akron, and despite their busy schedules, my parents always made time for me.

“I was born in Wisconsin,” I say. “My parents were never around, so I partied a lot as a teen. I fell in with the wrong crowd, I guess.” I pause for a minute, checking the circle for sympathetic faces.

“My fiancé, he was a cruel man,” I say. “At first he seemed so sweet, but after he proposed he became bitter.

I guess he thought his love would be enough to cure my drinking problem….”

Sympathetic murmurs ripple around the circle.

“It’s so easy to be influenced when you’re young,” says a woman in her mid-40s. Her hair is blonde, but I can tell it’s not her natural colour; her dark roots keep her honest.

“I was never brave enough to leave him, no matter how many bruises he gave me. Not until the doctors told me my liver was failing,” I say.

(I resist the urge to smile.

They believe me.)

“That’s when I knew I had to change.” I dab my eye with a tissue Greg has handed me. I’m not crying, but I think if any of this were real, I would be. “I didn’t want him to look for me only to learn I’d died an alcoholic.”

“It was easier to get drunk than deal with reality,” I say. “I dropped out of high school. Ended up pregnant….”

Too much? No, not yet.

“You’re a mother?” whispers a woman sitting to my left.

She’s tiny, sitting perched on the edge of her seat. I imagine the folding chair flipping up and swallowing her whole if she sits any further back in it.

“No,” I answer. “No, I put the baby up for adoption.”

“That must have been so hard.” She picks at the skin around her fingernails, her gaze focused on her lap.

52

I should have stopped there, but once I start lying, I can’t stop. I just kept piling them on.

“Him?” the bearded man seated directly across from me asks.

He’s been quiet until now, his large hands wrapped around a Styrofoam cup.

“Her. I said her.” I say it too quickly.

Some of the others exchange glances. A man with spiky black hair leans over and mumbles something to the fakeblonde woman, and the tiny lady begins tapping her toe nervously. My heart rate picks up as I realize they’re starting to question my story.

“Thank you for listening,” I say, folding my hands in my lap.

“The hardest thing I’ve ever done.” I’m surprised by how solemn I sound.

I wait for the warm applause, but it doesn’t come. When I look at the faces around me, they no longer seem friendly.

“So,” the group leader, Greg, cuts in, “tell us what changed Everly. What made you choose sobriety?” He’s got a fuzzy caterpillar of salt-and-pepper hair sitting on his upper lip.

“So, who’s next?” I ask.

Fiction

No one says anything, they just continue to stare.

“You look pretty good for someone with liver failure, Everly,” the bearded man says.

through it all…and now here you are trying to pull the same shit all over again!”

He knows.

Greg puts himself between us.

“It would have been liver failure if the doctors hadn’t intervened in the nick of time….” I look around, desperate to find even one person on my side. The group that was so welcoming minutes ago suddenly feels like a pack of wolves closing in on their prey.

“Seriously, Anthony. You need to calm down.” Anthony jabs his finger at me over Greg’s shoulder.

For a moment I think Greg is going to encourage the group to drop it and move on, but even he seems unsure of me now.

“I understand you’re feeling some very strong emotions right now,” Greg says, trying to de-escalate the situation.

I get to my feet and cut through the middle of the circle, walking quickly toward the bathroom. I need to collect myself, to think of a way to get this back on track.

“I can explain,” I say.

The man with the beard stands and steps into my path, blocking my way. I try to duck around him, but he cuts me off.

“I think you should leave. Now,” he says.

“But I thought aa was a welcome place for—” “For alcoholics.” He takes a step closer and I shrink away from him, desperate to put space between us.

“Exactly, so—”

(“You’re not an alcoholic,” he says.

“You’re a liar.”)

I can smell the coffee on his breath as he leers at me. There’s a look in his eyes I can’t quite read.

“I didn’t recognize you before because it was so long ago,” he says. “You’re the crazy bitch my brother used to date….”

“Anthony, I think you need to take a step back. Maybe take a walk, get some fresh air,” Greg suggests, putting a hand on Anthony’s shoulder.

“Do you even know how badly you hurt him?” Anthony shouts, shaking Greg off. “You made him believe you were dying for months. He grieved for you and held your hand

“Get the fuck out before I throw you out.” He’s so furious that his voice sounds strangled.

“Wrong answer,” Anthony says.

He shoves Greg aside and grabs me by the arm, dragging me to the door. Behind me I hear the sound of scraping chairs and people shouting at him, at me, at us.

The anxious woman shrieks and briefly I wonder if the chair has finally consumed her. Greg shouts, trying desperately to regain control of the situation, but we’re beyond that now.

My arm feels like it’s breaking under Anthony’s grip, and suddenly we’re up the stairs and out on the street in front of the community center, and I’m crying. For real this time.

Anthony shoves me and the toe of my shoe catches on a crack in the sidewalk. I try to right myself, but momentum carries me forward and I stumble off the curb. Distantly, I register a scream.

The world warps unnaturally around me as I fall. I hear skidding tires. I smell burnt rubber. The ground is cold and hard beneath me, and then…nothing.

When I regain consciousness I smell blood and see flashing lights. I hear sirens and the incoherent chatter of a crowd.

“Miss, can you hear me?” I can’t make out a face to go with the voice. “iv access established. Pushing morphine now,” another voice says. “Patient’s id lists her as Sarah Williams.”

“That’s not my name,” I mumble, but the words won’t come. ( )

Fiction

53

LIKE A NOOSE Chris (Seabacola) Beaton

I carve my name into your arm; when my face fades, you can wear me like a scar.

I choke to give you breath, beg for meaning in your death: summon desperate desolate detoxification to peel away your mottled flesh.

I hitch a ride to hell and back, siren cries and flashing lights, swim in crimson oceans while baby sucks his gun—tip of the barrel, smoking lung.

I wrap a necktie like a noose, pass flasks at your funeral, bury one brother in fentanyl, one mother in pain.

Rotten soil sours seeds.

I fear I was raised a crippled angel, born to dance with a relentless devil.

I drive blind through cemeteries, lie fresh-faced in a grave, screaming, shaking, searching for a way to erase the pain of existing.

54

Feature

Merv Feature James O’Reilly

55

YELLOWHEAD Patrick Wilson

fade in: ext. highway shoulder—evening (JENNIFER WHITETAIL, 18, an Indigenous woman, walks on the

shoulder of a busy two-lane highway in Smithers bc. Over her shoulder, the sun is setting behind a mountain that overshadows the small town. Jennifer is texting. We see from a close-up of her phone she agrees to meet with someone.)

ext. highway shoulder—evening (Seconds later, a black 1976 Ford f-100 pulls up behind her.

The DRIVER honks the horn.)

int. truck—evening (The Driver leans toward the passenger window with one hand on the steering wheel, while the other brushes garbage off the passenger seat. )

DRIVER:

Hey girl, you need a ride? ext. highway shoulder—evening (Jennifer looks back down the Yellowhead highway, turns and faces

the Driver.)

JENNIFER:

Naw, I’m good! int. truck—evening (The Driver leans to the passenger side to unlock the door.)

DRIVER:

Are you sure? I’m going that wa— ext. highway shoulder—evening (Jennifer stands tall with her arms at her side.)

JENNIFER: DRIVER:

I said no, ok? No means no. Now leave me alone. (Jennifer turns around and walks quickly toward traffic and away from the truck.)

(0.s.) All right, just trying to help you little girl. It’s not my fault if something happens. int. truck—evening (The Driver speeds off in a cloud of dust. He raises his middle finger out the window.

Jennifer kicks dirt in his direction and dials her sister.)

int. angela whitetail’s apartment—dining room table—night (We see ANGELA WHITETAIL, 26,

Jennifer’s older sister, and Jennifer sitting at a glass table in Angela’s upscale apartment in Smithers. Angela serves Jennifer a cup of tea. She stirs sugar into her own.)

56

JENNIFER:

I was scared, he looked really creepy.

ANGELA:

Was he White?

JENNIFER:

Yeah, and old.

ANGELA:

Ewww. What did he say?

Feature

JENNIFER:

Not much. He asked a couple times if I needed a ride and got worked up when I said no.

ANGELA:

Did he say anything else?

JENNIFER:

Actually, yeah. He said it’s not my fault if something happens to you.

ANGELA:

What the fuck? You should call the cops.

JENNIFER:

And say what? You know they don’t do anything for us. No one cares, Ange.

ANGELA:

At least you could give a description of the man and his truck. Did you get his license? Just in case something happens to someone else.

JENNIFER:

Yeah, I suppose I should have, but then again, the cops haven’t done anything about Melinda or Daphne’s disappearance and it’s been eight months….

ANGELA:

Ask for Constable Pederson. She cares about us and I know she would take you seriously, Jen….What did this guy look like?

JENNIFER:

Do you remember Mr. Ellich? The teacher with the bushy handlebar mustache? (Angela laughs.)

ANGELA:

Yes.

JENNIFER:

Well, he looked like him, but also like Mr. Lancaster from Grade 3. (Jennifer’s phone beeps with an incoming text.)

JENNIFER:

Hang on, Tina’s messaging me. She said she’s gonna be late, ‘cause she missed her ride and she has to hitch.

She’ll be leaving Witset around 6:30, 7 pm.

ANGELA:

Shit, I don’t like it when she hitchhikes, or when you do.

JENNIFER:

Yeah, I know, but we don’t all have a “true love” with a bmw. (Jennifer turns to look out the balcony window.)

ANGELA:

Oh, don’t start that shit again. It is what it is. Mark is good to me, and he treats the family like gold.

JENNIFER:

Yeah, whatever. He sounds like an ass-kisser to me. I don’t get you, Ange. How can you have a White boyfriend?

ANGELA:

I never said I hated all White people, and Mark is not an ass-kisser. He respects our culture, and he has never said anything bad about you or anyone else in this family.

JENNIFER:

The first time I met him, he called you his “Indian Princess” and called himself—-

ANGELA:

Big Chief. He was just kidding around, and I’m the one who gave him that nickname. You know, from The Cowboy Way?

JENNIFER:

Anyway, it sounds racist and I’m sure Mom wouldn’t like it, if she were still alive.

ANGELA:

Christ on a cracker, give it a rest will you? (Jennifer laughs.)

JENNIFER:

Christ on a cracker. Where the hell did you learn that? It sounds like something a White person would say.

(Angela laughs.)

ANGELA:

Right? Mark’s mom says it all the time.

Feature

57

Yellowhead

int. clara matthews—living room—evening (Inside the entrance of CLARA MATTHEWS’,62, dilapidated blue house a hole is punched in the wall and there are missing floor tiles showing patches of exposed plywood underneath. Clara sits on the sofa watching tv. Her cousin PETER MITCHELL, 63, knocks on the door.)

CLARA:

Come in! (Another knock.) Goddammit! I said come in. (The front door opens, Clara turns to see who it is.)

PETER:

Hadih’. How are you tonight?

CLARA:

Not too bad, my back is sore though. Doctor said I need to stay off my feet for a few days. Tina isn’t here.

She’s run off somewhere.

PETER:

I saw her on the highway about a half hour ago.

CLARA:

Hitchhiking?

PETER:

I think so. (Clara gets off the sofa. She moves to the kitchen.) int. clara’s house—dining room—evening (The 1950s blue Bel-Air dining room table with chrome edges is crowded with beer cans. The rest of the kitchen is spotless. Clara takes a beer from the fridge and silently offers Peter one. She sits at the table and calls her daughter’s phone. There’s no answer. Clara leaves a message on CHRISTINA MATTHEWS’, 16, voicemail.)

CLARA:

Christina answer your phone please. It’s 7:20, and you know how much it worries me when you hitchhike into town. Call me back, asap. Mommy loves you, Darling. ext. angela’s apartment—balcony—evening (Angela and Jennifer finish their cigarettes.)

ANGELA:

Did you want more tea or coffee?

JENNIFER:

No, but do you have any of that fancy juice Mark buys from Ikea?

ANGELA:

You mean the Lingonberry juice?

JENNIFER:

Yeah, that stuff. It’s the only thing I like about Mark. (Angela and Jennifer re-enter the apartment from the balcony.) int. angela’s apartment—living room—evening (Jennifer sits on the sofa. Angela goes into the kitchen

and returns with a glass of juice.)

58

Script

Never Seperate

James O’Reilly

Patrick Wilson

ANGELA:

You like this stuff? You’re so weird. Where the hell is Tina? Did she text you? She’s not replying to my last message.

JENNIFER:

No, she didn’t, but you know how she is….

JENNIFER & ANGELA:

She’s always late! (Both women laugh. Angela goes to the kitchen to check the pot roast.) int. angela’s apartment—dining room—evening (Angela’s phone beeps. She runs from the

kitchen to read the text.)

JENNIFER:

Who’s that? Is it Tina?

ANGELA:

(o.s.) No, it’s Aunty “Everclear” Clara. She’s asking if Tina is here yet.

JENNIFER:

She must be drinking if she’s worried about Tina. Did she ask for Christina or Tina?

ANGELA:

(o.s.) Christina. Why? (Jennifer mock-guzzles a bottle of alcohol.)

JENNIFER:

Yeah, she’s had a lot to drink. Probably hammered. Ever notice how Clara uses our full names when she’s drinking? (Angela gets up from the table and goes to the fridge.)

ANGELA:

It’s been awhile since I’ve seen her, but now that you mention it, that’s true. More juice?

JENNIFER:

Naw, I’m good, I gotta pee really bad. int. clara’s house—dining room—night (Clara and Peter sit at the dining table. Peter chews his lip while Clara makes another phone call.)

CLARA:

Christina. Where are you? I’m worried about you. Call me back baby-girl. I’m only on my fourth drink and you know what—(Clara is cut off by the voicemail beep. She looks at her phone. A text from Christina reads: hey mom. i just went for a walk. i’ll be back later. Clara looks at Peter, who is looking at his phone.) I thought you said you saw Christine hitchhiking?

PETER:

She was standing at the viewpoint in the hitching spot. Why?

CLARA:

She just texted me. She said she was out for a walk. What is my baby-girl up to? ( )

Never Separate

James O’Reilly

Feature

59

LOOKING BACK, PAYING IT FORWARD Zeel Desai

T

he first question i asked my grandmother was: “Why do we only get free food in this temple? The other ones don’t have it.” What followed was a history lesson I’ve never forgotten.

The name of our tribe, Rabari, translates to “outsiders” and explains a lot about our position in the Hindu caste system that assigns status according to wealth, knowledge, and occupation. Rabari people are proud of their rituals, mythology, history, and ancestors, all of which are inextricably linked to our ancient occupation as herders.

We used to live in the district of Kutch, in Gujarat, the state with the longest seashore located in the far west of the country. It was impossible to thrive in a place so close to the sun and so far from fresh water. We couldn’t survive on what little we had; the wool from sheep we sold exclusively to the international market was just not enough. The cows and buffalos could only provide milk.

To stay alive, we followed the rain wherever it took us, motivated solely by the prospect of putting food on our plate and water in our parched mouths. As we travelled from village to village, Rabari who had settled there gave us food, shelter, and directions to another town where we would find others who would do the same.

esa

Eventually, other Rabari made homes in these villages too, finding solace in one place or another, and formed communities where they had wells of their own. This gratitude was meant to be paid forward in memory of all the Rabari had been given, so we began to give shelter to others in need, providing them with food and water and asking nothing in return.

Grandmother says her mother was known to make food to feed four extra people each day in thanks for the many times her ancestors were fed. It never went to waste; someone always knocked on her door looking for food.

This is the principle on which our temple was founded. It is a place to worship our God and share with others what we have received. If you visit, no matter the time of day, there will always be hot food waiting.

As a child I ate there every Sunday with my father. We swept the floors and did the dishes after eating. It was our way of saying thank you to everyone who had come before us and giving to everyone who would come after. ( )

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by

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This went on for years. We never put down roots, never owned anything, but the hospitality and warmth of our supporters never wavered. We thanked them for their gifts with milk and blessings. It is written in our scriptures: અતિથિ દેવો ભવ — Guests are Godlike, so treat them accordingly.

pho

Zeel Desai is a third-year international student majoring in Creative Writing and Journalism at viu. She is pursuing her dream of becoming a storyteller and this is her first publication. Her interest in reading and writing began when she and her mother visited a run-down library around the corner from her home.

60

Portfolio Spotlight

WRAPPED, UNWRAPPED, AND WRAPPED AGAIN Susan Garcia

wrapped: I love the term “White gaze” to describe seeing without recognizing it’s through the lens of dominant White culture. However, “White gauze” is a more appropriate term for my formative years growing up in North Delta, bc. No one denied me anything; I was loved and indulged. I had grandparents, siblings, cousins, a bike, and a barn full of pets on a rural acreage. Four generations of my mother’s family lived within walking distance; four generations of my father’s family lived within a half hour’s drive.

At the time, I knew about six other cultures, but not how they were associated with skin-, or hair- or eye-colour.

These included: my mother’s Welsh and German parents; my father’s Hawaiian parents; my mother’s and grandma’s Japanese friends from the fish cannery; the two Chinese exchange students who were too old to be in our class; and a family with East Indian ancestry in our elementary school.

My eyes didn’t see mixed ancestry in our looks. Now I know my nuclear family was an assimilated Indigenous family. unwrapped: I was challenged by a teenage pregnancy at 14 and married at 15. I dropped out of school, and my parents accepted my shocking predicament without blame or shame. Much later I learned that I was repeating a generations-old pattern that went back to at least the 1880s. I was beyond adaptable, moving 12 times in my son’s first two years, sometimes living in motels while my husband worked in construction.

I returned to university in 2019 for a third time, this time learning about Indigenous ways of knowing and being.

I now study on this Snuneymuxw territory and learn Hul’q’umi’num, the Coast Salish language of this Land.

I also return again and again to genealogy where written records obscure the Hawaiian and Indigenous women of my family. Their names are misspelled or replaced with anglicized generic versions: Lucy, Mary, Sophy, Ann. In my imagination they carry humility and respect in cedar baskets, they dance proudly in grass skirts. We have each other and we don’t feel threatened. I am writing all of them (and the remarkable men in our family) back into history every chance I get. ( )

ph

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by Co

I returned to school at 25, but by then my self-esteem was negligible. It did slowly improve, thanks to nurturing women and the egalitarian culture of college. I was a single working parent, so I dropped every ambition I had in order to work.

wrapped again: I had heard snippets of my dad’s Indigenous past, but I didn’t realize the scope of our rich local ancestry until he died when I was 45. This time I was wrapped in a blanket. Chief Simon Baker of the Squamish Nation attended my father’s celebration of life and told me my dad’s grandmother was Lucy Nahanee. My great aunts began to talk and members of my family took part in ceremony and learned about our Indigenous culture. The large Nahanee family embraced us; the Hawaiians came to bc and acknowledged our descendancy. We shared stories with our older relatives and found ways to learn about their lives, little by little.

r vu

sB

olton

Susan Garcia is taking classes in Creative Writing, History and Indigenous Studies at viu after earning a Social Services Worker Certificate from College of the Cariboo and a ba in English from sfu. She has had “Homestead Murder” and “My Mysterious Great-Great Grandma” published in The Trail of 1858: British Columbia’s Gold Rush Past and the article “Upriver Captain, Downriver Family Man” in the journal British Columbia History. For more than a decade she has written historical nonfiction related to her relatives in the Clark, Browne, and Garcia families.

Portfolio Spotlight

61

REJECT Shawnda Wilson

October 17, 20

21

Silvia Goldber

4634 8th Ave

g

.

New York, N Y Dear Elijah,

Happy Canad ian Thanksgivi ng! I hope th you remembe is letter reache r me. I sent th s you and that is to the last ad in the hopes th dress I had fo ey would forw r your parent ard it to you. since we said s I know we ha goodbye at th ven’t spoken e train station but I’ve been the summer af feeling nostal ter high scho gic. ol, I’m recently di vorced and it ’s been harder live in New Yo than I ever im rk and am wor agined. I still king as the pu called No Hoa blisher of a lit x. It’s ridiculo erary magazin us ly interested in small, but I lo e re-connecting, ve my work.

If you’re you can write could call 718to me at this addr 223-4434. I w ess, or you ould love to he how you’re do ar your voice ing. I’ll leave and know it at that for no w.

I still love you Elijah, in case that matters to you.

Silvia

Goodmail

Elijah Finklestein, Thank you for submitting “Three Oak Trees” to The Story Hotel, Canada’s premier journal of arts and letters. We are pleased to have had the opportunity to read it this month—October is slower than usual for us.

We were interested in your protagonist and how they came to find their voice, but we’re not sure our readership is open-minded enough to relate to your origin story. I’m sure you understand this dilemma.

Unfortunately, this means we do not have an opening for this story in the magazine at present. We want to underscore that these decisions involve many complex considerations and can never be entirely objective, so this should not be read as a negative commentary on the quality of your work.

amazing.ca

Welcome back Elijah!

Order Summary: Pokéman Hoodie 3xl Order Total: cdn $62.99 Your guaranteed delivery date is: October 24, 2021

We also appreciated you sending a bio. We were intrigued to know your family is originally from New York, but had to leave due to legal troubles. Though young writers do tend to overshare, we never fail to appreciate the entertainment value.

Keep writing, Elijah! We hope you find a home for this piece.

Regards, The Editorial Team

Goodmail

Elijah, Thank you for submitting to The Fern. We enjoyed reading your work and the lyricism with which your poems embraced a variety of voices. Unfortunately, we cannot publish your submission at this time, as we feel it is too raciallycharged for our audience.

You mentioned in your bio that you are bi-sexual; perhaps a more grassroots lgbtq publication might be a better fit for your work in the future. We certainly do wish you all the best.

Sincerely, Elle Hides

amazing.ca

ps. We at The Fern love hearing from you, but unfortunately, we cannot respond to further emails or inquiries, given the volume of submissions we receive. Please remember you can only submit once a year.

Welcome back Elijah!

Order Summary: Pokéman 2-piece pyjama set 3xl Amazon Essentials boxer brief (6 pack) Order Total: cdn $162.99 Your guaranteed delivery date is: November 6, 2021

Goodmail

Dear Elijah Finklestein, Thanks for sending us “Beasts & Men.” We’re sorry to say this submission is not suitable for The Moon. Have you ever read our publication? We think not.

Our readers are professionals, business people, good upstanding members of society. I’m sure you understand.

This isn’t a reflection on your writing. The selection process is highly competitive and complex in ways that make it something of a mystery even to us. There’s no telling with what we’ll fall in love or what will be dismissed.

Writing is hard work and writers merit some acknowledgment. We realize this note doesn’t speak to that need. Please know, however, that we have read your work. We wish you the best in placing your writing elsewhere.

The Editors, The Moon

Welcome to Tender.ca!

Elijah Finklestein are you excited to meet new singles in your area? Write a short bio in the box below to get things started.

You never know who is out there!

Bio for Elijah F: Hi, I’m new here and looking for love. I’m interested in all genders; it’s the person inside that I find attractive. All body types, all backgrounds welcome. I’m a writer and I work at a coffee shop on weekends. I’m a little shy when I first meet people, but once I feel comfortable, I totally open up. I’m more of an indoor cat than an outdoor one.

I like mulled wine in front of the fireplace. I also knit.

Hit me up—maybe sparks will fly!

amazing.ca

Welcome back Elijah!

Order Summary: Set of Pokéman Mugs (6) Herbal cigarettes, Floral Garden (2 packs) Black side-zip skinny jeans (3xl) Glitter Eyeliner (12 colors) Puma soft ride sneakers (black size 13)

Goodmail

Order Total: cdn $376.43 Your guaranteed delivery date is: December 6, 2021

Dear Elijah, Thank you for sending your submission to Stipulate. We look forward to reading it. Your cover letter and bio stopped us in our tracks—we’ve never had a submission from someone like you before. We are a contemporary magazine, be assured of that, we’re just not sure you’ll be the right fit for us.

We try to respond within three months. However, our backlog of unread manuscripts is substantial, so don’t be surprised if the wait is longer. Thanks again for your interest.

The Editors

Tender.ca You have a match!

Message from Tallulah P dtf? Tonight? Message me. You’re hot!

amazing.ca

Dear Elijah! We’d love to offer you an amazing.ca preferred customer credit card. Follow the link and shop with greater ease!

Goodmail

Dear Elijah, Thank you for your submission to return. Though we received more submissions than we are able to accommodate in a single issue, yours made the cut!

Your work has been selected for the “Inclusivity” feature on our website and will be published as a free pdf next month. Just send $35 to returnmag.org to finance this endeavour. We will be in touch shortly with promotional material to share with your networks via social media. Thank you for contributing.

Sincerely, Kolin Klein, Guest Editor Kip Rom, Managing Editor

Order Summary: Blue eye contact lenses Black hair dye for men Pokéman slippers Polaroid camera with film cartridges Order Total: cdn $511.11 Your guaranteed delivery date is: December 8, 2021

Shawnda Wilson

uEat Hi there, Elijah! Welcome to UEat! We’re so pleased you have become a member. Su Fey is working on your order from Tiger Thai right now. They are new, so please be patient if the order takes longer to arrive than expected.

We noticed that you order from The Friendly Giant Liquor Store. Since you are new, we wanted to let you know that we deliver from many other restaurants and convenience stores in this neighbourhood, so check them out.

Remember to rate us on TasteAdvisor using the link included with each order.

Order #20203900 Tender.ca

Total: $80.00

You have a match!

Message from Tom R. dtf? It’s Friday night…

Goodmail

Hello Elijah, Welcome to ArtsyFartsy. Thank you so much for your submission to our blog.

I’m cc’ing our Arts Editor, Robin, to make sure she has seen your materials.

Although Robin and I will be in contact, you should expect to hear back from her. She is the one who deals with posting subversive subjects. We’re not saying your work is too challenging, but we reserve the right to edit all offensive content for legal purposes.

Thanks again. uEat Your order from the Friendly Giant Liquor Store has been received and we are working on it.

Your driver Mei will contact you when they are on their way.

Due to the quantity of alcohol you have ordered, this may take longer than expected. We appreciate your patience!

Order # 9836476 Total: $387.42

Goodmail

Hi Elijah!

We are thrilled to receive your submissions for The Rhombus! So many submissions! It may take us a while to get through all of them. Please indicate the genre for each piece so they can be put into the correct category for judging. Meanwhile, I will pass your art entries along to our Art Director. Looking forward to hearing from you, Paisley Watkins, Acquisitions Editor

amazing.ca

Welcome back Elijah!

Order Summary: 7 Highly Effective Ways to Kill Yourself Paperback Order Total: cdn $35.00 Your guaranteed delivery date is: January 1, 2022

Tender.ca Want to be successful on Tender.ca? It takes likes to get likes! Go global and never run out of possible matches.

Upgrade to gold for the best Tender.ca experience. uEat Happy New Year! We received your order from The Friendly Giant Liquor Store, and it is in the queue. As soon as we have an eta, we’ll give you a heads up.

Given the size of your order, we’re assuming it’s a party so might head over there after our shift! Obviously, all of our drivers are massively hung-over today and the whole freakin’ world is off work, so we’re a little behind. Thanks for your patience, Elijah. We genuinely value your business.

Tender.ca

Order # 191918719

You have a match!

Total: $499.59

Message from Jamal J. dtf?

Reply from Elijah F. does anyone read bios? no, i am not down to fuck. i want love. leave me alone!!!!

Shawnda Wilson

CTZ

winnipeg top stories

January 3rd, 2022

Police have reported that the body of Elijah Finklestein, 24, was found this morning in his studio apartment at the Wiksha Hotel.

He was found dead in his bathtub by a member of the housekeeping staff.

There was no sign of a struggle. Finklestein was a member of the lgbtq community and was a known bipoc activist.

Police are investigating his death and ask that friends or family who have information related to the incident come forward.

Finklestein was an honor student in his third year at the University of Winnipeg, in the School of Business. He dropped out to pursue a career as an artist/writer.

Elijah Finklestein’s death is the first recorded death of 2022 in Winnipeg. ctz tip line: 555-555-5500 or email tips@ctz.ca

January 5, 2022 Silvia Goldberg 4634 8th Ave. New York, ny Elijah,

Happy New Year! I hope you enjoyed the holidays. I’m sorry I haven’t heard from you yet. I’m not offended, though I was hopeful. Maybe your parents didn’t forward you the letter?

I would still love to hear about your life. Are you single?

Are you happy? Do you have a good community of people supporting you? I am lonely, but grateful to be out of a terrible marriage and so thankful we never had Goodmail children. Please, feel free to call me anytime. My cell Congratulations Elijah! Your story “Head” has won the 2021 Tourney Prize. number is 718-223-4434.

We had 1897 entries this year, and you were chosen as the most contemporary, vibrant, new voice of the year!

Love, Your prize includes a cheque for $10,000 and publication in the 2021 Tourney Anthology, and on the ctz website. We expect calls for interviews from all the major national radio and tv stations. You are also cordially invited to attend this year’s Writer’s Workshop at the renowned Banff Centre.

Silvia

This prize is a career-defining gamechanger, Elijah. You’ve made it! The right people have noticed your hard work and commitment to your craft. We’re so thrilled for you and look forward to working together in the future. On behalf of all of the judges and staff, congratulations!

Please reply to this email by January 31st so we can create a touring schedule that works for you.

Kaliope Tourney ceo & President ( )

TAKE XOUR GENDER AND RUN Rue Burgoyne-King

Ancestors pluck pink eXes from genes, smother them in blue whYs, their grex siphon dilutes xour rainbow river even before it can run.

Fed parental sovereigntx in xour mother’s womb, xou ingest prenatal poison preserved in amniotic fluid and weep before real tears can run.

Babx-reveal pxrotechnics scorch androgxnous earth; parents brand xour dead name and gender onto flesh before xou can run.

Mom and Dad demand amnestx xet asphxxiate identitx; xou conceal scars with smiles that burx xou alive before xou can run.

Xou wear uniseX pjs at sleepovers, xour roxal robes, as xou prax their parents won’t declare xou “monstrous” before xou can run.

Xou carve xour new name into a schoolxard tree, crack xears of crusted cis-sap; teachers seize xour knife, X out xour trans truth before xou can run.

Xou were born dead in xour own skin, a ghost possessing the wrong bodx; xou begged to belong, but thex made xou wish with all xour life xou had run.

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Venus Drowning

Rue Burgoyne-King

Nittu Prasai

NO FORWARDING ADDRESS Lisa Kremer

Dear Alberta, On the banks of your river where weeds oppress and cottonwoods bend I was delivered, my first breaths gasped in the harsh December blizzard.

On baked hills where bleached grasses billow and deer play hide-and-seek I was divided, my childhood lost in the glacial decay.

I’m not looking for saffron fields and swollen kernels of wheat that surrender instead, I’ve grown a thick skin for the cold snap.

Ink City

Althea Rasendriya

I’m no longer by your caress, your turbulence, your breath. I have departed, run, packed up, escaped.

moved

You betrayed me, don’t deserve a memorial.

I’ve left behind breadcrumbs of my story.

I’ve been and though I may return to reminisce, you are no longer home.

moved (to move)

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GODZILLA COMPLEX Henry Osborne

I

t’s 1962 and you’re godzilla.

The director yells “Cut!” and you and King Kong sit down atop a nuclear power plant the size of a doll’s house. Stagehands in black slacks and white button-up shirts scuttle about the set. Some prop up downed trees and powerline poles, others wheel in replacement fish markets, temples, and storefronts.

You light a cigarette and smoke it with your elbows on your knees like you’re Audrey Hepburn. It’s so disgustingly hot and smelly inside your Godzilla costume. You wish you were on the set of a dramatic movie, delivering a heart-wrenching performance so you could finally be recognized for the superstar you truly are. Instead, you’re Godzilla.

Your hand drifts toward Kong and he swats it away. He tells you his suit is made of highly flammable yak hair and he doesn’t want your cigarette anywhere near it.

You scoff. “They light you on fire in the next scene anyway,” you say. “You should read the script.” You can’t see Kong’s expression, but you can tell this irks the shit out of him.

This pleases you.

“What?” he says. “No way.”

“Yes way,” you say, ashing your cigarette onto the floor. A stagehand darts in, sweeps up the debris, and scurries away.

Kong approaches the director and says something you can’t hear. A shouting match erupts between them. You make out “safe workplace practices,” and “controlled burns.”

Wonderful. With luck, he’ll get fired.

Then you remember you’re still Godzilla.

Cue flashback: You’re 20 and eating gyoza at your parents’ dinner table. The scene plays like a montage. Your mom peels a cabbage in the sink and your dad smokes while he reads the newspaper.

Mom points her finger at you and says, “If you’d just focus, you could be something, like a dental hygienist or an oyster farmer. You could even afford your own place.”

But you hate oysters. Oysters can go fuck themselves.

(You want to be an actor, someone who wins lots of awards and makes people cry, on purpose.)

Your mom doesn’t care about your dreams. All she cares about is “job stability” and getting you out of the house.

You tell her she’ll eat her words when you’re a superstar.

She tells you to get a real job. You throw a gyoza at her, slam your bedroom door, and cry yourself to sleep. That night, you dream about winning an Oscar. It’s golden and beautiful and you nuzzle it in your bed like it’s a teddy bear.

End flashback.

y photos b

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pany ltd

There’s no Oscar, and you’re not rich, or beautiful, or a superstar. You’re just trapped inside a sweaty Godzilla costume while Kong and the director are shouting about the lack of on-set fire extinguishers.

From the dark, the director screams, “Action!”

You spin and sweep Kong’s feet with your tail. He falls on his back, tumbles down the hill, and crashes into the nuclear power plant.

“Magnificent!” the director says.

You grin as you gaze down at Kong’s stupid, crumpled body.

He scrambles to his feet, sprints up the hill, grabs a plastic tree and shoves it down the throat of your costume. He grabs your tail and spins you faster and faster in circles until your whole body is in the air. You feel your head swell with blood.

Your stomach contents burble. Kong releases your tail, and you crash into the fish market, killing everyone inside.

“My God,” the director gasps. “This is gold, pure gold!”

Maybe one of the controlled burns will get out of control and Kong will burst into flames. You wouldn’t have to work with him anymore…but you’d still be Godzilla.

There’s an outside chance you’ll be famous when the movie is released. Perhaps fans will beg for autographs as you push past the hordes of paparazzi, late for a very important party with lots of famous people.

You feel your heart pulsing in your ears. You let your stomach settle. You look up and see Kong pounding on his chest like an asshole. You dust yourself off and stare him down.

For a brief moment, you forget about your parents’ disappointment, your failed dreams, and how alone you are.

All you know is that you’re going to kick the shit out of Kong.

You smile to yourself. It’s 1962 and you’re God-fuckin-zilla. ( )

Cue loud dance music: You’re in a crowded bar whispering to a stranger you’re trying to seduce. You tell them you’re Godzilla. They laugh in your face and say, “Ya, and I’m Toshiro Mifune, Asshole,” and then they dump their Mai Thai on your head.

You shuffle home through the bustling neon streets of Tokyo. People rave about the new King Kong vs. Godzilla movie as you pass, but they don’t talk to you or look at you.

You didn’t get to keep the costume so you’re a ghost.

(You return to your 300-square-foot apartment, drink a whole bottle of sake, and cry into your pillow.)

Scene fades to black.

On set, your cigarette is burning down to the filter. The stagehands are offstage, and the shouting has stopped. You look over your shoulder and see Kong standing on his mark at the top of the hill. You hear a rasping sound coming from his suit, like he’s doing breathing exercises.

You flick your cigarette onto the ground and tamp it out with your foot. Then you stand up, touch your toes, and do some lunges to activate your leg muscles. The valence lights around the set dim as you saunter up the hill to your mark.

It’s just you and Kong now.

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BOOK REVIEWS Meanwhile, the tour’s organizer Nadine Redcloud and the real Lucas Pretends Eagle (it’s complicated) are chasing them to regain control of the troupe.

Incredibly, The Prairie Chicken Dance Tour is a novel loosely based on true events. The cast’s adventures take them from Kiruna, Sweden to Rome, Italy and feature a plane hijacking, ghosts, and government agents.

The clash between the aging Edna and the young adults is entertaining and memorable. Together they resemble the prairie chickens of the title, an ungraceful type of grouse familiar to Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

The Prairie Chicken Dance Tour

Dawn Dumont Freehand Books, 2021 300 pages isbn: 978-1-988298-87-0 $24.95 Reviewed by Sophia Wasylinko

“I’m in trouble, little bro. You have to help me.”

It’s 1972 and John Greyeyes is en route to Europe for a 15-day dance tour as a favour to his brother, except he hasn’t danced in 15 years and his companions are substitutes for the original dancers, incapacitated due to food poisoning.

Travelling with him are: Edna Shield, an arthritic and overly zealous Catholic; her flirtatious niece, Desiree Shield; and Lucas Pretends Eagle, a troublemaker.

Greyeyes needs to teach them the dances, make sure they get along, and keep a tight grip on their money.

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Amid all this levity, the troupe experiences racism and ignorance: the Germans wear Hollywood “Indian” costumes; Greyeyes and the real Pretends Eagle are detained by authorities; and the Italians treat them like a long-extinct species.

Comments like, “You are big, big men. You must have killed many white men, taken many scalps,” elicit horrified gasps and shocked laughter.

The characters often respond with self-deprecating humour, sarcasm, and an eyeroll, such as when Greyeyes answers: “I’ve lost count.”

At an international gathering of Indigenous Peoples in Kiruna, the cast learns that the suppression of culture and language—including the banning of dances—is widespread.

Per Ollman, a member of the Sami People, says, “The expression of culture is a form of resistance.”

As if this wasn’t enough, the prejudice they experience extends from race to sexual orientation. Several characters are revealed to be gay and in one case this leads to a fight at a dance club.

The novel also mentions residential schools, which both Greyeyes and

Edna attended. In Kiruna, Edna gets into a confrontation with a fellow survivor. The woman says, “When I think about all the terrible things those priests and nuns did to the kids in the schools—did to me—then I know that this Jesus…is evil and so are all the things done in his name.”

Edna retorts, “Then I’m evil too!” She later worries that she has “condemned” survivors who have turned against the church. Her moments of reflection, combined with reckless actions despite her “church lady” persona, make her one of the most complex characters in the main cast.

By contrast, Redcloud is the least developed. Her goal is to catch up to Greyeyes, the love of her life, and her troupe. However, she falls for the real Pretends Eagle and can’t choose between the men. She becomes bossy, indecisive, and clingy, leading to some awkward exchanges in the second half.

While the book is an enjoyable read, more sensitive readers may be put off by the sometimes politically incorrect jokes and references. However, it is true to Dumont’s humor and talent on the page and off. Dumont is a stand-up comedian, keynote speaker, and columnist from Okanese First Nation in Saskatchewan. Her previous works, Nobody Cries at Bingo, Rose’s Run, and Glass Beads, have all won awards. She writes for Eagle Feather News and the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.

The Prairie Chicken Dance Tour is a hilarious story about a group of opposites thrown together on a cross-continent journey. There are unexpected twists and turns and scenes that are equal parts funny and uncomfortable. It’s a must-read for the issues it tackles and the chaos that ensues. Who knew prairie chickens could dance?

grown up. Trish is an elderly woman who has been providing her rural community with illicit abortions for years. Clinics are too far away for many in need. Trish’s neighbours don’t comment on her suspected occupation or the nature of her relationship with her neighbour, Therese.

Trish is in fact a lesbian woman and traditional midwife, and a powerful example of healthcare for women by women. Marthe becomes captivated with the concept of continuing Trish’s “living matriarchal line of knowledge.”

We, Jane Aimee Wall Book*hug Press, 2021 199 pages isbn: 978-1-77166-701 $23.00 Reviewed by Isabella Ranallo

Aimee Wall’s debut novel We, Jane addresses the topic of abortion with a focus on access in rural areas and the complex nature of the sisterhood.

Inspired by a group of real-life women who provided safe abortions under the name “Jane” in 1960s Chicago, Wall brings the concept to Newfoundland in this captivating reimagining.

The novel begins with Montréaler Marthe floating between unfinished creative projects in the wake of her Danish boyfriend’s abrupt departure. A self-proclaimed “joiner,” she is drawn to the abortion movement, but “in a city with multiple options for access” little advocacy and protest is required.

Then she meets a woman from back home who tells Marthe about a Jane in Newfoundland, where Marthe had

Marthe’s own abortion explains her zeal and desire to make a difference. Wall shows Marthe’s boyfriend making her an omelette afterward, her roommate’s dog destroying the garbage in search of bloody pads, and flashes to a protestor outside the clinic where she had the procedure.

“It had been two years, but Marthe was still angry at the indignity of it all, at the insistence of the physical body….

She felt, possibly belatedly, utterly betrayed by it.” Although Marthe moves on, she can’t forget.

In fact, We, Jane is less about abortion than it is about Marthe’s existential crisis, as evidenced in one-liners like: “Marthe’s experience of adulthood so far had mostly been a series of realizations about the most obvious fucking things in the world.”

Wall explained in an interview for Portal’s Portfolio series that this focus was intentional. “I wanted to avoid [abortion] being the narrative arc,” Wall said. While she acknowledges its significance, “it puts a weight on the event that I didn’t want to give it.”

The novel is told in third-person from Marthe’s perspective and dialogue is presented without quotation marks.

This creates a deliberate disconnect from the characters and their

conversations. Marthe is an unreliable narrator, but this also allows the reader to take a broader view of the novel, something its topic demands.

Concerns about the future of abortion are voiced by multiple characters. “God only knows when the next man will get it into his head to start dismantling the system and the laws as they stand now,” the Montréal Jane says to Marthe.

Such fears are prescient in light of the ongoing threat to the Roe v.

Wade ruling. It affirms the us Constitution’s protection of a pregnant person’s freedom to choose to have an abortion without excessive government restriction. Wall also references the climate crisis and its impact on isolated communities.

These topical touches bring the story up to the 2022 moment.

As the novel winds to its conclusion, Marthe’s relationship with Jane from Montréal almost disappears. Marthe returns to Newfoundland and that undefined and unequal dynamic that was the focus of the first half of the book fades. Instead Marthe falls back in with the hometown party crowd she’d once run from. Fissures also form between the women that make up the rural Jane collective and threaten their mission, but Marthe realizes “the work would come first.”

We, Jane is a poetic and perceptive page-turner that offers an honest and much-needed perspective on abortion that will resonate with those in the first decades of adulthood.

A Newfoundland native currently living in Montréal, Wall has translated novels from authors Vickie Gendreau and Jean-Philippe Baril Guerard.

Wall’s Giller Prize-nominated debut demonstrates the prowess of a writer on the rise and ensures attention for future endeavours.

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Hazel has a propensity for smoking and losing her temper, but when she partners with Spider, a dog she steals from the Humane Society who can speak to her telepathically, Hazel really hits her stride.

She is not just a witty pi, she is a loving mother of two daughters (Missy and Little Frankie), a woman who has her demons, and someone who will compel you to keep reading despite blowing a little smoke in your face.

Humane Anna Marie Sewell Stonehouse Publishing Inc., 2021 295 pages isbn: 978-1-988754-24-6 $19.95 Reviewed by Hannah Willden

Sewell’s first novel, Humane, is a magicrealist Indigenous mystery that harnesses dark humour and the supernatural to answer the question: When given two bad choices, what is humane?

Nell August has been murdered in the fictional city of Amiskwaciy “known as Edmonton since 1904,” and was one of the “throwaway people.” She is both a prostitute and Indigenous, and now she’s been found dead in an alley. The police have given up pursuing her case.

It’s up to unlicensed private investigator Hazel Lesage, hired by the Augusts, to find out who killed her.

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Hazel is Anishinaabe, Mi’gmaq, and Polish, (as is Sewell) and like Humane itself, she carefully balances between two worlds. She says, “It’s easier to pass as White, not because I am not true to my Indigenous ancestry, but because it is simply easier to accept the assumption of White than to explain the whole history.” Growing up outside of “the rez” in a small redneck town, Hazel was “nearly the only colour.”

In Amiskwaciy, Hazel is grateful for the anonymity of the city: “Nish-beige is as normal as anything here. People whose heritage is all kinds of mix live here now. I don’t stick out…I was a bit puzzled by the lightness I felt. Took me years to work it out; what I felt was the loss of the burden of being the Other.”

After a string of more recent and equally gruesome murders, Hazel defends the missing and murdered people the police and media have written off. Sewell’s vivid characters and their relationships piece together the story from various points of view, supplemented by an omniscient perspective that takes the form of an Indigenous spirit. It has its own voice throughout the text, reminiscent of Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water, and it oversees events, highlighting key elements for the reader.

Inspired by true events, Humane is a mystery deliberately intended to invoke the headlines about the thousands of missing and murdered Indigenous

women and girls in Canada who have gone without justice since the late 80s. These are the women who have disappeared along the Highway of Tears, Yellowhead highway, and from many city streets. They are acknowledged in marches on February 14th, at Sisters in Spirit events on October 4th, and in the national inquiries that so far have not brought answers.

Wayne Arthurson, author of the Leo Desroches novels, says, “In Humane, Sewell brings an Indigenous and poetic sensibility to the crime novel… following the contours of Westernbased novels, but infusing it with Indigenous storytelling and allegory.”

Sewell’s hybrid approach can challenge readers unaccustomed to this interplay, but will reward persistent sleuths who want to know not only whodunnit, but why.

Sewell is an award-winning multigenre writer/performer whose work includes Ancestors & Elders, Reconciling Edmonton, Braidings, Honour Songs, and Heart of the Flower. As Edmonton’s 4th Poet Laureate, she created and curated The Poem Catcher public art installation. She founded and ran Big Sky Theatre, producing original Indigenous theatre with urban youth. She is a founding member of the Stroll of Poets Society.

Sewell has published two poetry collections Fifth World Drum and For the Changing Moon and her essays and articles have appeared in Eighteen Bridges, Alberta Views, New Trail, Write Magazine, Legacy and various scholarly publications. Humane was performed with a 24-piece orchestra and multilingual poetry and song showcases when it debuted. Sewell was MacEwan University’s 2019-20 Writer-in-Residence. She served on the National Council of the Writer’s Union of Canada as Indigenous Member Advocate and chaired the Equity Task Force.

George F. Walker’s Kill the Poor is a one-act play that speaks to these Covid times, successfully illustrating modern economic struggle and class disparity.

As with his previous works The Chance and Fierce, two others in his Parkdale Palace trilogy, Walker once again creates characters who are struggling and go to extreme lengths to survive.

Kill the Poor George F. Walker TalonBooks, 2019 224 pages isbn: 978-1-77201-2392 $24.95 Reviewed by Soren Van Helm

Lacey is unemployed following a traffic collision that resulted in a serious injury and her brother’s death. She barely scrapes by in a dingy apartment with her underpaid, overstressed husband Jake, a garage worker who resorts to dealing drugs to pay for mounting expenses and bills, much to Lacey’s chagrin. The unsettling spectre of eviction and homelessness hangs in the balance, a slip that they have experienced before.

Harry, a former lawyer, has been disbarred for embezzling estate money to pay for rent and food. Here Harry comments on his disbarment: “I handled her estate. She intended to leave all her money to animal shelters in memory of the 26 Pomeranians that had so enriched her life, which I think is a fine idea, but not when your young lawyer is struggling to pay his rent or even eat properly.” In lieu of the legal profession, Harry has become the apartment custodian in the same building where Lacey and Jake live.

In financial ruins and despair, these three concoct a scheme to extort the wealthy Albanian mafia lord Mr. Davis, also the other party involved in the traffic collision.

Walker is exceptional at creating realistic characters and giving them voice. The conversations illustrate their desperation and Lacey is as frayed as Jake is exasperating. For example, Lacey prefaces her comments before dinner by scolding Jake: “All those ingredients, how much did they cost? ... You could have just made potato soup or something to save money.”

Walker’s usual unsentimental style and social commentary, so apropos for the Covid moment we’re living in, packs a punch for a one-act production.

These are people who resemble those we know and love, and he gives them dialogue that’s plausible and distinctive.

Walker’s archetypal characters are plausible yet distinctive, regular people down on their luck who are forced to take drastic action to survive. He asks, “What the hell is wrong with you people?” They are still guided by a moral code and personal principle. He invites us to ask: What lengths would we go to get by?

George F. Walker’s career spans five decades in the Canadian arts. His style is described as “[p]art Kafka, part Lewis Carroll, Walker’s distinctive, gritty, fast-paced tragicomedies illuminate and satirize the selfishness, greed, and aggression of contemporary urban culture.” Walker has written more than 30 plays including Filthy Rich, Zastrozzi, Theatre of the Film Noir, Criminals in Love, Better Living, Nothing Sacred, Love and Anger, Escape from Happiness, Tough!, Suburban Motel, Heaven, And So It Goes, and Dead Metaphor.

Walker’s plays have had more than 700 productions around the world and been translated into French, German, Hebrew, Turkish, Polish, Hungarian, Romanian, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, and Japanese.

During a 10-year absence from theatre, he wrote mainly for television including the series Due South, The Newsroom, This is Wonderland, The Line, and Living in Your Car. Awards and honours include The Order of Canada, two Governor General’s Awards, five Dora Mavor Moore Awards, nine Chalmers Canadian Play Awards, and the Governor General’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

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reveals veins that resemble / rivers on a map. I trace them, trying to locate / a less invasive vascularity.”

A Natural History explores our relationship to the earth with great intimacy and a tactile sense of flora and fauna beneath our feet, as if lying on the grass, summer sweat evaporating as autumn approaches. Logan connects physical form with the natural soul: “Chest hair furls the top of a white T-shirt. / Bunches of unkempt grass / spew over a bleached fence.”

A Natural History of Unnatural Things Zachari Logan Radiant Press, 2021 96 pages isbn: 978-1-98927-453-8 $20.00 Reviewed by Brennan O’Toole

Zachari Logan’s debut collection of poetry, A Natural History of Unnatural Things, explodes onto the page with vibrant colour like a flower in bloom, sensual, heartbreaking, an examination of touch and movement.

In “Invasive Species:” Tiny pebbles and glass embedded / on my knee, braille for ever-present / timelines. My skin

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Logan says in his artist’s statement that he “evolves a visual language that explores the intersections between masculinity, identity, memory, and place.” He investigates the body exclusively to mine both place and experience. “Logan re-wilds his body as a queer embodiment of nature. This narrative shift engages ideas of beauty, mortality, empirical explorations of landscape, and overlapping art-historic motifs.”

His poems are startling and unlikely portraits of contemporary masculinity; bouquets of flowers replace facial hair as Logan invokes his own queerness in many of the poems.

These expressions of femininity, in concert with masculinity, weren’t as accepted when Logan was a teen living in Saskatchewan.

Reaching this freedom of expression required years of hidden acts that lead to brave discoveries: “I remember sex for the first time with another boy on a gravel bed;” “Dried semen and tiny pebbles stuck to my leg;” and “Everyone wants to be here during the time I’d like / most to leave.”

This bluntness leaves an impression, but it’s Logan’s ability to move from the hyperreal to the abstract that makes his work so impressive. Poems with a slower pace offset those with linguistic velocity, short bursts of poetry under ten lines breathe oxygen onto the building flame.

In the poem “The Comet” this is on full display: “Infinity; ocular ribbon. / No voice-over / placebo.” Short, sweet, kinetic. “Horror Poem: Web” is a blow to the poetic solar plexus: “Multi-eyed / panoptic glow. / Arachnid / bowel uncoils fear of / headless progress.”

Poems like these burst with energy alongside longer narratives to maintain a consistent rhythm across the collection. Logan’s dreamlike scenes suddenly awaken the reader with a slap of unfiltered realism.

Throughout the book, Logan inserts poems about his father’s death. These vignettes culminate in a scene in which Logan stands above his dead father in his hospital bed. Here he grapples with the pain of such deep loss: “It was the moment I felt most animal in my whole life. / And this is what we are.”

He describes the embalming process, the blood flowing into the drain, as he remembers someone no longer there. It hurts to read, but it questions our overly polite attitude to death in a way that is rarely talked about: “Death brings us down off our clouds / says, this is your future. / Fuck you and your thoughts of a harp.”

Logan builds this book as an artist would curate a gallery, each page designed to stop the reader and lure them in for a closer look. Structure and rhythm mimic multimedia visual art, applying texture and perspective. In A Natural History of Unnatural Things Logan has given us something wildly new.

Logan is a Canadian artist who draws, works in ceramics, and has installations in group and solo exhibitions across North America, Europe, and Asia. He has attended residencies in Paris, Tennessee, Calgary, Vienna, London, and nyc. He was artist-in-residence at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection and commissioned to create a work in response to the centenary of Tom Thomson’s death. In 2014, Logan received the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for emerging artists.

The book navigates the complex and often hard-to-swallow truth of mental and chronic illness with acerbic humour. Here is a man desperately trying to reclaim his place in the world while stuck somewhere that separates him from it.

Is This Scary?

Jacob Scheier ecw Press, 2021 76 pages isbn: 978-1-77041-605-5 $19.95 Reviewed by Erika Parsons

“Re: maybe you don’t understand/ I understand. I am here because I want to die,” writes Jacob Scheier in his third book of poetry Is This Scary? The poems are a lament that dives deep into the speaker’s struggles with depression, suicide, anxiety, and chronic illness while in a Toronto psychiatric institution and (occasionally) a Starbucks coffee shop.

The first poem in the book, “Dear Sam, This Isn’t a Suicide Note,” pulls no punches. Between raw descriptions of medications and suicide, Scheier seamlessly blends casual conversation. He refuses to romanticize mental illness and makes explicit there is no triumph, only management. It is a bleak outlook Scheier describes poignantly: “I still don’t have a strong case for you against death, which means I don’t have much of a case for myself either.”

Many of Scheier’s poems have a musicality to them, seen in the book’s eight odes to various medications and songs to the body’s maladies.

Full of lyricism, gentle rhythm, and soft imagery the poem “Ode to Zopiclone” speaks to the effect of this sedative, shifting from sharp consciousness to hazy half-sleep. Each line gives the impression of falling into a fog and “drowning in you, so blue.” It is gently worded, yet hardhitting and introspective.

The poem “Song to the Suicides” further utilizes this melancholic tone, and while it is less song-like than the other odes, the gentle and unstoppable rhythm in each line leans into these bleak undertones.

It emphasizes how those who suffer ideas of suicide often do so in silence and isolation.

“Thanks, but I’d prefer not…” is a phrase that reflects the struggle of trying to help someone who does not want to help themselves. The poem is a song to those who have been lost, and to those who remain to ponder why.

Scheier tackles the difficult subject of suicide and is to be commended for doing so without sugar-coating.

His poem “Metamorphosis” is a short encapsulation of the irreversibility of suicide, told from the speaker’s memory of a friend who jumped into the sea. There is no gentleness to this poem, no flowery prose to explain. It is straightforward, each line short and filled with a sudden urgency: “Velocity, an excuse for the way water betrays.”

Readers aren’t regaled with a story of instant regret or pleas to God, rather Scheier’s refusal to elaborate speaks volumes about how the act of taking one’s own life is felt by the people who are left behind.

Scheier’s poem “To My Friends Who Did Not Visit Me in the Mental Hospital” reads as several smaller poems in an email format, and achingly depicts the isolation that comes with institutionalization and stigma. One can’t help but feel its abandonment and loneliness, especially when he thanks a friend for gifts “dropped at the nursing station as [they] fled.”

Scheier’s evocative prose, exceptional imagery, and his vehement rejection of stereotype, shows that strength can be found in vulnerability, and meaning can be found in the constant and often unrewarded search for personal peace of mind.

Scheier won the 2008 GovernorGeneral’s Literary Award for his first book of poetry More to Keep Us Warm followed by Letters from Brooklyn in 2013. Scheier is also an essayist and journalist who has lived in Istanbul, New York City, Brandon, Yellowknife, and Columbus. His poems have been nominated for a National Magazine Award, longlisted for the cbc Poetry Prize, have appeared in Descant, Geist, and in anthologies in Canada and the United Kingdom.

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CONTRIBUTOR Chris (Seabacola) Beaton is an aspiring Mohawk First Nations writer and storyteller and fourth-year English and Creative Writing student at viu.

This is his second year working on Portal, this time as Managing Editor after being a Script Editor and Portfolio Series Manager for 2021. His poem “Like a Noose” appears in this issue.

Rue Burgoyne-King is a trans, mixed Afro-descendant and settlerEuropean artist and writer. She is in her fourth year of ba with a Creative Writing major and Visual Arts minor. She has won various awards and scholarships, including the 2020 viu President’s Scholarship for Continuing Students, the 2021 Barry Broadfoot Award for Journalism/Creative Nonfiction, and the 2021 create Anti-Racism Arts Festival Award for Performance Arts. “Take Xour Gender and Run” and “Venus Drowning” are her first publications in Portal.

Tammi Carto is a third-year Creative Writing student at viu and a Fiction Editor for Portal this year. Her poem “Inter/section” is her first published work. As a bibliophile, former bookseller, and now writing and publishing student, she is fascinated by the path from author to reader.

Jack Corfield is a third-year Creative Writing and English student at viu working on Portal 2022 as a Poetry Editor and Portfolio team member. On island time, he’s filling his portfolio with literary sci-fi, genre fantasy, and sesquipedalian poetry about space, including “After Abaddon” and “Black Hole,” which are his first publications.

Kaiden Coughlan is a writer and musician attending viu for a ba in English and Creative Writing. His poetry collection A Teenage Boy was released in 2020 by Friesen Press, and he is currently working on a debut novel, Last Online, and two screenplays, Two Old Men Wreaking Havoc and A Girl Named Tuesday. His poem “Life of the Party” is his first in Portal.

Jenna Cronshaw is a third-year Media Studies student at viu. She has a love for documentary-style film photography and is a videographer at The Navigator. Her photos “Hornby Highland” and “Life of an Abandoned Boat” were published in this issue and “Sunshine in a Victoria Backyard,” “Winter Sheds,” “Moments Like This,” and “Peaceful Waters” appeared in Portal 2021.

Kirsten Dayne is a fourth-year Creative Writing major, an aspiring novelist, and a sometimes-artist. “Only Human” is her first published work. She is also the Book Review Editor and a Fiction Editor for Portal 2022. She studied fashion design before realizing writing was her passion.

Zeel Desai is a third-year international student majoring in Creative Writing and Journalism at viu. She is pursuing her dream of becoming a storyteller and this is her first publication. Her interest in reading and writing began when she and her mother visited a run-down library near her home.

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Nature’s Overpass Ashley Smith

BIOGRAPHIES Santiago Dominguez is a third-year History major at viu. He has previously published a short story called “Denial of the Heart” on Vocal.

He won The Bruce Mitchell Memorial Award and the Diachuck History Bursary. He began writing “One Way or the Other” in 2013 and has been editing it ever since.

Luci Edwards is an English major at viu, hoping to pursue graduate studies in mythology and folklore in the context of modern popular culture. “A Different Quiet” is their first publication in the subgenre of cosmic horror.

Susan Garcia is taking classes in Creative Writing, History, and Indigenous Studies at viu after earning a Social Services Worker Certificate from College of the Cariboo and a ba in English from sfu. She has had “Homestead Murder” and “My Mysterious Great-Great Grandma” published in The Trail of 1858: British Columbia’s Gold Rush Past and the article “Upriver Captain, Downriver Family Man” in the journal British Columbia History.

Lisa Kremer is completing an Anthropology honours and Creative Writing minor at viu. In 2020 she was a Nonfiction Editor and Copy Editor for Portal. Her nonfiction, “The Devil Will Have No Part” was featured in Portal 2021 and “Refiner’s Fire” and her poem “No Forwarding Address” appear in this issue. Her article “Childbearing-aged Women in Remote Nepal: Challenges and Considerations” will be published in the summer 2022 edition of Contingent Horizons: The York University Student Journal of Anthropology. She is completing her memoir The Bishop’s Daughter.

Lauryn Mackenzie is in her fourth year of Media Studies at viu. She has had her work featured in the Powell River Peak, The Discourse, and on chly 101.7 fm. She is currently the Associate Editor for The Navigator. She was Content Creation Manager for the podcast Voices of Colour. She was Poetry Editor for Portal in 2020, and Portfolio and Social Media Manager for Portal 2021, as well as co-authoring the interview with Lillian Allen. Her photographs were published in this issue and in Portal 2021.

Sofia Morano is in her fourth year of viu’s ba with a major in English.

“Unmoored” is her first published short story. She has the crew 220 class and Susan Juby to thank for developing this work to its fullest potential.

James O’Reilly is working toward his Bachelor of Design in Graphic Design at viu. In addition to film, art, and design, his chief passion is photography.

He has received the viu Bursary Committee Award, Indspire’s Building Brighter Futures Award, and the EleV Scholarship. His photos “Towing Inc,” “Merv,” and “Never Separate” appear in this issue.

Henry Osborne is a first-year ba student at viu in the Creative Writing program. He likes to write fiction that is sometimes spooky, sometimes funny, and almost always weird. He started writing seriously a year and a half ago when he realized he’d probably die one day. He workshopped “Godzilla Complex” in Susan Juby’s class.

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CONTRIBUTOR Ella Ostrikoff is a second-year bba student at viu majoring in Business Administration with a minor in Marketing. In her spare time, she enjoys taking nature photos. Her photos “Neck Point Park Ocean,” “Triple Peaks Mountain,” “Sunbeam Tofino Mountain,” and “Aerial Tofino Waves” appear in this issue.

Brennan O’Toole is a fourth-year Creative Writing major. His poems “Ghost” and “Snowfall” have been published in Sea & Cedar, and his poem “Her Vivarium” and review of A Natural History of Unnatural Things appear in this issue. He has received the Meadowlark and Rollie Rose Awards, and the Mary Coleman Prize in Lyric Poetry. He is co-Managing Editor of this issue of Portal and was a Poetry Editor and Advertising Manager last year.

He interned at subTerrain in 2021.

Erika Parsons is a third-year Creative Writing major. She is a Poetry Editor as well as a member of the social media team for Portal 2022. Her poem “A Loss for Words” and a review of Is This Scary? are her first published works.

Nittu Prasai was born and raised in Taplejung in the Himalayas of Nepal.

She is now in her second year at viu majoring in Creative Writing. She has studied nonfiction with Susan Juby and Stephen Hume and has attended several workshops and readings around bc. “What Kind of Mother” is her first publication and is part of a memoir in progress.

Isabella Ranallo is a third-year Creative Writing major, minoring in History. She is a Fiction Editor for Portal 2022 and co-wrote the feature on A.F. Moritz, viu’s Gustafson Distinguished Poet, as well as working on the ad team. She is currently the Arts Editor at The Navigator. Her short story “The Journal” was published in In Our Own Teen Voice 2019 and her article “Publishing: A Work in Progress” was published in the bc Federation of Writers’ magazine WordWorks. Her review of We, Jane and photos “Koi Fish Kaleidoscope” and “Centennial Skyscraper” are her first publications in Portal.

Althea Rasendriya is a third-year ba student pursuing a major in Media Studies and a minor in Languages and Culture. Her sketches, drawings, illustrations, storyboards, music, and videos explore various cultures including her home Indonesia. Her works “Ink City,” “Memories of Blue,” and “Imagine Van Gogh” are her first publications.

Natasha Rozmarniewich is a third-year Graphic Design student at viu who has worked as a freelance illustrator for the Nanaimo Beacon and Thrifty Foods. She was a recipient of the McLotto Bursary in 2022. You’ll usually find her walking her dog around the neighbourhood, working at her desk, or selling artwork on Etsy. This is her first year as Designer for Portal. She has published photographic works “Sonder” and “Reststop” in Portal 2020.

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Tree Candy Hannah Willden

BIOGRAPHIES Ashley Smith is a fourth-year ba student majoring in Creative Writing at viu. Her story “Apples and Oranges,” feature article “The First Open Door,” and photos were published in Portal 2021. She was Acquisitions Editor that year and Fiction Editor in 2020. Her nonfiction “Still Life,” and short story “The Whole Truth,” as well as photos appear in this issue. She edited the children’s picture book I Am Everything In Between published by Rebel Mountain Press. She is a copy editor for The Navigator. She received the Barry Broadfoot and Meadowlark Awards.

Sarah Stirling is a filmmaker from Saltair living and working in Vancouver.

She graduated from Vancouver Film School in 2021 where she began writing and pursuing cinematography. Her script “Be My Neighbour” won this year’s Portent Prize.

Soren Van Helm is a fourth-year Creative Writing and French student at viu. For his first year working on Portal, he’s taking on the roles of Script Editor and is a member of the Portfolio and Ad Sales teams. His review of George Walker’s Kill the Poor and photo “Hard Case” are his first publications.

Brendan Wanderer is a fourth-year Creative Writing and Visual Arts student at viu. He graduated with an Honours Diploma in Screen Arts from Nova Scotia Community College. His short film Leave Pizza Here was a selection in the 2016 Atlantic Film Festival. He has a deep love of graphic novels and is writing and illustrating two volumes. His photography and art in this issue include “Electric Neuron” and “Now/Then, Now” respectively, as well as his script “The Talk.” He is the Art Director and a Nonfiction Editor for this issue.

Sophia Wasylinko is a third-year Creative Writing and Journalism student at viu. She is a Poetry Editor and the co-author of this year’s Gustafson Feature for Portal 2022. Her review of The Prairie Chicken Dance Tour appears in this issue. She is the News Editor for The Navigator.

Hannah Willden is a fourth-year English and Creative Writing student at viu who writes nonfiction, short fiction, and poetry. She is a Nonfiction Editor for Portal 2022. Her nonfiction “Split/Second,” short story “A Spoonful of Sugar,” review of Humane, art “A Fish Tale,” and photos “Fluttering Song” and “Tree Candy” appear in this issue.

Patrick Wilson is Wet’suwet’en from Smithers, bc and is in his final year of a ba in Creative Writing. He has published “Spotless” and “Those You Hold” in Portal 2020, and “Raising the Spirits” and “Nenyust’en” in Portal 2021.

His script “Yellowhead” appears in this issue.

Shawnda Wilson is in her fourth year of a Creative Writing degree.

She has been published in The Navigator and has self-published two collections of poetry. One of her stories was featured on the podcast The Stories Less Spoken. She won the Mary Garland Coleman award for lyric poetry in 2021 and opened for Planet Earth Poetry. She is also a visual artist. Her short story, “Reject” appears in this issue of Portal and her poem “Auto/Graphic” was in the 2021 issue.

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share your story All the Quiet Places A Novel

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IRXV] JII MRGPYHIW SRI MWWYI 4VM^I (IEHPMRI 3GX (IXEMPW EX portalmagazine.ca

contributors

Chris (Seabacola) Beaton Rue Burgoyne-King Tammi Carto Jack Corfield Kaiden Coughlan Jenna Cronshaw Kirsten Dayne Zeel Desai Santiago Dominguez Luci Edwards Susan Garcia Lisa Kremer Lauryn Mackenzie Sofia Morano James O’Reilly Henry Osborne Ella Ostrikoff Brennan O’Toole Erika Parsons Nittu Prasai Isabella Ranallo Althea Rasendriya Ashley Smith Sarah Stirling Soren Van Helm Brendan Wanderer Sophia Wasylinko Hannah Willden Patrick Wilson Shawnda Wilson

CAN $10.00 Image by James O’Reilly Design by Nat Rozmarniewich