Monday
Just the perfect sentiment for Father's Day, kiddos.
DADDY'S GIRL
VICE: So it's Father's Day this weekend.
My mom: I guess so.
Have you talked to David lately?
Who's David?
My father.
Oh, David. No. Have you?
No. I didn't think he had a phone.
I don't know that he does.
Well, look. I had a question about him that I wanted to ask you. I was thinking about how when people do a lot of drugs how they usually sit around with the people they're doing the drugs with and talk about the big ideas they have and the big things they're going to do.
Yeah.
So I'm just wondering, what do you think he talked about when he was getting high? What were the things he was gonna do?
I don't recall David ever talking about things he was going to do.
Oh. But I mean, what were his goals?
I have no idea that he ever had any goals.
No goals?
No.
Well what did he enjoy doing?
He played pool. And he went to the horses. And he's like a master whaddayacallit when you can pick the right number combinations to win big money?
I dunno, but he couldn't have been very good at that because otherwise he might have had a pot to piss in, right?
Well it's interesting. He told me that the first time he went to the races--he was a cashier at a deli at the time--he won something like $35,000. And it so scarred him, because when you start out winning like that, for the rest of your life you're going to give it back. And that's exactly what he did. He just kept giving it back. By that stage in his life he was already headed down. He'd already left behind a bad marriage.
What are you talking about? Who was he married to?
I've told you this before. To a woman in Sweden.
Wait . . .
But they were divorced. He led me to understand that it was a marriage of convenience.
So that she could live in the States?
No, the other way around. So that he could stay in Sweden.
He was living in Sweden?
He was eventually deported. Or repatriated.
Because he was broke? Is that some kind of capital offense in Sweden?
Oh no, not at all! It's just that the US doesn't like having to pay to bring their people home--
But why was he deported in the first place?
I have no idea, you'd have to ask him.
But how did he get to Sweden?
You'd have to ask him. Me, I never got answers.
So could I have brothers or sisters?
Sarah, I have no idea.
Yeah. OK. Well, happy Father's Day.
All right dear. You too.
-SARAH STEINBERG
Saturday
by Brandy Ryan
re verse all – jeanette winterson’s
‘cup knife compass remedy’
iii.
The strange thing about learning to look
to watch without living
… is that the eye becomes sharp, sharp
is a slow death
as a blade, and
the basil leaf left on the counter
… We start to see
unused ,
the world
that eyes me
differently, not as
as i peel, smash, and finely mince
an intellectual response, no,
the garlic,
I mean actually see
sliver the red-skinned
it, alive suddenly to
onion, julienne
ugliness and beauty, repelled by banality
(not Julian, a boy i knew once; he played guitar)
instead of habituated to it
this leaf.
The new
cannot command my attention
sight [of] art
as i heat oil
allows … no more blur
i unnotice it,
no more failure
and so its edges indigo in protest
of vision
furl inwards finally it withers to half its size in bloom.
Or, i may look – a fate no different in its inevitability.
CIBC national student loan centre
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perpetually (sometimes petulantly) playing with words, brandy ryan lives in toronto as she considers her next move.
Marcelle V.
There is no womb.