bullpenned

2010-06-21T10:57:00.001-04:00

SPACE! DAD!
by Ian Sullivan Cant & Melissa Bull

2010-06-21T10:56:00.002-04:00

2010-06-21T10:56:00.001-04:00

2010-06-21T10:50:00.005-04:00

Sarah Steinberg let me repost this piece from Vice mag.
Just the perfect sentiment for Father's Day, kiddos.

DADDY'S GIRL

Just because my dad was never around because he was a drug-addled loser doesn't mean that he didn't teach me a couple of things. My dad (or "Dave" as he had me call him) taught me that jeans were made for wiping your dirty hands, that the word "toilet" should be pronounced like "troy-let" and how to play Ms. Pac-Man for at least half an hour on one quarter. I was thinking about calling him up to ask him a few questions about his life but then I realized that I didn't have his number. So I called my mom instead.

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

2010-06-05T19:14:00.003-04:00

SPACE! DAD!
by Melissa Bull & Ian Sullivan Cant

2010-06-05T19:14:00.001-04:00

2010-06-05T19:13:00.000-04:00

2010-06-05T19:09:00.010-04:00

TAYLOR BROWN-EVANS are free range eggs allowed to move around the womb?

9 minutes ago

You like this.

· Comment ·

Marcelle V.

There is no womb.

Saturday at 20:36

· Comment ·

2010-06-05T19:05:00.001-04:00

EMERSON
by Dan Svatek

2010-06-05T19:03:00.001-04:00

2 poems
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

This post-amount

account Revision first revises into how

to divide infinite yielding to reckon the Wilde, number & divide their expense what of the women restrictions from discovering Revision women I could write begrudge silent-speaking—the truth the end of inquiring As a result revise the terms the letter confirm you the world Information time
I take not taken to steal and fly As the letter principle check that my scalp hadn’t melted write to see I write close start at the end to write a world pushed into have there is nothing enter stuck and catalogued with me deliciously unknown I seek letter outside terms terms unchanged holding placing open please the air and nothing chance to be other, to be either, to be ether (E)(vers 4.2) not invoiced ink put hooks in your mouth between and local and ~~reckoned~~, ~~accounted~~, ~~due~~,

record.

perpetually (sometimes petulantly) playing with words, brandy ryan lives in toronto as she considers her next move.

2010-05-27T11:34:00.008-04:00

show details 04/09/2008 

The barrista has the same cologne as you. She smudged it all over the lid of my allongé.

OLIVIA
- Show quoted text -

HENRY0245

Journal entry for September 4, 2008:Told I smell like a female barrista.
Skipped dinner to sob.
2300mg thorazine.

- Show quoted text -

|

show details 04/09/2008 

NEWSFLASH: FEMALE BARRISTA SMELLS LIKE SEXY MAN!

OLIVIA

- Show quoted text -

HENRY0245

show details 04/09/2008

AP Canada: Female impersonator found, arrested, found sexy.

show details 04/09/2008

2010-05-26T17:16:00.006-04:00

MIXED MEDIA
works by Clea Haugo

2010-05-26T17:14:00.005-04:00

2010-05-26T16:47:00.020-04:00

A little Q an A
with Clea Haugo

What are you working on right now?
I am currently working on a series of mixed media portraits of victorian era ladies set in modern day surroundings; these are inspired by family photographs and early photographic techniques such as composites, dioramas and silhouettes.

Tell me about the vintage inspiration.
I incorporate a lot of vintage imagery and text into my drawings, paintings, and illustration--I am especially interested in the aesthetics and graphic design of vintage magazines; the simplicity, honesty, and lack of pretense.

What's your favourite era?
It's hard for me to pick just one favourite era... I am really fascinated by the 1930s--times were desperate and yet people were creative, it was the Jazz Age and people danced and sang and watched musicals! And I think there are similarities to today--the economic depression, markets crashing and job shortages.

*

Clea Haugo has a degree in Art History and Fine Arts from Concordia University, and is also a graduate of Algonquin College's Applied Museum Studies. She's had internships at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, at The Field Museum in Chicago, and at the McCord Museum in Montreal. Clea currently works as a writer/cataloguer for a fine art and antiques auction house. To see more of her work, visit factorycentral.ca. You can also buy up her cards at General 54.

2010-05-26T11:23:00.003-04:00

--from Gus--

I have been moving a lot. Lifting heavy boxes all day. Last night I did a load at midnight. Then I filled the bathtub with cold water and got in it. I make it sound instantaneous but it actually took a long time for me to get in it actually.

2010-05-19T11:51:00.003-04:00

SPACE! DAD!
by Ian Sullivan Cant
and Melissa Bull

2010-05-19T11:51:00.001-04:00

2010-05-19T11:50:00.001-04:00

2010-05-13T18:34:00.001-04:00

we're all connected
by gabe foreman

(click to enlarge)

2010-05-13T16:21:00.007-04:00

E R R A T I C A

by Nick McArthur

A Brief Monologue Wherein Our Hero, a Formerly Comatose and Wrongfully Accused Young Patient, Makes Good his Escape from Sayreville County Hospital, Displaying at Once Resourceful Cunning and Multiple Behavioral Symptoms of Having Sustained a Massive Head Injury

Greetings, Mr. Worthington! How are you feeling today? Good? I hope the answer is “good.” My name is Samuel Curtis and as you’ve probably guessed from my stethoscope and wristwatch I am a real doctor gainfully employed at this hospital. I will be attending to your case this afternoon. Please disrobe and lay face-down on the table while I look in this cupboard for a medical chart (i). Help yourself to a paper dress. The lollipops are delicious.

Now before we get started, you may or may not have noticed that aside from my stethoscope and high quality wristwatch I am dressed, let’s say, sort of atypically for a practitioner. This is entirely for your comfort, Mr. Worthington. Recent studies have shown that a doctor’s good health and professional success can be off-putting for some patients, especially those inclined to bouts of jealousy. These jealous bouts can adversely affect a patient’s willingness to open up, inhibiting channels of communication, and ultimately delaying the attainment of a useful diagnosis— sometimes with catastrophic results. According to these studies, a less professional appearance on the part of a practitioner can foster healthy relations between him and his patients. You will notice, for example, that I am not wearing a lab-coat or grasping onto a clipboard. I am dressed in a hospital gown identical to your own— my feet clad in slippers, my face unshaven and legs exposed. These are all tokens of my sympathy for your illness, Mr. Worthington. They are the symbolic evidences of our shared mortality, our mutual vulnerability, our unbreakable bond as diagnostician and diagnosed. Consider them a gesture of equalization. And please, Mr. Worthington, don’t think of me as superior, for we are embarked on this together just as sailors in a squall or as soldiers in a foxhole— companions united until the bitterest of ends. Do you understand what I’m saying, Mr. Worthington? It is pivotal that you trust me and that I in turn trust you. This is the reason that I’m dressed the way I am— as a patient recovering from extensive cerebral hemorrhaging. Can you comprehend all this, Mr. Worthington? Can you understand what I am trying to communicate?

I’ll assume from your speechless terror that you cannot.

Excuse me one second while I lock the door…

Mr. Worthington, I believe I have surmised the reason for your discomfort, and I suppose that I owe you some kind of an apology. Obviously, my endeavors to put you at your ease have failed; my feigned congeniality has failed; these illusions of bad health have failed. You’re as alienated now by my paper gown and slippers as you ever could have been by a three-piece Armani suit. What is worse, Mr. Worthington, is that your attention (I can tell) has by this point been drawn to the upper-leftmost quadrant of my skull. Please do not be alarmed! It is my duty to emphasize, here, that the festering contusion which you believe you see is entirely an illusion— a synthetic wound designed to bring us together; to render us less like doctor and patient and more like two commiserating friends. I can see now what a terrible error in judgment this has been. You are obviously frightened. Perhaps if I were to— how should I say it— unveil for you the methods of my dissemblance— perhaps then your reservations would be assuaged? Please, Mr. Worthington, indulge me for one second:

The area right here resembling exposed skull is, as you will notice on further inspection, nothing but plaster bandages carefully shaped and painted. Go ahead and touch it, Mr. Worthington. Doesn’t it feel real? Doesn’t it feel like genuine exposed skull, throbbing below your fingertips? Please do not be disgusted. Nothing you’re experiencing is real. Those secretions you’re encountering are also synthetic.

And what about the fissure? At the center of the plaster, can you distinguish a long crack? A narrow little cavity? A hole that extends straight down to the interior? If you hazard a second look you will no doubt catch just the faintest glimpse of grayish pink brain, nestled below the surface. It is nothing but smoke and mirrors, Mr. Worthington! A little black paint for the illusion of depth; a little pink polish for the temporal lobe, and voila— a thoroughly convincing cranial fracture! Go ahead and get a pinky in there… that’s right, keep going… keep going… okay, that’s far enough.

Now, Mr. Worthington, have I thoroughly calmed your fears? Are your uncertainties abated? Your questions answered? Your prejudices quelled? As you can tell I am a man of science— abreast in every way of the latest techniques. My approach may be unorthodox, my demeanor may be odd, and I may smell unpleasantly of uncured ham— but I am nevertheless your doctor. And after everything I’ve shown you I hope you’re ready to trust me. I hope that you’re ready to begin the examination and move forward in our friendship. Are you, Mr. Worthington? Are you ready to trust again? Are you ready at last to let yourself be vulnerable?

Mr. Worthington, I have with me a sedative to dispel whatever lingering feelings of anxiety you may possess. I normally wouldn’t insist but— given your initial wariness— this may be the only way for us to secure accurate data. If you trust me as your doctor and have faith in my techniques, I will administer this needle before continuing your examination. If not, I will leave you in peace to locate another practitioner. The decision is yours.

But I should warn you, Mr. Worthington— there is a small chance that the sedative in question will present certain undesirable side-effects. You may feel disoriented. Your mouth might become dry. You may twitch uncontrollably. After a few minutes of these initial effects, you may experience various paranoid hallucinations. Just as an example, you may imagine that I’m stealing your clothes and rifling through your wallet— leaving you here in a state of prostrate nakedness. Possibly, these paranoid hallucinations will occur with such galvanising vividness that you will suddenly feel compelled to punch me in the throat. I urge you to resist this compulsion. It is important you remember that I am your doctor, and that I am only here to help. I am not here to run off with your clothes like some desperate, hunted person. Because I am not a desperate, hunted person. I am a doctor. I am here to help. I am here to help you with your illnesses, right now.

So, what will it be, Mr. Worthington? Will you take the sedative? Have you decided to take my advice? Have you decided to trust me?

(i) An excerpt from Mr. Worthington’s medical chart, located several days later by police investigators:

Patrick Worthington

DOB: 10/11/1959

03/14/2016

PHYSICIAN: Samuel “Wallaby” Curtis

PHYSICAL EXAMINATION:

VITALS: Still vital.

SKIN: White.

Head, Eyes, Ears, Nose, and Throat: One of each. Except for the ears. And the eyes. And the… nostrils?

CHEST: Present.

CARDIAC: Super.

BREASTS: In the A range, I suppose.

RECTOVAGINAL: Definitely recto.

UTERINE: This may be the wrong chart.

MENSTRUAL: This is almost definitely the wrong chart.

LABIAL: Where do we keep the other charts? Is there a cabinet for men? By which I don’t mean a cabinet filled with tiny little men, but rather a cabinet filled medical charts designed for regular sized men, with regular sized ailments. And where would we keep such a cabinet, if we had one?

EXTREMITIES: Good.

NEUROLOGIC: Very good.

NODES: Very, very good.

SPINAL: Very, very, very good…

Nick McArthur's first book, Short Accounts of Tragic Occurances, was published by DC Books last year. You'll want to read it.

2010-05-13T16:11:00.003-04:00

X-FIGHTERS OPENING EVENT

by Dan Svatek

2010-05-13T16:09:00.002-04:00

unpublished excerpts
from The Book of Pets

by Eugene Ostashevsky

6. The Mosquito

Puncturing skin

and drawing blood in

makes your mind go ZIZZZ,

But—alas!—

that way you can catch

a severe disease.

14.

Octopus Earl

Hugged the drowning girl.

17.

Three elderly vultures

Purchased new dentures.

Empowered, they carry on

Tearing carrion.

18.

Quick! Maul the koala

Before it holler!

21. The Paper Box

There’s an ox

In my paper box.

L.

Little bunny rabbit

Met a raccoon, rabid.

Now there's no more bunny,

And you think it's funny.

*

Eugene Ostashevsky is a Russian-born American poet from New York City. His books include the poetry collection Iterature and a volume of Russian 1930s writings in translation called OBERIU: An Anthology of Russian Absurdism.

2010-05-13T15:56:00.004-04:00

ODE TO BOUDIN
by Kevin Young

You are the chewing gum
of God. You are the reason
I know that skin
is only that, holds
more than it meets.
The heart of you is something
I don't quite get
but don't want to. Even
a fool like me can see
your broken
beauty, the way
out in this world where most
things disappear, driven
into ground, you are ground
already, & like rice
you rise. Drunken deacon,
sausage's half-brother,
jambalaya's baby mama,
you bring me back
to the beginning, to where things live
again. Homemade saviour,
you fed me the day
my father sat under flowers
white as the gloves of pallbearers
tossed on his bier.
Soon, hands will lower him
into ground richer
than even you.

For now, root of all
remembrance, your thick chain
sets me spinning, thinking
of how, like the small,
perfect, possible, silent soul
you spill out
like music, my daddy
dead, or grief,
or both -- afterward his sisters
my aunts dancing
in the yard to a car radio
tuned to zydeco
beneath the pecan trees.

*

From Meatpaper, Your Journal of Meat Culture, Issue 4, Summer 2008.

2010-05-13T15:55:00.000-04:00

SPACE! DAD!
by Ian Sullivan Cant
and Melissa Bull

2010-05-13T15:52:00.003-04:00

2010-05-13T15:47:00.001-04:00

2010-05-13T15:02:00.005-04:00

TERRITORY OR A WOMAN LION

by Rick Benson

"Which one of you filthy pigs left this pot in the sink?” Lorie holds up the oatmeal pot that Evan just used to cook our breakfast in.

“Well I did but we’re not finished eating yet,” Evan says, head down.

“You little pigs know better than to leave a dirty pot in my sink. Get over here and clean it.”

Her skin stretches across her face as the tension builds up in her wrinkly body. She looks like a bat. She reminds me of the junkies hanging around Prince George when she gets like that.

“You useless little assholes,” she says. “Every day I have to retrain you, retrain you, retrain you.”

Suddenly my sister Marilyn stands up from the table. We wonder what she’s about to do. Lorie turns around and stares her right in the eye, right. I’ve never seen anything like that before, except for on the animal channel when 2 male lions fight for their territory or a woman lion.

“You know you don’t have to yell like that. We’re just kids,” Marilyn says.

Lorie steps towards Marilyn. Evan and I slide out of our chairs and make a break for it. We hide around the kitchen door.

“What did you say? I thought I heard something,” Lorie says.

My sister puffs out her chest. “I said. You don’t have to talk to us like were animals. We’re just kids.” Lorie takes a few steps closer in reaching distance and extends her pointing finger out to Marilyn’s chest.

“You… you don’t talk to me like that, young lady.” Lorie says. “You don’t have the right to speak to me at all you little bitch.”

I stood for years outside that kitchen to see if my sister would finally tell her how it was. “I just don’t understand why you have to be such a cunt to us all the time,” my sister says.

Lorie lunges in for the moment we’ve all been waiting for. She leans in and shoves both arms hard into my sister’s chest and throws her against the kitchen cupboards. My sister gets up and shakes her hair. She raises her fist, holding it just right like my brother had taught me that day in the shop. She hits Lorie square in the face.

My stepmother flies back a couple steps and crumples against the counter.

Marilyn, red-faced and rushing with adrenaline, looks over at us. “Come on guys,” she says as she catches her breath. “I’ll give you a lift to school.”

Manton, Evan and I hurry outside to my sister’s car. My sister gets in and says nothing. She starts the engine and we begin to pull out the driveway and onto the dirt road.

Wanna bowl cut? See Mister Benson about that.

2010-04-19T16:11:00.001-04:00

2010-04-09T16:37:00.004-04:00

EMERSON
by Dan Svatek

2010-04-09T16:28:00.002-04:00

IN PLACE OF PERSEPHONE
by Penn Kemp

Here I hide in darkness,
sullenly squeezing red
pomegranate seeds.

There was a field of flowers,
viper's bugloss, blue and red.
Their pink buds brighten crimson,
violet and then deep blue.

Sometime I will return.
Not now. Too much hurt
reverberates the will.
The bright sky shut my eyes.

The mothers still curse me with sharp
insatiable teeth, hissing through gaps.
His mother. Hers. Her. And likely yours.
The generations swell enraged.

I chew the pomegranate slowly.
No gaps in my teeth. Here I am
young. I am beautiful. Eating
this fruit I am almost inviolate.

I am the unfading flower.
I disappear half a year.
They seek me out. Close.
I am in. Closer. Closet.

The power grows in me.
The will to be different
from them. To effect
change.

I become what I'm called.
Rage prances, it dances
with jabs neat and sharp.

I don't know for how long
before the red bull roars.

The sweet surge rises,
floods till it's over.

Power spent, futile.
Ineffectual. In effect.

Ranting in the wrong ears.
Pluto never listens.

from Binding Twine.

2010-04-09T16:26:00.003-04:00

FARE TRADE
by Penn Kemp

I would eat local food only were it not for temptation.
A green invitation of open avocado in emerald halves.
An alluring variety of mango hot to eye, cool to tongue.

The seduction of dark chocolate.
The slurped fulfillment in oyster.
The simple necessity of rice.

Otherwise, I would be content with my yard's fall produce.
But having tasted the world's fare, how to return unjaded
to simple pleasures that this ground offers? Beans.
Corn. Squarsh. Corn. Beans. The tree sisters thrive.

Yes, I will eat local food mostly. Except for. Except for...
Accept. Not many claim carrots for their snack. But banana.
Or chocolate. No chicory compares to café au lait. Ole!
Import coffee; import tea! On to political rant:
Our food too cheap, our farmers ruined.
Our eyes closed, we rest easy, spoiled ripe fruit in the docks,
turning sleepy to sun-rotten. Given so much, we reach for more
even when over full. Poems break off as the lunch bell rings.

*

Fare Trade is presented in Penn Kemp's DVD, Luminous Entrance: a sound opera for climate action, which was performed at Brescia University College this year. It can be heard on www. chrwradio.com/talk/gatheringvoices.

Penn Kemp is a novelist, playwright, poet, sound-poet based out of Toronto. Check her out: www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/kemp.

2010-03-31T17:38:00.008-04:00

from QUANTUM CHAOS & POEMS:
A MANIFEST (O) ATION

by Cara Benson

Why a poem.

Why not:

Waste of time, energy, materials
Distraction from the real business of living
Cannot emulate reality -- nature's knock-off
Only emulates...
Engenders alienation and obfuscation
Poor man's philosophy
Mother will worry for your future
It will upset the status quo
Fosters solipsism
Fosters elitism
Fosters confidence to write in anyone with an ex-boyfriend, a
mother, or a therapist (it's a given if subject possess all three)
Doesn't sell product
Is barely product itself
BORING!
Unsuccessful attempts at escapism (TV = better)
Difficult / impossible to quantify
Breed flies in bottles*
Weren't those anarchy black coats reading Bukowski or
somebody other like that?
(your reason here________________)
(and maybe here________________________, too)

*(Wittgenstein was said to have thought much philosophy was generating its
own conundrums to solve. Philosophers were not necessarily brighter than most
folks, merely more capable of trapping themselves in linguistic confusion. It was
a matter of, he said, "language gone on holiday." He believed it the philosopher's
duty to "show the fly out of the bottle"; to relieve the mind of confusion.)

George Oppen:
A simple poetic undertaking: to see if life is livable,
to make life livable. Without lying.

Jack Kerouac:
I myself have difficulty covering up my bullshit lies.

*

Quantum Chaos & Poems was published by BookThug in 2008. Cara Benson's latest collection, a series of prose-poems, is called (MADE). She talks about it here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTVgNNtmPGY.

Cara lives in NY State, not city, without a TV.

2010-03-31T09:57:00.007-04:00

DANCE PARTY FRIDAY!
by Zoe Page

It's Friday night so they’re throwing a dance party in the Mile End for specific people. They do this often, mostly on Fridays. I’m specific, so I go, most always. Where else am I going to get to be specific, like, really specific, flamboyantly specific? All of my specific friends are going to be there, being specific. I feel obligated to go.

Sometimes I wish I wasn’t specific so I could just go to any party, or, truthfully, so I wouldn’t have to go to any parties at all, let alone specific ones. I hate parties, but I feel obligated to go. Plus, I’m lonely. I don’t think that comes with being specific, but the posters for the party tell me that this is the best place to get with specific people, so I go, most always.

At home I put on my red shiny vest and yesterday’s underwear because it’s the sexiest. It’s just plain white cotton but that definitely beats all the other ones. I clean my room just in case, purposely leaving the collage-in-progress, just so.

The nice thing about these specific parties is that I don’t have to shave my armpits, or wear makeup or high heels. I don’t have to feel shame for wearing a sports bra. Radical specificity officially promotes saying “fuck you” to patriarchal beauty standards. In fact, I feel obligated to feel proud of my mustache, to flaunt my belly fat, so that’s what I’ll try to do, at least for tonight.

It’s a small bar on Parc, where the road is widest, where I always lock my bike across the street and time my jaywalk when the tide of cars is far, far away or when the stoplight is red, so I can close my eyes and walk very, very slowly. I’ve never made it to the other side without getting nervous and opening my eyes.

Once I’m on the curb I’m in a face off -- with the too-bright-hot-pink-tube-lighted sign that never even flickers -- it’s got one sure word it shouts over my silence, so what it says isn’t important, I always lose.

Sometimes I have friends and they’re sitting on the steps outside, but not tonight. Just the same smoke-talkers shivering in T-shirts, having heart to hearts and watching me watch them. I might know some of them from somewhere, but they wouldn’t let on. I kick dust and go for the stairs.

Inside the heat frosts my glasses. Arms pull me towards the cashbox, where I’m stamped. A shiny sea of torsos, open mouths and closed eyes, shove-heave through the crowd holding beers like fragile children above their heads. Sex organs bounce in crotch-ripped jeans between bass blasts and hand claps. Everyone seems to be trying to get somewhere else than where they’re standing. The DJ ching chings alone in the corner wearing duct tape pasties, smiling. She looks like she might be having fun.

Someone spills warm beer down my back and I am flung towards the washroom. The toilet has no seat cover, so I take my pants down to sit on it. Oh well I think, even though I’m not here to pee.

The party is muffled, and the stall is a teleport. I close my eyes and my mind travels to memories of other places I’d rather have never been.

My second grade Spanish teacher, Senorita Summers sits on the edge of the school playground at recess, flaunting her pregnant belly like an A on a spelling test. She was really pretty. Pretty like a cabbage patch doll. All the girls stop playing tag and run over to pet the imaginary fetus, a princess shining bright with mucus and blood. I always believed that beneath their cooing voices, and eyes saucy with sisterhood, the girls were conspiring against me. Alas, what they didn’t know, I remember thinking, was that it was in fact a dodgeball under Senorita’s shirt. But I keep that to myself. I don’t know… what made me think of this.

I travel to the conversation I had with that girl I met at the protest today.

“Global warming exists, and it sucks.”

“Yeah, I agree, like, whoa.”

“I totally feel like we have an affinity! Do you totally feel like we have an affinity? I totally feel like we have an affinity! Why? Because you’re wearing that headband with a bike wheel and a heart and not only do I like hearts and not only do I like to bike, but I also think it means you’re a dyke.” And then we held hands and walked off into the sunset, towards a post-penetration anarchist utopia.

Back in the stall I wonder if that really happened, or if it’s just in my mind. Then someone’s banging on the door. Maybe they need to pee, or make out, or wallow in self-pity. I realize I’m wasting my time, I only get to be specific ever so often. I feel obligated to leave the washroom, and go dance. Soon I will have to face the throngs of sweaty bodies, people with just as much torment as me, but who dress better, and who aren’t afraid to bury it in the lips of a familiar stranger or crush it in the space between pants flies, and plus they hide it better too.

Zoe Page is a Montreal activist and poet who organizes at the 2110 Centre for Gender Advocacy and the Union for Gender Empowerment.

Check her out in the Matrix 85 New Feminisms online supplement: www.matrixmagazine.org/2010/02/radical-vulvas.

2010-03-18T18:39:00.001-04:00

SPACE! DAD!
by Ian Sullivan Cant & Melissa Bull

2010-03-18T18:37:00.002-04:00

*

I don't understand why this picture is smaller than the others either.

2010-03-18T10:15:00.014-04:00

BECAUSE LOVE LEADS TO BUDDIES
by Mat Laporte

(click to enlarge)

*

I live on rue Laporte. Or avenue. But Mat lives in Toronto, so. Mat just started this: www.fernohouse.com. Ferno House is a brand new publishing house based in Toronto, Ontario, committed to designing and printing hand-made, beautiful chapbooks and full-length collections of fiction and poetry. Also you can download his interview with Jan Zwicky for The Puritan. Just Google him up. It's there.

2010-03-07T15:35:00.012-05:00

FOOD IN TRANSIT
by Alex McIntosh

Plastic Pies

The lack of garbage cans in the cities of Japan is likely linked to the fact that no one eats on the street. Frowned upon, say the guidebooks. Food is consumed sur place even if it means hurriedly swallowing a proffered sample at a food hall, or chugging a drink by the vending machine. There is no roaming about with coffee cup in hand. Tourists thus find themselves carrying small accumulations of refuse in search of an appropriate receptacle, and think twice about the barbaric act of eating a clementine in a public park.

Recently back from the future, Alex McIntosh considers the lobster delectable.

2010-03-04T17:15:00.002-05:00

VACATIONLAND
by David Bradford

Esther’s Cornwallian grandmother feeds me a canned mess of apricot and peaches and cottage cheese. She sits and watches me suck it down slowly, watches me texting my arrival at the Oceanview Cottage. Esther texts “Finally come to rescue me from my family yet, princess?” I text her “Granny is feeding me.” She suggests she might rush back and try and save me from being poisoned, which is melodramatic and silly and makes me smile. I and her Mummama discuss her potentially broken rib and the impertinent worries of her family, the moss-green Subaru she was forced to leave at home. I concur. We discuss the superior mileage on my borrowed Corolla and she is much satisfied. She is not one to mention its pretty candy-apple color. She says “Sour” and I say “Cream” and I knock over a glass of water. I speckle the Maine sun beaming in with that spilt sparkle and she laughs so I do too. We mop it up together and she says “It’s ok” and “You know, aren’t there a lot of black folks on TV this convention week?” and I assume this is what Esther meant when she described her as inappropriate. I assume she was not informed. So I slowly shut my mouth and she kindly invites me to walk over to the beach, to leave her to her rib and I am much obliged and thankful and say “Thanks.”

Maine is, like, not “Live Free or Die.” Maine is a lobster roll wonderland of unlocked doors and cruiser bikes, Dutchman and Shooting Star, discarded sandals entrusted to the sand-glittered dead-end walks to the beach, kept safe by the ever-pearly white Goose Rocks Beach community. Maine is TRU BLU in square indigo Massachusetts license plate letters. Salt-bleached whites and blue skies. “Vacationland,” cursive greens over pure pearly clamshells. Maine makes me grateful for my girlfriend’s blue hair. I’m walking up the dead end towards the shore and she pulls up and gets out of her mother’s white station wagon. We cross a guy, who looks like Goose Rocks’ own token Sahid from Lost, on the seaside road. We nod and smile. So does he, warmly. My wise black and white ambiguity tells me he sees himself. Another other. The “other” is close enough. His smile breaks as soon as we pass by.

Hindu or not, I am American. Enough to be a little blasé in regards to my suburban Victorian home just outside of Milford, CT. I too did not see the point of little league. I too could hit. As cute as the town might have been I am willing to accept it as the prolapsed epicenter of collegiate drug distribution in this here New England. I am grateful, but peeved by the ease of access a resident of Milford has to Xanax. I am American enough to be tired. I am blasé enough to be relieved, albeit un-staring, when I see a white blue-haired girl emerge in a pair of NPS boots from a white Subaru and lock hands with what may be a lighter version of a Ferris Bueller à la Bollywood crossing the street. I too crave hamburgers. I imagine square patties and pickle sliced bacon wonders like every other non-vegan collegian. My parents are Roger and Maude, very formerly Rajesh and Madhoo, and their favorite restaurant is the Olive Garden. They are Episcopalian. I’m American and I sigh a little when a Maine granny with a turkey sandwich in one hand sniffs a bit at me with a tight smile and a “Hello” as we cross paths. I hate Indian food, but I can tell she would beg to differ. I assume cocaine is too far away from this foamy high-tide to inform the meaning of said sniff, and I smile and pop a bit more spicy Oberto Jerky in my mouth, Eat Like An Alpha and keep strutting on. I crest that dead end and hum quietly all-American at the deep. I too laugh and hope for Animal Cops on the tube tonight.

The Animal Channel. It occurs to me, as we witness the Michigan Humane Society removing a pot-belly piglet from a fat lady’s dirty evil uninsulated basement—Esther calls the shots, I don’t. I reach for the remote, knowing she’ll smile and smack my hand away. We and the appalled Humane Society agents are not alone. The mother coyly demands a “nighty cap” and I indulge her. Watching from the foot of the LayZboy that Esther is rocking in, I see her slug the cheap Duty-Free Cutty Sark like banana cough syrup from her lobster mug and smack her lips peacefully. Mummama is dozing in a ball on page 31 of Under the Tuscan Sun, while Cindy watches on and sucks on virgin seltzer. Esther told me, on the walk from the general store, to entirely and strictly avoid offering Cindy a drink. Though she owns horses and seems happy enough now, despite the two childrenless divorces. It worries me how Diff’rent Strokes seems to continually occupy one of the seventeen channels in this state. I’ve decided to avoid the issue altogether and drink up early, head to bed for what I’ve been told will be Quiet Fucking. The mother asks which parent is the black one and I’m used to the question. She says “Ohhh!” pleasantly when I tell her it’s my father. She seems a little dissatisfied when I answer “Where from?” with Pennsylvania instead of Jamaica or Kenya. The beach, I hear, is best at low tides and cold as a block of ice in a recovering alcoholic’s freezer. Cindy’s freezer. I pour myself another pint of Duty-Free Cutty-soda. She is starting to notice.

The girlfriend texted me this morning: “Ura shitball. U know dat right? Who da fuck goes to Maine alone.” It occurs to me that her questions are rhetorical. I’d be mad. Then again, perhaps she meant “spitball” and screwed up without noticing. Perhaps she is being flirty to let me know she’s all freaky hot for me in her dorm room, wallowing in the stench from the moldy towel she left there this summer. I surely hope not.

The beach is an esoteric melting pot of rich Massachussetts folks and middle-class Bostonites. It’s nice. They don’t notice each other too much and everyone says “Hi” and smiles. I brought a men’s magazine I found in the toilet and I try to assimilate a revolutionary abs-routine and the BE A BRO column, all while sinking deeper into the Valium before I go and freeze myself in the water, along with the littler Bostonites. They giggle and act a credible silly and are A-OK. Maude always tells me life is “A-OK.” I’ve decided I might try to find my sloop today. A note in multicolor fridge letters led me to believe a “sloop” would be waiting for me around here, beached at low tide. I wikipediaed it to make sure I was looking for the right thing. I might attempt a few figure eights. I’ll find it. Let it rise as I suck on some cans of beer. My LL Bean cap will surely be needed.

A wife beater tan. The mother insisted I lather up for the sun, and my response was “I’ve had twenty-three years experience at this, I think I know what I’m doing.” The beach is my red burnt shoulders bringing out the Caucasian half in me. Esther’s laugh is not too mean and sweeter every minute. I’ve decided the water is slowly killing me. I am living in tremors. Esther’s legs are like prickly fucking cucumbers, but Esther is at home like a seal and I keep her close. Full bellied little fuckers run in circles spouting salt like fountains, wandering farther and farther from mom and dad. There is more pointing and awing than I would have ever assumed and Esther and her blues get it all. She floats in the attention like seaweed and I tickle her like tiny nameless fish under water. I am looking forward to the urine-warm pools in the low-tide glare and I await them like happy hour. I tickle her like the deep sea and she squeals a little louder.

The 99 is like a restaurant-island in a strip mall parking lot. There are ninety-nine reasons painted on the walls inside, protruding from what used to be reason numero uno: things were ninety-nine cents. “Always enough for a doggy bag at the 99”—reason 41. I’m trying to order a hamburger. From route 9 to route 1 and twenty minutes of phantom mist and high beam squints and they won’t let me have a burger. It occurs to me my Darjeeling Limited tee might be too powerfully suggestive. “Ain’t it against your creed hun?” I insist and insist again a little louder and the waitress finally says “OK”, though she isn’t looking too happy about it. She offers chives and bacon on the garlic mash and I feel I can’t really deny her the pleasure at this point so I say “That be great!” She brings some lemon water and I feel a Percocet may be in order. People are a little too involved in looking away to notice. No need to hide. No worries friendo. Bring on the steakhouse patty.

The fat guy at the Burger King. The one with the shiny ASST. MANAGER tag. The one staring down Esther’s hoodie, taking proverbial pictures, forgetting the bacon on my 6$ hamburger. This place deserves me mentioning the one black person I’ve seen around here was wobbling through the parking lot when we pulled in. The Five Points. Biddeford is where they’ve hidden the Wal-Mart and Target from the seafaring folk. They are also hiding the brand new Tim Horton in the Shaw’s parking lot. We stormed in all “Oh Gosh” and “Timmy Ho’s”, demanding sour cream glazes and Double-Doubles. They didn’t get it. They informed us it would be opening on Monday and kindly asked us to leave. We made up for all that by having an ironic make out to the smooth sounds of Just my Imagination on the All ’71 Rock Ride in the Burger King lot. I picked up more liquor at the Liquor Superstore.

Kennebunk Port is silk-screened paper bags and glasswear boutiques, a pharmacy doubling as a heritage site, hybrids and Volvos, mural plates and herbal tea—everywhere. The beach is stupid eager political correctness and hardtimes for pill popping. I loaded up in the car and headed over and am tearful with portside glee and something better to stare at for a while. Really nice knick-knacks and doodads and Limoges gravy boats with little lobsters on the side. Also coffee mugs made out of giant snails, which is a creepy guilty pleasure, like little people wrestling in Don Perignon and Jell-O.

“Ask about the Daytrip Society” someone told me. I was sitting on a bench with a clam roll, an hour or so after driving into town. There was tartar sauce slowly dripping onto my WESC khakis. I believe I was what is commonly referred to as K-Holed. If I had been white, I might have been spat on. The scooter-police, little guys in Glock-strapped shorts, baby-yella polo shirts, just waved and smiled, though the tartar drip gave me away. People just smiled at me, and introduced themselves. They introduced their children, and their mothers and told me, flat out, I’d LOVE the Daytrip Society. They just wanted to talk to the nice quiet brown man. It occurs to me I might be imagining this. So I said “A-OK” and made my way over. I remember Bueller à la Vindaloo and his gal friend were around. They were leaving the Society with this far out, porcelain paper cup—a paper cup design made out of porcelain. “This Is Not A Paper Cut”—that’s what was written on it. And I kept thinking oh, oh man. I stopped in the middle of the road and “Woah. I need that” came out of my mouth. And they kind of giggled and toasted me as they walked around me. I asked the lady in DS for a Not Paper Cup. A Not Paper Cup, a “This Is Not A Paper Cup.” We laughed. Unfortunately Slightly Brown Guy and his gal friend had purchased the last one and I left kind of pissed. I spent the next hour buying stuff at the Federal Jack’s gift shop. Scrabble, a captains hat and a lobster shaped beanbag, etc. I got lost on my way home and stopped for organic ice cream on route 9. It melted green all over the car.

Sitting in Kport today, holding breakables as she ran into the drug store for something, it occurred to me I was shaking a little, feeling hungry. I was eating pistachios. An old man kept looking at me and finally I said “Hello” cause that’s what I’ve come to understand you do here and the old man just smiled and pointed to the corner. I ate some more pistachios and sighed a bit. He kept pointing and I gave him a “What” and he sat down next to me. He just pointed some more and said “George Jr., DUI.” And I said “Huh?” And he said “Dubbya, DUI, ’76.” I said “Hell’s Ya?” I shook some pistachios in his hand and he nodded an Affirmative. And we just sat and shook for a while. Experiences with the locals are typically the same.

Old Orchard Beach is Poutine Supremes and Russian carnie kids on drug exchange from Saint-Petersburg. I am told last year was skinheads from Poland, and Esther’s sudden reasonable urge to kick them. I convince Cindy and her to get on the matterhorn and I’m not too sorry. It turns out it doesn’t have any locking mechanisms, just flapping bars you have to hold down. We swirl around to the universal thumbs-up from the sweet Russian teens. The mother looks on, looks away, looks for a corner to quietly vomit in, if need be. I laugh Esther laughs, Cindy clenches her prize toy clam and whimpers and laughs. After we get off I win a fluorescent plush lobster for Esther, but leave it by a tartar sauce pump at a clam shack. I manage to drag her into the haunted house her childhood has made the bane of her existence. The thing is kitschy as all hell and delightful child shrieks throughout and she’s as cute as a button clawing at my arm, squealing. I feel useful and not too thirsty and that leaves me peaceful by the time kids are using bumper cars as their metaphorical ploy for the destruction of my youthful love. Esther just bumps around in a corner and I try not to laugh too hard. Old Orchard Beach is bedazzled sunglasses and my mopy, beat, blue-haired fox. Life is cute and novel. I drink two pints. She massages my neck most of the misty way home and won’t stop changing the radio station. I drink three highballs after she goes to sleep and watch Seinfeld for two hours. The Summer of George taints my dreams like a pre-slumber cheeseburger.

I’ve packed a Paddington Bear style bag of pills, Schlitz and marmalade sandwiches, as well as an entertainment hodgepodge of old movies and Jeeves and Wooster episodes. I have set sail—I have sought the St-Elmo’s Fire of my smithy. What would be the manically depressed Bueller of St-Elmo told me I should watch a little less Charlie Brown and a little more Seinfeld, or better yet, his, my smithy’s, words, “the soothing tea club complex” of New England PBS—say Right Oh Jeeves and take a hint from the help. A local summer millionaire, a rather domestic legacy, told me to stick to the sea, more or less north of Timber Island, keep an eye out for whales and stop hoarding the Percocets. So I did and so I shall. Thank you kindly, Mr. Walker.

Then again, I am running a little low. Eight hours has shrunken my resources. I’ve taken to the starboard side, for puking, when needed. I am rationing, feet deep in the blue sea as I sit over the back edge, sound and heavy, graduating to the smooth sounds of codeine cough syrup and vegetarian sea monsters. I myself am hell, I will not scare, ye saltwater fiend.

Saturday night, at Shaw’s. It’s late as shit and we’re just wandering round Shaw’s, me with a bottle of Maalox, she just scratching her arm, doing her thing, complaining about latex, when all the sudden there’s this kid, this like 9ish girl. She’s standing at the top of what feels like aisle 5, slowly raising faithful arms to a Fresca sale display when she suddenly turns and just stops what she’s doing arms still in the air and goes “WO! Your hair. My head. Now.” She then proceeds to run down aisle 4. I have a swig of Maalox. Esther keeps telling me about her latex allergy issue.

We make it to the condom display in the corner by the health food and she starts looking for polyurethane. And then for “non-rubbery-plasticky” urethane. Like non Ziplocky. And then, to Esther’s want, I look for extra thin polyurethane, which doesn’t exist, which really peeves her. That kid is still running around in the background. Esther makes up her mind. We leave empty handed.

Later in bed, I read in the paper that David Foster Wallace hung himself.

The little plastic bottles are all empty. I’ve switched to Gin and Schlitz, which is not as good as I had assumed it would be, but it’ll do. The night is high tide apocalypse in to the lowlight flicker of Emilio Estevez wigging out. On drugs. I have never wanted to be Emilio so bad. Breakfast goes down harder in the lonesome night. Tomato soup has come along with some saltines and the brave spoon shakes a little more than I am willing to describe on its way to my mouth. Molly Ringwald became such a loser after this. To think of The Breakfast Club as a life’s masterpiece is so sad. I will now argue that John Hughes invented the Teen Movie and is presently drowning in Montauk. I imagine him bobbing along with the gulfstream, here by daybreak, a dead, not so youthful Ariel gleaming fish-nibbled irises beneath my dry-heave gaze. We’ll have a little eye contact. It’ll be pretty cute. And I’ll fall in and give him a hug and we’ll go drink and laugh at a bar in Atlantis and everything will be everafter good times and salted beer. Everything will be A-OK.

School starts in three days.

I had a dream. I had a dream we were trying to fuck. And her family was in the other half of the room, Cindy watching Seinfeld, others sleeping. And her ex-boyfriend, whom I’ve never met, was sleeping in a LayZboy I’d made up for him. And we were trying to fuck at her insistence, despite the Brillo pad between her legs. We were disturbed by my substance abusing friends of yore knocking at the door. And she insisted we answer and climb up to the roof. And she pushed one of them off the roof. Laughing. And I kept wanting it to rain, sticking my tongue out for rain. That never came. And she insisted we climb up to the other, higher roof. And try to fuck. All I wanted was a little rain.

I was all shaky again when I woke up. I headed out to the shore before anyone else woke. Watched Diff’rent Strokes, the white face episode, and walked down to the beach with some left over fruit salad that came back up again. There was this low tide quiescence in it that left me wandering towards what I assume is that Timber Island Esther mentioned. I was alone, smacking the air with a few blood-red rosehips I’d tripped on and cussed at and picked up. I remember how dark it was. How I still felt a little sick, even after the sour-creamed salad. Hungry like a teenage panic attack that wouldn’t actually happen, just lingered. Smacking the air with the rosehips, wandering. So many snails covering the rocky island. Lying on the snailed rocks. Trying not to kill any. Trying to still myself, and listen for the tide I would not hear coming in. Chattering teeth. Closing my eyes.

The mist is kind of nice. Like a wailing, monotone vacuum.

The sun rises and hunger is welcome. I head back like Mr. Walker said, wading slowly around timber island. A lone haggard party—the slumped sloop, as dull as ultracane. The shore is kind of nice from this far out, all the Nantucketty little cottages and the beachfront Estate houses hiding them here and there. Retrievers are running on the beach with L.L. Bean models, possibly p.34 of the fall of ’85. I breathe it all in a little; imagine the state pride, coon cats, singing beneath the boat, my own little smithy’s chorus. I stare out. And I see him, the bluehaired girl’s boyfriend. He’s lying in a rising pool by the island, half-disappearing beneath the waves. A huge snail looks like it’s trying to eat his face and I nearly sloop him over I’m so surprised. He stares at me, eyes as cold as the deep blue wasting him, Bueller the Untouchable looking at me like help is a bad idea. He gives what I can only assume is a sigh, ambivalently heaving his arm and purplish hand out of the water, towards me. I pull him in. And he just lies there, staring, and I look at him, shaking. I pull the snail off his face. He looks it over and tells me its “a moon snail” and I say “OK.”

I get us moving again, I look into the dry wind, towards the shore. He asks if we can kind of wade around for a while, before heading back in. I tell him that’s “A-OK,” that that’s what I was doing anyway. He says “Thank you.” And we take it a little farther out.

2010-03-04T16:42:00.001-05:00

EMERSON
by Dan Svatek

2010-03-04T16:36:00.002-05:00

show details 16:31 (5 minutes ago)

those HUMPS over at Pigeon International Contemporary Dance Company beat me to the punch in getting out a show that pays homage to the discovery of a sea route to India by Portuguese mariners and to the creation of the “first global village.” How many times is this going to happen to me?

- Show quoted text -

hm.

for real?

what else?

- Show quoted text -

On 4 March 2010 16:12, Ronald wrote:
to me

Oh, I don't know, alone in the office, feeling expansive, certain I am surveilled. You?

2010-03-04T13:39:00.010-05:00

MORE
GESTURES
BY NEAH BAHJI KELLY

GESTURE 1

AFTER GESTURE 1

GESTURE 2

AFTER GESTURE 2

*

Originally from Shawnigan Lake, on Vancouver Island, Neah Bahji Kelly currently lives in Montreal, where she is studying Fine Arts at Concordia University. Gesture paintings use acrylic paint and measure 3'X3'. Knitted Gestures (also known as the 'baby gestures') are 1'X1' and are made up of various fibres: synthetic and wool mixes.

2010-03-04T13:38:00.023-05:00

A CONVERSATION
WITH
ARTIST NEAH BAHJI KELLY

BY MELISSA BULL

GESTURE 7

AFTER GESTURE 7

WHEN DID YOU START TO PAINT?

I first started to paint towards the end of my first year in college. I had a required painting class in the second semester of that year and that was when I started to develop a greater interest in painting. Before that I wasn’t too interested. My dad is a painter and I think because of that, I just never wanted to try it, it didn’t seem mysterious enough.

I think I am pretty influenced by minimalism and colour field painting. I also think that because of the way I work with paint, which is in a lot of layers with very thinned down paint, I have a strong relationship with people like Helen Frakenthaler and Morris Louis. I have definitely looked at these painters a lot.

WHAT IS THIS SERIES ABOUT?

This series is based on an article I read; at least this is where the idea began. I read an article by Zacharias Kunuk in which he talked about his filmmaking process. He talked about authenticity and something he termed “the significant gesture”. To Kunuk the significant gesture referred to the moment he captured on film of his actors portraying their parts in a very authentic way. Kunuk, in a lot of his films would have his actors improvise their parts which might give a better idea of the authenticity he was after. I heard this phrase and it captured my imagination. I wondered what it would look like in visual terms. Right away I saw it and felt it as something immediate, a gesture, a reaction, something with presence, something with a strong formal and compositional significance. I saw it as something that would dominate the compositional space in which it was situated. So with these ideas in mind I started practicing my gestures.

The style of them and the colours just sort of came about organically. I tried different tools and learned how to go about making the gestures so that they had presence, movement, interest, were resolved formally. I always saw them as one colour, the gesture, done in thick paint laid over top a surface done on raw canvas in washes. I don’t know exactly why, I just saw them that way. The colours were intuitive. I just start with one colour then my imagination leads me into another colour. Its always relational, even between the individual works in them selves, the colours are relational. I didn’t want them to be necessarily harmonious; I was interested more in fringe colours that would relate in unexpected unanticipated ways.

GESTURE 8

AFTER GESTURE 8

WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO ECHO YOUR PAINTED SERIES WITH A SERIES OF KNITTED "PAINTINGS"?

Most things in art are mysterious and ideas come from who knows where. The best answer I have is that I am knitter so it is a language that is familiar to me, so perhaps it was a natural next step in expression. The best part about it is that knitting and cross-stitch could be considered a thousand little gestures. So it starts with copying one gesture, which is all about immediacy and reaction, with a gesture painting made up of a hundred tiny gestures, which is the opposite of a reaction though still authentic. These knitted paintings end up talking about authenticity in a different way, in terms of commitment and a level of discipline. I really enjoy the irony of it all. When it occurred to me to make knitted copies of the significant gesture paintings my immediate reaction was to laugh, and it is funny, it’s a funny way to think about them.

WHO TAUGHT YOU TO KNIT?

I think my mom taught me to knit. Although my mom isn’t sure because years later I taught her how to knit. I was really sick and had a bad fever and couldn’t read or watch TV, so to pass the time my mom showed me the basic knit stitch and I think I knitted that thing for years, until I was a teenager. And then I learned how to knit a scarf.

TELL ME ABOUT YOUR KNITTING BOOKS.

Right now I am in the middle of the reversible knitting book where there are a bunch of patters where everything is reversible, there is no wrong side just two different right sides and sometimes two same right sides. It’s also this amazing stitch dictionary that has all these crazy lace stitch patterns where you can make folded fabric which allows for the fabric to become almost 3 dimensional. It’s a pretty exciting knitting book.

IS THERE ANY ARTIST'S WORK THAT YOU FEEL CONNECTED TO?

Someone I’m always looking at is Eva Hesse. She was a sculptor and used materials like resin and string, and other industrial materials. She also made weird drawings that were very sculptural; they were more like reliefs than drawings. I am always interested in her because she was and is super imaginative, what she did with materials, the way she would just make them do whatever she envisioned is exciting. She just seemed to be detached from any discourse that was going on around her and created what she needed to create. She still seems ahead of her time.

2010-03-04T13:23:00.008-05:00

MISFORTUNE COOKIES
by Michelle Marie Santiago

That wasn't chicken.

*

Michelle Marie Santiago is a top-notch classical pianist. In her spare time she knits her cat, Max, sweaters he can be coaxed into wearing and also makes elephant Play-Doh Star Trek dioramas. I know, right? She is so cool.

2010-02-23T18:00:00.001-05:00

SPACE! DAD!
by Ian Sullivan Cant & Melissa Bull

2010-02-23T17:52:00.014-05:00

W R I T I N G
P R O J E C T

DIARIES

Writing is an excellent way to express your feelings. Some people write in diaries, and I think it's one of the best ways because you can write anything you want to write, nobody's forcing you to write things you don't want to write.

When I'm mad or angry I (sometimes) write out what I feel and it makes me feel better, getting it all out.

Also when you're older and you look at the things you wrote it makes you laugh!

POEMS

Poems are very, very fun to write but if you're angry and you want to get things out by writing poems you'll just get more and more angry there are rules in writing poetry, like in some poems you have to rhyme in others your syllables have to be in the right order or the rhythm has to be right. So you shoulden't write poetry when you're angry!

STORIES

Stories are also fun to write but they take much, much longer to write. X

I'm writing a story about a prince named Atam and a princess named Sherazad and their adventures. I started this story in May '88 and I've only written a chapter, it's very, very hard!

While writing stories you have to be specific so that people who are reading the book will know what's going on!

X than poems.

LETTERS OR FORMS OF COMMUNICATION WRITING

Letters are a form of communication. Most people use them to find out how their friends are going or stuff like that, but there are other forms of communication writing such as telegrams. Telegrams are a bit like letters only they are shorter, simpler, less details and instead of having periods they say; "STOP".

There are also (secret) codes and ciphers they can be used in case of emergency or to hide something from someone. Codes are not the same thing as ciphers. In codes one letter can mean one word one sentence or even the whole letter! Ciphers usually don't change like that. They have for example a drawing or an other letter or sign to represent A or B or what ever, but it is always some sign, etc. to represent a letter.

NEWS PAPERS

News papers are exactly what the word says. It's news written on a paper.

All news papers have articals. You can find articals almost anywhere in a news paper.

THE END

*

My misspent childhood. For you.

2010-02-23T17:47:00.004-05:00

Free Translation of THE CRATE by Francis Ponge

by Lisa Sookraj

Comprised of planks connecting, intersecting, I am crate. Illiterate.

If I could read, and were I French, I'd find my name between cage and 'cachot' (prison) in the dictionary. What these two things have in common is enclosure. The impossibility of escape. I contain myself. Am a container, myself. Volatile contents restrained. Cageot: A simple box for transporting produce. Or other cargo. That needs to breathe, or else grow disease.

I need not comprehend French to know that crate is meant to be crushed. Once its duty is done. Living a less lengthy life than the items I cradle. From point A to point B or C. For me there is no point. There is no pay-off. This is inherent knowledge.

From hands to truck to hands to hands to trash. Shuffled, sorted and splintered. Briefly self-sustained. Then maimed. Tossed to the curb. Quickly. With finality. This existence leads to depression. A sad state, a sad fate. The bead of moisture most aren't aware wood can create.

2010-02-23T17:42:00.002-05:00

(click to enlarge)

HOW LOVE CONSUMES US
by Gabe Foreman

2010-02-23T17:40:00.000-05:00

2010-02-11T23:29:00.019-05:00

MIDLIFE
by Robin Becker

Everyone here wears a full head of dark hair. Mornings,
they casually allude to parties, getting to sleep at three or four.
As usual, there are a few great beauties;
most still eat eggs.
They treat me like an older sister, hip but no
all-nighters. What happened to my competitive spirit?
My rakish scarf? Like an old man, I miss my
basset hound.

Back home, my Mountain Laurel creates curb appeal,
my mailbox salutes, a sturdy citizen on the road.
Last month I felt great communion with my neighbors
as we all cursed and mowed. Then we hauled
our recycling bins to the street in unison, we made
the collective squeal of our village.

Still, I like these young people,
some of whom still read poetry
and smoke cigarettes.
We share a taste for the linen suits I found
along the Avenue, when I lived in a studio
in Cambridge, city of brick and rescued greyhounds.
Restless, I didn't even know that wanting
was already a kind of having.

Today over lunch I will have an argument with myself
and enjoy it thoroughly, taking both sides,
gesturing and furrowing my brow. Though secure
employment is a sure sign of age, it's so still
in this glade of light and leaves that I might mistake
myself for a bear, a deer.

*

I ripped this poem out of the 1999 January/February issue of The American Poetry Review.
I was 21. I lived in an apartment where my room had a towel instead of a door.

I still like that line about wanting being a kind of having, a kind of nostalgia preparedness. And I picture Becker's hipster bevy congregating at Cosmos, the old Cosmos, the way it used to be when Cosmo himself dropped his cigarette butts on the burner and they'd get into the egg. He'd say, What you want today? I make you nice mish-mash, eh? His voice sounded like a fart, or a hangover.

www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/529

2010-02-11T17:36:00.003-05:00

(click to enlarge)

*

Yes, these are real. Yes, it is ok to publish them. They were remade into a chapbook called Letters to Vienna, by Ian Sullivan Cant. Check out his brandspankingnew site and order a copy up for yourself: unkindnesspress.ca.

2010-02-10T22:39:00.019-05:00

Valentine

by MB

You let me sleep in. I’m grateful. I put on my moccasins. Go into the kitchen. Turn up the heat. I look at the garbage and think there’s enough room for yesterday’s grinds. I dump them out. I rinse the coffee pot, barely. No one will care about aluminium mushrooms. Fill it up again, turn the element of the stove to high. My dog’s sleeping on the floor. I pour her a bowl of dogfood. I say, Look, pellets! She raises one eyebrow, then the other. I warm some milk in my favourite saucepan--the beige one from Village des Valeurs. It’s got 70s style caricature flowers on its side that make me glad on the inside. I put in some milk. Whole milk. Stir a bit. Get my bread. Rye is best. Slide a pair of slices into the toaster. (Say it like this: tooost/tooohst/tooowst.) Pull out a record, something nostalgic, like from before anyone became Yusef anything. Get my seven dollar Île d’Orléans blueberry jam out of the fridge, got my butter all loosey goosey melty on the table already, my prune yoghourt. I put my grandmother’s plate on my mother’s canadienne table and pour the almost burnt café au lait into my mug. I spread out my books. The one about libraries, the old Atlantic with all the writers, the suicide girl diaries. The coffee’s too hot but the milk didn’t skin. I pick up the libraries book and smear jam in the margin and spill crumbs in the spine. And I think about Virginia Woolf and her gossipy intelligence and I look through the plastic-covered patio windows to my backyard, where snow’s piled waist deep and it's bright with winter-slanting sun. My dog dreams dog dreams. She swallows back a bark. I take another bite into my toast (tooohst). Saturday, I love you.

2010-02-07T20:48:00.002-05:00

(click to enlarge)

HOW LOVE DIVIDES US
by Gabe Foreman

2010-02-07T16:37:00.004-05:00

date		1 February 2010 17:30
mailed-by		gmail.com
Signed by		gmail.com

--from Gus--

I heard the chruch got organ money but now needs roof money. The other night, lying in bed next to a friend she heard me say, in my sleep, "english breakfast tea please" and as did i, i woke myself up saying it and laughed my head off ha ha ha ha

2010-02-01T12:35:00.003-05:00

EMERSON!
by Dan Svatek

*

He's a storyboarder illustrator cartoonist and he's got a pet turtle.
The turtle's name is Bubbles. He's a quarter century. Already. Time crawls fast and slow.
But it's not a race.

2010-02-01T10:17:00.013-05:00

ÉDEN
par Éric McComber

Une fourmi. Encore une fourmi. On en trouve dans le lit, depuis quelque temps. Je suis courbaturé. Xhana a dormi de travers entre nous, je n’avais plus de place. J’ai pris froid. Comme à son habitude, Joe a chipé tous les draps pour s’en faire une tortilla roulée bien serrée autour du corps. Je passe d’abord une jambe au-dessus de la Noisette, qui grogne juste ce qu’il faut pour me rappeler son rang. Pirouette buto et genou contre terre sur la terra cota, bras droit tout écarlate, omoplate brésilienne imprimée dans le biceps. Xhana ronfle un peu. Réflexe des cavernes,puisqu’elle ne le fait jamais quand on dort juste à deux. J’ai franchi en tanguant les trois pas vers la chiotte. Je tiens entre mes doigts ma petite chose fl apie. Un trait chaud et cuivré fi nalement en jaillit, je m’allège de deux litres de rhum décati. Je me glisse sous la douche et c’est comme ça parfois, les bonheurs se succèdent, on empile les jouissances. Je me frotte bien partout, surtout autour du cul. Les efforts de la nuit m’ont collé de sueur. Retour dare-dare sur le lieu de leurs souffl es. Je descends au village, rictus niais sur la gueule, où je fais faire pour nous tres cafés con leche. J’ai droit à la raillerie tout à fait sympathique de la serveuse complice,
elle aussi gouinophile.

Retour à la casa. Elles dorment toutes les deux. Je verse les boissons dans de gros bols d’émail et j’apporte le tout sur un plateau d’osier. L’arôme les réveille. Les yeux de la Josée brillent déjà de mille feux. Elle fait le plein d’étoiles en dormant, celle-là, que dès qu’elle s’éveille, ça jaillit des paupières. C’est bleu, vert, pluie, glace, mer, ciel, Islande, Groenland. Les prunelles de Xhana, toutes aux antipodes, c’est noix, café, choco, pau-brazil, Bahia, nuit. Je dépose le ti-dèje entre leurs deux torpeurs. Xhana bouge et s’étire, grimace, grogne et proteste. Elle nous voit, sourit, serre Josée dans ses bras ; fait bisou dans son cou, sonore et théâtrale. Elle aspire une gorgée de sa tasa grande, soupire de gratitude et fait :

— Putaaa… café.

Elle me déboutonne déjà et me prend dans sa bouche. Mon gland gonfl e sur sa langue au contact du café et je vois mon émoi dans les yeux de Josée. Elle aussi prend son bol puis me mord sans un mot, m’enlevant aux mains d’ébène d’une tendre chiquenaude. Quand elle m’a bien poli, me remet à Xhana qui me tient d’une seule main en suçant son kawa.

Eden. Un autre jour commence. Un grand bol fume encore là tout près, juste là, mais je n’ai plus la force d’étirer le bras. Elles se réveillent en retard et prennent en catastrophe la guagua de quinze heures qui quitte pour la Havane. Nous nous donnons rendez-vous pour dans quatre ou cinq jours. J’ai encore du travail, je ne peux pas les suivre. Vaut mieux de toute
façon que je les laisse voler.

Je retourne me coucher au creux de leurs odeurs accordées. Je me relève vers les vingt et une heures, juste à temps pour gratter les restes du buffet de l’hôtel. J’échoue ensuite dans le lobby avec mon cahier noir et un litre de rhum. L’hôtel est bourré de touristes québécois, une gentille Lavalloise trop bronzée m’aborde.

— Aille. Ouère harre iou fromme ?

— No hablo inglés.

J’abandonne mon chapitre à peu près au milieu. Je monte prendre une douche. Deux gentils fascistes de Sainte-Foy entrent dans l’ascenseur. Au deuxième, une femme de chambre se joint à nous, poussant son immense chariot chargé de draps propres. L’effl anqué lui fait :

— Nice wedder, han, very sonné day, han ?

La dame sourit de ses dents mauresques. Acquiesce, baisse la tête. Le petit
râblé insiste :

— Maille frend ask you if you like de wedder. Do you hundesten ?

Spikinglèche ?

La dame écarquille les yeux, n’a plus le choix, avoue :

— Discúlpeme señor. No hablo inglés. Español.

L’effl anqué jette entre ses dents :

— Ah ben, grosse négresse ! Ça travaille din z’hotels, pis ça parle même pas anglais, asti.

La dame grimace poliment, sort au 4e. Les deux adéquistes éclatent de rire. Le petit gros se tape les cuisses.

— Astiii… Hssss. C’est ça qu’on a dans un « une étoile ». Stie. Ça coûte pas cher, mais… T’as ske tu paye pour ! « Moua pas pa’ler anglais… Moua pa’ler jusse nég’esse », hsssss… asti !

— Oué mon Claude, s’t’offi ciel, monsieur.

Le grand facho se retourne à demi, comme pour chercher mon approbation, me reconnaît, dit à son complice :

— Ris pas trop fort, y en a un aut’ en arrière, qui pa’ler jusse négwesse !

— Hsssss !

Le dodu m’adresse un salut respectueux :

— Holà Tonto. Hsssss, hss, hss. Pas pa’ler f’ançais toué non plus, Tonto ?
Je le fixe.

— Hssss, Hssssssss.

Il scille. Le grand se voûte encore un peu plus :

— Stie t’place cheap, mon homme, moué asstheure, c’est Dominican Republic all the way. T’as ske tu payes pour.

— Hssss…

Nous arrivons au sixième. Nous sortons tous. Le ventru me congédie :

— See you around, mon Tonto, hsss…

Je le prends par la manche et je le retourne d’un mouvement sec. Il me dévisage, estomaqué. Je jette :

— Primo, Tonto, y comprend toute ske tu dis depuis deux semaines. Tonto y sait que toué pis Raymond, vous allez une fois par année dans l’tiers-monde, que vous prenez des photos de vos putes, que t’as trois enfants, un 4x4 GM, pis une tondeuse John Deare. Secundo, Tonto, y va t’expliquer de quoi, mon ti-pet. Regarde ben le sol sur lequel tu pose les pieds, d’ici à ske tu décâlisse, dans trois jours. Regarde ben la face des gens, ti-caille… Paske c’est ÇA, un pays souverain. Si jamais ça t’intéresse de savoir c’est quoi un peuple qui suce pas Monon’c Sam en tsous d’la nappe, regarde autour de ta serviette de plage, c’est icitte que ça s’passe. Sinon, si
t’es pas capable d’endurer l’español, amigo… Stay out o’ my sight, you pathetic fuck… Passke : NO – HA – BLO – ING – LES !

Je marche jusqu’à ma porte et je crois bien qu’ils sont encore devant l’ascenseur lorsque j’entre dans ma chambre. J’entends :

— Crisse, y parle français ?

Je prends une longue douche. Ensuite, je lis sur la terrasse. J’habite un ex-hôtel soviétique délabré. J’ai eu la suite complète pour 100 $ par semaine, bouffe et rhum inclus. Une fourmi m’escalade la jambe. Dingue, la quantité de fourmis, ici. Drôle de hasard, pour un pays socialiste. J’aime bien, moi, les fourmis. Les derniers rayons du soleil se sont estompés et de mon observatoire au 6e étage, on distingue très bien les deux fl ottes : la grande étendue agitée des barcas des pêcheurs de Santa-Maria, puis, plus loin, la scintillante menace de l’armada Ricaine on the wing, occupée à protéger le monde libre des féroces légions cubaines qui menacent à tout instant de dévaler à ski les plaines du New Jersey armées de bombes islamiques et de javelots zoulous badigeonnés d’anthrax.

Rassuré de voir que tout le monde est à sa place, je décide d’aller m’amarrer au Bar de la Playa, prendre une camomille ou un petit lait chaud, histoire de préparer mon gros corps au sommeil, mais une fois vissé au comptoir, je commande une bouteille de Cubay.

Pour séduire les nombreux Québécois, l’orchestre nous chante une chanson de Céline Dion en anglagnol surréaliste. Y a que les Allemands, complètement pintés, qui applaudissent. Sur scène, incognitos, Alejandro Ruiz, l’ancien bassiste de Miami Sound Machine et Osvaldo de la Cerna, le tromboniste d’Arturo Sandoval. Un animateur, genre crieur de foire agricole, hurle des trucs en huit langues dans son micro craqué de la vie, espérant nous réanimer. Il a pas de chance, le pauvre. Ce soir, la foule a bien d’autres chats à fouetter. La relève est arrivée. La relève prend position le long du bar. Les contingents font rotation toutes les deux ou trois semaines, m’explique une mulata, en m’offrant ses services.

— Je paie JAMAIS pour ça, répliqué-je, moral et digne.

Elle acquiesce et baisse les yeux, me dit que c’est sa première semaine, qu’elle est étudiante, bla-bla-blaa, aqui en Cuba, es muy difi cil, senor, no dinero, no plata, no comida… Elle avise un Allemand et tourne les talons sans terminer sa phrase, comme si elle interrompait simplement une répétition.

Je vois mes deux fascistes au milieu d’un groupe. Ils ont recréé l’ambiance de la cabane à sucre dans un coin des Antilles. C’est à qui enterrera l’autre entre eux et la tribu des Grecs. Ceux-là tonitruent depuis l’heure du souper les plus grands succès de la chanson grecque en grec, par-dessus l’orchestre, complètement imperméables aux stimuli extérieurs. Osvaldo écourte tous ses solos, ce soir. Les Hélénas dansent et les Georges vocifèrent.

Moi, bien, je tue lentement ma bouteille de rhum cheap. Vladimir m’approvisionne régulièrement en glace et en soda. Le temps passe, les rangs s’éclaircissent. Osvaldo vient s’asseoir avec moi, on discute un peu, je lui sers trois ou quatre verres en rapide succession. La gentille Lavalloise l’embarque pour 100 $. Le manège habituel se déploie, les cocus montent se coucher, les autres font un peu semblant de jouer aux cartes, puis se prennent des putes, réservent des chambres à la demi-heure, reviennent en rigolant ou parfois, pensifs. Finalement, après une version syndicale de la pas toujours pertinente Hasta Siempre Commandante, l’orchestre se tait. Plus tard, Vladimir arrête son CD de techno-latino de Miami… Je commence à voir double. La vie redevient tolérable, je sens l’océan m’appeler, les odeurs fantastiques de la mer et des plantes, le sel et le sable et le mariposa… Je me sens tout heureux. Je m’ennuie des filles, un peu mais pas trop. Je me lève, m’étire, je titube jusqu’aux toilettes. Je reviens prendre mes affaires et je vois qu’une petite potelée a pris place à côté de mon sac.

— Holaaa, elle lâche, l’air découragé.

Elle est vraiment pas jolie. Seize ou dix-sept ans, la bouche trop mince, le nez trop petit, d’immenses bajoues gâtées qu’on aurait pu croire gourmandes, n’eut été du triste démenti de ses yeux, pingres et éteints.

— Que bolà, je réponds, laconique mais branché.

— Estas bonito.

Je la remercie, retourne le compliment sans trop d’enthousiasme, me prépare à partir, saoul, fatigué. Elle me quémande un verre, que je lui offre. Elle y trempe à peine les lèvres, me demande d’où je viens, on joue aux devinettes. J’invente n’importe quoi. Je dis que je suis hockeyeur pro, que je joue pour les Canadiens de Montréal, que c’est un peu comme jouer dans Habana Industriales au baseball. Elle comprend. Elle demande si je la trouve vraiment belle et je mens une deuxième fois.

Je lui demande ce qu’elle fait dans la vie… Elle étudie dans les télécoms, mais elle aimerait aussi faire médecine. Je demande depuis quand elle tapine. Elle sursaute. Faut les voir, nier tout, au début. Faut voir au moins une fois. Elle fi nit par dire que c’est sa première semaine. Elle enchaîne en se plaignant des clients de l’hôtel, déplorant leur peu d’entrain. Elle est pourtant la seule à ne pas s’être trouvé de client, ce soir. Je paye ma bouteille, elle cherche mes yeux, je quitte mon tabouret. Elle demande si j’ai pas besoin d’une petite chupa, pas cher… Je réponds qu’on pourrait marcher un peu sur la plage, sous les étoiles, puisqu’elle n’a rien de mieux à faire en attendant l’autobus des maques qui vient la rechercher vers les 5 h. Nous partons, elle qui claudique dans ses talons-hauts trop grands, moi qui vais de travers, plein comme une outre. Elle me raconte d’une voix traînante sa vie sous forme de statistiques ; 3 frères (10 ans, 14 ans, 27 ans), 2 soeurs (15 ans, 23 ans), 2 pères (34 ans, 64 ans), une seule mère (sans âge) ; son frère cadet a remporté 4 championnats régionaux en boxe, elle-même a obtenu 3 prix d’excellence académique, deux de plus que sa grande soeur, qui elle demeure à Trinidad depuis 5 ans. Elle est pas seulement moche, la petite pute, elle est tuante. Rareté cubaine, elle a pas de poète favori. Elle a pas de groupe favori non plus. Elle a pas de fi lm favori. Elle aime pas danser. La perle rare, je dis. Ce qu’elle fait dans ses loisirs ? Elle regarde les soaps d’État à la télé. Elle aimerait bien se faire un bon coup d’argent cette semaine à l’hôtel. Elle veut s’acheter des robes, manger des chocolats ; je dors presque. Elle remarque mon enthousiasme et commence à frotter mon pantalon. Je soupire.

— Cinco dolares, señor.

Cinq dollars.

— Aqui, je fais, en lui tendant un billet de 10 $.

Pour la conversation, je dis. Je sens monter en moi le sentiment noble de la droiture. L’élévation que ressent l’homme de bien. Elle me regarde, horrifiée. Elle pleure. Elle dit qu’elle est moche, que personne ne voudra jamais l’engager, qu’elle trouvera jamais de mari, qu’elle aura jamais d’enfants, que même pour 5 $, dans le pire hôtel du pays, un vieux touriste gras et solitaire ne veut pas qu’elle le suce… Je lui tapote l’épaule, je la rassure… J’explique que je suis ici avec mes deux amies, qu’on a beaucoup fait l’amour, que j’aime pas l’idée de payer pour des servicios sexuales, surtout pas dans un pays pauvre, que j’adore, et dont je respecte les habitants, blabla, blabla… Faut croire qu’elle écoute rien de ce que je dis, elle s’agenouille dans le sable et baisse mon short.

— Dejame por favor…

Là, je sais plus. Si mes paroles l’ont inspirée, qu’elle a un élan de tendresse, si je la charme, c’est bien ! Après tout… La voie lactée, le vent du large, les vagues… Le fi lm softcore dont vous êtes le héros… L’ennui, c’est qu’elle sait pas faire et que je suis pas du tout bandé. Je décide de mettre toutes les chances de mon côté, je m’oriente pour avoir une vue sur l’océan, la lune, aussi, dont le refl et se découpe sur ses lèvres qui me mastiquent. Ça y est presque. Je me concentre sur le souvenir de la chatte de ma petite Josée… La plus belle des petites chattes, ferme, musclée, dorée, douce, compacte… Ça y est.

— Bueeno, elle chuchote.

Ça m’excite, les chuchotements.

— Te gusta ?

Mais oui, ça me plaît. Suffi t d’oublier un peu la réalité. Je jouirai jamais, par contre… Ça c’est sûr. Comment lui faire comprendre ? Je lui prends la nuque pour la relever. Je dis :

— Muchas gracias.

— No mas ?

Mais non, rien de plus. Je veux bien aller me coucher, moi. Je remballe. Buenas noches. Elle trottine derrière moi, s’inquiète… C’était pas bien ? Elle ne me lâche pas… Je remonte jusqu’au bar, maintenant fermé. Personne. Elle me suit toujours, silencieuse, le long du petit sentier en lacets qui mène à l’hôtel. Elle me rattrape, veut me rendre le billet. Je refuse. Je dis que c’est un cadeau. Pour sa famille. Pour ses robes.

— Uno regalo para ti, bonita.

Ça la rassure. Elle me serre contre elle. Je lui tapote le dos, paternellement. Tiens, y a le Claude de Sainte-Foy qui remonte de Dieu sait où. Il me salue, complice. Regarde la petite.

— Vive la relève ! il fait, le con.

— No hablo ingles.

— Hssss… On a skon paye pour…

Je tente de larguer ma puta fea, mais elle n’a nulle part où aller, elle a froid, si je pouvais seulement la laisser attendre la navette des maques dans ma chambre, elle ferait pas de bruit, elle me laisserait tranquille, dehors c’est dangereux…

— Ah oui, les ours, je fais.

— Que ?

— Nada.

Bon, d’accord, je fais. Ça peut pas faire de mal… Y a trois lits dans la suite… Tant pis… Toute joyeuse, elle marche à mes côtés en me prenant le bras, nous voilà casi-fi ancés. Devant la porte de l’hôtel, il y a Juan, le gardien de nuit. Il me désigne la petite et me demande 5 $. Pas le droit, il explique. C’est pas pour lui, le 5 $, c’est pour la police. Quand la police vient inspecter, il faut les graisser. Je suis fatigué, je suis saoul, j’en ai marre… Je crache le billet. C’est dingue. Nous montons à ma chambre par un escalier discret.

Je m’assieds dans le noir sur la terrasse et je me verse un scotch. Je lui en offre un, elle refuse. Elle est de bonne humeur, au moins, enfi n. Elle entreprend de me masser le cou. Comment lui dire qu’elle est en train de me causer des dommages irréversibles à la moelle épinière ? Je lui demande de s’asseoir, de prendre ça relaxe, je regarde l’heure… Je pars prendre une douche. Je reviens sur la terrasse, elle n’a pas bougé. Elle voudrait bien se laver aussi… Je n’y vois pas d’objection. Elle ressort quelques minutes plus tard, complètement nue, toute perlante et pimpante de gouttelettes d’eau tiède. Elle s’assied sur mes genoux, me présente sa poitrine. Je souris. Elle se relève et s’accoude sur la rambarde pour regarder la mer. Elle tortille du panier, commence à se branler. M’appelle. Bon. Je veux bien essayer.
Je mets une capote. Je suis mou, ça entre mal… Elle se retourne et me suce pardessus le plastique… Sordide. J’ai pas envie… Elle réussit tant bien que mal à me requinquer un peu. S’affale sur la table, l’anus au clair de lune. Ses fesses encore mouillées, c’est esthétisant ; je fais abstraction de tout le reste, je la prends comme il faut… On dirait même qu’elle aime, elle gémit pour la première fois. Pendant quelques minutes, ça me plait presque, je me prends au jeu de la faire jouir. Je la caresse par dessous, j’emploie des rotations, je me retrouve dans mon élément, j’en oublie presque que… Merde ! Merde, merde, merde ! Je suis en train d’essayer de faire jouir une petite pute moche, sans doute mineure, sur ma terrasse… C’est fi ni. Je me retire. Je m’excuse. Je rentre dans la chambre sans la regarder. J’entends ses pas clapoter derrière moi. Je m’assieds sur le lit en évitant son regard. Ça commence à devenir malsain. Elle me remercie. Dit que c’était merveilleux. Son ton est celui d’une mauvaise comédienne. Je lui demande si elle a un amoureux. Elle répond que oui. Je la regarde enfi n, et je remarque qu’elle n’est pas du tout grasse, mais plutôt… enceinte. Mes poils se hérissent. Combien de mois ? Elle refuse de répondre. Nie tout. Elle a commencé la soirée en niant être pute, elle la termine maintenant en niant être mère. Je lui refi le un autre billet de 10 $, pour le petit, je fais. Grand seigneur. Elle dit que non… qu’il manque 10 $ ! Je reste si-dé-ré. Elle fait les comptes sur le bout de ses doigts…

— Pora la chupa en la playa, chingadas (dos veces)…

Une au balcon, l’autre sur la table, plus la mini-chupa par-dessus la capote, ça compte, en plus ça a pris du temps, tout ça… La cabesa me tourne. C’est pas pour l’argent, elle a a-do-ré, mais c’est si diffi cile, Cuba señor, muy difícil, mucho trabajo, no dinero… D’un air amène, elle s’assied devant moi au pied du lit et me prend dans sa bouche, se met à sucer, me lance un clin d’oeil, s’arrête, susurre :

— Regalito para ti, señor.

Ah bon. Elle y va. Ça fait pas tellement effet, je suis un peu dépassé et j’en ai assez marre, en fait. Tout à coup, une clé farfouille dans la serrure de ma porte de chambre. Je fi xe l’entrée, incrédule. Un colosse hirsute surgit, marche à toute vitesse vers moi en éructant des trucs en argot par sa moustache aussi grande qu’un caniche ! Je ne comprends rien à ce qu’il raconte, je me lève, nu, comme ça, là, la queue encore dégoulinante de salive… Je lui hurle de foutre le camp en hispanoanglo- joualvert… La petite pute se relève, lui répond, le rassure… J’aperçois Juan le gardien, dans le cadre de la porte. IL ME SOURIT ! Pas rassuré, mais assez saoul pour ne pas mesurer les conséquences, j’agrippe le géant au collet et je le précipite dehors. Le gardien, appaisant, me demande :

— Everything O.K. ? Everything O.K. ?

— Fuck you ! Never come in my fucking room, I’LL KILL THE LOT O’ YOU ! And NO HABLO INGLES !

Je claque la porte. J’entends tous mes voisins qui se lèvent, se demandent ce qui se passe. Je me retourne. Ma petite mama-puta est déjà toute habillée, elle pointe la porte :

— Mi jefe, elle dit.

Son chef. Pas de socialisme dans les réseaux de putes, apparemment. Je lui refi le son fric. Elle a gagné deux mois de salaire en deux heures. Elle me jure qu’elle arrête, qu’elle travaillera plutôt aux champs, ou à la fabrique de cigares, à l’avenir. Génial, je me dis. T’es le dernier des cons, je me dis. Je lui donne un bécot sur la joue, attendri par le rhum, sans doute. Elle sort sans se retourner. Le maquereau est là, appuyé contre le mur. Je le pointe entre les deux yeux d’un air baveux. Il m’ignore souverainement et ils partent tous les deux. J’émerge vers 14 h. J’ai trois fourmis sur le bras. Je regarde par terre, il y a une autoroute de fourmis. Je m’étire, me gratte le ventre, les couilles, la barbe. Je suis du regard le fl ot des hexapodes. Je sors pour voir où ça mène. La caravane naît de sous mon matelas, passe par-dessus la rambarde du balcon, et descend le long du mur de l’hôtel. Je repars dans l’autre sens, je longe la fi le jusqu’à mon lit pour me rendre compte que la piste aboutit carrément dans la corbeille, au pied de la table de nuit. Je plonge la main dans les mouchoirs, m’attendant à trouver un fruit moisi. Y a rien. Je me gratte la tête, perplexe. J’amène la corbeille sur la terrasse et la vide par terre. Les fourmis sont partout… C’est la confusion. Dans les mouchoirs, dans les papiers… Dans… Elles sortent des condoms… Des centaines de fourmis ! Transportant sur leur dos des fardeaux de sperme séché qu’elles ont roulé en boules. Je ne me sens pas bien… Je perds l’équilibre… Je rentre dans la chambre en titubant… Je remarque d’autres colonnes allant et venant sous le lit, entrant et sortant du chemisier gris de Xhana, là, par terre… Encerclant la culotte de Josée sur le divan… S’agglutinant à une tache le long du mur, près de la salle de bains.

Je ramasse les draps, le linge, les fourmis, je jette le tout en tas sur la terrasse et je ferme la porte-patio. Puis, je pars bouffer en songeant que, quand même, mes couilles nourrissent tout un peuple. C’est pas rien.

*

Éric McComber is the author of two novels, Antarctique (Triptych, 2002) and Sans connaissance (Littératures autrement, 2007) -- formerly La mort au corps (Triptych, 2005). He's edited Moebius and published numerous short stories. He works as a translator.

Here's a review:

Sans connaissance
Dans ce roman à la langue crue, détonante et pleine d'humour, Éric McComber nous raconte l'histoire tragicomique d'Émile Duncan, de son enfance dans le Montréal-Nord des années 1970 -- entre violence et "granolisme catho-colonisé" -- jusqu'à sa plongée dans la sensualité brute et l'alcool, entre neige sale et ciel bleu.

Éric McComber est né à Montréal en 1964. Il suit un parcours chaotique, à l'image de son antihéros, jusqu'en 2002 où, convaincu par un ami, il fait lire et publie Antarctique, un premier livre déjà décapant. Avec Sans connaissance et sa réinvention du joual, argot populaire québécois souvent méprisé, il est devenu l'un des écrivains les plus remarqués de sa génération.

(sansconnaissance.blogspot.com)

2010-02-01T10:14:00.005-05:00

BREAK UP CARDS
by Melissa Bull, Caela Moffet, Dan Svatek

2010-02-01T10:11:00.004-05:00

PUSSYFOOTERS
by Gabe Foreman

Scene: a muddy field at harvest

Icarus: This corn I brought to share has been cooked

all the way through, now the cobs are soft

and covered with cheese.

I extend a floppy cob to you—

Tina: I have work to do. Besides, last night I used

your father’s stubble like a tool, drawing his service

to my kernel with a sigh.

Icarus: (aside) I watch enthralled

as she chucks a whole whack of carrots

into a damp case of loam.

Tina: Icarus, as you admire my working curves and hair—

Icarus: There is straw in your hair.

Tina: —pay keen notice to the nature of my coy disdain:

I hope your silent observation may last

the entire winter.

Icarus: I see what you mean. Each speech balloon’s inflated

with virginal uncertainty—it’s a flirtation device.

Tina: Yes. But there’s a catch: “Whenever words are turned

to purely voluptuary uses and divorced from rational purpose the end result is not a real advance, but rather—

Icarus: —the beginning of decadence.” Say,

isn’t that Irving Babbitt?

Tina: Where?

Icarus: Way up there, with those pelicans.

GHOULS

by Gabe Foreman

You little hobgoblins, lavish backyard

dandies starving with your barbeques open—

what did you expect? Had you somehow heard

that fridges would spring to life in the den

as you lurched up the drive, cocktails lifting

swirling, stirring as they self-poured, and soared

past fine furniture to land (ice-tinkling)

in your decomposing hand at the door?

Listen here: our hearts and minds are not breasts

tumbling tenderized from some plane above.

You must call first, play the host, make us love

that undead bread. Stand up. Do not rest

in peace any longer. We can do the math.

Who makes toast that close to the bath?

(bis)

Heralding from Lake Superior's north shore,
the half woodsman, half city slicker, quarter werewolf
Gabe Foreman has published his poetry
in numerous journals, including Fiddlehead, Prism and Grain.

2010-01-28T14:01:00.007-05:00

natural/unnatural

by Lisa Sookraj

The penthouse apartment across the way is the only obstruction. Julie's view to the end of the city. Peter tells Julie, “You're paranoid.” Nothing has transpired in two years. He licks his finger. After dipping it in a jar of pesto. Julie stares, like always, into the unused room. A stalker in hiding watching their intimate moments? A brief obsession with documentaries about serial killers. The silent business man next door. His briefcase/mini-luggage on wheels. The mystery of vacant vessels. Full suitcases. In January. The body found in one on St. Laurent. The bodies found beneath the rubble in Haiti. 3 garbage bags of donations to Heart of the Nations. Some disasters are more natural than others. What is natural? How the sun shines right through to the other side. Of the vacant penthouse. Except for on grey days. It has large windows on three sides. In the centre, there appears to be nothing. Only the curtains, pulled and tied. Peter fingers strike the keyboard. From the kitchenette, Julie checks and double checks over her shoulder. Are the shadows stationary or have they shifted? How could such a nice room, offering multiple views of the city, be vacant? “Perhaps it's haunted. Perhaps a demon,” Julie says. As she breaks another glass accidentally while doing the dishes. She breaks new glass after glass. Loses job after job. Hair after hair. Cursed. Strands. Shards. Peter picks them all up carefully, rinses her hand under the tap water. Lays the broken pieces in an empty cardboard box.

C and B

by Lisa Sookraj

Violet hums a tune. The sky turns navy blue. Gary Numan: “I die, You die”. The precise instant the 70s turned to the 80s. Damien is on the couch. On the Cusp. Aries meets Pisces. Half-ram, half-fish. Is a crab eating chicken wrong? He wonders as he stains a piece of wood. Violet always hums. Out of tune. Often the same notes, found in different songs.

Morrisey in one of his dark castles, in Ireland. The air damp, intrusive. He licks his dry lips. In Violet's daydream. She finishes stitching the button back on her coat. Bubbles smell like mango-kiwi. While Morrissey in reality, sits in LA, with a blonde bimbo on each arm. Online, Violet sees the picture that proves it. Damien tells her he thinks it's a front for homosexuality. She prefers asexuality. Imagines Morrissey at a bus station where he's remained eternally 20. Pale, sad-faced and slim-limbed. “Is it really so, really so strange?” He sings. Over the computer speakers. He blows at a lash. Violet blows at dust. Damien blows at wood. That will soon be one of three shelves of a bookshelf. Violet brushes his hair back, up, big, with slender fingers. Her modern new-waver. Though he doesn't like new wave, he is one. In the lurid, watery mass that is her life.

*

Lisa Sookraj is the kind of friend who'll trek out to hear you read a short story in the dentistry faculty at the top of a mountain on a Saturday morning in the middle of winter. She hems her own curtains, à la main, no less. She writes funny things about groundhogs. She lives in Montreal, for now. Join with me in my plea to keep her out of Toronto 's mean suburban streets. Stay, Lisa.

And you say.

2010-01-28T13:47:00.002-05:00

SPACE! DAD!
by Ian Sullivan Cant and Melissa Bull

*

Ian makes the pictures. The rest is banter.

2010-01-26T09:32:00.005-05:00

NAMES

by Jeffrey Gandell

Sol was itchier than usual. It could have been the weather or it could have been one of those things. I don’t know why I’m so itchy, he thought. Of course, it didn’t matter why, really. You’re itchy, you scratch. Sol didn’t want to blow the tickle up into one of his medical meltdowns, he just felt the need to scratch. A lot. His nails were too short from biting to get the job done right.

Walking down the street, he swung his leg up on a stair that led up to a doorway and went to work. It was good. It was better than good, it was sublime. Scratching nirvana. Rubbing his leg hair into paste, a sound like cereal being crunched slowly sunk him into a meditative plateau.

The door in front of his scratching self swung open. He froze, mid-stroke, looking at the woman who had opened the door looking at him. Sol’s hand was still glued to his leg, pants halfway up his calf.

‘What are you doing here?’ Diane asked.

‘I’m scratching my leg.’ She looked at Sol’s leg. There was no doubt that’s what he was doing.

‘Have you seen my keys Di—’ Lester came up behind her, saw Sol, saw their icy poses.

‘Who are you?’ He asked. This was his place.

‘Sol.’

‘Sorry, Lester, this is Sol, Sol, Lester.’

Lester already knew the name. Now everyone knew everyone’s names. Sol had supposed that there was someone like Lester. He might have even given him the hypothetical name ‘Lester,’ though it was probably closer to ‘Smokey,’ or ‘Wallace.’ All the alternatives dropped away when genuine Lester materialized. Now Lester could put a face to the name, and Sol could put a face and a name to the preoccupation. Sol imagined that he looked exactly the same as Lester had imagined he would. Diane stood there, shifting her weight from one foot to the next.

‘I’m gonna go look for those keys,’ Lester said.

‘Well it didn’t take you too long,’ Sol reasoned. He had managed to separate his nails from his leg hair and to regain a more upright position. He still leaned forward a little bit, but he always did that. Diane used to tell him to stand up straighter, that he was going to develop back problems in the future. She thought of scolding him on his posture, but instead just stood straighter herself.

‘Listen, Sol, I’m sorry you had to scratch your leg right here.’

Sol’s leg was still itchy, itchier, even, than before. His arm was itchy too. He thought about which one he would scratch first when he managed to dislocate himself from this doorway scene. He couldn’t do both at the same time. He would need a third arm for that.

‘Found them!’ Lester’s voice came from inside the apartment. Lester was often out of context, something Diane was beginning to find annoying. Standing in his doorfront though, she had to push such a thing into the back room of her mind. It’s not like they were lost, anyway.

‘We’re going for a walk,’ Diane said, as if it mattered.

The thought came into Sol’s head that they might be headed in the same direction as he was. He decided to go in the opposite direction of wherever they were going. He’d go straight up, if he had to.

‘It was nice to see you,’ Sol said, to his own disappointment.

‘Definitely. ‘

‘I found my keys,’ Lester appeared in the doorway, beaming. ‘They were in the cutlery drawer. Imagine!’

Something about this statement made Sol feel slightly better about things.

‘Take it easy,’ he said.

‘Bye Sol.’

‘Sol man, good to meet you.’ Lester thrust his hand out. Sol was forced to shake it. Lester had a good grip, which made Sol feel slightly worse about things. He turned and walked away. The itchiness was worse than ever, but he refrained. The street kept moving.

Stepping out onto the sidewalk, Diane slipped her arm into the loop Lester’s arm created when he jammed his hand into his jacket pocket.

‘Weird guy,’ Lester said.

‘Ya, weird guy,’ Diane agreed and looked behind her, wondering when it would be appropriate to extricate her arm from Lester’s vulture-like grip.

Jeff -- that's Mister Gandell to you -- teaches English at Dawson College and runs Clamorous Sundays, the once a month read aloud extravaganza at Green Room. He likes to buy his shirts in NYC. They just fit better. They have those darts or whatever.

2010-01-25T16:50:00.009-05:00

(click to enlarge)

PIRATES!
by Gabe Foreman

*

Heralding from Lake Superior's north shore,
the half woodsman, half city slicker, quarter werewolf
Gabe Foreman has published his poetry
in numerous journals, including Fiddlehead, Prism and Grain.
He also makes these fine illustrations.

2010-01-25T09:49:00.006-05:00

POLE-VAULTING
by Jeremy Tusz

I had always known that flying dreams were quite common but it was only after a particularly vivid night of dreaming that I realized I wasn't actually flying in mine. I could clearly recall running while holding onto a pole and then suddenly being airborne, high above the clouds and cities below. My air travel couldn't be described as self-sustained flight but rather a controlled launch (and fall) at the end of an extremely long arc. Yes, my "flying dreams" are in reality "pole-vaulting" dreams.

*

He plays viola. He's a sound engineer. He vaults. Spy on him here: homepage.mac.com/tusz/.

2010-01-19T16:48:00.007-05:00

THE SHED
by Brenda Coultas

Directions: This is a very easy film to make as the hogs are predictable in their behavior and limited in range by the pen; however, they are deceased, and I took part in eating them, thus this is a most difficult film to make. Build a three-room shed out of wood with a tin roof and flathead nails. Plant thistles and pigweed. Dig a wallow and fill with water.

Narrative: The pig shed is gone and where it stood are green grasses. A neighbor bought half of the land and put up a stable of goats (says they are the main ingredient in pepperoni). I can remember our pigs without the aid of hypnosis or memory drugs. There's Pearl, the mama. Rusty with his reddish patches (my pig), and Dogfood (Peggy's pig).

Can you capture the sound of my hog call?

We stocked the wallow with tadopoles, who died despite our efforts.

Film us (four girls) in the wallow, deepening the hole.

Can you film us thinking "If we could only float a boat in here then we would truly have everything: water, mud, and navigation."

Shoot a close-up of nose rings and film us scraping out plates into a coffee can can, turning dinner into hog slop. Can you film the ghost of Pearl? Pan out to the humans, on bicycles and foot, rooting in junkyards on the old Moore place, rooting in ravines full of abandoned cars.

I try to ride my pig but fall off. I pet my pig. Lay my head down on his rump. I am a small human, so small that my underpants come up to my armpits. Bust Weatherholt's dog, Old Blue, always sat down when I tried to ride him. I sat on his back, then he sat down on hind legs and I slid off.

We wanted machines or animals for transport: swings, merry-go-rounds, and maypoles for flying. We tried to ride everything our size, living or not. Ponies were too high up. We considered a wooden wagon with wooden wheels; we could take to the prairies in this, but we needed a team. I dreamed of so many treasures buried in the earth or of just bones, all the bones buried by time, nature, or natives. Given eternity, we could find marvelous bones.

*

This is from page 87 of Brenda Coultas' collection The Marvelous Bones of Time: Excavations and Explanations, published by Coffee House Press in 2007. Coultas lives in NYC's Bowery. She began to autograph my copy of Marvelous Bones -- Melissa, Happy days -- but the pen started to leak out by the y, and she gave up, and I've never asked anyone to sign anything again. I wonder what she was going to say.

2010-01-19T16:01:00.007-05:00

to Émile
show details 26/08/2008

i've got the broke up with a cossak who tried to flee me on his bicycle blues. that's it. no more streetfights. no more enigmatic eccentrics. from now on: carpenters. male nurses. history professors with as little psoriasis as possible. had coffee with a man who started telling me about aliens on sunday. until now i've been fine with mental illnesses and alcoholism, men who take pills to ward off balding, men who don't wash regularly, men who sweat too much, men who don't eat meat. but i have to draw the line somewhere. i draw the line at aliens. i told the guy if he said he'd been probed up the ass i was leaving.

Marilou

- Show quoted text -

On 8/26/08, Émile > wrote:
Up at daybreak with the fishing boats hauling right under my window. Then the gasoil from the trashtrucks. Then the rising sunlight starts beating the ceiling white. I swear it comes up straight in my window. The East. Maybe going there. Or North. Is it normal that I laughed so much I almost broke my comp, reading this?Call me self-centered, but I recognized myself everywhere in your list (except the balding pill guy). I was at Brassens' tomb yesterday.The day before I fell in the Canal with my fully loaded bike.Adventure everywhere I turn.

Kiss
&.

*

Marilou Sevigny puts the machine on delicate, even for towels.

2010-01-19T14:52:00.001-05:00

2010-01-19T14:50:00.002-05:00

EMERSON
by Dan Svatek

2010-01-19T14:48:00.008-05:00

WILDERNESS PLEDGE

by Suzanne Hancock

Or if we met in Vegas.
In front of the volcano at the Mirage.
Early-evening, your head a little red from a day in the desert sun,
my cheeks the same. You’re wearing your white shirt
and jeans, both wrinkled from the suitcase, a thin wet crescent
beneath both arms, my own black dress damp from the heat.
I feel itchy and homesick, and I move closer, but, still, the full
splendor of you is hidden by Midwesterners in jerseys and cameras.

Maybe later the real beginning is a shared humiliation
in finding the volcano’s drawn-out explosion
beautiful—those 3000 lights simulating lava flow.
We’d toast to that.

Or we run into each other in the elevator
we share with the funny drunk bride in her beaded
dress and bucket of tokens, and you’re going to get a bag of salt and vinegar chips
from the vending machine, and I’m fooling myself into thinking
tonight is the night to learn craps. “Bet with the house,
my dad always says, “even if it makes you unpopular.”

You follow me and peel a fifty from your roll and tell me to go crazy.
“Anything above the fifty, you can keep,” you say with a smile.
We fall in love the moment after you lift my arm, declaring, “You’re the champ!”
while the rest of the players around the table give us the wood eye. We walk
and I whisper, “Let me buy you a drink every day for the rest of our lives.”

Or we’re in line for a show (hopefully Nearly Neil,
the Neil Diamond impersonator) and you say,
“I’m going to fuck the Christ out of you,” and I think,
excitedly, what does that mean? Does he think I’m
Christian? What is it about Neil that makes him so friendly?
The view from your room is Egypt, Hollywood, Pirates—
a synthetic warmth that makes me dizzy and hungry.
Go back downstairs for those potato chips
while I take off my lucky boots, my lucky socks and dress,
come back while I’m saying yes, yes, yes,
draw the curtains and,
for a while at least,
unplug all those landlocked lights.

We swim at the same Y in Chinatown. When she found out I didn't have goggles, she left me a spare pair at the front desk. "Yes," she says, "swimming is good. Do it, do it, do it!!"

Suzanne Hancock has been published in a variety of journals, including Prairie Fire, Arc and Geist. Her collection, Another Name for Bridge, was published by Mansfield Press in 2005. Her most recent work, Cast from Bells, out of McGill Queen's University Press, is slated for release in April 2010.

2010-01-12T19:48:00.003-05:00

CETACEAN FETISH CRUISE
by Christopher Stetson

*
artandwit.com

2010-01-10T16:09:00.010-05:00

BREAKFAST IN BED
by Joe Fiorito

The Inuit greet face to face, but they don't rub noses, exactly, and you shouldn't call it kissing. It is a form of greeting every bit as intimate as a kiss, but it goes deeper than that; it's a way for friends to take in each other's smell. It's how friends fill the empty places caused by absence.

Smell is fundamental to happiness. I know a man who travels with a piece of his wife's clothing sealed in a plastic bag. When the separation is too much to bear, he opens the bag and breathes.

Traces of this signature mark our sheets and pillows; this is what makes crawling into bed on a cold night such a comfort.

Smell is one of the many nameless things you miss when love goes wrong. That smell will linger, it will haunt you and exhaust you long after your lover has gone.

Think I'm exaggerating? Wake up early one Sunday and smell the person sleeping next to you. Do it. Lean over. The side of the neck will do, just below the ear. Take a deep breath. The knowledge of this scent is lodged in the deepest part of your brain.

Breathe deeply, if only to remind yourself of why you are where you are, doing what you're doing.

Now go into the kitchen. Throw two eggs into a bowl with a cup of milk and a cup of flour. Add a quarter teaspoon of salt and a tablespoon of melted butter. Mix until smooth, but don't overdo it.

Pour the batter into buttered muffin tins, filling the cups no more than half-full. Put the tins in a cold oven. Turn the heat to 450 F. After fifteen minutes, turn the oven down to 350 F. Wait for fifteen minutes more.

This recipe comes from the Fannie Farmer Baking Book by Marion Cunningham. It's an important book, with clear recipes and much new thinking. For example, prior to Marion, popovers were always started in a hot oven. This is a small thing, but one which changed my life.

While you're changing yours, make some coffee and squeeze a couple of oranges. Do what you want with a pear or a pineapple. Get a tray ready to take back to bed.

Now open the oven. It will make you smile. They don't call these things popovers for nothing. They look like little domes, golden brown and slightly crisp on the outside. The texture inside is as soft as your partner's neck. The smell is just as warm and every bit as earthy.

Take them out of the muffin tins and put them in a basket. They'll steam as you break them open. Eat them with a little butter and the best jam or honey in the cupboard. A soft camembert isn't out of place if you have it.

Breakfast together is the second or third most intimate thing you can share. If someone new is sleeping over and you want to make an impression, make these. If you're worried about what to talk about while you're eating, remember what Oscar Wilde said. Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.

If you haven't got a partner, make popovers anyway. It's easy enough to cut this recipe in half. It's good practise. It's its own reward. The butter melts into the jam and the sun pours onto your breakfast bed. And you have another way to fill the emptiness caused by absence.

*

From Comfort Me With Apples: Considering the Pleasures of the Table (Nuage Editions, 1994), a delectable collection of Joe Fiorito's vintage Hour food columns. Amazon that to your doorstep.

2010-01-10T16:05:00.000-05:00

2010-01-10T16:01:00.001-05:00

2010-01-10T15:59:00.006-05:00

I WAS A 50-ft WOMAN!

struck by a radioactive cloud!
grown from 5'9'' to 50' tall in 2 hours!
a miracle of modern science or an accident of nature?

temerious photographer! tim lagacé!
giant caught on camera! chantel ness on location getting a taste of expo 67 (once the USA pavilion)! propping on le palais des congrès! peering into montréal's casino (formerly the French pavilion)!

2010-01-10T15:53:00.006-05:00

DISPATCHES FROM THE OTHER SIDE
by Aaron Kreuter

Editors’ Note:
Local hikers found the following typewritten pages in an enormous crater next to what appears to be an ostrich cemetery. We have never heard of the author, nor do any of the events he refers to correlate to reality. Nonetheless, we have put together three excerpts from the vast amount of text extant, to showcase the workings of what must have been a very unique mind.

-eds, North American Anthropology Quarterly

strange times

September 2nd, 2008

Fellow Americans,

The news out of Washington this week is bleak. I just got off the phone with my good friend Bill Hackensack who has been working thirty-six hours straight, balls to nuts, trying to get to the bottom of this vice-presidential shitbomb. Bill says he has a credible source in Flatback, Montana who has old B grade porno featuring the Alaskan governor herself. According to Hackensack it was an all out fuckfest complete with eighties soundtrack – the governess and four, five men, poolside, stilettos and (this will at least keep her evangelical friends happy) no contraceptives.

I knew from the moment she was brought onstage something was amiss. The tight teacher bun, the glasses, the pouty lips. It all makes sense now. And McCain weasel smiling away, bloated from the condensed fat of young school children.

In saner times this would spell the end for the Republican push for the white house, and the framed picture of Obama I keep on my mantelpiece next to my hunting rifles would have paid off, but the country appears to be one gas pump away from a pure clusterfuck, these apes in suits itching to send us back into the early mediaeval period, where any sign of straying from the status quo was met with a terminal visit to the rack and insubordination was treated with boiling oil.

I am ready to flee at any moment. I have a suitcase packed with passport, pistol, and my bust of Richard Nixon by the door. I put a down payment on forty acres of tundra a hundred miles north of Yellowknife. And if I don’t get out in time, when the militia come knocking at the door me and Jack Nicholson have enough dynamite to blow those bible-fuckers back to Jupiter.

We won’t know how serious the situation is until November, which leaves us at least two months of the NFL, though with Favre playing for the Jets and the Gillette stadium buried under a mile-high mountain of ice, it is strange times indeed to be a betting man.

AK

dispatch from four thousand feet

September 25th, 2008

Fellow Americans,

I am writing this from a small wooden shelter high atop the Canadian Rockies. On clear mornings the smoke from America’s eastern seaboard is as visible as grey weasely laughter. Me and my new neighbour Calvin spent all weekend installing triple-fortified barbed wire around my compound with air-raid sirens every five feet. If anyone comes for me they’ll have thirteen feet of 300 watt fury to get through.

Not even the most apocalyptic fundamentalist nut-jar could have foretold that the downfall of the American empire would come so swiftly, so severely, so historically beautifully. But if we’ve learned anything in this epoch of fear and ignorance and animal stupidity it is that history is one toothy-grinned motherfucker. And now while the world picks apart the corpse of a three-hundred year experiment that somewhere back during the early eighteen-hundreds veered off course and never had the balls to do anything about it I eat roasted venison for every meal, play a hick version of checkers Calvin has taught me, go on long walks with my pitbull Bernanke, and experiment with the local flora.

Is it too soon to elegize? America, you fucker, you really had us going. Oh well. So it goes. Besides, nothing will really change: whomever rises to global dominance now, whether China or Russia or Europe, the inherent production of goods and spending of capital will still reign supreme. The unprecedented clustershitfuck that is high capitalism won’t be happy until human kind is dead and bloody in the bathtub, covered in the piss of fanatics and the reeking shit of powermongering strongmen.

Canada probably won’t be safe for long. Who in their right mind would leave such a wide land of trees and snow and mushrooms to fend for itself? But I can see the mountain road that would take me deep into the arctic and I know a thing or two about survival. One thing’s for sure – Calvin, Bernanke and I will persevere.

Saying Goodnight To The American Dream That Turned Into A Nightmare And Bit Our Collective Cock Off While Giving Us A Blow Job,

AK

dispatch from the other side

November 5th, 2008

Fellow Americans,

Since the polls on the west coast closed last night I have been busy. I powered down the electric fence, uncoiled the barbed wire, took down the buckets of boiling cooking oil that were prepped to fall on intruders with a tug of any number of ropes. The remote-detonated mines I will leave, for now: I’ve heard rumour that there’s bands of disenfranchised voters roaming the mountains looking for revenge. Like the jazz great Bloody Wallace used to say, the best way to stop a lynching is dynamite.

But those are exceptions of the time, fringes of the zeitgeist. Most of America will fall into line – it’s what they do, at least until the fang-toothed monarchists are able to regroup, be seen together in daylight once more. Being a humanist I can’t help feeling sorry for them: they were so close to reinstating the feudal system in the new world, they were four to eight years away from complete and utter dominance, and now, in one sweeping day, they’ve been shown for what they are: power drunk mutants with too many hands on the steering wheel. A few still remain unscathed, clinging to their positions, waiting for the return of their lost wet dream.

Sadly (on that note), even a half-drunk student of history knows that the good times rarely last. And because of that I’ve got a lot to do. For starters, the largest organism in the world is apparently a miles-long fungus growing under Montana, and I am, lest we forget, a doctor. Ah, the hallucinogenic thrill of the open road. I’ll miss this place though. Tonight with the help of my cyclopsed neighbour Calvin we’re going to dig an enormous pit in my backyard, have a bonfire of all my correspondence, clothing, books and various drug-related paraphernalia. To my editors, please take this as my formal resignation from my weekly column. To all the gun store owners of this great nation, don’t be surprised to see me in the near future, a crazed look in my eyes and self-defence my only concern.

Enjoying The Good Times Because There’s Much More Shit Than Candy And The Kids Keep Getting Fatter,

AK

One of the headlining authors of Hot Dog, the recently kibbutzed Aaron Kreuter has settled into grad studies at U Vic and is writing poems not necessarily about animals that are finding their way around the quarterlies. "What's up? Just started my second semester at U Vic. Putting together a poetry manuscript. Nothing much else."

See. That's what I just said.

2010-01-08T17:44:00.005-05:00

OVERRIDE
OVERRIDE
OVERRIDE
OVERRIDE
OVERRIDE

To prevail or have dominance over;
have final authority or say over;
overrule.
To disregard, set aside, or nullify; countermand
to take precedence over; preempt or supersede
to extend beyond or spread over; overlap
to modify or suspend the ordinary functioning of;
alter the normal operation of
to ride over or across
to ride past or beyond
to trample or crush;
to ride (a horse) too much
to ride too closely behind (the hounds).

*

Jessica Howarth stumbled across this poem on dictionary.com. She uses her paper dictionary to keep the living room door shut. It's a drafty house.

2010-01-07T10:03:00.002-05:00

BREAK UP CARDS
by Melissa Bull, Caela Moffet, Dan Svatek

2010-01-06T12:18:00.007-05:00

THINGS ARE BORN
by Michael Chadwick

Things are born. That is to say that when something is necessary, something will be created. It occurs, everywhere. In nature. In thought. Everywhere. For example, yesterday, at the Firebird Motel, my friend Emmezeka cut his thumb off. It was a pretty reasonable circumstance.

I was standing in the aisle. The aisle between two beds. There’s a certain symmetry to a hotel room with two beds. I was standing in that aisle, with my back facing the wall and I was watching the television…well, actually, even though the television was on…it was Charlie’s Angels, the TV show…even though it was on, I was staring at my reflection in the mirror on the wall opposite me. I was looking at every detail, at every unique imperfection. Looking to understand exactly where everything is located, when in the corner of my eye, I saw Emmezeka’s arm jerking.

I turned my attention to him. He was using the tenon saw. He was putting a lot of force behind his motions. I said, to no one in particular, more thinking out loud than anything else. I said, “You sacrifice precision with speed.” I turned my body away from the mirror, and towards Emmezeka. Just as I turned, I saw the blade positioned right above his thumb.

Have you ever been in a moment that was occurring and you were aware of everything in the moment at that precise moment? I could see that Emmezeka was going to cut his thumb. And I was aware, in complete understanding, that if I didn’t express that concern immediately it’d be too late.

A man once told me…well, he didn’t tell me. I overheard him saying it to someone else. I heard a man once say to someone else that, “you could only notice the play of the world, for a moment, before it rolls on.” I didn’t want that moment to pass me by. So I waited until I couldn’t hold that moment any longer. By that point, the blade was cutting into Emmezeka’s thumb.

“Mez,” I said. I call him Mez. I’m the only person who calls him that. I said, “Mez,” and he looked up. I said, “Mez, you’re cutting your thumb off,’ because as he looked up, he continued to cut. I said, “Mez, you’re cutting your thumb.” And when I said this, I pointed my finger down at his hand.

And at the moment I started to point, a beautiful red ribbon of blood shot out of his thumb. As it moved toward me, I saw this unbroken chain, this crimson rope, connected to Mez. It was beautiful. It shot straight up with a burst of momentum. It went as far and as high as it could before physics intervened. It leveled, for an instant, and then began its downward arch.

The blood hit my left collar, on the top part where my neck starts to show. I always have my collars starched. I get them cleaned at this Korean place. Very good price.

Then, in an instant, he recognized what was occurring and looked down.

But the thing was he didn’t lift the knife first. He lifted his hand. The hand with the cut thumb. He was already pretty close to removing it. Jerking his hand did the trick, so to speak.

I said, “Stick it in the cooler.” We had two coolers in the room. Big Igloo coolers. You know those coolers that construction people carry their lunches in? The Igloo cooler? We had two of them, but they were big, big versions of those. Like the size of small televisions. We had a red one and a blue one. So I told him, “Put it in the cooler.” And he turned around, and right behind him was the dresser. And on the dresser was one of the coolers. The blue one.

He was calm. He didn’t yell, or scream, or look panicked.

He said, “It’s a new day, Lou.” He calls me Lou. I don’t know why. There are no L’s, or O’s, or U’s in my name. My name doesn’t even have the sound ’lu.” I asked him once, “Why do you call me Lou?” And he said, “Because you look like a Lou to me.” What an interesting man.

So he said to me, “It’s a new day, Lou.” I said, “What are you talking about? It’s a new day? We have to hurry to the hospital, to get your thumb back on.” And he said, “There is no need to hurry, my friend. It’s a new day.”

He said, “Today, is day one… of Emmezeka minus one thumb.” And the moment he said this, he had this grin. The kind of grin that makes you think the right side of his face didn’t tell the left side it was supposed to be smiling. The timing couldn’t have been more…perfect. I started laughing with an energy and a vigor that I hadn’t experienced in ages.

I told him, “You have…no idea.” But I don’t think he heard me because I was laughing so hard. I am sure that it came out like a jumble of sounds. But those sounds must have been pleasing, or the site of my laughter made him happy, because he started laughing with me.

A lifelong wrestling fan, Con-U certified Michael Chadwick has interned with Vice and En Route and now makes a killing with the mad men -- he's the one in the bow-tie.