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.

EMERSON
by Dan Svatek

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.

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.