Issue 3: Take This Job
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The broken C I Prose Poetry Photography Art Music T Y Issue 3: Take this job... W i n t e r 2 0 0 8 ISSN 1916-3304 Cover Illustration: W i n t e r 2 0 0 8 Mouki K. Butt I s s u e 3 The Broken City, ISSN 1916-3304, is published semi- a concentration in illustration, and has already been annually out of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, appearing accepted to several colleges and universities. Born in 1988 in Calgary, Alberta, she currently resides in New sporadically in print, but always at: England with her husband Peter and their two cats. www.thebrokencitymag.com. Submission guidelines Check out her website at: www.juliekitzes.tyreus.com. can be found at that site and submissions can be sent Despite speaking and writing in his mother tongue, to: [email protected]. Questions about The Christian Martius lives far away from the country he used Broken City or its policies can be directed to Editor-in- to call home. Recently, he has started using words like “kinda” in his sentences and now calls trousers pants chief Scott Bryson at [email protected]. Rights and pants underpants. His short stories have appeared to individual works published in The Broken City remain online andEye in printWeekly in Vancouver,Discorder TorontoCapital and Mag London. He the property of the author and cannot be reproduced also writes articles for various magazines and websites, including , and . Samples without their consent. All other materials © 2008. All of his work can be found at www.christianmartius.com. rights reserved. All wrongs reserved. Kiran Mehdee is a writer, performer, animal and human Contributors rights activist, and teacher who has lived in 22 places in 11 cities in three countries. She is currently working on her memoirs and an anthology of her poetry. She can be found admiring nature and elevating her consciousness Mouki K. Butt ([email protected]) is a mixed media in Toronto, where she lives with her beloved and the cats artist who designs still imagery, motion graphics, video, who own them both. Her website is: and sound. She doesn’t like to limit her possibilities or www.kiranmehdee.com. creativity, but is suffering from a dreadful disease called procrastination. Mouki is currently living in Vancouver Katrina Taliana is an explorer of the mystical places and is looking for a full-time job in design and media. found under the covers of old tales. A graduate from http://minorepic.net/~mouki. Sheridan Technical Institute, she bends space and has scrapes from her many adventures �loating in and around Jeff Crouch Blue is anPrint internet Review artist. Google him, or Yahoo him, the universe(s). or Lycos him, or HotBot him. Or, review his fairly recent www.myspace.com/enterthediamond. listing at . Amanda Thornton girl�ixer (a.k.a.The Kristie Broken Wiwad) City recently decided that if Haruki Murakami could start writing at the age of thirty, Salvatore William is an Ottawa native who has traveled so could she. is her �irst publishing credit North America through and through, seeking outThe truth Book and for that she is grateful. Visit her online at andof Hope inspirationThe in World the nooks Healing and Book crannies of the land. www.myspace.com/suicide_room. In 2002, he was published for the �irst time in and Fjord Three (Beyond Faces Borders Darren Bradley Jones makes poor decisions when Press, Reykjavik). He has released two mini-albums of drinking, speaks about himself in the third person when wistful songs, (2002) and (2007), and tequila inspires such arrogance, and frequently manages is currently in the planning stages of his debut album. to trick those around him into believing his intentions Recently, Sal’s music and poetry have been published are sincere and his heart is pure. He writes �iction to on the Calgary-based e-zine Splinterswerve.com,A Misspent as well exorcise his bad behavior and uses his characters to do onYouth his Ofpersonal Ramblings: website, My Adolescent salwilliam.googlepages.com. Poetry and say things that, in real life, would be detrimental to Look for the release of his �irst book of poetry, his successfully passing for a likeable human being. He , in 2009. can be harassed and ridiculed at [email protected]. Christopher Woods is the author of a prose collection, UNDER A RIVERBED SKY. His photographs can be viewed Julie Kitzes has experience illustrating children’s books, in his online gallery, MOONBIRD HILL ARTS as well as working with clients on independent projects (www.moonbirdhillarts.etsy.com), which he shares with ranging from T-shirt designs to slideshow illustrations. his wife, Linda. He lives in Houston and in Chappell Hill, She plans to earn a bachelor of �ine arts degree with Texas. - 2 - Long Live The Ants K a trina Taliana Far ahead of its time and stylistically in�luential in the swing of things, a deep voice echoes from the hallways of imagination. Ants. A soft brush of a brown sweater and a familiar warmth at hip level. Almost forty-two percent of luck, the rest is left up to fate, a connection unbridled by the ties of decision. Holding dreams from the con�iscating people, con�iscating the dreams from the regular people. This is not my divine. Driving away in the high grey dying cities, singing away the blue temperate mornings. A love song written across hours of countryside, and the sticky remnants of nectarine dripping down, down my thin freckled wrists. Ant. Ant. A faint breath of forest, a jolly blow of seaside, a true hopeless romantic. There are fourteen trees that line the bathroom walls, and a patch of white paint on the �loor. This is amusing, this is pointless, this is just the falling of Rome in our living room. Murder by a small child’s toy and a few freedom �ighters. Ant. A perfect erasable blue heart on the door, rice in the bowl, chopsticks. Mango �lavoured dishes from mango �lavoured countries, and his face shining up from the sidewalks. Catching myself believing in the slow ripple of change and synchronicity. These are the best lines from the poems about Pallantine. Ant. Flat rate star bought off the back of a truck close to the border. A midnight pinner, and the twinkle of colourful Christmas lights waiting for October. This is reality. This is it. Ants. B ro k e n Amanda Thornton P h o t o s : Julie Kitzes We got thrown out of our uncle’s house at the hips.” same time, me and Lana, my twin. I �igure we both left “Who’s in Yorktown? Another cousin you can lay?” with the same three things: a high school diploma, our I kept walking. life’s savings and a suitcase. “Yorktown is where Ryan lives.” Ryan was her old The diploma was pretty much useless; we knew boyfriend, and Lana had the most irritating way of poking that to start. Our uncle had told our caseworker he could her chin out when she knew she was trying to pull a fast keep us until we had a place to go after we graduated one. Out of the corner of my eye I could see her doing it from high school. But after graduation, Lana slept with now. our uncle’s stepson, and that woman my uncle married “I’m not coming.” said it was us or her. So he gave us each an extra twenty “He already said he’d take us in.” bucks, and threw us out with the same suitcases our mom “When did he say this?” bought us when she lost custody. “He said whenever I needed a place.” I was walking as angrily as I felt and ignoring “You can whore yourself out for a place to stay,” I Lana even though I knew she was looking at me sideways said. “I won’t.” through her long hair. She started talking fast. “I’m not a whore.” “We can get a bus ticket out of here, Jackie. It’s I stopped and put down my suitcase. “No, not a only �ifty dollars to Yorktown.” whore, I guess. A whore can keep her legs together for It took me a while to get enough spit in my mouth long enough to get a price for...” and she clocked me with to speak. “You get us thrown out and you already have her �ist, right in the face. plans?” I went for her and when we stopped, my face was “Yeah.” She set down her suitcase and put her throbbing, and I had some of her hair in my hand. I spat �ists on her hips. Both of us had these wide bony hips to get the taste of blood out of my mouth and heaved my even though we were skinny everywhere else. Edith, the suitcase up and headed towards the highway out of town. woman my uncle married, called them “childbearing I had no plan and I was too pissed to think of - 3 - one when I reached the highway. So, restaurant?” his hands to himself. Granny Greer I put down my suitcase and stuck “No.” supplied him with girls mostly, out a thumb. I nearly put down my “Well.” She coughed for a some boys, and he worked us for thumb when a pink and white junker little and I wondered if she should every second he could, paid below slowed because I couldn’t tell if the be smoking that cigarette. When she minimum wage, no overtime. driver was a woman. When she rolled stopped, she said, “He could give you Probably illegal, but the restaurant down the window, I got a good look a job if you wanted to work for one.” fed us, and there were two cots in the at her and changed my mind.