A Journal of Arts & Culture

MIChAEL CRUMMEy · MARy DALTON · SpENCER GORDON · LENEA GRACE · KyM GREELEy · AUDREy hURD · BRUCE JOhNSON · ALLISON LASORDA · JANAKI LENNIE · CARMELITA MCGRATh · COLLEEN pELLATT ·JEy pETER · NED pRATT · ShEILAh ROBERTS · SUE SINCLAIR · KAREN SOLIE · JANE STEvENSON · JENNy XIE

A JOURNAL OF ARTS & CULTURE No.13 A JOURNAL OF ARTS & CULTURE

# 13

A GENUINE NEWFOUNDLAND No. 13 — WINTER 2013 ISSN: 1913-7265 $14.95 AND LABRADOR MAGAZINE Mary Pratt, Salmon on Saran, 1974. Oil on Masonite, 45.7 x 76.2 cm. Collection of Angus and Jean Bruneau

MAY 11 – SEPTEMBER 8, 2013 MARY PRATT Renowned Newfoundland and Labrador artist Mary Pratt will be celebrated in a 50-year retrospective exhibition that will open at The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery in May 2013, then tour Canada until January 2015.

A project by The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, with support from the Department of Canadian Heritage, Museums Assistance Program.

When you appreciate art. When you crave creativity. When you’re happiest being inspired, challenged, even surprised. There’s one place where your spirit can truly soar: The Rooms.

Baggage JILL SOOLEY “This is honest, gripping, funny stuff.” – THE TELEGRAM

Braco LESLEYANNE RYAN “A bombshell of a book… harrowing and instructive and maddening.” – MARK ANTHONY JARMAN, AUTHOR OF MY WHITE PLANET

The Mean Time JAMES MATTHEWS A powerful story of how life is lived and lost between regrets.

In the Field JOAN SULLIVAN Part narrative, part documentary, part ghost story: In the Field reminds us how a soldier’s sacrifice resonates, long after he has fallen. AND FreshNon-Fiction Here Be Dragons BRUCE HYNES Does the massive Kraken lurk off the coast of Newfoundland? Find out in this engaging catalogue of the strange creatures said to prowl our coves and barrens…

Fluctuat Nec Mergitur: JC Roy’s Newfoundland ART JEAN CLAUDE ROY Painted almost entirely on-site, each image is the story of one day in the life of a community. “Hums with the strength and buoyancy Roy sees in all his landscapes, throughout Newfoundland…” – THE TELEGRAM

Fall 2012 BREAKWATER is NEWFOUNDLAND 1.800.563.3333 www.breakwaterbooks.com available as ebooks New from Creative Book Publishing

Walk With My Shadow: The Other Side of Midnight: The Life of an Innu Man Taxi Cab Stories GEORGE GREGOIRE MIKE HEFFERNAN

Meet George Gregoire, an Innu man The Other Side of Midnight: Taxi Cab who was born in the Labrador bush Stories describes the experiences of an in the middle of the last century, yet underwritten portion of Newfoundland’s mustered enough education to working class. Comical, absurd and write his memoirs. In the authentic often dramatic, many of their reminis- voice of a storyteller, George invites cences will be of long hours and years the reader to see Innu society and on the job, their hopes and decayed culture from the inside. dreams. George Gregoire Mike Heffernan 978-1-77103-000-7 978-1-897174-96-8 Memoir/Biography Non-Fiction 5.5 x 8.5 / 200pp 6 x 9 / 250pp b&w photos b&w photos $19.95 $19.95

CREATIVE BOOK PUBLISHING • 430 Topsail Rd., Village Shopping Centre, St. John’s, NL A1E 4N1 Tel. 709-748-0813 • Fax 709-579-6511 • www.creativebookpublishing.ca fenc i er onl ne It gets even riddle n SED iv, 93 ‘riddle sticks’ D. Attrib SUBMISSION riddle (rod) fence ([1987] QUINLAN 30). 1981 SPARKES xv To make a riddle fence, GUIDELINES a top and a bottom rail are first either nailed to posts or are tied in position with We publish the best green withes. A middle rail is then set in in Canada. Make us place. The riddles are forest thinnings of young spruce, about as tall as a man and A JOURNAL OF ARTS & CULTURE not much bigger than a man’s thumb. They want to publish you. No. 13 — WINTER 2013 are laced vertically on the three rails in a Riddle Fence is a Newfoundland-based jour- basket-weave manner. nal of arts and culture, published three times from The Dictionary of Newfoundland English yearly. We endeavour to publish high quality fiction, non-fiction, poetry, artwork and anything else that fits on paper and punches Riddle Fence above its own artistic weight. PO Box 7092 St. John’s, NL, Canada A1E 3Y3 [email protected] www.riddlefence.com So what are we looking for? Simply amazing fiction, non-fiction, poetry and visual art. We ISSN 1913-7265 Publications Mail Agreement No. 417 250 14 Charitable No. 84167 9822 RR0001 only accept previously unpublished work. We license first North American serial rights. Who We Are For fiction and non-fiction, our suggested Riddle Fence is a Newfoundland and Labrador-based journal of arts and culture, published three maximum word count is 5,000 words, but if times a year by Riddle Fence Inc., a registered Canadian charity, and managed by a volunteer edito- it’s brilliant and a bit longer, we just might rial executive and board of directors. The mandate of Riddle Fence is to publish high quality artwork, go with it. essays, interviews, poems, reviews and short fiction. Distributed by Magazines Canada.

For non-fiction, we’re looking for essays Executive Director Associate Editors Proofreader on the arts or on particular artists, or on Shoshanna Wingate Art: Susan Rendell aspects of “culture” and “art” as an idea or Bruce Johnson & Editorial Board as a specific practice. In-depth book reviews. Managing Editor Poetry: Board of Directors Interviews with artists of all disciplines. Carson Butts Danielle Devereaux Chip Clark (chair), Michael Creative non-fiction with a strong narrative Randy Drover Crummey (vice-chair), Bob Designer James Langer Hallett, Pat Hayward, Lisa drive. What aren’t we looking for? Travel Graham Blair Fiction: Moore, Dave Paddon. writing, re-told folklore or academic essays. Susan Rendell Your best bet? Read some back issues of Catherine Hogan Safer Riddle Fence, and you’ll quickly get an idea of what we publish.

For visual art: 300 dpi minimum. We do publish colour, but we also love, love, love black and white.

When submitting, please make sure your submission goes to the right e-mail address: Front cover: Back cover: Ned Pratt, Transicold Trailer, Herring Season (2011). Ned Pratt, Facade, Northern Peninsula (2008). [email protected] Ink jet print, 46.25” x 34.75”. Ink jet print, 446.25” x 34.75”. [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] weekend arts magazine Join host Mack Furlong as he tours artist studios and galleries, jumps on stage with actors, comedians and musicians and chats with the province’s latest literary lights.

Weekends 6 - 9:30 am 8:30 am Labrador NEWS VISUALS NQ ARTS $30/year CULTURE ED 4002 Memorial University POLITICS HISTORY St. John’s, NL A1C 5S7 FOLKLORE p 709.864.2426 f 709.864.4330 POETRY FICTION e [email protected] A Cultural Journal of N&ewfoundland MORE and Labrador CONTENTS

Guest Editorial Karen Solie Bruce Johnson Rental Car 38 Newfoundland Standard Time 9 A Western 40 The National Gallery 42 Fables of the Reconstruction 44 Fiction Affirmations 46

Jane Stevenson Michael Crummey Sadie’s Bone 17 The Kids Are Alright 55 First Prize Winner/ Getting the Marriage into Bed 56 Riddle Fence Short Fiction Contest 2012 Small Clothes 58 A Carry-On 60 Colleen Pellatt Cause of Death and Remarks 61 Pop 27 Spencer Gordon Sheilah Roberts Okay Lolita Cupidx 62 The Big Wheel 47 Mary Dalton Jenny Xie Vertical Panel 78 Carry-On 65 Gauze 80 Cross-Stitch 82 Jey Peter Source notes for Mary Dalton’s Centos 106 Confessions of a Synesthete 87 Allison LaSorda Ending in A 84 Poetry Carmelita McGrath Lenea Grace Old Crooked Fellow 96 Proof 12 Harmless Jack 98 Tracing One Warm Line 14 With Apologies to the Little Dove 100 Escape Velocity 102 Sue Sinclair All the Gods I Know Are Out on the Mashes 104 1st Corps de Ballet 21 Exercise in Beauty No. 2 22 Visited 24 Contributors/Acknowledgements 108 Poem for Nietzsche’s Eyes 25 6 ON THE FENCE Carson Butts

I figured I didn’t need to buy any more and then covered in dirt, topsoil and sod gold and silver. What with those two big to disguise it as a regular ole mound in ornate chests full in my bedroom closet. I the topography below during flyovers. Of didn’t need to buy a gun either, seeing as I’d course I dug tunnels from hill to cellar to purchased one a couple years back for the shed and all the rest. And of course I had gun rack behind the kitchen door of the new a big boy all wired up in the living room house—gun bought, waste not. I had bullets to blow out the windows and doors when too—first in my truck, then under the bed, necessary and make everything above then in a safety deposit box (which really ground all uninhabited looking. I didn’t didn’t make sense). I decided to collect them need people moving in when the time and just keep them with the gun; the cabinet came; I’d rather contract cholera. door locks and I don’t have any kids. Now, I didn’t forget the finer things. I also didn’t need to buy any more I had one of those big pillows for the groceries. There just wasn’t any room for queen bed that turns the headboard into them: the entire cellar was jammed with the backrest of a soft, yet firm, full-length canned, preserved and pickled goods and couch. And I had a smart TV at the foot there were sacks of grain and a mill in my of the bed with all her favourite shows. beer room, gallons of fuel with the gen- (She prefers sitting in bed to the couch.) erator behind the shed. The rain barrels I also bought some fancy bottles to bust were full and the water treatment system open on special occasions to come because primed, the out-rooms of the basement the world ending doesn’t mean it just up crammed with chopped, dry wood. A and explodes. I guess it might and, if so, standard first aid kit in the bathroom. I’ve wasted a lot of preparation, but if it (Let’s be realistic; I’m not a doctor, and doesn’t, some of us will last longer than even a fully loaded OR and a surgical others. I’m going for longer. team wouldn’t change that.) In all honesty, we had been living un- I was happy with the souped-up GMC derground for most of the year by the time Sierra 4x4 and the Xterra with plate glass it started drawing to a close. Arguments windows parked out in the hill. The hill is took hold of us and became more frequent. actually a small airplane hangar I’d con- At first, they were about little things, like structed the year before out of sheet metal, how fast we were squeezing through our 7

toothpaste supply. This was easily re- the phone in my hand, looking out the solved when I ran out to Sobeys for more. window at the hill. The dial tone sounded Everyone was so calm in the aisles; I imag- pretty loud in the silence. ined their end-of-the-world setups being better than mine. I wanted to ask them all * * * what they were doing for toilets. The arguments grew angrier as the On January 1, while the snow ploughs were leaves turned; she left before the first busy scraping 2012 off the streets outside, I snow. The final straw was her finding out thought how quickly we’d left the old year I didn’t have the right bullets for the gun. behind. As Bruce Johnson describes in this I’m still not sure why she tried loading the issue’s guest editorial, we are “geographi- gun; that was supposed to be a post-event cally the beginning of Canada.” As such, first measure. I hadn’t planned on explain- we are also the torch bearer of new time, ing the bullets. I hadn’t planned on ever rushing first into the new year, half an hour using the gun, accidentally or otherwise. before the Maritimes. She felt this was a seeping wound in the Issue #13 features the first-place win- plan. I let her take the gun and wrong bul- ner of the 2012 Riddle Fence short fiction lets when she left, on foot, but that was all. contest, “Sadie’s Bone” by Jane Stevenson. I still felt on track. The last thing I And we have more torch-bearing fiction, needed was to be sure I’d know as soon by Colleen Pellatt, Jey Peter, Sheilah Rob- as the end began, so I set up an advanced erts and Jenny Xie. There is wealth of new warning system. On the American con- poetry by Michael Crummey, Mary Dal- tinents, Newfoundlanders would be the ton, Spencer Gordon, Lenea Grace, Allison first to know if the world was ending on LaSorda, Carmelita McGrath, Sue Sinclair December 21, 2012, and I was living in and Karen Solie. All this great literature is New Brunswick. So I arranged for a friend accompanied by equally great artwork by to call me from the Avalon Peninsula on Kym Greeley, Audrey Hurd, Janaki Lennie that date, at 12:01 a.m. and Ned Pratt. After he hung up, I stood there with Janaki Lennie, Future Conditional #1603 (2005). Graphite on gesso board, 8”x 5”. Riddle Fence Guest Editorial

Newfoundland Standard Time 9 Bruce Johnson

Newfoundland Time is unlike the se- struggling with the weight of history to quencing that I experienced growing up shape a hesitant present. If Newfound- in mainland Canada. There is more to this land time is unique, it is no surprise that than the measurable half-hour gap, which, its wobbles are reflected in its art, where for twenty years now, has separated me ideas of memory and narrative abound. from the shores of the continent. I write Visual art is a relative newborn here, from the Avalon, Newfoundland’s east- growing up within a family of ancient ern edge, named after the magical isle siblings. Music, poetry, prose, theatre and where Merlin aged backwards and King traditional craft have pedigrees that pre- Arthur reportedly rests until England’s date the founding of both America and Ca- time of greatest need. It marks Elizabeth nada. The idea of working as a fine artist I’s first colony, the beginning of the British is a consequence of the influx of American Empire, and is (thanks to a slim 52% vote culture (and currency) during WWII and in 1948) geographically the beginning of then confederation with Canada. Canada. Probably the best known and celebrat- After more than four hundred years of ed artist from Newfoundland is painter European settlement, the island’s capital Christopher Pratt. Others, including his looks (after three levelling fires) like a Vic- former spouse, Mary Pratt, and print- torian town, grinning through colourful maker David Blackwood, are also recog- clapboard houses, seemingly unconcerned nized nationally, while Gerald Squires and with the pernicious ascent of big oil and a handful of others are best known closer executive condos. Downtown St. John’s to home. Besides the critical acclaim each continues to pose for postcards, sur- has garnered in varying ways, they enjoy rounded by ancient and steep stone cliffs a wide popular appeal stemming from embracing a finger of harbour. the reassurance offered by their subjects. My home is a place that has jumped Although spread along a broad spectrum, through time, from some kind of sub- each are realists of a sort, at home in a sistence feudalism into post-modernity, region where pure abstraction is rare. within only a generation or two. Time For five decades, Christopher Pratt has routinely misbehaves here, often moving distilled the landscapes, architecture and in serpentine loops. Old and new chafe, human figures of this island into precise, 10

formal archetypes; the work of a quintes- foundland’s national psyche, and there- sential Platonist. These paintings, often fore the explorations of its artists. These of vernacular forms derived from specific changes have straightened time somewhat, places and times are nonetheless oddly linking us more to global time; there are atemporal. With mathematical precision, signs that we are beginning to consider Pratt refines the messy, collective memory a present that, while not abandoning of the island into clarified stasis. Pratt’s the past’s gravity, seeks other orbits and perfect tense is at odds with the narratives trajectories. Church sex abuse scandals of printmaker David Blackwood. More ro- in the 1980s broke a centuries-old trust in mantic than classical, Blackwood is a trou- established authorities, the failure of the

Pratt is a formalist, whose control of frame and technical craft consider a society in flux. His images play with the audience, their easy desires and expectations, while adding an ironically exact eye.

badour, reciting the narratives of a spent cod stocks and the death of four centuries past, his chiaroscuro tones and iconic char- of fishing in the 1990s encouraged a retake acters reflecting a sentimentality shared of our place in Canada and an oil industry by his audience. Many act as memorials, promoted by the quasi-messianic regime images of the lost country’s mythical and of recent premier Danny Williams made real pasts (scenes of sealers, sea captains, the province into an economic power- whaling outports, harsh natural elements house (after six decades of being painted and rugged ancestors). His narratives, and as the country’s poorest and neediest their stylized, hyper-Newfoundland land- ward). The pain of the former two and the scapes, feed a culture long fed by a diet of gain of the latter have given rise to a new eulogy and remorse. Of late, however, this zeitgeist, balancing irony-salted optimism fare has begun to change. with a growing self-assurance. A number of recent social, political For the first time, a generation of and economic shifts have altered New- young artists who’ve left Newfoundland— 11

for art schools, work and life experi- the reality of faux vinyl siding, of mod- ence—have returned to a place that both ern landscaping amidst its detritus and needs them and can support them. They of a changing sense of the past as quaint are a different breed, alongside their CFA museum piece. He is not alone. A bat- (“come-from-away,” a local epithet for a tery of emerging artists are taking on our non-native) colleagues, who bring an out- landscape/heritage fetish, contesting our side, contemporary sensibility to add to collective sentimentality and exploring traditional tropes and an evolving visual what we value as contemporary consumer language. citizens in a nascent world. Ned Pratt offers a subtle case-in-point. In Umberto Eco’s novel The Island of On the surface, Pratt’s large-scale photo- the Day Before, a quixotic hero finds him- graphs mirror many of the traditional self marooned on a baroque galleon, alone preoccupations that still charge this place in a vast sea, staring at an island a league (images of landscape and touchstones of away. What separates him from firm land heritage and their associated narratives); is the imaginary line of the Earth’s merid- they even riff off the work of his famous ian. For him, looking at the island is to father. That said, they offer more for those simultaneously look through the curtain of who care to look. Pratt is a formalist, time into the past. A decade ago this scene whose control of frame and technical craft reminded me of life here in Newfound- consider a society in flux. His images play land, where the past continually filled with the audience, their easy desires and one’s vision. Today, however, the ship has expectations, while adding an ironically landed: to look out to the horizon is to see exact eye. His traditional images of island the future. architecture and environs are more about 12 Proof Lenea Grace

Poutine is a Québec delicacy. Poutine contains gravy, fries, and cheese curds. Therefore, gravy, fries, and cheese curds are Quebec delicacies.

Guy Lafleur never wore a helmet. Guy Lafleur released a record album of hockey tips set to disco. Therefore, there may or may not be a correlation between head injury and disco.

Margaret Trudeau hustled and bumped at Studio 54. Margaret Trudeau was bi-polar. Therefore, she set the trend for Canada’s love-hate relationship with her husband, non?

Oui, avec 24 Coupes Stanley, les Canadiens sont l’équipe la plus titrée de toute l’histoire de la LNH. Oui, avec seulement 4 sieges dans la Chambre des communes, le Bloc Québécois est mort. Donc, le rêve de séparatisme fond sous nos pieds.

Leonard Cohen is from Montréal. Leonard Cohen is not French. Therefore, Leonard Cohen is a Jew.

We pride ourselves on ars mosaica. We pride ourselves on separate but equal. Therefore, we are soon to be regret. 13 Proof Lenea Grace

Our apologies melt into ores, kiss arse. Our apologies span 54°40’. Therefore, our sorries border on Pacific Rim jobs.

We’re not British blue collar, but our great grandparents are. We’re not American white trash, but we like Fort Lauderdale. Therefore, we are unnatural shades of leather and cream.

Alberta’s got beef with Ontario. Ontario’s got beef with Alberta. Therefore, they should just do it already and get it over with.

In this Canada, we are not together. In this Canada, we are separated by 8,030 kilometres. Therefore, you are Vancouver and I am St. John’s. And I am the harbour, the lighthouse. And you are the country after dark. 14 Tracing One Warm Line Lenea Grace

Through this bastard-child land, the boreal savage, mammoth rock and birch, the leaves like papier-mâché across the extended shield— this extended legend sleeved in highway tunnels, barreling north and west, compass be damned, we will not wait for Canada

in its adolescent search for identity—Canada, your juvenile arc terranes do not mope for the savage, the savant, the sage. They do not need a collective moral compass. No, they are not the CBC. Yes, they are the CBC. Wavering leaves— the deciduous, we drop to our knees on highway carpet—the shagged rock, the shield

a glassy scope, mirrored nimbus—the shield cut and tarred, a bevelled diamond. Face it Canada, you’ve got acne, you’ve got angst. It sprawls the highway, seeps through newspaper and radio, those savage beacons stuck in the mire of Trudeau give leave to screens—we don’t need a compass

rose to navigate these proverbial waters. Throw the compass to the winds, the Chinooks blow kisses to your eastern shield. Say hello to the prairie mamas—leave your apologies to the politicians. Canada, get it together, man. Do your due diligence. You are not savage and there is no residential school left to tame your highway 15 Tracing One Warm Line Lenea Grace

guilt. Buck up, darling. Grit your teeth, wind the highway. For God’s sake, I told you to lose the bloody compass. And stop playing with your stickshift. Enough with the savage comparisons below the border. This windshield is not a two-way mirror, Canada, so don’t you scream superior at a reflection double-exposed, don’t you dare leave.

Well. You’ve been on your own for 154 years. I’ll leave you to your own devices, your chiseled highway looks and provincial charm. Canada, I love you but my compass points south these days and I cannot shield my eyes anymore—your savage

snowy tantrums are ugly like a CBC sitcom. Pass the salt-n-vinegar chips—I’ll keep watch, Canada, but my shield is up, the crests of highways and leaves falling, the savage. Ned Pratt Shed and Dwelling (2011). Ink jet print, 46.25” x 34.75”. First Prize Winner/ Riddle Fence Short Fiction Contest 2012 Sadie’s Bone Jane Stevenson

On a small strip of damp grass just off the court- yard Sadie dances. Her lips mouth the one-two- three rhythm of a silent dance routine. Her pink legwarmers and dirty white sneakers bounce out a beat. Sadie is leaping and spreading her arms wide open and closed, open and closed. Water flicks off Sadie’s wet shoes and falls on the grey sidewalk. A nurse wearing white stock- ings swishes past Sadie and walks to the bench where Sadie’s parents sit. The nurse tells her dad that he has just five more visiting minutes left, he has a group session. Greg nods. He has a brown paper bag squashed on his lap and is eating the take-out Sadie chose for him. A Chinese noodle is stuck in his black beard. Beside Greg sits Sadie’s mom, Brenda. Brenda manages to pick at the Chinese food despite her hunched up posture and cinched-together arms. Brenda’s left foot vibrates as if it wants to cut loose from her and hop away. Greg watches his young daughter do gymnastics, her floor routine, wav- ing her right arm as she leaps and rolls across the damp grass. A track of moisture is seeping a wide line on Sadie’s shirt. Greg watches the tumbling intently and wonders if he can learn to braid in one day. There is just one day left here and he wants to surprise Sadie with something. Greg thinks that if his daughter’s hair was back in one thick braid instead of falling in wads 18

down her back with some thin strings back Sadie bounces across the grass to falling in front of her ears Sadie may stand start the routine again. Brenda frowns at a chance, she might look like a girl that her fortune, folds it once down the middle could half afford a real dance class. lengthwise and picks the space between Sadie holds one arm out straight and her front teeth with it. With her other tells Greg to imagine a stick in her hand, hand she compulsively clicks the silver a long stick with a pretty dance ribbon. clasp of her purse. She and Greg look at He sees it perfectly, imagines a brilliant each other. Greg lifts his chin in the direc- red ribbon with gold edges, a Johnny tion of Brenda’s bouncing foot and asks if Walker ribbon. Greg watches his daughter she is all right to drive. Brenda nods, taps and her pretend dance ribbon and looks her wrist where a watch might have been, sideways at his wife. Brenda sucks at her stands up and walks towards the parking teeth, adjusts her mirrored glasses and lot. Greg waves Sadie over. Sadie widens looks at her car, parked in the empty lot. her brown eyes, lifts her eyebrows way Sadie points a small sneaker and flicks her up and touches a finger to her chin. Greg wrist towards her parents on the bench; mirrors her and swipes the Chinese food Greg hears the imagined ribbon snap like out of his beard. They hug, Greg shakes a buggy whip. Brenda cracks open her his beard in Sadie’s small neck and she fortune cookie as blue jays drop out of the wriggles and laughs. “See you in one more low-slung maple tree and strut around sleep,” says Greg. Sadie is off running a garbage can. Sadie flips and bows, one to the parking lot where Brenda has the small hand pressed on her back, the other Datsun idling. Sadie does a perfect cart- hand on her belly. Greg stands, letting wheel and doesn’t have to look back to the paper take-out bag fall to the side- know her dad is watching. walk. He claps his big hands. He smiles Back at their apartment Brenda does at Sadie. He rubs his hairy knuckles and Greg a favour and continues her sixty- thinks again that he really needs a drink. day effort of cleaning the apartment of But Sadie stares at Greg like she can read all drugs and alcohol. She is drinking the his mind and Greg nods at her. He says last fingers of dark rum from the bottle okay once for Sadie. He says okay, okay, while Sadie practices handstands against twice for himself. With a proud straight the living room wall. Brenda has her first 19

clear thought in weeks and is reminded of that the dull scissors and construction her childhood dog, a beagle named Oscar. paper are on the floor of Sadie’s bedroom. Brenda remembers he was an eager dog, She goes to the kitchen, stands on the balancing on his hind legs for milk bones, counter and stashes all the matches and leaping into the air, racing, chewing table kitchen knives out of reach. From up on legs and ripping couch cushions. Brenda the counter Brenda pauses briefly and remembers that her mother, in an effort surveys the apartment. There is a record to amuse the dog, wrapped a beef bone player, a potted plant and an ashtray. in many layers of newspaper and left it There are open curtains and a jammed- for the dog to tear apart whenever they shut patio window that looks out to the

Brenda knows then what she has to do. She moves through the apartment with a controlled pace and a slow focus she had forgotten she possessed. left the house. They would come home to street. There is a young girl on an old shredded newspaper all over the house couch looking at an Archie comic. There is and the dog splayed out on the linoleum a small kitchen window looking out at the happily chewing his bone. Brenda knows brick wall of the next apartment. Shad- then what she has to do. She moves ows are stretching across the bricks and through the apartment with a controlled Brenda looks at them and knows that the pace and a slow focus she had forgotten sun is going down. It’s late in the even- she possessed. She rummages through an ing. Brenda climbs down off the counter. old sewing basket. In a box of Christmas She sniffs the milk jug and pours milk into decorations that haven’t been opened two tall glasses. She labels the glasses with for several winters Brenda finds rolls of permanent marker, 1 and 2, and balances Christmas wrapping paper. She does what them on a low wire shelf in the fridge. she has to do. With the same stinky marker she labels Later, Brenda checks to make sure an the bananas, 1 and 2. And the wax-paper extra toilet paper roll is close to the toilet, wrapped peanut butter sandwich stacks, 20

1 and 2. She smells the marker, considers two thoughts and carries Sadie. He runs carefully the chance of potential hazard around the small apartment. He calls, and then tosses it out a hole in the screen just once, for Brenda. All over the floor of of the open kitchen window. While the the apartment—the kitchen, the hall, the sun is setting and Sadie is sitting cross- bathroom, Sadie’s room—are layers of legged on the carpet listening to the crumpled Christmas wrapping paper. He Smurfs on the record player Brenda picks collapses on to the arm of the couch with her purse off the kitchen table and leaves. Sadie. On the floor amongst the wrapping One day later in the dusk of early paper is a long yellow ribbon knotted to evening Greg steps off the city bus in front the end of a short stick. Sadie follows his of the apartment building. All the lights in eyes to the ribbon and tells him it’s new, their apartment are on and the patio cur- that it was the surprise that Brenda left tains are open. He sees his young daughter inside the big present. Sadie wiggles out of dance across the living room. They must his lap, swipes the tears out of her swollen be waiting for him. He wants to know tired eyes with the back of her hand and why Brenda hadn’t showed up to drive kicks at the wrapping paper. She bright- him home on his last day. Greg opens the ens and tells Greg she has been practicing apartment door and Sadie leaps across the a new routine. She stands by the record linoleum and into his arms. Sadie won’t player in the corner of the living room, let go of him. Her arms are a vise under straightens her spine, positions her arms, his beard, around his neck. Her little legs points her ribbon stick at the water stain are pinching Greg’s middle. Sadie cries. on the ceiling and tells her dad that she Greg realizes something is very wrong. has the first part all planned out but hasn’t He thinks he has to shit, has to drink and figured out yet how it will end. has to find Brenda. He ignores the first 21 1st Corps de Ballet Sue Sinclair

There was a man mistook himself for the sun, for fire. He trained assiduously. He danced because that’s what fire does, especially in the pit of the eye. To command the eye is to command the man; he was no fool. King since the age of four, he entertained no comparison of the arch of his foot but to the firmament. It was discussed alongside the tenderness of quail and other delicate matters. Apollo was his role of choice. His ballet master replaced him sometimes so he could witness his own glory. 22 Exercise in Beauty No. 2 Sue Sinclair

I took a lighter to a seagull feather, seeking a glimpse of what E. had witnessed. I was reading Farrokhzad at the time:

commit flight to memory, for the bird is mortal.

It seemed to me that flight was equally mortal, and memory, for all our fallibility, indeed its best bet:

when E. was a girl in Poland, she said, the barn down the hill had caught fire. She watched in her nightdress, feeling like Caesar as chickens plunged from the hayloft into the freakish glow of the fire trucks,

plumage consumed mid-flight, wings flapping “uselessly,” which is one definition of beauty, or so you might think. What kind of person are you? her mother had demanded. Even now

23 Exercise in Beauty No. 2 Sue Sinclair

E. struggles to tell the difference between affliction and miracle, to figure out what an “act of God” is. She still dreams about the chickens: flailing,

they scribbled themselves across the sky, birds and flight partially immortalized by the fire’s mnemonics.

The gull feather in my hand burned so fast that birth and death seemed compressed in a single instant; I remember it was gone almost before I lifted my thumb from the flint wheel. 24 Visited Sue Sinclair

There’s a painting of Joan of Arc in which golden people float in the trees behind her. She looks as though she sees them.

She is God’s summer home, her eyes a bay on which he floats for a time of an afternoon.

Holy-crazy is the look in her eyes.

One summer, the whales came to the cliffs behind my mother’s home. I was in the garden and heard them singing; it was like hearing voices, the sound seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere.

Their flukes ghostly pale as they floated up to the surface.

My eyes fell over the cliff and into the bellies of those whales, who have never returned. 25 Visited Poem for Nietzsche’s Eyes Sue Sinclair Sue Sinclair

My office was once a girl’s room—a little swallow cut from a mirror is still glued to the wall. At night

in the window’s doubled panes, I can see the swallow and a twin, flying in perfect formation, steadily

into the darkness. I’m thinking of Nietzsche, of one minute and sixteen seconds of snowy footage played

and replayed, his huge, steady nineteenth-century eyes looming from a sickbed in Weimar, indifferent to the aphrodisiacal

light that fell into the room. Forgive me, my friends, I have ventured to paint my happiness on the wall.

He lay as though finally convinced the wall was out of reach. And the swallows, he could no longer picture them.

Last night, snow slid from the roof with a crash that shook the house. The footage flickers irresolutely

on the screen; I watch from deep inside the winter of 2012. The snow drifts. The swallows don’t move unless I do. Audrey Hurd, The Last of Four Chairs (2011). Lithograph, 15” x 22”. Pop 27 Colleen Pellatt

“You can pick her up with one hand,” Father Once Mother said Father flew a Lancaster said to his friend and gave his head a shake, a bomber, and Father got mad. smile on his face. After the war Father went to university Calina had waited all day for Karl and became a professional forester, because Selinger to come, and now here he was, at the government gave the soldiers some mon- last, in their living room. ey, and Father picked university. Karl was Karl and Father worked together in an his helper at work. One street behind Calina’s office building downtown or went off into the house, the ground sloped down into the bush bush. Mother and Father invited Karl for vis- that ran all the way out to Lake Superior. its because Father liked to talk to him, and be- Across the water was a long, blue shape like cause he lived alone in the country. Karl liked a man. That was the Sleeping Giant stretched children and would play with Calina and out on his back. The bush that Father and her brother and two sisters when he came Karl Selinger went into was much farther over. Faye was the oldest, Peggy was the away than the bush behind the houses, so far youngest and Gordie was the only boy. Karl away that the road ran out and they had to go was always the same, always cheerful. On the rest of the way in by helicopter. Sunday drives up to Kakabeka Falls, Calina, Now Calina hung onto one of Karl’s arms sitting in the backseat of the car, would look and Peggy hung onto the other. Karl pulled for his house by a bend in the road. Mother his arm free from Calina and set his hand un- had pointed it out to her. It was an old grey der her armpit. His fingers gripped her ribs house, half hidden by trees, not much bigger without hurting her. Swoosh! Up she went. than a shack. She felt happy when she spot- He pulled his other arm away from Peggy. ted it, but it made her shiver. Why did he live He turned Calina around and sat her on in that lonely place? his knees with her back to him and set both He wore a khaki shirt and work pants hands on Calina’s waist to keep her from fall- and thick, grey woollen socks with red on the ing off. A ride! She saw Peggy back up and cuffs; he left his work boots at the door. He lean against Father’s leg with two fingers in said he was six-foot-four in his sock feet. her mouth, watching. Karl was younger than Father, not one “This is the way the children go,” Karl of Father’s air force buddies. Nobody was al- said in a sing-song voice. She shook as his lowed to ask Father a question about the war. knees moved up and down beneath her and 28

his hands held her in his grip. “Walk. Walk. by Mother’s green lamp. The light poured Walk. Walk. down from the shade. On the side of the lamp “This is the way the ladies go! Trot. Trot. was a picture of a man and a lady in old-fash- Trot. Trot.” Her teeth rattled. The back of her ioned clothes. Calina liked that picture and throat got a funny ache in it. The black horses would often stare at it. The lady was sitting and red jackets on the living room curtains on a bench under some trees and the man bobbed up and down. was bowing to her. “This is the way the gentlemen go. Gal- Her brother Gordie was seven. He ran lop. Gal-lop. Gal-lop. Gal-lop.” The knees tiny cars around on the rug. He had on his rose higher, and she would have slipped but cowboy gun and holster. “Hey, watch this!” he kept her steady. he boasted. Gordie came around back of Karl Here it was. It was coming. “And then and tried to put what Gordie called a stran- a big bear came out of the woods.” His legs gle-hold on him. froze. A feeling as if she was going to burst Father said “No more rides” and went rose up from her stomach to her throat— into the kitchen. All the kids sat down on the “And scared the horses away!”—and came chesterfield and didn’t move. Calina heard out of her mouth as laughter as his knees the oven door creak and the smell of pot roast bounced her silly. She slid down his leg but and carrots and potatoes floated out from the he kept his grip on her and pulled her back kitchen. while his knees pumped and pumped. At Then Gordie knelt down on the rug again last, the tired horses slowed to a halt. to play with his cars, and Peggy lay down Peggy ran forward and pressed down on on the chesterfield and sucked her fingers. his knees and made climbing motions with Calina got up and stood in front of Karl, far her legs. “Me. Me.” Calina shifted onto his enough back so they were face to face, so she right leg and leaned back against his chest. could talk to him. His legs were stretched He stayed still. He was warm and safe. He out and crossed at the ankles. When Peggy made her eyelids heavy. Then she slid for- pulled on his arm, he kept looking at Calina. ward onto the floor. Peggy had her turn. He smiled at her, nodding. It made her think Calina sat down on the chesterfield next he liked it when she talked and it was their to Faye, who was ten, four and a half years special time because the other kids only liked older than Calina. Faye was reading a book to play. 29

“Mother made me a ballerina dress—a anywhere—the way she might hear a meow blue dress with a sparkly net over it,” she and say that’s a cat. said. “For the recital.” Mother called them for supper, and they “Your recital?” went in. On Saturday Calina had watched “Yes. At the church. And a Little Red Rid- Father pull a package of rooster decals out ing Hood costume. For tap.” of his pocket, like a magician, and paste a Sometimes when she asked a question, decal onto each grey kitchen-cupboard door. he chuckled or asked her a question of his She and Father were alike because they both

She’d felt her insides jiggling—she could hardly breathe— because the red and green and brown roosters were so beautiful. own. Sometimes he would start by saying, liked the roosters. She’d felt her insides jig- “Calina,” and she forgot everything else in gling—she could hardly breathe—because the room. the red and green and brown roosters were Calina liked to look at him while they so beautiful. talked. His skin was golden, and his short, Now Karl will see them, she thought. She fair hair curved sideways on his forehead. sat down at her spot. On each side of his face, near his blue eyes, “Not there!” Father barked, and she were bones with white skin stretched over jumped, feeling guilty. She never knew what them, like knuckles. When he smiled his would make Father angry. He pointed across skin plumped up like small apples. He had the table to an extra plate that had been set, dimples. His two front teeth peeked over and she moved to it. his bottom lip when he smiled. She liked As he took Calina’s old seat, Karl said watching those teeth come and go. She liked to Mother, “It sure is great to have a home- hearing his rumbly voice. On top of the cooked meal.” rumble there was another sound, like music, Father said grace. Calina closed her eyes that went up and down as he spoke, always and thought of God and, as she always did, slowly. It was a sound she would recognize saw Karl Selinger’s head, and his shoulders in 30

a white T-shirt, floating above her in the wide They arrived at the camp on a lake blue sky. outside Kenora. It was the only cabin on the lake. During the day Father went off in the In the summer Father announced he was car to work while Calina and her brother and taking the family to Kenora for a month. They sisters swam in the lake. The lake was full of drove for two days through spruce trees and bloodsuckers that had to be covered in salt blasted walls of red and grey rock. Often they and pulled off when she and Peggy came stopped the car on the road because men out of the water. Only Calina and Peggy got were working. There would be a big bang, bloodsuckers because they had to stay near and smoke, and they would have to wait a the shore. Faye and Gordie and Mother could long time. Father said they were building the swim off the dock. When the bloodsuckers Trans-Canada Highway. She always felt safe were pulled off, Faye and Gordie laid them

The lake was full of bloodsuckers that had to be covered in salt and pulled off when she and Peggy came out of the water.

in the car when Father was driving. In the out in a row on the dock to dry. Whenever afternoons, the car was hot. Calina felt sleepy Mother forgot the salt in the house, Calina and dreamed about drinking a bottle of pop, and Peggy screamed and hollered. Calina a nice long cold swallow and fizz rising up always believed Mother would bring the salt, from the back of her throat to the top of her but sometimes she didn’t. mouth. When they stopped at a gas station, “Why didn’t you bring the salt, Mother?” she stared at the long, white cooler standing Calina asked at the kitchen table one day. outside the building. She was too scared to “I don’t know,” Mother said looking ask because she remembered that time when down at her plate. Then she gave her head a they’d been on a Sunday drive, and Father toss. “It’s only a few little bloodsuckers.” stopped for ice cream cones, and Gordie For two weeks it rained and on one wet, asked for a sundae. But she hoped as hard as indoor day Mother yelled, “That fighting is she could, right up until Father drove off. getting on my nerves,” and snatched the pile 31

of comic books that Gordie and Faye were and get angry. always squabbling about and threw them When darkness fell, they ran in to the liv- into the fire. The children watched the flames ing room. Karl Selinger was sitting in a chair lick the shiny covers and colourful pages into talking to the two fathers. Calina stopped. grey-white ash. They could hardly believe She had never seen Karl anywhere other than their eyes. at her own house. Janey and her brothers One Sunday they all drove over to visit shouted out and rushed past her toward him another family after supper. There was a as he talked over their heads to the fathers. small white house off the highway and a yard Janey and her brothers crowded around him with a couple of sheds. Next to the house was and hung onto him. a field of daisies and buttercups and purple Calina hung back. There were other clover. A woman in pedal pushers opened children, who had played with him before. the screen door. Inside there was a girl named He made no space for her and said nothing Janey, who looked about the same age as Ca- to her, as if she was invisible. Her face, her lina, and two younger boys. Calina had never whole body, suddenly went hot. She felt like met them before. Janey had small eyes, and a coal-red fire log crumbling into ash. a small nose, and a pointed chin. Her pale Calina turned and went out onto the brown hair was straight and shoulder-length, porch where Peggy was asleep on the swing, the way Calina’s would be if only Mother a sweater tucked around her, and the mothers would let her have long hair. were sitting talking. She looked up. The stars The children were told to play outside, were out, but they seemed flat and very far except Faye, who was allowed to stay in- away. She went over to her mother and stood, doors, and they ran around in the field. head bowed, beside her chair. Janey must be Calina began to think up ways they could prettier than me, she thought, picking at a play with the flowers and stones and sticks, rung on the wooden chair. Mother and Father a game they could make up together as they seemed unaware of what had happened. The went along, but Janey had no patience for thought of their being ashamed of her was play like that. Janey liked to swoop with her dreadful. The women said nothing to her. arms stretched out, and scream, and tease the Outside one of the sheds a dim light was younger kids by outrunning them. She never on, and she could see Gordie playing there seemed to fear that her father might notice with his tiny cars, within Mother’s sight. Cali- 32

na wanted to go home. She walked across the When school had started in September, grass to the shed and stepped up onto its low she couldn’t start Grade 1 with the other porch and looked back at the house. Through children her age because she was in the the big window she could see Karl. It was like hospital. By the end of the summer, she’d a picture: in a lit yellow square with a frame had a pain in her side so bad she had to lie around it, Karl sat in a chair—she could see on the couch in the afternoons, and her skin the side of his face—and Janey and her broth- turned from a pinkish-white to a dull yellow, ers surrounded him. Janey was in the middle which Mother said meant jaundice. One day with her face upturned. The yellow light Mother told her to pack a bag, just in case, made the picture seem close, but the black because they were going to the doctor and the frame around it made it seem far away. Close doctor might send her to the hospital. Calina and far away, all at once. She was alone out thought that would be an adventure. The here, but here she was. doctor said, “Hepatitis A,” and Mother said: Father came out and called to her and “She started feeling sick after the train trip to Gordie to get in the car. It was time to leave. her uncle’s farm in August. It must have been “It’s past your bedtime.” In the back of the the train.” The doctor patted Mother’s arm car, she could see the dark shapes of Mother’s and said: “It can go easier with children than and Father’s heads, with Gordie between with adults.” Mother drove to the hospital, them, and then the windshield—three people and they pulled into a parking spot at the riding together through the night. Peggy side of a red brick building. Calina hugged slept, leaning heavily against her. In the far the case on her lap. corner of the back seat, Faye was nodding off, The hospital had green walls, and it her spool-knitting pooled in her lap. Calina’s made her nose wrinkle up because it smelled eyes were wide open. like mercurochrome. Calina was put in a room that had two beds. A little curly-haired Calina was in the hospital. Maybe Karl would girl named Hannah was in the bed by the come for a visit to their house, and she would window. The nurses kept the blind halfway miss it. But she was too tired to think about down so they could sleep. Hannah said, that. No one was allowed to visit her except “I’m four,” but she looked awfully small and Mother because, Mother said, Calina was skinny, even for four. They slept and slept. contagious. She was too tired to care. Every day she got a needle. Mother came to 33

visit her. Soon the hospital felt like the whole close to her bed, and when he took the glass, world, and her family and everyone else Ca- she felt shy, and her tongue wouldn’t work. lina knew seemed to be living in a far-away Outside her door, the nurse yelled at the boy: place. “I told you not to go in there! You weren’t One day a new girl about her age arrived supposed to touch that glass!” But she never in the room across the hall. Calina saw her yelled at Calina, and Calina knew it was be- wheeled in and heard the girl crying and beg- cause the nurse was really mad at herself. ging her mother not to leave her there. Calina Calina listened to the girl’s crying get- wished she could tell her that grown-ups ting softer and fell asleep. Calina dreamed in here were the same as they were at home about looking and looking for Karl in the or in school. They yelled at kids—the best hospital, and then she thought, Karl can’t thing to do was to make up imaginary stories come to the hospital. Later she tried to inside your head, and they wouldn’t notice remember if she had thought that just before you too much. But in the hospital, you were or after she woke up.

But when the boy came into her room, he looked even bigger now that he was close to her bed, and when he took the glass, she felt shy, and her tongue wouldn’t work. pretty safe if you were little. Calina knew this One night, Calina opened her eyes. A because after rest time in the afternoons, they dim light was on in the room, and a man and gave everyone a drink, thick and sweet and a woman were sitting by Hannah’s bed with always green—Calina had to drink a lot—and their backs to Calina and their heads bent. one afternoon the nurse had told one of the They sat so close to each other, and to the big boys in the room next door he could pick bed, that she knew they were sad. up the glasses. The nurse came into Calina’s A nurse was raising the metal sides on room and looked at her and said every word Calina’s bed, and her bed started moving. She slowly: “Don’t let him take this glass.” Calina tried to sit up. “Ssh, it’s okay,” the nurse said. nodded. But when the boy came into her “Lie down.” The nurse pushed her bed into room, he looked even bigger now that he was the hallway and down the hall and into the 34

middle of a large, round playroom. Children blankets pulled tight. don’t sleep in the playroom, Calina thought. “She went home,” the nurse said. “Stay in this bed,” the nurse warned her. No, Calina thought. She looked at the “Go back to sleep.” She watched the nurse nurse’s face. It was like a face on TV that go out and close the door. If Mother tried to couldn’t look back at her. Hannah was gone.

She could see toys crouching in the shadows on low shelves under the windows, strange, night-time toys, the colours gone out of them, sitting so still.

picture her, she would think of Calina in the But if she said so, she knew the nurse would old room where she used to be, not here. get mad. She wouldn’t like it that Calina She could see toys crouching in the knew she was lying. After the nurse left, the shadows on low shelves under the windows, room seemed too big. She rolled onto her side strange, night-time toys, the colours gone and curled into a ball. She listened. A cart full out of them, sitting so still. The room was full of breakfast trays rumbled past her door and of dark shapes she could not make out. She down the hallway, going farther and farther stopped looking around so she wouldn’t see away. Calina wanted to go to sleep; and then them, but they still scared her. There was no she did. After she woke up she thought, I’m wall beside her bed to protect her, only the still in here, and then she thought, by myself. high railings, like a crib. She thought of a little All afternoon she watched a long sunbeam Calina inside her, keeping her company. She inch its way across the floor, and when it lay awake until the morning light came in reached the door, a nurse came in and moved around the blinds, and she was still awake her to another room. when the nurse came in and rolled her back One day Mother came in carrying a to the old room. carton with six bottles of pop, every one dif- The other bed was empty. She turned ferent—clear cream soda (her favorite), red her head and looked at it while the nurse cream soda, Orange Crush, root beer, lemon- lowered the railings on her bed and locked lime, grape pop. It could hardly be. Six pop, the wheels. It had been made, the sheets and all for her. Mother and Father hardly ever 35

bought pop for her or the other children, but remembered the doctor saying that when she always hoped to get one when she went a child got it, a child didn’t get as sick as a to her grandmother’s. Mother set the carton grown-up did when a grown-up got it. She on the bedside table. “Karl Selinger bought could not think about that. this for you,” Mother said. “Mrs. Jakola is coming to stay,” Mother Mother pulled the blind up, the light said. Mrs. Jakola helped Mother with clean- dazzling. ing and looked after them when Mother and Calina blinked. Karl thought of her even Father went away on trips to Duluth. Calina when she was not there. He’d thought of liked Mrs. Jakola because she always asked her even before he’d come to the house. She them what they wanted for dinner. She imagined a little Calina inside him that he thought it was like being allowed to stay up carried with him everywhere. It was a thrill- past your bedtime—if one day she ever got to ing thought and made her feel as if the walls stay up past her bedtime. of the hospital had melted, and Karl could see It wasn’t her fault. She remembered her. looking in the window at Karl with the other Mother sat down on the chair beside the family, as if he were in a picture. bed and said “Oh,” like a hiccup. “Last spring She looked away from Mother at the Karl was so disappointed when he couldn’t brightly coloured bottles of pop sitting up make it to your recital. He’d planned to come. straight in the carton on her bedside table. He’s never done that for the rest of you kids.” They looked so cheerful in the sunlight. Every Calina jerked. “Mother, why didn’t you day she’d pick a different one. She reached tell me before?” out for a cream soda, pulled back her hand “I don’t know,” Mother said and looked and pointed to the grape pop. Mother picked away. She wiggled her shoulders and made a it up, hooked the bottle opener over the top of huffing sound. “I’m trying to cheer you up.” the bottle, snapped off the cap and handed it Calina looked closely at Mother. “Your to Calina. The bubbles swam from the bottom skin looks yellow.” of the bottle to the top. The smell of grape “Don’t worry,” Mother said. “The doctor pop went up her nose. She smiled, holding told me today that I’m going into the hos- it in her hand. Then she tipped up the bottle pital too. I’ll be on the ladies’ ward.” Calina and swallowed. knew it was because she was contagious. She Ned Pratt, Guard Rail (2008). Ink jet print, 46.25” x 34.75”.

38 Rental Car Karen Solie

It’s not a contract until the names are on it. Though always there is one who signs off with less than a whole heart. “Leading Today for Tomorrow,” that’s Mississauga’s motto. Or is that leaving. Eastbound, westbound, exodus via the 400-series highways. Personal reasons I will not get into. The 427 Interchange is a long note in space, a flightpath of materials the grace of which is a reason to live. Is not likewise the possibility and mortal danger of a photograph of same shot from the roadbed? Is not digital

radio? Accelerate into the curve by the Ford plant, its freshly birthed Fusions in the nursery lot behind razorwire, their cradle the duplication of goods and services. Oakville’s slogan is “Stand By.” And, indeed, where is everyone? They are shopping in the Dixie Mall because their cars are there. 39 Rental Car Karen Solie

They’re working in pharmaceutical company offices because their cars are there. They’re eating at the golf club. They’re lying in their beds. Burlington is “The Home of Ribfest.” Upon the satellite campus of the Lancaster

Gentlemen’s Club, sodium halos cast a perpetual light whose influence fades along the paved and shouldered avenues the locals call country roads. We are all locals now. A thing is what it is called. Country has become the countryside. It gets so you don’t want to talk about it. Though the air is thick with personal messaging. A thought could walk on it as on stones to find you. My good horse will bear me over the river of that noise. As through a burning cloud my good horse will carry me. 40 A Western Karen Solie

Its origins are to this hour undetermined. The free-floating found its transformative agent. A third term arose. It was a thing, it existed.

Not a friend, though in all other things it did kindle a renewed existence. Storefronts said, defend yourself. Under pavements, the timbers, arms around one another, said embrace your condition, said, we are lost.

Equipment is in a peculiar position. It knows it belongs to the earth. The machine, with its thousand parts, is a thing, as is its smallest bearing. A pail is a thing. So is the water it carries. A painting hangs like a hat on a nail.

Judgement, perception, death, are things in themselves; they’re not nothing, though they don’t, as things, appear. 41 A Western Karen Solie

But what is the use of a feeling, however certain, in defining that which itself is only a feeling? No thing can survive such boredom. The situation prevails with its timeline.

A third term arose between us, it existed. But a violence has been done to its element it could not withstand. It is not dead, unseen, or elsewhere. Nothing real any longer corresponds to it.

Above the harbour a gull creates flight as flight has created him. He arises and results from his work. He is the circle that violates logic. That’s where his soul is. 42 The National Gallery Karen Solie

From the airplane, fields are an Eric Cameron— Reds and Yellows on Green—a process begun as innovation now manifest in the monoculture. Silent Lake as seen from an airplane is apprehended geographically, with visible parameters, but is all surface, like the past. The future is an airplane seen from an airplane.

Lorazepam’s sweet fog has burned off. Here is the present and its landing gear. And the absence of someone whose participation as such is largely involuntary.

Ottawa in March lights its one dim lamp. It’s cold, it just got up, it has that anxious cold feeling. Its restaurants are closed; its thoughts, inward. The fat of its heart has been spent on winter.

In the National Gallery all the seeds of colour are preserved. It’s lit like a mountain laboratory, concrete architectural prologue aspiring to stone in the floodlights. Chambers, anterooms, great halls, rotunda, dome, restaurant, theatre, gift shop, inside it’s a landscape of the unconscious mind. 43 The National Gallery Karen Solie

I can’t find the elevator with the map I’ve been given. Around the corner of every era, every great advancement in perspective, the same security guard and the 20th century unavailable. It’s being rehung.

Joshua Reynolds, show me the way, you whose career, all due respect, never peaked, but who painted until your eyes gave out. Your Colonel Charles Churchill, visual allegories in hand, stares wanly and imperfectly past the elements of composition, like a ghost after the fugitive carmine of his living complexion, another victim of the experiment. Though the experiment continues as he fades and is a kind of life. Our eyes meet in the frame, in the limits of our existences.

Back at the hotel, a message waits, received through the crowded air’s invisible wires. The message is a liquid crystal display. Distance’s droning lecture on policy is interrupted. The doors to the long grey hall fly open. 44 Fables of the Reconstruction Karen Solie

Nose down in their day of rest. Bobcat, excavator, trackhoe on legislated hiatus from the business of holes and fill, of avoiding gaslines and the inadvertent manufacture of larger holes and, thus, a public relations nightmare. No rest, though, for he who must negotiate such obstacles, rolling his cart and its empties toward refund, toward refill, toward reinforcing the gaps in his memory. Who will attend to whether his solitude is taken up in pleasure or despair? He is a hole in the landscape. He is a black bird at night. The security cameras of Queen Street have suffered violent ends and register only their disconnection.

Images supplied by recollection inspire little confidence. Lab techs riding herd on experimental krill and bright exotics like high B flats in the middle C of the faux environment, were stumped by the consecutive disappearances of these regulated populations. No evidence, no mortal remainder. Should a single being vanish into what is not, so all things may vanish, as has been written. Commence to trembling. Then rig the labcam. Witness 45 Fables of the Reconstruction Karen Solie

the octopus crawling out of his tank to feast, returning to it before shift the next day. They took him away. Why wouldn’t you think there was something divine in him? It’s difficult to commit injustice and escape detection, said Epicurus, but to be confident of escaping detection is impossible. He also said that life is ruined by delay.

The animal dies when the soul withdraws. Dion Phaneuf has been traded to the Maple Leafs. Neck deep in a Calgary piano bar, the future of the franchise attempts “Piano Man,” but can’t get past the first verse. Soon, he might as well have been born there. Sings it again and again, an infernal recurrence without beginning or end, as the Acme Portable Hole reaffirms its station as the best thing never invented. Crowd studded with cameraphones like a ham with cloves. Now always we look upon ourselves. Do we impose pattern or rehearse it in our being? Beauty and terror in equal measure. Intrigue of a boarded-up building. We want to get in there and find out what’s the matter with it. 46 Affirmations Karen Solie

Has the past not pursued me with its face and have I not turned away? Can a thing made once not be made again?

Hasn’t the rider returned to her horse, the dog to his master? Isn’t this the lesson of our popular literature? And was the trash not collected this morning, signalling no disruption to the civic schedule?

Isn’t the gesture, the act, inarguable? And don’t we live a parallel life in thought, an attentiveness not unlike

a natural prayer of the mind and not-mind? The shadow cast between them. Where a little unlight burns.

Won’t nighttime return and won’t it be familiar? Unequivocal through Carolinian Forests which have not yet wholly disappeared, and equally among rows of wrecked cars in the junkyards, hoods open like a choir? The Big Wheel 47 Affirmations Sheilah Roberts Karen Solie My father kept everything inside him, tightly “Ronnie!” my father barks. “Get her hair sealed like hazardous waste, a toxic brew that out of her face. For God sake, help her out continually leaked into our lives, seeping out there.” in acid comments and sarcastic jibes. He be- My oldest brother reluctantly holds on lieved in discipline. If an act of ours smudged to me. outside the line of his strict code of behavior, “Are you done yet?” He passes me a the brown belt slipped its way, snake-like, tissue. out through his trouser loops, lashing its Dirt spatters up onto my new pink T- leather tongue against our bare skin. shirt as the vomit spews out again and I hear I find it hard to remember much of my my father’s growl. life with him, but old photos help pull bits of “Watch your goddamn shoes.” memory out of the dark, rich soil of the past. My brother does his best to hold back the Like earthworms, you have to tug on them fine, thin hair cut short in a French crop. Even slowly and carefully or they will break apart. though the retching has eased, tears stream The colours in the photograph have down my face, dripping off my nose and faded into browns and yellows with just a chin, and my sides ache like someone has just hint of the green that was once there. Across punched me. the back of the photo a child’s large-looped “It’s okay,” Ronnie, says softly. “You can handwriting sprawls in peacock blue ink: ride in the front seat from now on. You won’t “Summer Vacation, Nova Scotia, 1964.” get sick up there.” Ronnie is not usually nice. I almost like The car grinds to a stop, doors slam and I him. breathe deeply to stop the ocean in my stom- My father opens all the doors in the car ach from swelling up into my mouth again. to clear out the stench of vomit, washing off My brother Jack and I have made a pact. We the seat with water from a buttercup-filled will always keep our mouths shut. ditch and an old rag he keeps in the back “The best way to keep out of trouble,” of the trunk. I watch him rub the seat and Jack says, “is to keep your mouth shut.” think of how my mother used to scrub the But I can’t; my stomach contracts and floors. When my mother lived with us, she its contents spray out over the lush summer answered him back. That’s what got her grass by the side of the car. into trouble. One day he hit her and she left, 48

and we decided not to talk in front of adults hard the yelling would stop. When the door anymore. Jack said, “That’s the way to fix slammed, my ears strained in the dark silence things.” to hear who was still there. Ronnie answers my father back. Jack says Sometimes Ronnie stays out all night, someday Ronnie will leave and we’ll never but when he comes back in the morning, my see him again, just like our mother. Ronnie father doesn’t say anything. I think Ronnie wants to quit school and move away. He says doesn’t like us anymore, but Jack says that it won’t make much difference, he’s going to isn’t so. fail anyway. My father finishes his cigarette and The night before we left, I heard them throws the rag back in the trunk. Jack looks

“We’re okay as long as we don’t make him angrier. You know the rule. Keep your mouth shut, do your best at school and do everything right so he won’t get mad.”

yelling, the sound seeping up through the on with his hands clasped behind his back floor boards and curdling the air. Jack was in while Ronnie helps me to the car. the bed across from me. When we get inside, I slide up close to “Jack, can I come in bed with you?” the door and lean my head on the window. No answer. “Are you all right?” my father asks. “Jack, I’m scared.” “I’m fine. I won’t get sick again.” My I could hear him turning over, feel his voice creaks, ugly, like a door hinge. impatience with me. “We’re okay as long as This seems to satisfy him. we don’t make him angrier. You know the The road curves upwards through some rule. Keep your mouth shut, do your best at thick woods to the top of the mountain. As school and do everything right so he won’t we crest the hill, the fairground comes into get mad.” view, the whole world spread out below. In Jack does everything right. the distance a small city of tents and rides I chewed on the frayed satin edging of cluster around the Ferris wheel, rippling like my blanket for a long time and wished really a mirage. 49

“There it is!” My brothers lean forward ruts, drawing up next to a red pickup parked over the seat, and I expect my father to send on flat dry grass, its few strands combed over them back with a curse or an elbow. But he’s the bald earth. My father pulls the gearshift concentrating on navigating the twisting up into park and rolls up his window. The road. gearshift is next to the steering wheel and Below us, the cars form a centipede that sticks out like an arm. One day, I hung doll spews out a cloud of dust with each new clothes on it and he yelled at me to never do arrival. The August heat sears the inside of it again, the car could slip out of gear and roll our old Chevy, half smothering us, but we’re down a hill and crash. only allowed to open the little triangular side My father sees the dirt on my T-shirt. A windows. If a car passes by we have to close thin smile stretches across his lips. them quickly to keep out the dust. “You look like a ragamuffin. Couldn’t I sit forward in the car, clutching the you find a cleaner T-shirt?” dashboard. My father tells me to get back, Four doors slam in succession and we but the Ferris wheel pulls at me like magnet. make a dash out into the parking lot. We I stay where I am, but keep an eye on him don’t get far. just in case. He’s looking straight ahead with “Get back here! Jack, don’t lose that his left arm resting on the open window, an camera. You almost left it in the restaurant oasis in the burning car. As we descend into the other day. For God’s sake pay attention the valley, the only sound comes from the to what you’re doing.” short hollow thud of stones ricocheting off I touch the strap of my camera, hanging the bottom of the car and the occasional buzz around my neck. of a blackfly trapped behind the windshield. My father stands about six feet tall and Sometimes it sits motionless on the smooth wears a felt hat over his dark blond hair; the surface of the glass; sometimes it flies in panic brim shades his blue eyes. I would never lose around the car. him in a crowd. Stick together, he says, and The air starts to sizzle as the fairground don’t get lost. gets closer and it isn’t long before we’re add- Jack’s beside me now, holding my hand. ing to the dust in the line-up. Orange-vested Not far away from us, the Ferris wheel attendants with sweaty faces wave us into a turns its never-ending circles. I have to tip parking lot. The car bounces over the tractor my head back and strain my eyes against the 50

glare to see the people in the highest seats. have their hands in their pockets. I pick At the cotton candy stand, my father up my camera. Snap. Ronnie scowls, dark treats each of us to a great pink cloud of spun glasses hide my father’s face. sugar. We pull large clumps of it off and stuff After the ride, Jack doesn’t want to walk it in each other’s faces, laughing, until there with me anymore so I take my father’s hand is nothing left but a few stains of streaky red and wonder how it can be so cold; mine is hot syrup on the paper cones. These get tossed and slippery with sweat. My brothers walk, over our shoulders, joining the rest of the distant, one on either side of us. And then trash on the path. someone from across the way hails my father. I carefully avoid the makeshift gutters, He moves us into the shade and drops my shallow ditches dug in front of the stands. hand to shake hands with the stranger. Dollar Someone has run a hose and soggy bar bills come out of his wallet and get passed wrappers mix with dark, wet muck. I stick around, one for each of us. to the middle of the path, warm and dry and “Here, you can go on the Ferris wheel. packed down hard. The gutters are shad- Then come straight back.” owed by the awnings covering the concession He turns back to the stranger in the blue stands; any grass left growing between them overalls and I turn toward the crowd. A man is trampled down and full of garbage. Power at a concession stand calls me over, but I pre- cables in thick black rubber casings tangle the tend not to hear him. Other children, towed path, tempting my brothers to jump on them. by parents, stare at me as I wander down the Kill the snake, they call it, but I don’t like the row. Jack has gone off; he doesn’t want to be feel of the cables under my sneakers. Old seen with his baby sister. When I try to follow men and children toss wooden rings around Ronnie over to the rifle range to try the tar- small blocks papered with dollar bills and gets, he tells me to get lost; he probably wants balloons pop loudly when a dart hits its mark to look for girls. Sometimes me and Jack spy or when the heat bursts their tightly stretched on him when he takes them into the woods, skins. but it isn’t a game I like. Me and Jack go on the merry-go-round I hesitate and look back at my father, with its scarlet, white and gold horses, but but I know what he’ll say with a smile on his Ronnie turns up his nose at the “baby ride.” face as if he’s making a funny joke. “What! He stands next to my father; both of them Aren’t you big and ugly enough to go on a 51

ride by your self? Why you’re almost nine “Are you scared?” She peers down at years old.” me. I nod again; my tongue feels two sizes I watch as he joins a group of men, and too big for my mouth. then turn and make my way back down the “See that big man over there?” The row of stands with my eyes on my sneakers, strong smell of her sweat invades my nostrils kicking at paper because I don’t want to look as she lifts her arm to point. at the people. I’m sure his eyes are on me, but “Well he’s going to look like a tiny little when I turn around my view is blocked by ant when you reach the top. You’ll see all

The Ferris wheel’s steel frame crisscrosses the sky like a giant spider’s web, wonderful and terrible. the crowd. these little people running around down The first row of stalls look familiar, but below and you’ll feel like you’re the queen then they all begin to look alike. At the end of the world.” She sits back and wipes her of one lane is a fishpond and my dime buys forehead with a crumpled grey handkerchief, a surprise bag with candy and a whistle that then puts it into a side pocket. “Have you got makes a hissing noise. I wander for a while somebody with you?” I nod my head, lying. and finally come out into the central clearing. “You enjoy now.” Her eyes look past me The Ferris wheel’s steel frame crisscross- to the next person in line. es the sky like a giant spider’s web, wonder- I join the line-up of unfamiliar faces and ful and terrible. At the base of the wheel, a try to look as if I don’t care. The ticket in my line of people are squirming around the entry hand makes me feel safe and important. I gate. I gently slide my money across the bend it back and forth, smooth it out and counter to a fat lady in a red bandana. She then bend it again. smiles at me. The line moves slowly; a tiny blind “So you want to ride the big wheel.” thing, a small insect of fear, begins to crawl Her face glistens in the heat; strands of limp in my stomach. The woman ahead of me and oily hair hang out of her bandana. I in the line complains about her hair in a smile and nod. nasal voice that rubs like sandpaper on the 52

smooth summer’s day. and burnt sugar. The man takes the cigarette Up ahead, the attendant, a grubby look- out of his mouth. ing man in a torn T-shirt and faded blue “What’s the matter with you? Are you jeans, is collecting tickets. The cigarette in his deaf? You can’t go on the Ferris wheel alone, mouth bobs up and down each time he asks you need a partner.” for a ticket and his eyes squint as the smoke Tears of panic spurt into my eyes and rises into them. Occasionally he reaches up I try to hide them. I don’t want anyone to and takes the cigarette between his finger see that I am not only deaf and stupid but a

Under the trees, the cool air is clammy on my skin, like the chill of a fever. Finally my father stops talking and looks down.

and thumb, sucks hard, blows out and then crybaby too. I push my way back out into the clamps it back between his lips. When I reach crowd, past the stalls and the staring faces, I him, he looks down at me and says some- run past the blur of pink candy, stuffed toys, thing. My eyes follow the drifting smoke and cable snakes, back to the entrance of the fair I don’t notice what he says. He glares at me where my father stands in the shade, one through the haze as I push my ticket at him. hand in his pocket and the other holding his “Gotta ’ave a partner,” he snaps, turning cigarette. He is talking and doesn’t seem to his head and spitting a piece of tobacco off notice me. If I speak, he’ll get mad at me for his lip. interrupting. The other man’s eyes come to My face begins to burn; my stomach rolls rest on me first. over. Huge eyes stare at me from every direc- Under the trees, the cool air is clammy tion—troublemaker, problem, the one holding up on my skin, like the chill of a fever. Finally the line. I push my ticket at him again, like I’m my father stops talking and looks down. I tell poking a stick at an animal. He says some- him I can’t go on the Ferris wheel without thing, but I can’t hear anything now because a partner. He stares at me, and then takes my heart is drumming in my ears. I want to a long draw on the cigarette, drops it and run away, get out of the hot sun, away from grinds it into the ground with his foot. He these people and the sickly smell of sweat takes my hand. 53

My ticket is crushed now, sticky with The voice of the bandana lady comes sweat; red dye stains the palm of my hand. back to me— “queen of the world.” I feel a The wait is shorter this time and the at- huge wave of power flow through me, wash- tendant doesn’t look up when he takes our ing away the fear. tickets. We climb up into the seat that swings As the wheel sinks down, I glance over around, and the safety bar slides into place at my father again. The wind is whipping with a heavy clunk. the hair back from his face, which is tanned I press up against my side of the seat and and smooth except for the slight crease in the look over at my father. His face is like stone. brow above his dark glasses. I wonder if I Slowly the wheel begins to move, creaking love him like other kids love their parents. I and clanking as the metal rods in the mecha- decide that I don’t. nism collide. The hot, bright steel of the front When the ride finishes, the attendant un- bar burns my hands. My father tells me to locks the bar. My father offers me his hand, sit back or I’ll fall out. As the wheel begins to but I jump down alone, re-entering the crowd rise, I look down and feel my stomach heave; without him. a wild panic beats its wings up through “Did you enjoy that?” he asks catching my chest. I’m moving away from the earth. up with me. There is only emptiness beneath me. My “Yes” I reply, not looking at him. Neither breath catches in my throat. Don’t look down. of us speaks as we walk towards the shade. Desperate, I look at my father, but he stares Under the trees, he takes out a package of cig- straight ahead, his face as cold and vast as the arettes and offers one to the stranger. Flicking ocean. Better to look down. With a great ef- open his heavy silver lighter, my father lifts it fort, I force my eyes past the edge of the seat. to his cigarette. I turn to walk away. The world below shimmers wide and green “That’s my youngest,” he says. and gold in the haze. The trees have shrunk “Pretty little thing,” the man replies. to bushes; rides and concessions lie scattered The words ripple sweetly in my ears as I among them like toys in a sandbox. The cars step out of the cool shade into the heat of the look like Jack’s dinkies and the people are August sun, back into the colour and move- like the ants on the ant hill behind our house. ment of the fair. I walk towards the man who The one that Jack jumped on once and they is calling me over to his stall, and this time I all came out. don’t look back. Kym Greeley, War Graves 1 (2012). Acrylic on canvas, 44 x 33 inches (photo: Ned Pratt). 55 The Kids Are Alright Michael Crummey

Their hands are busy defacing the world as you sleep, altering your place in their lives one detail at a time—you barely recognize the bedroom come morning, furniture shifted, picture frames knocked askew. They leave all the doors of your head ajar, purr over the branching tributaries of your confusion like 16th century explorers fingering a map of terra incognita, convinced they’re making you up as they go. They flick on the lamps of your childhood to make you feel naked in your clothes, vital organs backlit and sitting like food on a tray they can prod for any sign of blight—Does that hurt? Is that sore? Twice a month Canada Post delivers a moment of clarity and terror in a plain white envelope, a note in your own hand that says the kids are alright, but you’ll never forgive them for making you feel so human. Turn out their pockets before you throw the day’s laundry in the washing machine on the off-chance you might discover the glassy marble of your heart among the lint, hard and polished and just small enough to swallow whole. 56 Getting the Marriage into Bed Michael Crummey

Unplug the insatiable telephone, the apocalypse unfolding hourly on the network news crawl.

Ignore the kitchen’s Victorian factory of filthy dishes, the laundry pile suffocating a lost child in the basement.

Ignore the lost children. Forget music and saffron and oysters, put aside the clichéd, the quaint

rituals of wine and lingerie— aphrodisiacs are for amateurs with more time than common sense,

who’ve yet to learn bliss is stolen from the world in small, piercing slivers. Think of stealth as foreplay 57 Getting the Marriage into Bed Michael Crummey

in the prison yard of daily events, sneak out of your clothes as soon as the coast is clear—

the air raid siren of a youngster crying is about to rise through the bedroom floor,

the weight of the Three Gorges reservoir has altered the planet’s rotation by the same rate at which yesterday’s

dishes are going septic in the sink— be resolute. Bliss lives for bliss alone, apply yourself to that ephemeral sliver.

You have less time than you think. 58 Small Clothes Michael Crummey

near Corner Brook, Newfoundland ca. 1940

This is where he told me to stand under the washing on the line

He’d come up the hill lugging his camera and set it down in the garden, staring out over the harbour with both hands to the small of his back like he’d just bought the place from God

Didn’t see me there till I said hello, him jumping and rubbing his palms together then, like someone up to no good, told me to stand over there, never even asked after my name

I stood over there like he said my dress billowing out with the washing and I never felt so foolish

59 Small Clothes Michael Crummey

What do you want me to do I asked him Look out at the water he said I said What’s to look at out there? You just look he said

My mother said he was a queer stick to take a picture and not even ask me to smile for it

She was hiding in the kitchen all this time and never come out first or last

Wouldn’t be caught dead talking to some man who’d seen her small clothes faffering in the breeze 60 A Carry-On Michael Crummey

You’ll want to pack a toothbrush, a good book, your razor.

A lengthy skein of wool, a flash- light and extra batteries,

cigarettes to curry favour with the shades and wraiths,

to trade for tips, directions. Songs for the broken-hearted

uploaded to your iPod, pictures of the dearly departed

to identify their blank eyes among the astonishing press of the dead.

Nothing you can’t afford to leave behind or lose.

A list of yes-or-no questions you’d like to have answered.

A second pair of sensible shoes. 61 A Carry-On Cause of Death and Remarks Michael Crummey Michael Crummey

from Jerrett’s Genealogy, Provincial Archives

Died suddenly. Died young. Fell overboard and drowned. Boat capsized while hunting loons, body never found.

Lived one hour. Lived with brother George. Lost on schooner coming from St. John’s with all hands on board.

Jaundice. Senility. Apoplexy. Died in First World War. Died when fishing on Labrador. Joined Salvation Army.

Tuberculosis. Influenza. Multiple myeloma. Must have died young, not remembered by sister Julia.

Died of old age. Pleuritis. Coronary Thrombosis. Operated Post Office at Cavendish. 62 Okay Lolita Cupidx Spencer Gordon

six different fonts, sequins glued into cupcakes affixed to leather boots, Pabst Blue Ribbon & Bud Light Lime i learned from the example of my father glass picture of a this, like, fucking huge mushroom, dental floss stretched that the manner in which one endures with necklace beads, runes, crystals, watches, plastic file containers what must be endured & a bird’s nest in a blue wicker basket, Xbox 360 game containers & a white muffin tray, pink plastic is more important than the thing that must be endured chairs & garage doors & over-long band t-shirts one does not love a place the less & MacBook Pro lids half-covered in Anime sweetheart stickers of rainbows & yellow animals, Boba Fett helmets, a sticker that says Supreme, piles of Polaroid photos on unmade beds & a vase of white flowers for having suffered in it unless on a car roof beside a gold picture frame, Hello Kitty it has all been suffering, nothing but suffering pillows & peace signs, ornaments & fairy lights & what distinguishes the artist from the dilettante fake Christmas trees, empty plastic water bottles & is only the pain the artist feels Pabst Blue Ribbon cans, disco lights & nose rings & non-toxic ink on lips, metallic hip flasks, distant red- haired dolls, stretchy bead bracelets the colour of lilac & leather-print short-shorts, cardboard boxes of indeterminate cloth, a crucifix & a cruise ship on the dilettante looks only for pleasure in art a late-’90s television, black laptops & permanent pen on binders holding hearts, Seventeen magazine beside near-empty cardboard boxes of microwave meals still stuck with hardened yellow noodles beside another can of Pabst Blue Ribbon, Justin Bieber cut-outs for close-ups, White Trash Bachelorette Trucker Hats, do you not see how necessary “ugly azz <<<” “Kitty hearts Danny,” “Yeastie Girls,” a world of pains & troubles is Facebook creep pics, “Ovary Action,” alarm clocks, jewelry cases imprinted with roses, octagonal mirrors, red toy car, plastic flower, back massager, snow-globe to school an intelligence & make it a soul & black stuffed poodle, cell phone, head scratcher, baroque frames

six different fonts, sequins glued into cupcakes affixed to leather boots, Pabst Blue Ribbon & Bud Light Lime i learned from the example of my father glass picture of a this, like, fucking huge mushroom, dental floss stretched that the manner in which one endures with necklace beads, runes, crystals, watches, plastic file containers what must be endured & a bird’s nest in a blue wicker basket, Xbox 360 game containers & a white muffin tray, pink plastic is more important than the thing that must be endured chairs & garage doors & over-long band t-shirts one does not love a place the less & MacBook Pro lids half-covered in Anime sweetheart stickers of rainbows & yellow animals, Boba Fett helmets, a sticker that says Supreme, piles of Polaroid photos on unmade beds & a vase of white flowers for having suffered in it unless on a car roof beside a gold picture frame, Hello Kitty it has all been suffering, nothing but suffering 63 Okay Lolita Cupidx pillows & peace signs, ornaments & fairy lights & Spencer Gordon what distinguishes the artist from the dilettante fake Christmas trees, empty plastic water bottles & is only the pain the artist feels Pabst Blue Ribbon cans, disco lights & nose rings & non-toxic ink on lips, metallic hip flasks, distant red- haired dolls, stretchy bead bracelets the colour of lilac & leather-print short-shorts, cardboard boxes of indeterminate cloth, a crucifix & a cruise ship on the dilettante looks only for pleasure in art a late-’90s television, black laptops & permanent pen on binders holding hearts, Seventeen magazine beside near-empty cardboard boxes of microwave meals still stuck with hardened yellow noodles beside another can of Pabst Blue Ribbon, Justin Bieber cut-outs for close-ups, White Trash Bachelorette Trucker Hats, do you not see how necessary “ugly azz <<<” “Kitty hearts Danny,” “Yeastie Girls,” a world of pains & troubles is Facebook creep pics, “Ovary Action,” alarm clocks, jewelry cases imprinted with roses, octagonal mirrors, red toy car, plastic flower, back massager, snow-globe to school an intelligence & make it a soul & black stuffed poodle, cell phone, head scratcher, baroque frames

Janaki Lennie, Dusk and the Ruins of I-45 (1999). Acrylic and Oil on Canvas, 48” x 60”. Carry-On Jenny Xie

Alice, the woman with the oversized chin who stands at the metal detector, tells me Flight AC790 for Madrid-Barajas is delayed for aircraft inspection, having hit an electrical storm over Boston. She’s been trying to start a conversation with me for the past half hour, when I last sighed. She probably pities me—the guy who slumps into his chair every morning and takes regular bathroom breaks until the end of the day, who’s never mentioned plans after work. From the outside it must look pretty bleak. “It’s not uncommon,” I reply, the sooner to restore silence. “Planes are natural conductors.” People in line at the security screening are thumbing their phones with slack faces, and children cling to the loose denim at their parents’ knees. No one pays me any attention. At this point I’m just another piece of equipment they have to clear before they’re allowed airside, my face another hoop to jump through. Sometimes when people hear that I’m a screening officer they make an effort to seem inter- ested and ask whether I’ve ever caught someone smuggling contraband, or have I ever screened someone like Sean Penn, and what did he have in his bag, and was he a dick in real life? I tell them no, but once I did recognize the magician Lance Burton on his way back to Las Vegas. His face was eclipsed by the bill of his baseball cap; what I could see of it was deeply pockmarked and the color of dough. My dad and I had watched him 66

perform on a family trip to Vegas back in at his post, says something that makes an ’98, years before Kenny died and we lost aging woman laugh. Her face looks like a interest in things like that. Onstage, he had dumpling, soft and bloated at the edges. worn a black suit and cued his assistants She gets in line and steps on the heels of her with a jaunty cock of the cane. I spent the purple Crocs to take them off. When it’s her rest of that summer learning card tricks until turn, she places her leather handbag and her my dad told me to stop goofing around. backpack into a plastic bin and sends it off I’m good at what I do. There’s not much with a little shove towards the X-ray. She to it besides following directions. What is waits in front of the metal detector with her acceptable and unacceptable in carry-on toes curled on the cold floor. luggage is clearly delineated by the govern- The second question people ask after ment. During training I ran a finger down I have disappointed them is what I see on the list of prohibited items every night like the monitor, and I have to explain how a a kid saying his prayers: no liquids, aero- dual-energy X-ray system works. What sols, or gels over a hundred milliliters—this happens is, the conveyer belt takes your includes aftershave, snow globes, chocolate bag past a machine that shoots X-rays rang- spread, liquid mascara, cologne; no butane ing from 140 to 160 kilovolt peak—KVP. cylinders; no billiard cues; no animal repel- The higher the KVP, the further the X-ray lents; no fire extinguishers; no sabers, which penetrates. Since different materials absorb belong in your checked luggage; no black radiation differently, each object shows up and smokeless powders; no morning stars distinctly on my monitor. Organic materials or shuriken; no paint—no enamel, lacquer, are coded orange, inorganic materials are liquid filler, paint thinner, stain, shellac, green, and metal is purple. Most explosives varnish, spray paint, or solvent-based paint; are organic, so that’s what I’m primarily no belts made with fake bullets, no per- concerned with. What looks like the cross- fume bottles shaped like grenades; no meat hatched bottom of a sneaker may actually thermometers; no Constant Companions; no be part of an improvised explosive device. telescoping spring-loaded batons. And yes, They’re pretty to look at, the colors. If I’m people have attempted to board with these not careful I can convince myself that I’m items. looking at the pale reflection of a stained Roderick, who’s looking over passports glass window, the skeleton of a strange 67

beast, a bag of crushed flowers. ably didn’t know that she had two butane Alice at the metal detector beckons the lighters in her luggage, or that the airport dumpling-faced woman forward. She checks even had a policy limiting the count to one out okay. She beams at me before slinging for personal use. Her X-ray exposed a bottle the handbag onto her shoulder, and I swivel of sleeping pills or aspirin, an electronic away in my chair. typewriter—which I thought was kind of It’s important to remain professional. cute, a couple of paperbacks. She was a Some of the officers will attempt small talk writer, I guessed. She had packed everything with the passengers when the traffic dies impeccably. All of her clothes were rolled down, or they’ll smirk at each other when up. Between each layer of clothing she had

I like to examine the monitor with just the top of my mind running and allow the rest of it to think about other things. My grandmother called this moving furniture in the attic. someone trips over a duffel bag. Me, though, hidden jewelry: bracelets and rings and a I’m quiet. I like to examine the monitor with string of pearls snaking towards the bot- just the top of my mind running and allow tom corner. On the monitor it looked like a the rest of it to think about other things. My treasure chest. grandmother called this moving furniture in Tucked neatly into the heart of this chest the attic. Most of the time it’s very pleasant was a pair of shoes, a child’s. Leaning in, I to sit here in my blue uniform performing made out that they were a girl’s ballet shoes, my cog-like function, and think. It’s only probably for a seven-year-old. You get a when something goes wrong that I have to feel for the particulars after a couple years really look at the person in front of me. at the monitor. Then I understood that all Last week, for example, I realized that the jewelry was miniature as well, made to the woman with the red Samsonite bag had encircle small wrists and hang on the plump a maroon birthmark on her temple. She was ends of small ears. I would never have given attractive, though I’m not sure she would any of this a second glance if not for two have been without that birthmark. She prob- lighters zipped into the outside pocket of 68

this woman’s suitcase. I would never have notes that said “Fuck the pigs,” which made smelled the tart smell of wine on her body me think about Dad. or seen that mournful bow in her lips and So it’s important to remain professional. started to think about why she was going That’s my dad’s thing, too, being profes- away to write with a little girl’s dancing sional. He’s a cop in Eugene, Oregon, where shoes at the most protected part of her, and I’m from. Actually my mom called this of course I came to the saddest conclusions. morning to tell me Dad has colon cancer and “Ma’am, please open your suitcase for that I should fly home where I haven’t been further inspection,” I said. since I drove down to Los Angeles three She looked at me as if I’d asked her to years ago. remove her top. She flushed, and the skin I made the trip in a Ford Bronco, stop- around her collarbones pinkened. ping only once at a truck stop to curl up for “It will just take a second, ma’am. two hours under my canvas jacket. The fog Airport procedure,” I tossed in. Nothing on the windows had softened the headlights personal. of truckers signalling for girls. I was equally

On the day I left my dad patted me twice with a stiff arm and wished me luck, told me to play it straight. We haven’t had a proper conversation since then.

When I asked her if she preferred me as much in a hurry to leave as I was to ar- to throw away the green lighter or the blue rive: a lot of my friends had stopped talking lighter I could tell that she hated me and to me after I started Lane Community—and wanted to tell me to put both those light- anyway by then they were using meth—and ers in an offensive place. She put her hands I had decided to head south to my girlfriend over her eyes and sighed, “Green, I guess.” at the time. On the day I left my dad patted After she had gone I felt sick and wondered me twice with a stiff arm and wished me if I couldn’t have made an exception, and luck, told me to play it straight. We haven’t that made me think about Kenny, and how had a proper conversation since then. There afterwards kids had passed me crumpled was a pause on the phone this morning 69

when I knew Mom was waiting for one of us law shaking him down, too. Later that night to ask her to put the other on the line. But I they found his car crumpled around a tree let that pass. “Tell Dad to keep his chin up,” four blocks from his house, pieces of glass I said. “And I’ll talk to you soon.” buried in his cheek and his ankles twisted Dad’s an exemplary police officer, but he the wrong way. After the accident my dad never took off the uniform. His grandfather didn’t talk about procedure as often. He was a general in World War II, so I guess he started getting confused about what he was had something to prove. Even at home when supposed to do, especially as a parent to me. he lowered himself into the couch he would I borrowed his tie for Kenny’s funeral and grunt for “proper procedure,” which was a stood around wiping my nose with my hand beer. He said that a lot, “proper procedure.” wondering how much of it was anyone’s He used to say it while walking his enor- fault. mous feet towards me where I was belly-up The line’s moving a bit quicker now. on the carpet, flying my Hot Wheels across An Australian couple wearing hiking the ceiling, coming to put me to bed. It made shoes and matching cargo shorts are jostling people uneasy sometimes when he stuck with their backpacks. They’re both blond out his hand for a handshake and grinned, and tanned, with gleaming noses. The wom- saying out of the side of his mouth, “Proper an violently unzips each pocket of her bag procedure, Bud.” and feels around. She pulls out a cardigan, When we were in the twelfth grade, my tosses it over her shoulder. best friend Kenny and I bought a handle “I can’t believe it,” she sighs, rifling of Sailor Jerry’s with the help of his older through a quilted purse. brother and showed up at the party Ash- “I thought you had it,” the man says as ley Bergman was throwing. It was the first he peers into his own backpack. “I remem- time either of us had been invited to one ber handing it to you just outside the hostel of Ashley’s parties, which were generally after we took that last picture with Austin. reserved for the in-crowd. Around half past Don’t you remember?” midnight my dad knocked on the door, and “If I remembered,” she says, “we would Kenny gave me a squeeze on the shoulder have found it already.” before ducking out the back. He was in “Baby, I’m sorry,” he says. His back- enough trouble with his parents without the pack runs under the X-ray, and he watches 70

it morosely. “We’ll just buy another one in wedding rings while the plane is taxiing; Toronto.” teenagers who pull out their copy of Pent- She plops her bag onto the conveyer house, swiped sometime during their hour belt. “It’s just frustrating to know I can’t wait at the terminal; the girl who didn’t trust you to look after anything. First the bother to correct the Burger King cashier reservation, then the train, and now the when he charged her five dollars less; the camera, too. All it takes is a little caution and woman who ran a red light and sprinted her common sense, Liam. Go.” She waves him way to Gate 34; the ten-year-old who didn’t towards the metal detector. wash his hands after going to the bathroom; Liam’s backpack is hard to make sense daughters who get drunk on tiny bottles of of after his hasty search. Besides clothes, he’s single malt Scotch to forget the funerals they carrying a small notebook, a water canteen, are inevitably flying to; professionals who sunglasses, an extra pair of sandals made stare at the shrinking city and realize they from some kind of rope. Two of the straps hate their jobs; young men who won’t hear have twisted around the misplaced camera. until they land that they’ve missed the birth I glance up; Liam stands slump-shouldered of twin sons, two weeks premature; tourists on the other side of the metal detector, who’ll get mugged by the river in Bordeaux; avoiding his girlfriend’s gaze. She’s still people with acute depression; people with fuming and takes hot, quick steps when the cancer. guard waves her forward. I could say some- A part of me doesn’t believe that Dad thing, save them another fourteen hours is sick. He’s a big person, the kind to make of bickering, but that’s not my job. I watch you nervous just by standing next to him. them tug on their shoes in silence and walk When he’s in his uniform he walks like the away with three feet of space between them. law—steady, sure-footed. The morning after On nights I can’t sleep I pull the blankets Kenny’s accident he sat on my mattress and over my head to block the green light from rubbed his hands together, trying to wring my alarm clock and imagine a file of people some kind of apology out of himself, but boarding their flight and crab-walking after a minute all he said was, “Cole, I want into their seats. I think about everyone the you to stay away from situations like last government has pronounced secure: mar- night. There should never be anything as ried men and women who twist off their dangerous and stupid as underage drinking 71

at any event or social occasion you attend. always thought she deserved better than me And God forbid anything worse.” Some- and Dad. thing had woken up in him, something not I wonder if inside him cells were al- quite like fear or hatred but carrying the ready going rogue, if his body deformed his toxicity of both. behavior, if, even then, my dad would have If I went out with a girl and came home shown up green on the monitor. too late he demanded her number and inter- Dad took it as a point of pride that his rogated her about where we had been, what son turned out to be a screening officer. I we’d been doing, and was she sure, because think he sees it as staying in the family busi- that’s funny, Cole hadn’t mentioned the ness. Unlike him, though, I’m not here just bowling alley. Those girls didn’t go out with to blow the whistle. Part of my job is making

Mini key chain handcuffs are okay. Whips, piñatas, straightjackets, cremated human remains, gel-filled bras and similar prosthetics are okay. me again. He punched walls when I talked sure things are okay. For example, quanti- back and complained that Mom was being ties of dry ice amounting to less than 2.5 too easy on me—or, as he’d say, making kilograms per person are okay in carry-on cat food out of me. He stalked through the luggage if the package releases carbon diox- living room and switched off the television ide gas. Self-inflating life jackets are okay. if he didn’t like what was on; most of the Underwater diving lamps are okay, but only time it had been a commercial. His breed in carry-on bags. Mini key chain handcuffs of preemptive discipline made it hard to are okay. Whips, piñatas, straightjackets, know what I was doing right or wrong. I cremated human remains, gel-filled bras and just knew to be careful in the house. Mom similar prosthetics are okay. Breast milk is used to watch me eat my afternoon cereal okay but must be inspected by me. with drooping eyes and say, “Your dad has “Your passport, sir,” prompts Roderick a hard job. It doesn’t take just anyone to do at his post. A thin man with hair shaggy what he does.” My mom’s a sweet woman. I behind the ears fumbles through a stack of 72

paper, drops something, smiles sheepishly. holiday for the past three years, Mom and It may just be that the kid is on my mind, Dad have come to me. It’s her idea to get out but the man carries a bit of Kenny’s impish- of Eugene whenever they can. Mom bounds ness in the big ears and the tapered chin. out of the gate in her lime green sweater and When he finally gets the book, Roderick flips floral pants while Dad trudges behind with to the photo page and, signing the boarding the luggage; she comes to the movies with

I should have told him to go home, apologize to his mom for whatever he pulled, but I didn’t. I should have told him to take it easy on the rum and coke, but I didn’t.

pass, says, “Have it ready next time. Make me while he stews in the apartment and your way to the left-most line, please.” reads the novels he’s brought along, which It’s evident even from here that the are Stephen King thrillers, mostly. If we do man’s hands are shaking. He folds the venture out together he watches the uni- boarding pass and slips it into his pocket, formed cars on Sunset Boulevard and sucks then refers to it again, mouthing the num- his teeth. I asked him once what he disliked bers. The paper hangs limply in his grip. He about the LAPD and he said, cryptically, searches the faces of people in line, surveys “Well, a city this big, I can’t really blame the security equipment, looking nauseated, them.” scratching a sparse beard with two fingers. The man with the nervous hands grunts For a moment I think that he might be as he hefts his suitcase onto the conveyer trouble, but when he approaches and casts a belt. The other officers watch him apprais- wan smile at me I realize that he’s just terri- ingly, probably gauging whether he needs fied of flying. I see it often: the peaked look, to be swabbed for Explosives Trace Detec- the restless gestures. tion. Some of them get antsy when things If I visit my dad this weekend it’ll be my go smoothly; mean, suspicious, they’ll start first time on a plane. I know it’s strange, a picking on anyone. The man shivers as he man of my occupation never having flown, lopes through the metal detector. but that’s the way it worked out. Every The guard Alice raises her eyebrows at 73

me: Aha, got one. She says, “Sir, we’re going arm and gives it a shake. “You’re going to to ask you to step aside for a moment.” have a good ni-i-ight,” he says in a singsong, The man stops short and laughs a little grinning toothily. I hide my smile behind word that ends in a question mark. “Why? another mouthful of chips. I’m not doing anything wrong.” I should have told him to go home, apol- All of a sudden I’m back with Kenny on ogize to his mom for whatever he pulled, the couch in Ashley’s living room with one but I didn’t. I should have told him to take hand in a bowl of chips. His hair is freshly it easy on the rum and coke, but I didn’t. I cut, a close shave that accentuates his pro- should have taken the keys from him, made truding ears. It makes him look handsome in sure he got home all right, staggered with a dopey kind of way. him into his bedroom plastered with Grate- “I’m not doing anything wrong,” he ful Dead posters and glow-in-the-dark stars says over the music. “I’m just on hiatus from left over from the fourth grade, put him to my grounding.” bed and said see you tomorrow you bastard, “Well, if you’re already grounded, you you crazy drunk bastard. But I didn’t. might as well earn it,” I say, following Ash- “It’s just a random check-up, sir,” says ley to the front door with my eyes. “Besides, Alice. “We want to run a simple test. If you’ll I need you here. You’re my wingman.” come this way.” She touches the man with a Kenny slides further down on the couch blue-gloved hand while producing a black and brings the red cup to his lips. “Fuck it. wand with the other. She’ll want to swab his I’ll deal with the she-beast tomorrow.” hands, run the residue through the Ionscan “If you’re not too hungover. Good morn- 500DT. ing, Mom, sorry I—Oh, God—” I mimic “But why?” asks the man, fixated on the puking into my hands. wand. “What have I done wrong?” He shoves my shoulder. “Stop dicking “Sir—” Alice tries to place a hand on his around and act like a gentleman. Ashley’s shoulder, but he shrugs her off. been looking at you.” “Don’t touch me,” he says. He bunches “What do you mean?” up his shoulders and looks around wildly, Kenny indicates Ashley with a nod of helplessly. “Somebody explain to me what’s his head, and I catch her just turning away, going on.” tugging girlishly at her ear. He grips my “This,” says Alice, brandishing her tool, 74

“feeds into the Explosives Trace Detection. from her forehead. “We should probably It’s a precaution that we—” also swab his luggage.” “Explosives!” “Are you listening to me?” The man’s “There’s no reason to get upset.” Alice voice rises an octave, and he chops the air as cocks her hip. “And please don’t yell that he explains, head bowed, “I have a condi- word, it tends to rile people up.” tion, this is my first time flying, if you want “I’d call agoraphobia a reason to get to swab me, fine, but please, as profession- upset!” He locks his arms by his sides and als, give a man a moment to gather himself.” makes his hands into fists. His thumbs move “Sir, you’re coming with us, and if from finger to finger, cracking knuckles. there’s no problem with security, then you “It’s a medical condition and requires that have nothing to worry about,” says an- I remain calm, or else flying is impossible. other officer. He reaches over and slides the I really don’t”—he pauses to shrug out his suitcase off the conveyer belt. It lands with a shoulders and continues in a tense voice— heavy thud. “I really don’t appreciate how I’m being “It’s clean,” I say, rising a little out of my treated, and I’d like for you to put that thing chair. “There’s no need to search through away.” that.” Someone in line chuckles. The man He withdraws the handle of the suitcase. twitches his head towards the sound and re- “We’d like to be sure.” alizes that security has stopped, that every- “That’s completely unnecessary,” I say. one in line is watching him, peering around “This gentlemen suffers from a common their neighbors to get a better look. His face pho—” deepens a shade, the eyes bug slightly. He “Just do your job, Cole,” interrupts Al- rubs the collar of his T-shirt and breathes ice, and she levels her dark eyes at me. deeply and rhythmically through flared “No!” shouts the man suddenly. He nostrils. waves his hands in incredulous circles. “No! Several other officers have sauntered This is not how things are done! Let me over and now they surround the man. I can speak to your supervisor. Let—” see him wincing as he struggles to breathe. But he’s already being led away, hands “This man refuses to cooperate with the latched around his thin arms. He writhes, is- ETD,” says Alice, smoothing a curly flyaway suing hoarse noises, proclaiming that this is 75

unfair, that he hasn’t done anything wrong, my dad drags his red taillights in and out of and haven’t they ever heard of invisible the fog. One of us has to start talking. disabilities? The officers pay him no mind; Here’s a story. In 2006, a man aged fifty- from a distance, it looks like they’re ushering eight drives under the raised security arm at away a protesting child. Alice follows, drag- the first guard gate of the Los Angeles Inter- ging the suitcase. national Airport. He makes it straight on to

He’ll be cringing in that little white room while their gloved hands rifle through his things, hands dumb and assured by the law.

“Some people just can’t follow direc- the tarmac. He weaves towards the runway tions,” sighs the next man in line. He places and its blinking lights, blowing out all four his brown leather loafers into the bin and tires on the security spikes as he drives back- gives me a smug smile. I hate his smug wards through the second guard gate. He smile. I hate the way he folds his sweater, as circles for ten minutes before the tires deflate if for a store display, and the practiced flick at the edge of the tarmac, and a guard calls of his hand as he sheds his watch. He gath- the police about a possible security breach. ers his things and makes for the escalators When the police find him fifteen minutes on the other side. later at 1 a.m., the man is smoking a cigarette I’m thinking about the man with agora- and stares dazedly through their questions. phobia and how he reminds me of Kenny. The police later report that the man was He’ll be cringing in that little white room disoriented and meant no harm. Here’s what while their gloved hands rifle through his they couldn’t figure out, though—how he things, hands dumb and assured by the law. made it to the point of departure unnoticed, I don’t want to be here anymore, agent of how he had seemed to get there without nothing. I want to be on those escalators, meaning to get there, how he was waiting shrugging on my backpack and headed back unperturbed while an Air France cargo jet to Eugene, where the trees fan open and up- barrelled towards the runway from over- wards in long sighs of green, where Kenny head, his bags sitting between his feet, ready is buried but perennially under flowers, and to fly.

Ned Pratt, NRC (2012). Ink jet print, 46.25” x 34.75”. 78 Vertical Panel a cento Mary Dalton

She’d been identifying patterns: first one doesn’t come back, and then another and another, so it is natural that they should drown, the large expected gods.

The little potter’s sponge called an “elephant ear,” it had no trouble accepting its limits, given the night in the indiscriminate green.

A puppy laps the water from the can, bites its own tail: a New Year starts to choke. Moon-fingers lay down their same routine: goosedown like thrown boas of a chorus line.

The language of trees. That’s done indoors— the wild caprices and bouts of pulse weave and dive like Stukas on their prey, the darting thing in the pile of rocks. Vertical Panel 79 a cento Mary Dalton

Say your life broke down. The last good kiss which takes place in a room where the legs intertwine to keep the body warm— exhibits for the Museum of Humanity.

Later, a delayed moon and a violent moon stands every fibril of the mind on end; hangs there helplessly, but doesn’t drop except where one black-haired tree slips.

Who says? A nameless stranger, American or Canadian. A vertical panel with him in it— and the polar bear, is he here too? 80 Gauze a cento Mary Dalton

He built his own cages. And their fine lines singe his monkey-trellis of language.

Gone the dear chatterer, his nerves of metal and his blood oil. Pretend it is a ritual.

By the white picket fence in the ditch that’s filled with snow a face, a blinded face.

Further down the valley the clustered tombstones recede. Waves come to the sea wall, fall away— monumental, hard to read.

On the half hour at the commercial break the muzzles of the microphones describe the green after an accident. Gauze 81 a cento Mary Dalton

Strutting like fat gentlemen they dance on the surface among the flies and apes and peacocks.

The terrible tourists with their empty eyes question and cluster round the still small pool; then just catch a glimpse:

a jittery clerk with a slippery pen, and burning bits of mother-of-pearl to match the broken English.

Where are the tribes, the feathered bestiaries? The trees emerge from darkness: their wings fold the other way. 82 Cross-Stitch a cento Mary Dalton

Patiently the river asks for its share of the drizzle; that doesn’t stop the other things. You’ve heard the news; it hints of madness, like a naked anorexic— like a moth.

You will have to learn the terrain. They tell you this. You know it is interminable. Outside: the dark pink air; guy grin; the almost sarcastic chatter. The father carries the coffin.

Someone has to, just as someone, singing out stupid names for the animals, has burned all night, flares like magnesium. Add but pale flesh, claws, dark fur, cable of spine.

All of the relatives circling eerily warily the scent, rain braiding a windowpane— on the streets a work crew, hammer and tongs. The dark shapes of the city collect and collapse. Easy to say, why not give up on this?

Careful to avoid the blood— even in the day it hides behind RVs in comfortable rows like cows. Light in an eggshell sky, the air stretched taut, the cross-stitch work of birds. Cross-Stitch 83 a cento Mary Dalton

The train tracks lead there, into the woods. Too many divorces, too many blood panels. Tell you what it’s too late for: sitting at uncontagious distances. The desert has entered the flea’s belly.

Now the darkness is in the man with a hole in his hat down the freezing road, avoiding the dogs. And this happened in the afternoon. What did you expect? We were locked in.

In chrome, with vast fat tyres the colour of fissured cement, aggressively ribbed, and there’s Duchamp saying it’s better, standing off at a ludicrous distance, thinking,

during the lecture on the ongoing (on that little hampered run, that running tiptoe), about angels, how they bite off a sailor’s knot only someone lost could find.

*The source lists for the lines which make up these poems can be found on pages 106-107. 84 Ending in A Allison LaSorda

We should just forget about women with names that end in A. Phonological bombshells: Laura, Svetlana, Christina and Mari-ah swell off the paper like breasts pushing in front of us.

Remember when we were awkward critters? The rugged mainland girls had boys chasing their names out of baseball fields, long hair whipped across their wan faces.

How to forget how men look at women: at some, but through others like doorways to a stretched out vision: a field beyond the highway that once held ample bounty giving rest to rows of yellowed husks. 85 Ending in A Allison LaSorda

We hoped the everything nice girls, so longed for in the county districts, were put to shame in the glossed pages blossoming with collisions of the world’s finest features. Roman noses, Slavic cheekbones slice androgynous angles into French bread beauty.

Yet it’s too difficult to forget about a woman whose name has a dozen songs written for it, because things rhyme with her. When men speak it, harmonies of pronunciation come unbidden. Janaki Lennie, View From Leach Highway to Mt Dryden (1992). Oil on Canvas, 30” x 40”. Confessions of a Synesthete 87 Jey Peter

Crossed Wires regarding my flagrant disrespect for the teacher during morning attendance before My life is steeped in abstractions. The my parents realized that I was neither word Christmas sounds the way a ripe pa- expressing my individuality nor just being paya tastes. The rain smells like a soft and a little smart ass. hobbling violet mass flecked with silver. So, it’s Bill, by the way, never Wil- To scan the phone book is like watching a liam. carousel spin out of control. I could go on. William, as I tried to explain to my The common analogy used to de- pediatrician and later some sort of neurol- scribe synesthesia is to have one’s “wires ogy specialist, tastes like sour dirt. Or like crossed.” My wires are crossed like an a penny, maybe. It wasn’t until I was older atomic bomb. that I could finally place the taste within Until I was six, my parents just my gustatory lexicon. Who knows how it thought I was poetic. Precocious. Extra had got there so young: most of my other bright. That my quirky descriptors were a “tastes” were familiar even then. symptom of some greater genius. I was my It was this first neurologist who diag- mom’s little Shakespeare. I had no idea I nosed my synesthesia, which manifested wasn’t normal because how could I have? itself in three forms. The more common I didn’t know that my dad didn’t see our grapheme-colour synesthesia (that is, see- area code in the approximate palate of the ing letters and numbers as coloured when Lithuanian flag. I didn’t know that my they’re not), as well as lexical-gustatory mom couldn’t smell the soft vermillion (word-taste) synesthesia and the much wafting from her grilled cheese. rarer smell-colour synesthesia. It was also It was only the way I would gurn and he who first told me that old saw about grimace at the mention of my own name crossed wires. that tipped my parents off that some- He talked about it like a gift, though. thing might be weird. Not immediately, As if it was some desirable defect that in- of course. At first this too was taken as a creased my value by virtue of rarity. Like symptom of my burgeoning poetic (and I was the Inverted Jenny. My mom didn’t therefore eccentric) sensibilities. There take it that way though. Not that she took were a few phone calls from preschool it quite like it was a disease, either. But 88

there was a noticeable shift in her bearing. the seasons. They’re more intense as the As if before my difference made her feel heat rises and the odour grows more rank. strong and proud about having the genes I bet I could wake up with amnesia and and the womb that bore this uncommonly still be able tell you what season it is with- artistic boy, and though that strength and out looking out the window. pride remained, they became those of a But lately the ochre has been ever mother who loved her child in spite of his so slightly more reddish. Almost yet not difference. quite a sort of burnt sienna. Other than I guess you could say she loved me all the intensification of smell caused by the the same, just differently. climbing temperature, there hasn’t been any detectable change in smell, but the shift in hue is enough to make me peeved. Yet Not Quite The way I see smells in colour is sort of layered. Like, if I smell one thing In the summer, my apartment building and then another thing, the second one smells like a sort of rapidly oscillating doesn’t replace the other like a sequence, ochre. It’s decently pretty, sharp and nor do they mix like paint. It’s more like

The way I see smells in colour is sort of layered. Like, if I smell one thing and then another thing, the second one doesn’t replace the other like a sequence, nor do they mix like paint.

bright, but natural. Like the horizon of fireworks, with each individual colour an autumn sunrise. I get these sorts of sort of exploding at a different rate with ochres a lot in my building: It’s the must. a different velocity and texture, one over If I leave my apartment door open long the other. But it’s not bright like fireworks enough a warm magenta wafts in with the or distracting, just that sort of dynamic. I smell of one of my neighbor’s cigarette don’t expect this to make sense. smoke, colouring my bland plaster walls. But my point is that if the colour The ochres change in intensity with has changed only this lowly half-shade, 89

either the quality of must has also subtly head like a babushka, regardless of the changed or a new smell has been intro- weather. She goes by Mrs. Wilkinson even duced in such minor quantities that its though no one has ever heard her men- particles are so widespread or dilute that tion a husband, living or dead. There’s not they manage to appear as a sort of trans- even a wedding ring, which seems strange parency over the regular musty smell. considering her attachment to her form of But maybe I’m just paranoid. When address. My grandmothers are dead and I was eight I went through this period of Mrs. Wilkinson is older than both of them, looking for the smell of peanuts in the possibly combined. cafeteria food (a sort of silky puce). Not Like me, she actually enjoys the burn- because I was allergic, just that I hated the ing plasticky smell of Ms. Sanchez’s Pall idea that some authority might be lying Malls. She says they smell like school- about the ingredients and a kid could die house furnaces used to smell, back when because of it. Turned out that the slight they contained actual fire. She says they change I detected was the result of a smell like the cigarettes her papa used to switch from fresh to frozen meat. roll himself. It wasn’t until after I had launched a I’ve carried her groceries up the stairs full-on investigation into the strictly off- for her a few times (why she refuses to limits cafeteria kitchen and my parents take the elevator, I have no idea) and were invited to see the principal for a little watched as she carefully scraped the heels chat that the truth surfaced (along with of her gold-toned orthopedic shoes on the a largish folder containing records of my hedgehog boot scraper outside her door, previous offenses). then took her shoes off and scraped them But the point is, I was right in a way. some more with her hand, before lining them up carefully beneath the plaque declaring her room number (106: orange/ Soft Blues crimson/chartreuse) to the left of the door before pushing the unlocked door open Two doors down from my apartment is and directing me towards a table that Mrs. Wilkinson. She wears a puffy red coat seemed to be covered in a single gigantic and a Hello Kitty bandana tied around her doily. 90

I remember that the apartment had refreshments will be served!) in the bottom that clean old lady smell. Like beeswax left corner. I trashed it almost immedi- and cheap lilac perfume. The colours were ately, opting to claim ignorance or blame all soft blues, none of the red tinge I’ve Gmail’s filter system as needed. been seeing lately. A few days later she came to visit. She She asked me if I wanted to stay for never calls, she just shows up. She used to some tea (“I just started two new tea bags ring the buzzer—three times short/long/ this morning”) but I deferred and left as short, SOS in Morse code—to identify her- soon as the spoilables were crammed in self rather than actually calling up to the with countless open cans and jars in her apartment to be let in. This way, I had the refrigerator. option to ignore her and pretend I wasn’t “Thank you, William,” she said, half- in. But somewhere along the line she man- rubbing half-petting my back like a dog aged to get a key not just to the apartment while I smiled in a way so as to keep my building entrance but to my unit as well. near-gag hidden. As I found out after trying to consoli- That was the last time I saw her. It’s date the nasal doorbell buzzing with one been a week and a half, but there are her particularly unfunny stand-up opening shoes, scraped clean as teeth, sitting just to to Seinfeld, if I made no motion to open the left of the front door. the door for her she would simply open it herself. It should have been one of those mutually guilty moments, where she felt Walking Backwards bad for barging into my apartment and I for pretending not to hear her. But if I received an e-mail from my mom with a anything, the only surprise she seemed to link to a flyer for a mixer for synesthetes. show was at my own expression of shock. In the subject box she had written “for my Within a minute she was unloading cans lonely boy” and I almost deleted it, think- of Campbell’s Healthy Request into my ing it was spam. The flyer was composed cupboards and recounting the alterca- of silhouetted clip-art people against a tion she had had with the cashier over rainbow backdrop with the relevant date unmarked stipulations that very nearly and time (6 p.m. at the public library, light prevented her from taking advantage of 91

this fabulous deal to its fullest. you’re nervous, I could tag along. I’d stay “What do you prefer, William? Italian quiet. Not embarrass you in any way. The wedding or roasted chicken?” last thing I’d want to do is embarrass you. Such was the case when she came to “You know, William, I know you’re all visit Wednesday: I ignored her rings and grown up but”—she sighed and looked

I hugged her when she came in, and she pecked both my cheeks in this sort of European way she has taken to lately and soon she was back to fumbling in her purse. then got up to rinse my dirty dishes when at the collection of unwashed coffee mugs I heard her outside my apartment fum- flanking my sink—”but sometimes I can’t bling in her purse for the key I still have help worrying about you. Thinking that I no clue how she obtained. maybe haven’t been the best mother.” I hugged her when she came in, and I ended up agreeing to go but politely she pecked both my cheeks in this sort declining her offer to chaperone. I don’t of European way she has taken to lately think my attendance was ever really op- and soon she was back to fumbling in her tional. purse. As she exited, walking backwards “I think this would be good for you,” while slipping her shoes on and beginning she said, handing me a quarter-folded to close the door behind her, I asked if she black-and-white printout of the synesthet- noticed any difference in the apartment’s ic meet-up ad. smell. “You know I hate these types of “Honey, it’s an old building. Just the things, Mom. Besides, how do you know same old must and probably mold. Maybe I’m not seeing someone right now?” it’s a little stronger from the heat. You She laughed. “Don’t be silly! Besides, know, you should really be looking for a this isn’t just for romance. Maybe you can nicer place to live. Would you like me to meet some friends you might be able to start looking? I’ll start looking.” relate to a little better. It couldn’t hurt. If That night, I phoned the landlord and 92

asked if he had heard anything about Mrs. A Blessing Or Wilkinson going on vacation. “Nope, nothing about a vacation. To The synesthesia meet-up turned out to be honest, I’m not exactly sure if that old be held in the community centre adjoin- bird’s fit to fly, if you know what I mean.” ing the library rather than in the library I told him I hadn’t seen her in a while itself. But there was no missing it: some- and that I was worried. I asked if she had one had taken the time to make at least any relatives he knew of that I could call. a dozen arrow-shaped signs with direc-

His okays and rights lilted like questions but invited no response. I thanked him for his time and he huffed once more before the line went dead.

I could hear him sort of huff on the tions markered-on in alternating rainbow other side of the phone. Maybe there was colours (this despite the fact that many some sort of law about giving out tenants’ synesthetes do not in fact experience any personal information or maybe he just sort of colour visualization) demeaning didn’t want to go to the trouble of looking the community centre’s otherwise dig- up the information. nified pillared front. More than once I After a while, he replied, “Listen, I’m wished I was attending a meeting with a sure she’s okay, okay? Old people don’t more discreet organization, like AA. get out much, right? They need their rest, The people inside looked like the sorts right? As for relatives, there’s none that I of people who had not only been to events know of so just take it easy, okay?” held at community centres before, but His okays and rights lilted like ques- mentally referred to them as “events,” as tions but invited no response. I thanked in occasions. As in somewhere to be. There him for his time and he huffed once more were a lot of grubby-looking bohemian before the line went dead. types and stiff-walking suits. I guess I was a plainclothes suit. The refreshment table consisted of 93

lukewarm coffee in a sort of oversized other person in attendance who looked thermos and pre-poured cups of what was like she shopped at the Gap or some other probably either Kool-Aid or flat grape generic retail giant. I might have found Crush. I saw more than one person drink- her pretty if she hadn’t spent a quarter of ing the milk out of the tiny sealed capsules an hour describing which colour and tex- intended to be mixed with coffee. ture, to her, corresponded with each note The whole social aspect operated more of a given musical scale. I wonder if that’s of less like how I remembered my junior another form of synesthesia—not being high school dances. The comparatively able to find another human being attrac- chic bohemians and some unusually out- tive because they’re dead boring. I know going businessmen circled the main part plenty of guys who wouldn’t be so picky. of the room, informally round-robining I interrupted her: “But do you ever get between conversation partners while the where what you see or whatever because shyer of the professionals clung to the of synesthesia conflicts with what you see perimeter, chatting softly with the other in the physical world?” business-types beside them while hoping She dropped her hand, which she had to be invited “in.” previously been using to try and describe I was approached by a handful of the the sort of crunchy, burlap-y teal she as- attendees, fellow synesthetes as well as sociated with B-flat. (I guessed) former acid heads and other “What do you mean?” delusionals who engaged in long mono- “Like, do you ever feel like what you logues whose sole purpose seemed to be sense with synesthesia is pointing you in an attempt to prove that they were, in fact, the opposite direction of what you sense synesthetic. normally?” A common thread in all my conversa- She shook her head. tions was the description of synesthesia as “I know that whatever I perceive with being a blessing or a gift from God. synesthesia is true. It’s not misleading; I said, “My first name tastes like coffee it’s not interchangeable. I trust it. I mean, grounds mixed with lemon juice.” if I hear C-sharp, I see like a billowing At one point, I was talking to a young- tangerine. It’s always been tangerine and ish woman who seemed to be the only it always will be. If I ever saw like a green 94

or something, the first thing I’d do is get when I entered. I deposited the envelopes my ears checked. Does that answer your on the kitchen table next to a set of salt question?” and pepper shakers shaped like two cows kissing. There were three tea bags sprout- ing mold in spoons resting on the kitchen Some Small Ceremony counter. Their smell was like clean wet dog: slate grey speckled with white. That Mrs. Wilkinson’s mail was piling up: half a clean old lady smell was starting to fade, dozen envelopes protruded from the view- the blue superseded by the musty ochre of ing slot at the top of her mailbox. These I the rest of the building. grabbed with my own small collection of On the wall was a hazy coloured bills and brought with me back upstairs. photograph of a gap-toothed young man One of the gold orthotic shoes was in a mortarboard and gown. More photos on its side, as if someone had stumbled of this same boy at different stages of life over it and neglected to put it back up. I and of varying photographic standards brushed it lightly against the hedgehog were arrayed on the kitchen island. Among boot scraper and set it in its proper place. I these pictures were framed prints of bibli- pressed my nose against the painted metal cal passages and a strand of plastic rosa- door like a normal person might press ries that snaked between their stands. their ear to a wall in order to eavesdrop. At no point did I call Mrs. Wilkinson’s There was no conclusive difference in the name, which tastes like warm sweetened colour of the air. milk. I simply walked through her living Most of the people in the building room, straightening corners and fluffing were retired or slept late, but I still really pillows. I squeezed out the tea bags into didn’t want to be accused of breaking and the sink and threw them in the garbage. entering so I knocked a few times and I avoided her bedroom for as long as I shuffled through the mail like I had been could. From under its door I saw a lambent asked to collect it before turning the knob red emanating but still could not tell if it and walking in. I knew she never locked was synesthesia or neurosis. There was still the door. no perceivable difference in smell, at least The lights were on, dim and buzzing, nothing that I thought related to that red. 95

When I finally went in, she was lying mon. A stunning, clean colour seemingly on the bed with her eyes wide open in a composed entirely of light. way that should have been alert. One leg I tried to think of some small ceremony hung over the side of the bed as if she had I could perform for her: close her eyes, put collapsed after a long day of work. She was her leg fully on the bed. I could borrow

The lights were on, dim and buzzing, when I entered. I deposited the envelopes on the kitchen table next to a set of salt and pepper shakers shaped like two cows kissing. still swaddled in her coat like a pupa, and some of Mrs. Sanchez’s Pall Malls and I did my best to ignore the dark tinge of wave them around like incense. But what the sheets surrounding her. The first thing would be the point? I thought was of course. As if I had always I left the apartment quietly, taking known it, the fact of her death, the smell of her mail back with me to replace in her it. Of course. Was there ever any doubt? mailbox without fully realizing what I was I came closer because it seemed neces- doing. I would have to think of a way to sary to. I felt strangely glad for the intense tell the landlord, to justify my intrusion. red hue that I could finally clearly see, Could I really say that I saw the smell of pulsing outward from her tiny frame: her death? Medical records could be pro- My inability to focus helped me to ignore duced to prove I wasn’t crazy. I don’t think the greenish cast about her skin and the anyone would think I did it, though there doughy texture of her normally sharp fea- would be lengthy police interrogations, I tures and pretend that she hadn’t changed. was sure. Undoubtedly, someone would The smell itself was strong and sickly eventually ask me exactly what colour it sweet. It wasn’t a pleasant odour by any smelled like, you know, for curiosity’s means, but not really rank in the way I had sake, and I would say that it smelled like expected a body to smell. Organic, certain- the red-orange of ripe persimmon, and ly, but somehow completely unfamiliar. know for certain that I wasn’t being in the The colour, though, was of ripe persim- least bit poetic. 96 Old Crooked Fellow Carmelita McGrath

Whatever you do, don’t end up with a houseful of work and an old crooked fellow looking at you sayin, where’s me supper. —Mother to daughter advice

He was the best kind starting off; maybe he was hove off on the couch too much, took a bit too much time with the grooming, had to look awful sleek when he went out. But you’d put up with that. For the good bits. The warmth of him curled up on the cold nights, and the company, and the footfalls breaking the silence upstairs. He was polite, starting off, never complained about his dinner. Hove it into him so you knew he was famished, but what he did all day to get that way you couldn’t fathom and he couldn’t say. What odds, he was company. Then he got the nerve. Would stand in the porch door with a face on him, 97 Old Crooked Fellow Carmelita McGrath

demand his supper with a kind of snarl. Get on your nerves with a houseful of work. Spook you the way he stood in the window looking in, after him out all night. Then he started marking off the house, making his water in doorways and corners, then on paper, first the mail order catalogues—who cared—but then the manuscripts. Every woman got her limits. He had to go, old crooked fellow, and he went like it was nothing, came back a few nights and got a stony reception and went again. Did I mention he was a cat, old crooked fellow, not just cattin around but the genuine article, paws and claws and everything. But the world is full of shape-shifters, and who knows how many legs a mother’s fears for a daughter might walk in on? Now he’s gone. She’s better off. She gets more done. She don’t miss him. 98 Harmless Jack Carmelita McGrath

It’s a wonder she survived our tool box; him racketing at the door most days, said he wanted an axe to level the bed, a hammer to hammer in some nails, seemed they kept springing from the walls, it was a damp spring after all. I’d watch him stagger swinging some heavy, sharp-edged thing, thinking, do me a favour Jack, forget to bring it back. Fat chance. Borrowed some pliers, mumbled about wires, fixed the toaster good, all the kids dancing when the fire trucks came, nothing like sirens when you’re sick of Lego on a rainy Sunday. Came, used the phone, harangued the cops, said, the bitch’s after me with the bread knife, how come ye fuckers won’t do nothin? My daughter looked small as a doll in that narrow hall. 99 Harmless Jack Carmelita McGrath

The cops phoned, public mischief was originating at my house, said it’s your phone, you take charge, and I learned to stand out back, deadhead the flowers, and not listen to him hammering and yammering at my door, me not answering. I didn’t care for her. She yelled slut and whore from the window of the room where he leveled the bed or something. Threw Lysol cans. He leveled her on another street, harmless Jack, bashed her and then killed the cat, walked out on the street covered in blood, frightened all the kids in the neighbourhood. Amazing she survived our toolbox, didn’t get past someone else’s hammer or wrecking bar or spirit level. Harmless Jack, thank god he’d brought all ours back. 100 With Apologies to the Little Dove Carmelita McGrath

I was expecting a cheque. But instead the little card was frozen to the mailbox. It held the promise of a superior memorial plan and laid out the details in nine fonts. The laying out, yes, ancestors in the parlour in their Sunday clothes; no longer so simple. A checklist announced the things that I would need covered. Casket and professional services. Transportation. Clothing. Floral expenses. Like I was going to the Oscars. Newspaper notices. Unpaid household bills. Grave opening and closing. Monument or marker. Cemetery property. Vault or ground box. Unexpected medical expenses; something I thought would probably end with death, but who am I to say for sure? And all this could be covered for the beneficiary of my choice from payments starting at $15.00 a month, an outstanding feature. I began to feel special, for after all who bothers with flowers for me 101 With Apologies to the Little Dove Carmelita McGrath

or clothes for me. Not to mention a vault. Or a monument. No generally the days go on like this. Frozen detritus and coupons for artery-hardening specials while the sleet slants sideways and cold hands poke for the cheque that does not come. And these people were so considerate. Though they were strangers. In tiny print, they covered every possibility. If this brochure is received in a home

where there is illness or bereavement, it is unintentional. Please accept our apologies. Well there was that rich food and beer last night and today the Monday queasiness of it all, and even that these strangers understand. But I couldn’t fill out their little card, even with its consoling little dove with a twig in its mouth. I could imagine that dove coming swiftly up the street followed by a parade of ancient men in tailcoats, silk hats, the ones who plan and execute, death’s merchants, haunting dreams once set in motion. And after all, it is January. The cheque has not come. And it’s cold as the grave already. 102 Escape Velocity Carmelita McGrath

You hurried through that forest, along that twisting path as if something was after you; it wasn’t. Unless ahead was simply not enough; back not an option. Fair enough, fear enough. Someone, something dogs you. Pushes you to the peat.

You imagined that seven miles per second, the burn of it, the breathlessness; how could you gird your body for this escape? The opposite of when the elevator plummeted, then stopped with your first true definition of suddenness, the car rolling, the plane landing on the frozen lake. 103 Escape Velocity Carmelita McGrath

You stopped in front of a wall one day to observe a fading mural, and they must have thought it was a bank machine or grail, the way they lined up behind you then stood too close, the cloying breaths of billions no room on this earth to breathe.

You dream of an alchemic catapult, how it hurls you, high and fast; speed unlike any you have known the sun welcoming you, the moon, your sister Venus; before light fades, before the stratosphere recognizes you as strange, that certain knowledge of never going back. The burn of change. 104 All the Gods I Know Are Out on the Mashes Carmelita McGrath

Pale god-son with torture in his eyes, inevitability in his heart spurns me, always has. Even as a child, when I turned my eyes his way and made them hard as passion and asked him why, I hardly formed the sound with the frame of my mouth and he was gone over the fence and up the nap, and just as well. His father who morphed into him was harder but the same way when you got right down to it. I’d be lying into the sweet contours of a mossy rock dizzy from all the earth going round the sun and he’d stand there, arms crossed, his eyes gone over the sea and off to Galilee and he’d warn me about feeling too good. Flames must follow. I would lie and dream of fires on the beach and the soft night pressing like a lover taking his time on the approach. And though we had abundant water for them those other gods never came out our way, powerful fellas turning into swans to get with girls in the river swimming. I’m going now. All the gods I know are out on the mashes, where life and death smell the same in turf, and gods know this, the speckled mashberries are ripening in the heat of their hands.

106

The cento “Vertical Panel” is composed of The cento “Gauze” is composed of the the second lines of the following poems, in fourth lines of the following poems, in the the order given here: order given here:

1. Stephen Dunn, “Connubial” 1. Michael Clement, “My Father Loved Pigeons” 2. Bruce MacKinnon, “The Bees” 2. Sylvia Plath, “Wuthering Heights” 3. Louise Glűck, “The Drowned Children” 3. Don Coles, “Natalya Nikolayevna Goncharov” 4. Louise Glűck, “Palais des Arts” 4. H. D., “Epigram” 5. Marvin Bell, “Drawn by Stones, by Earth, by Things 5. R. S. Thomas, “Cynddylan on a Tractor” that have Been in the Fire” 6. Leonard Cohen, “You Have the Lovers” 6. Marvin Bell, “The Self and the Mulberry” 7. James Dickey, “The Strength of Fields” 7. Colleen Thibodeau, “Poem” 8. J. V. Cunningham, “To My Wife” 8. James Reaney, “The Lost Child” 9. Robin Skelton, “Lakeside Incident” 9. Randall Jarrell, “Eighth Air Force” 10. John Hollander, “The Mad Potter” 10. D.H. Lawrence, “At the Window” 11. Charles Wright, “Clear Night” 11. Patrick Lane, “Stigmata” 12. Sandra McPherson, “The Microscope in Winter” 12. Rachel Hadas, “Winged Words”

13. Howard Nemerov, “Learning the Trees” 13. Brad Davis, “Simple Enough” 14. Jean Garrigue, “Cracked Looking Glass” 14. Jon Stallworthy, “A Poem about Poems about 15. William Meredith, “Country Stars” Vietnam” 16. Jorie Graham, “Orpheus and Eurydice” 15. Gail Fox, “Portrait”

17. Richard Hugo, “Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg” 16. Richard Kell, “Pigeons” 18. Mark Strand, “The Story of Our Lives” 17. Ted Hughes, “Pike” 19. Howard Moss, “Rules of Sleep” 18. John Masefield “Cargoes” 20. Irving Feldman, “Simple Outlines, Human Shapes” 19. P. K. Page, “The Permanent Tourists” 21. John Berryman, “The Moon and the Night and the 20. Anne Marriott, “Beaver Pond” Men” 21. Al Purdy, “Spinning” 22. Amy Clampitt, “Medusa” 23. Edward Hirsch, “Fast Break” 22. A. J. M. Smith, “The Common Man” 24. Anne Sexton, “The Starry Night” 26. John Gould Fletcher, “Dawn” 27. Anne Szumigalski, “Angels” 25. Theodore Roethke, “The Shape of the Fire” 26. Elizabeth Bishop, “Poem” 27. John Hollander, “The Night Mirror” 28. John Ashbery, “Glazunoviana” 107

The cento “Cross-Stitch” is composed of the 28. James Richardson, “Head-On” second line of the following poems, in the 29. James Richardson, “Emergency Measures” 30. Ted Hughes, “Heat-Wave” order given here: 31. Margaret Avison, “Twilight” 1. Mahmoud Darwish, “Sonnet V,” trans. Fady Joudah 32. Paul Éluard, “The Weapons of Sorrow,” trans. Lloyd 2. Frederick Seidel, “Then All the Empty Shall Be Full” Alexander 3. Anne Simpson, “Ordinary Lives, Embellished” 33. Matthew Sweeney, “Snow, Ice” 4. Christian Wiman, “Country in Search of a Symbol” 34. Mahmoud Darwish, “We Walk on the Bridge,” 5. A.R. Ammons, “Late November” trans. Fady Joudah 35. Paul Éluard, “Curfew,” trans. Lloyd Alexander 6. Sharon Olds, “Self-Exam” 7. Charles Simic, “The Oldest Child” 36. Les Murray, “The Top Alcohol Contender” 8. Anne Carson, “V. Screendoor,” in Autobiography of 37. Les Murray, “Laggan Cemetery” Red 38. Kay Ryan, “Sonnet to Spring” 9. Eric Ormsby, “Grackle” 39. Dean Young, ‘Atmospheric Pressure,’ from “Demon 10. P. K. Page, “Funeral Mass” Cycle”

11. Dean Young, “Commencement Address” 40. Robert Mezey, “With a Ten-Foot Pole” 12. James Richardson, “Origin of Language” 41. Dean Young, “Vintage” 13. Philip Schultz, “The Adventures of 78 Charles 42. Don Paterson, “The Handspring” Street” 43. Dean Young, “Lucifer” 14. P.K. Page, “After Reading Albino Pheasants by 44. P.K. Page, “Stories of Snow” Patrick Lane” 45. Christian Wiman, “Small Prayer in a Hard Wind” 15. Anne Simpson, “Remains”

16. Christian Wiman, “American Cheese” 17. Don Paterson, “Rain” 18. Joanne Page, ‘Arrangement of Notes,’ from “Summer Ice” 19. Damian Rogers, “In the Back of a Cab” 20. Anne Carson, “And Kneeling at the Edge of the Transparent Sea I Shall Shape for Myself a New Heart from Salt and Mud”

21. Anne Simpson, “Grammar Exercise” 22. Don Paterson, “Phantom” 23. Anne Simpson, “The Trailer Park” 24. Anne Simpson, “East” 25. Anne Simpson, “The Grand Canyon”

26. Dean Young, “Scarecrow on Fire” 27. Dean Young, “Late Valentine” Contributors 108 Michael Crummey is married, with children, in St. John’s. • Mary Dalton lives in St. John’s and teaches at the Memorial University of Newfoundland. Her fifth book of poems, Hooking, a collection of centos, is being released by Véhicule Press under its poetry imprint Signal Editions in the spring of 2013. • Spencer Gordon is the author of the short story collection Cosmo (Coach House Books 2012). • Lenea Grace is a Canadian writer living in New York City. Her work has appeared and/or is forthcoming in CV2, Existere, The Toronto Quarterly, Grain, and Event. She’s inspired by rock and roll, rivers, Townes Van Zandt, and trying to find the balance between the heartbreaking and the hilarious. • Kym Greeley is a St. John’s-based artist exhibiting in commercial, art-run and publicly funded galleries. • Audrey Hurd is an artist living in St. John’s, Newfoundland. She received a BFA from NSCAD University in 2011 and recently completed the Don Wright Memorial Scholarship program at St. Michael’s Printshop. • Bruce Johnson is a critic, novelist and the curator of contemporary art at The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery. His debut novel, Firmament, was published by Gaspereau Press in 2010. • Allison LaSorda completed an MA in English and Creative Writing at the University of New Brunswick and now lives in Toronto. Her work has been featured in journals such as the Antigonish Review, CV2, PRISM international and The Malahat Review. • Janaki Lennie is an artist who finds drama and inspiration in her seemingly mundane urban environment. • Carmelita McGrath is the author of nine published works of poetry, fiction and children’s literature. Her latest collection of poems,Escape Velocity, will be published in Spring 2013 by Goose Lane Editions. • Colleen Pellatt lives in Ottawa. “Pop” is her debut story. Her poetry has appeared in Bywords Quarterly Journal. • Jey Peter is a writer and artist currently living in Toronto. • Ned Pratt grew up in St. Catherine’s, St. Mary’s Bay, Newfoundland. He works as a freelance photographer based in St. John’s. • Sheilah Roberts was born in Corner Brook and now lives in St. Philip’s, Newfoundland, with her partner and their senior dog. Her first book, For Maids Who Brew and Bake, was an historical look at how seventeenth-century Newfoundland women cooked, what they cooked and how they lived. “The Big Wheel” is her first published short story. • Sue Sinclair grew up in St. John’s and is now practising her wobbly French in Montreal. • Karen Solie lives in Toronto and her most recent collection of poems is called Pigeon. • Jane Stevenson was born in St. Lawrence, Newfoundland. She now lives on a farm in northern British Columbia with her husband and two little girls. • Jenny Xie is located in Berkeley, California, where her living to writing ratio is about 5:1.

Acknowledgements

Riddle Fence gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the following: Compusult, the Canada Council for the Arts; the Department of Tourism, Culture and Recreation (Government of Newfoundland and Labrador) through its Cultural Economic Development Program; the Department of Innovation, Trade, and Rural Development through the Ireland Business Partnerships (Government of Newfoundland and Labrador); the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council and the City of St. John’s. We also gratefully acknowledge our designer, Graham Blair, and our printer, The British Group of Companies, who have produced wonderful, high-quality issues of Riddle Fence. Thank you. Assistive Technology Solutions www.compusult.at

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A JOURNAL OF ARTS & CULTURE No.13 A JOURNAL OF ARTS & CULTURE

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A GENUINE NEWFOUNDLAND No. 13 — WINTER 2013 ISSN: 1913-7265 $14.95 AND LABRADOR MAGAZINE