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A JOURNAL OF ARTS & CULTURE No.11 D No. 11 — WINTER 2012 ISSN: 1913-7265 $14.95 1913-7265 No. 11 —WINTER 2012 ISSN: ISPLAY UNTIL JULY 2012 POETRY IRISH A RIDDLEF ENCE S PECIAL F EATURE Michael Pittman, Witch Ridden (abattoir). Acrylic, charcoal and india ink on panel. 124.5cm x 91.5cm. 2009.

May 26 – August 26, 2012 MICHAEL PITTMAN

May 26 – August 26, 2012 JOHN MCDONALD: YOU DON’T KNOW COLD

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WITH READINGS BY LITTLEFISHCART PRESS ALUMS JERAMY DODDS, JOSH TROTTER, GABE FOREMAN, AND LEIGH KOTSILIDIS FREE TWO DAY ALL-AGES DOWNTOWN MUSIC CRAWL PANELS ON INDEPENDENT MUSIC AND PUBLISHING RECORD AND SMALL PRESS FAIR 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. 11 — WINTER 2012 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 We ISSN 1913-7265 Publications Mail Agreement No. 417 250 14 Charitable No. 84167 9822 RR0001 only accept previously unpublished work.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 on the arts or on particular artists, or on Executive Director Proofreader Board of Directors aspects of “culture” and “art” as an idea or Shoshanna Wingate Susan Rendell Chip Clark (chair), Michael as a specific practice. In-depth book reviews. Crummey (vice-chair), Bob Interviews with artists of all disciplines. Managing Editor Associate Editors Hallett, Pat Hayward, Lisa Creative non-fiction with a strong narrative Carson Butts Angela Antle, Art Moore, Dave Paddon. drive. What aren’t we looking for? Travel Susan Rendell, Designer Catherine Hogan Safer, writing, re-told folklore or academic essays. Graham Blair Leslie Vryenhoek, Fiction Your best bet? Read some back issues of Riddle Fence, and you’ll quickly get an idea 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 Front cover: Reverse cover: submission goes to the right e-mail address: Dave Sheppard, The Wound, Study from Wolf Rhonda Pelley, Migration (2008). Photo composite, Tickets (2011). Watercolour, 8.5” x 12”. pigment ink on fine art paper, 12” x 11.25”. [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] THE NEWFOUNDLAND POETRY SERIES was started in 1993 as Breakwater’s twentieth anniversary project to honour and preserve the literary talents of our Newfoundland and Labrador poets.

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1.800.563.3333 www.breakwaterbooks.com S Rule e H T Stories must be in some form of English (any dialect); of English (any must be in some form Stories maximum of 4,000 words. must be unpublished in the contest entered Stories or publication other any to submitted and not currently contest. everywhere fine aged 19 and over, all writers Open to writing is done. One entryper participant, please. so include the title of your “blind” will be judged Stories data revealing name or any the author’s story but NOT email or cover letter Include a cover on the story itself. story phone number, mailing address, name, with your count. title and word Entry (includes a one-year Riddle subscription fee to Outside Canada/ $45 elsewhere. $35 in Canada; Fence): or U.S. in Canadian please send a money order U.S., $45. funds for a one-year Riddle subscription to will receive entrants All know cover us in your RF? Let receiving . (Already Fence this extend or give to want whether you letter/email subscription as a gift.) 3, 2012 (postmark) Deadline: August or [email protected] to dazzling work Email your mail it to: Riddle Fence 7092 PO Box NL, Canada John’s, St. A1E 3Y3 to Questions? Write [email protected] SHORT FICTION CONTEST

y S g d I IN d. R

OF T ER’ OST Clark. adOR m pIp dlaN lITERa R TION N adventure. abR u RETREa da N TION, a THE

O N T u d & l FOu a O w wIN b RITINg. S E ITH y For more information information more For dlaN N RITERS’ N about Piper’s Frith, visit: Frith, about Piper’s w published in the Winter Winter published in the a , publIC to/from Kilmoryto/from Resort. day including program fees, fees, including program S NT w Frith: Writing at Kilmory, Kilmory, at Writing Frith: aRTS F E The winning storyThe will be E full registration to Piper’s Piper’s to full registration Kilmory resort is a four-star 2013 issue of Riddle Fence areas, offer a perfect offer areas, indoor a u and the winner will receive receive and the winner will complement to a spectacular to complement Crummey, Don McKay, Mary Don McKay, Crummey, kitchens living and furnished Peninsula. Waterfront chalets Waterfront Peninsula. FOu accommodation, meals and accommodation, outdoor setting for leisure and leisure setting for outdoor FIv RITH w and cottages, all with equipped and cottages, nestled in the Piper’s Hole River River Hole nestled in the Piper’s w Valley on the estuary leading to Valley Dalton, Jessica Grant and Joan and Joan Jessica Grant Dalton, transportation from St. John’s John’s St. transportation from amid the wilderness of the Burin the headwaters of Placentia Bay, Bay, of Placentia the headwaters F RIllI E SpONSOREd by THE Past instructors include Michael instructors include Michael Past b ddlE N RESTIg I p R www.literaryartsnl.com/pipersfrith.htm CONTENTS

Poetry

26 Irish Poets A Riddle Fence Special Feature Flip the magazine for this featured section

Fiction

Caitlin Laura Galway Dog Fights in Dresden 11 First Prize Winner / Riddle Fence Short Fiction Contest 2011

Matthew Heiti The First Snow Covers Everything 23

Andrew MacDonald Up, Away, Here, Gone 32

Ryan Paterson An Imposter 43

Contributors 55

Acknowledgements 55

“I don’t want to make money, I just want to be wonderful.” (2011). Digital photograh by Jillian Parsons, 22” x 30”. Colette Urban, Limited Possession—April (2011). Digital photograh by Jillian Parsons, “I don’t want to make money, I just want to be wonderful.” ON THE FENCE Carson Butts

You’re standing there with a full pint of beer in your left, and I push my pint into your right the moment before I pants you in front of all our friends; you didn’t see it coming. (Not even when you decided to wear track pants to the bar.) That’s the point: you didn’t see it coming. And that is what I believe Riddle Fence, this journal of arts and culture, wants: to thrust inside our comfort zone and pull us unawares from the way we just assumed things would remain. I did not see this opportunity at Riddle Fence coming as I strolled across my front lawn with my darlin’, our coffees and cigs exhaling effortlessly in the mid-afternoon, mid-summer air. Then came a text mes- sage from a distant acquaintance with distant (not Riddle Fence) job offer on dis- tant island. My puffy bartender eyes said yes, please to regular hours; my nose said no, thanks to leaving her magnetic pillow scent. But she and I made a call for the best. I filled the trunk of my ’98 Saturn and drove eight hours to a ferry from which, seven hours later, I drove ten hours to my new home. That Saturn is now gone, but it was for the best: the tires couldn’t keep on that road; the muffler couldn’t hang on; I couldn’t keep waiting for the next oppor- tunity packaged up and tied with a big

Dave Sheppard, The Aquarium (2010). Oil on canvas, 17.5” x 43.5”. ON THE FENCE 9 Carson Butts

ribbon of perfect timing. ing the pulleys and levers. Last summer, my time at Riddle Fence We begin the front section with the was yet wrapped up in the swaddling winner of our first short fiction contest, clothes of mid-autumn’s changing table— Caitlin Laura Galway! And we continue a final sparkle in the headlight eyes of with horror fiction—startling, violent and that dying Saturn. And change hath given: masterfully strange. a steady job, an unfortunately long-dis- Now flip this issue over to find our tance relationship, a shared apartment, special feature—our Irish Poetry edition— honorary Islander status (yes, I kissed twenty-six Irish poets selected by Patrick it). And change hath taken away: my car, Cotter of the Munster Literature Centre’s my wonderful cigarette addiction, the Southword Journal in County Cork. Riddle Mainland, the house I knew. Then, one Fence #11 celebrates the long planned day I saw a poster on a downtown lamp- and awaited exchange between our two post pointing to the Riddle Fence #9 issue countries, our two journals, the exchange launch at The Ship – our preferred drink- of poetry; Southword Journal is, at this very ing establishment for fun Riddle Fence moment, typesetting six of Newfound- launches and serious editorial meetings. land’s finest poets, selected by our own I peered inside and saw an opening for Mark Callanan, Leslie Vryenhoek and managing editor, and it was shaped like Shoshanna Wingate, for on-line publica- a man bent forward in search—my shape tion in Southword’s issue #21a. exactly. And let’s not forget the artwork—sto- Riddle Fence is no newborn, but new ries and poems told in image, installation, still, renewing itself three times a year. If photograph, paint and interpretation. truly a fence, Riddle Fence leaves its gate You can tighten your belt, but your wide open—to invasion, to innovation, to pants are coming down. And that is just risk and reinvention and questioning and what Riddle Fence will continue to do: answering. shock you, stir the pot, tug at your com- Issue #11 has change built in; it moves fort zone, make you realise that you can’t in many directions at once and presents plan for it. Change lies in wait, and Riddle a reverse cover special edition. We’ve put Fence is here to smirk knowingly, point a Riddle Fence on the rack and we are work- finger and tell you it’s for the best. Brendan George Ko, Doreen’s Bible (from The Barking Wall; 2010). C-print, 30” x 30”. First Prize Winner / Riddle Fence Short Fiction Contest 2011

Dog Fights in Dresden 11 Caitlin Laura Galway

I took Godric’s fur because he would have my pocket over the final, stolen traces of wanted me to have it. It was smooth and Godric, and stepped back into the rumble soft well after he died, and would remain of the warehouse. so, with his bones, while the rest disap- Pheodora was on the lap of a man peared. He once terrified me. His enormi- with buttery stains down his shirt- ty, his uncanny, monochrome white with front. He had to hold her up she was so black eyes like bullet holes in snow. I tried slumped, so suddenly boneless. He rolled to get as little skin as I could on the blade. her head onto his shoulder and nibbled at My first foster father showed me how to her neck with fat, gawping lips. A carcass skin a dead thing in a cabin outside of Go- hung from a low rafter behind him, the thenburg. Once a living thing, even, while Ovtcharka that took out Godric. The man its legs shook. I cried the whole time, who brought him was floating in a purple screamed when he stomped on the slim pulp over his beer. neck to keep it still. He said it was good to A familiar heat closed in behind me, know, and I never thought that true until Olric’s hairless arm sliding across my Godric here. torso. For months I thought he was the It was almost quiet in the back of worst of them in his own deceitfully well- the warehouse where they threw him. kept way. His shirts always clean, pale I thought I nearly heard the sounds of hair slicked neatly back, only the mildest Bruhl’s Terrace pass in and out like a stubble. sweet, smoky fragrance. If only I were a “Godric,” was all I could say. He vapour, a sound, I thought, feeling along placed my head against his chest and I the cracks of the unfinished walls. Maybe didn’t care that it was Olric holding me, it had all gone black and white beyond was even happy that it was. them. The apocalypse of colour, nothing left but flashbulb faces and smoke-swept * * * Tohaku pines. A world like a photograph, nobody escaping. I was the star, the water nymph of The I wrapped his teeth in a strip of fur Dutch National Ballet. Meine Nixe and and skin. Ran my hand, hard, over his Ozeanhaar, Olric would call me, for the cheekbones, squeezed his ears. I closed baby-blue hair of my modern Ondine. 12

Gretchen Baur was our deserted Beatrice, didn’t deny. Years had passed like ash and and her hometown, Dresden, was the last smothered its stone. A firestorm of pound- stop in our tour. She seemed thrilled to act ers and bombs once fell from Flying For- as tour guide, chaperoning me all about tresses, hand-held sirens racing through town, from the Garden City of Hellerau the streets. And here the city was, wearing

Dresden didn’t complain, it didn’t deny. Years had passed like ash and smothered its stone. A firestorm of pounders and bombs once fell from Flying Fortresses, hand-held sirens racing through the streets.

to Die Herkuleskeule for gorgeous, vi- its landscape like a skeleton, fractures and cious cabaret. We started our mornings all to see. far too early, wanting to sweep the city in But it was here outside of the church with the blue veil of morning. No fusty, that it happened. There was a pressure be- mid-afternoon chatter, the interruption of tween my ears, a wavelength of warning. moving bodies. Twice I walked the stretch Somebody smoking kreteks, I recognized of The Fürstenzug, the whole suspended the silky crackle and clove. I was listening stampede of dandy Wettin princes, before to the sewage trickle below the sidewalk the sun ripened, taking in each tile one by when a hand closed over me with a gluey one. seaweed scent. Only for a moment, a There was a small, old church a short pinch in reality—a second split like a hair walk from the Baurs’ apartment, and I sat before I was gone. across from it on what was planned as my last Dresden dusk. Frost fell over its * * * domes like shaken snow globes, chaffing my lips in the excitable chill. I was sad to Long, scabby legs criss-crossed in front of leave. The city overall agreed with me, me. Lights flashed on and off with the rise its winter borne silently, the way it clung and sink of my lids. Bodies jerked, flat as to its age. Dresden didn’t complain, it paper, moving in stop-motion like Zeno 13

freeze-frames. Black to white to black. A More legs, this time heeled. Strapped woman’s voice sang off in the ceiling—in- up to the knee. The purple pumps looked audibly and tunelessly. Words that ran huge compared to the air-and-lace that as lemonade. I wondered if hers were the were those legs, and I watched for the scabby legs, but there had been so many. ankles to snap in half. I waited for an eight-legged ballerina to The woman attached told the girl not unite them all to a single form, or a giant to spread it, to go clean herself up. “Pheo- octopus to swallow me up into its lumi- dora,” she then said, leaning over me with nescent head. a listless, violet mouth. She seemed end- A crack of light tugged like a zipper lessly tall, the ceiling rose and fell with across my eyes. There was a girl crouch- her. “Your name, devushka.” ing over me with a sluggish expression, “Valkyrie.” The word drooled from eyes as unstable as oil on milk. She had my tongue and down her arm as she short, pink hair that curled at the ends the hoisted me up. The strength to lift some- way rotting tulips do. She held my hand one even as small as myself was alarm- with my arm outstretched, a large blue ing; the girl was slight as a sliver. In all cross swinging from her neck. It seemed of my years in ballet, in fact, I had never to glow—a flash of neon sign blitzing my seen anyone look so frail. Pheodora’s face pupils. She sat down next to me and tilted floated big above her body, connected to my chin, our noses barely apart. “How the rest of her only by the tight, mauve many do you see?” she asked, holding veining of her neck. I could make out up three fingers. I doubt she would have where her bones connected. She had on known, herself. She sat down across from a string of peeling, fake pearls, but there me and stuck a light bulb up against her were so many bone pops it looked more mouth, smoke curling within the glass. like her skeleton sneaking out. Then a jagged dip in the ring caught her “She’s Olric’s,” the light bulb girl said. lower lip and blood went spidering down Pheodora hushed her and brushed the her chin. Her jaw seemed to be unhinging, hair from my face as the room vanished her face’s casing fractured and no longer into a warm, black pool. able to contain all of the red underneath. She shouted “Pheodooooora!” * * * 14

Olric descended the stairs with a sort of water and weeping as the stove paint predatory care. Godric followed, muzzled bubbles. at his side, a prowling, white wavelength. The night Olric came back was when I What I first noticed of Olric was his seri- first saw the dog fights. I had only heard ousness. He was almost expressionless, them before, muffled into nightmarish charmless as a billboard at twenty-nine. echoes through the walls. Two dogs were But beautiful. Commercially perfect, now hauled over, riled and barking in really, with hair and teeth of matching separate kennels. Olric was rooting for the Warhol white. pit bull. The one with the inflated upper “The Zimmermans are infamous,” lip, and crumpled, veining nubs in place Pheodora told me. From her account, it of ears. The other dog was an almond- seemed the whole clan was unwell. An eyed bull terrier with a massive snout, and enormously wealthy entrepreneur moves pink piggy ears missing the tips. Between to Berlin with his new-money, his family them, the men had chained a smaller dog of eight. The eldest son inherits the family by the neck. A slim, speckled black one. business and beats his pretty wife until His nasal cavity was already split open. her brains scramble. Olric’s mother, that His long ears swept the floor as he hacked is—Belinda and the angry tick until the ice and stumbled, his eyes stuck on mine. pick poked it out of her. I flung out like a spider. I sprouted “Then some rival had his father shot,” extra limbs, became Arachnid Ballerina. Pheodora said. “Allegedly.” Olric’s arm was quick. He slung me over Olric, youngest of four, left alone with his shoulder like a jacket and dogs and the mother now. So he watches her like a feet and floor bobbed away below me. sitter, brings her to the market for the fun fruit baskets, the vegetables she refuses to * * * eat. He learns to drive and sits with her in church, where she interrupts sermons, I was dripping off a chair half torn to chiding the congregation into joining her shreds when I came to. My fingers slipped singsong hymns. She giggles, but never against moist patches of vomit and velvet. laughs. She tries to cook, but lets it all My knees shook in the tiniest convulsions. overflow, burning her feet with boiling There was the dainty, wooden knock of a 15

bead curtain and I must have been listen- second foster parents insisted upon for ing to it for hours. I watched the willowy the advancement of my English. Adele’s shadows extend and retreat in the icy mother, Sofia, was an esteemed painter afternoon sun. and photographer. I had never met a Sweat caked itself down my chest, woman who looked like her, spoke like chilling through my shirt. I had such her, ruminating personal philosophies trouble propping my chin up on my legs. like fine silks. As soon as I landed, she It was as if one magnet had been stuck in was driving me towards the Chinatown

She did a whole series of female frameworks, body shots of buildings. Concrete taking on flesh, steel mimicking bone. In one, she exposed arousal in the Eiffel Tower. my forehead, another in the floorboards. Night Market Fair in her prom-blue clas- There were people asleep all around me, sic Falcon, telling me of the Embarcadero their backs to the wall or on their stom- Freeway quaking to bits. How Portsmouth achs like they crashed mid-crawl. I fiddled Square was now frilled with flags and with my bracelet, waiting out the room’s dragon heads on summer afternoons. She spin. The scaly leather strap brushed bought me slippery noodle soup and we against my ankle and I thought of course stood while we ate by a neon altar. A Bud- I am a lizard, I have always been a lizard, I dha of fat, watermelon jade smiled down am drying on a rock. I thumbed the jangle from behind the window, and we watched of beads at the clasp, and wondered if the lions dance, ogled rice paper lanterns I had really been wearing it this whole like balloons pinned to the sky. time. This little girl’s treasure, this closing San Fran Sofia took me on as a kind portal. of pet project, as people so often did. She It was a gift from the mother of Adele knew I was a foster baby, said she saw Mintz, a San Franciscan girl with whom I something struggling and admirable in had traded places for a summer. We were my long, dancer’s form. My framework, as part of an exchange program that my she called it. She did a whole series of fe- 16

male frameworks, body shots of buildings. prayers spinning from the wheel into the Concrete taking on flesh, steel mimicking world. A soft om mani padme hum whis- bone. In one, she exposed arousal in the pered into dawn-poured coffee. I wanted Eiffel Tower. Spread its legs, made it firm to fall asleep in the sound. Her dark bed- and garish. Shot below its exposed inner room, that luxuriously earthy closet. The lining, that arched open space clean of warm sense of unconscious guidance that shadow. I imagined between a mother and child. She gave me the bracelet, a token from Indonesia, the morning I flew back home. * * * We were eating breakfast at the Turkish bakery across the street from her apart- I can only assume by the piercing, ice- ment. She could not have looked more water scent that it was Olric who carried regal then, curls heavy down her front, me from the backseat of the car and up her jazzy black eyes. She ran her fingers the stairs. The room he left me in was all

Whatever that girl had first put in my veins kept the blue light of the Cross rocking me to sleep. It took every particle and wrapped it up in melting plastic.

through the beads and gave me a warm, hardwood—softly plasticized, but my dry kiss on the cheek. Tugged my little joints still stabbed into it and it hurt to pink backpack, straightening it against my think of pillows and carpets and the cushy shoulders. cool of garden soil. I curled up into a I glanced at her bedroom’s velvet corner, my fingertips tickling some thick green curtains, easily visible from the bak- night wrapped around my face. I thought ery patio. They dropped lank and stiff, too I had poked myself up into the ozone thick to be bothered by the breeze, with layer, pulled it over my entire body like a a Tibetan prayer wheel hanging between sack. them. I could almost smell the room’s When I realized that I was all alone, lingering incense, Sofia’s secret pleas and I tried to stand. I thought I might just fly 17

right out of there, but I toppled over at was a pale cluster off ahead, maybe an the ankles; they seemed to bend under my iceberg or the hump of an enormous polar weight. Down I went, jelly-kneed and use- bear. I hadn’t moved much in days and less, hitting the floor like mercury. I hung my fish from giant bobbing ribs Miss Mercury Girl, I thought, splitting below the sky’s cool glitter. off into a million drops. My hair whipped violently like thin, That was how the substance felt. Like white snakes. I lay back and closed my bones of quicksilver. A mind like a phos- eyes, and then I was a Norseman’s body. phorescent bulb. Whatever that girl had The funeral’s flames were tired out, only first put in my veins kept the blue light smoke signals rose. All from countless of the Cross rocking me to sleep. It took Chinese lanterns littering the sea. every particle and wrapped it up in melt- In these dreams, I am a changing ing plastic. Warm, bouncing plastic that body. I am a man striding lean and tall chewed out the nerves like gumballs. along shorelines, across moors. My feet, I rolled up and sat there with my head clean and certain, bounce like syllables, hung, my hands bent, rocking on the inner while Godric follows at their heels, huge curves of my wrists. I imagined the walls and ghastly white. Sometimes I am a filled with fingerprints, rows and rows of woman, and my eyes, when they brave them, like a burial ground hidden in the open like shy stars, freeze the world in inner lining of the house. Its framework. I ghostly dust fainter than even my fin- began to crawl, pulling myself along with gertips to air. The world shifts in veils, it my weight against the wall. I put my hand seems. There is nothing to do then but lie up to it. I could read us in the paper like back with the fires on either side. Move Braille. through the great yawn of night, from sea to stream where the laurels and bush be- * * * gin to sprinkle the scenery, and grow into the flesh of forests. My name had changed. I was grey-lipped Familiar faces come to me. They float and lost at sea. My coughs became cloud up in my mind like bloated scalps in drifts, white waves spinning my boat water. I see Gretchen’s attached to bodies within the cage of a whale’s bones. There rolling in the riverbank. I see Prakriti, the

19

eight-year-old Nepalese girl with whom morning to help a friend find her wallet. for three years I shared a room. I see them We stood at the chipped bar—once the li- amongst rubbery toes and the mismatched noleum altar—now completely sober with clothes of strangers’ limbs. Washing up the dull daylight pouring in. This is the against the brink, lit by the glow of flick- difference, I thought then, between what we ering armadas. think and what actually is. No wonder there I look up and there is a bright wound are so many misunderstandings. of red in a neatly green oak. I know that it There was never a mother, nor a is fall. Olric keeps the window open, and Mother Sofia, not really. Only imitation I smell the season’s smoky re-emergence. Mother Superior, a man-cooked parody of Where am I now, I wonder. Olric’s room, what it might feel like to be loved. a dream, perhaps nowhere near my skin I curled up at the base of Olric’s at all. I think I am just light now. Mercu- bedside table; there sat a black-and-white rial effervescence that has transcended of his family in one corner, a stuffed fox walls and dreams and time, the body most in the other. Both loomed over me with of all. buggy glass eyes. From the frame were Belinda and her daughters, Olric in the * * * middle with the tallest girl’s hands on his shoulders. They stood in what looked I woke up to my own voice calling for my like a living room outside of a farm—or a mother. Godric lay splayed and sedated garage-sale, a junkyard, the aftermath of beside me on the floor, my head against a hurricane—with ducks squatting on a his stomach. I didn’t like the idea of call- sofa, horses lounging, bored and serene, Lady Things (2010). 40” x 50”. ing for anyone, especially my mother, along the fence. who was never much of a mother at all. Small as the photo was, I could make She certainly wasn’t here for me now. out the confliction of baby teeth getting Even Sofia had failed to measure up, like squished out of place in Olric’s mouth. all of the others. She wrote less and less He looked just like his sisters. They were once I was home, and I only fully realized all pretty things, with elongated necks how that had made me feel when I was and steely hair. Belinda prettier than her eighteen. I returned to a dance club one daughters, even, but for the ghostly blush Robyn Cumming, Lady 9, from the series 20

of make-up. It simply came off black, as And the last of Pheodora herself. Her sis- though an indelicate thumb had smudged ter had been found dead from an overdose the image before it settled. She was smil- earlier that week. One of the girls told me, ing with a cheerful, inky mouth, one hand a middle-aged Brit named Mona. “They holding her hat in place. And while the found the poor kid in the trash,” she wind forced the others’ photo-ready eyes said, and I pictured legs like rainbows, to squint, Belinda’s remained wide and every unnatural shade. Mona tugged a unaffected. sparkling line of lashes from her eyelid. It was the worst part of the room—the “Somebody’d found her and just thrown photograph, the fox, standing side by her out with the brown bananas.” side in a twilight time couldn’t squeak Pheodora was sitting at a card table, through. her dark hair pulled to one side. She looked horrifying. Her eyes were glazed * * * over, and they roamed about the room as though skidding on ice. I put my hand I saw Godric fight just the once, the night on her shoulder, but she didn’t look up. he died. He was monstrous, elegiac—but Across her violet face was a carnivorous still Godric, a wilderness of white that vacancy that I have never in my life seen

I saw Godric fight just the once, the night he died. He was monstrous, elegiac—but still Godric, a wilderness of white that didn’t belong in a crowd like this.

didn’t belong in a crowd like this. His fur on another person. What more could the blew across his back like Siberian sands. world take from her, I thought. It had His teeth flashed like shark fins, slits of simply carved her clean. warning before the bite. And then it was Winter washed in with the creak of over. All of him, gone. an opening door. I felt none of it, but I It was the last time I saw the ware- saw how the papers curled against their house where I had first met Pheodora. weights, and gravity seemed to flutter 21

between loose fabrics. Pheodora flinched. ed, with flowers bright and brimming. Her eyes followed a single trail, caught Tended to, every petal, strung to hooks with the wind. I could have sworn I with chili pepper lights. Below, where one watched her disappear, tagged to the cold might have set a wicker couch or ham- through the door and the alley, like a drift mock, Olric had aquariums filled with of frost, a breath of dust. perfectly lively fish. I think if everything When Olric brought me back that had been a little deader, I would have felt night, he didn’t put me in his bedroom. more at ease. Over it all stretched a nylon He left me sitting, alone, in the kitchen roof, holed and chewed-out. Plush toys downstairs where I had never before hung from the picket-fence, surrounding been. Everywhere in the room was some glass cabinets filled with storybooks and strictly regimented mess. Shirts and ties silk-dressed dolls. It looked just like some swayed like loose leaves over my head, sickly pawnshop. strung from wall to wall, with magazine I threw up into the sink and dug my stacks and newspapers running from floor forehead against the tap. I wanted some- to ceiling. Years and names and histories one to call for. Someone, for once, to just towered throughout. A paper and print tell me what to do. Sofia, is it you I call for Kowloon Walled City. in my sleep, or one of the other, lesser moth- I crept towards the window, fingers ers? Maybe even the real one, whoever she sprawling a distance between myself and was. anything that might come toppling down. Before, I hadn’t seen why anyone I watched dawn leak along the window- would call for someone they never knew. sill, gilding the tall, crammed houses But we turn to God, I suppose. A mother’s across the street. The front yard, the gate, love, God’s love, real or absent. Ideas so the road that led to anywhere, were all instinctual that we grab at them, almost just on the other side. It was an unex- unfailingly. Please, God, I want my mom. pected view, not quite like anything I had Even Pheodora, with her dead eyes and ever seen. The porch where Olric now sat her dead sister. I bet she asked God why, was white and seasick-green as a hospi- spinning her heart like a prayer wheel, tal, with plastic swan pots swinging back while I cried out for my mom, mom, mom. and forth. Twenty-two of them, I count- Doreen Kennedy, Book Grid (extract from Portrait of a Library) (2011). Giclée print, 40cm x 80cm. The First Snow Covers Everything 23 Matthew Heiti

Wally Kajganich stands on the side of the standing and staring. road shivering, wishing he hadn’t stopped “Hey, Kag, maybe it’s this thing.” the van. It’s been a cold day, the kind that Fisher’s pointing at a little stone man punches you in the gut every time you step perched on the lip of the embankment—the outside, and the coming night is promising kind of thing you see up and down every worse. The water’s turned to ice running highway and back road—making some down the rock, hanging in long jagged fin- kind of joke, which Wally knows because gers over the ditch. There’s no snow on the he’s got that little twist to his lip he only ground yet, but that’s not what makes the gets when he makes lewd suggestions about flow stand out—it’s pink. Rosy explosions women they drive by or female prisoners. trapped beneath the layer of ice, shaped More sounds come out of Fisher, but like stars or blossoms, racing down to the Wally’s got him on mute and is turned, very tips of the icicles where the tint seems looking back into the trees—evergreen darker—more like some fancy lipstick red. and naked maples, thick and dark like in Nothing’s been said for about five min- a storybook. He’s got that little tingle, that utes, just two men standing on the gravel little urging whisper behind his ear that shoulder above the ditch, staring, and then used to make him think he could’ve been Fisher opens his mouth once or twice before a good cop. Leads his eyes, tracing down finally saying “Well” without a question the scarred trunks to the ground—telling mark. Wally rubs his hands together, looks him look, look it’s right in front of you. But back at the transport van—police mark- all he can see is an ocean of cracked and ings so faded he’s put in two requests to browning leaves. Look. have her repainted—and then walks further A hand on his shoulder. “C’mon. Ce- down the shoulder, muttering “Shit,” Fisher lia’s making me dinner.” shuffling behind him like some lost puppy. And it’s just as he turns around that They find a point where the embank- he spots it—the shock causing him to grab ment is not so steep and the two men climb Fisher’s hand and the men stand, holding up the surface of rock and frozen moss, the hands and staring down at an opening in (2010). Archival print, 18” x 24”. Archival (2010). Dream Warriors exertion forcing clouds of vapour about the pile of leaves. An eye is staring back up their heads. They make their way back at them, frozen over like a marble. to the top of the ridge and do some more Jan Avendano, Jan Avendano, 24

By the time they get the leaves cleared “Hell of a thing.” Fisher says it for the away, Wally’s hands are aching and he’s got fifth time, each time like it’s just occurred to them locked over his mouth, blowing into him. them like a bellows—rhythmic wheezing in The body is almost unmarked, glazed and out. Fisher looks at him and then down like some Italian sculpture Wally saw in a at the body and then back at him again. book once, but the throat is open in a smile, “The hell you doin that for?” coal black along the slash. Blood frozen up

Blood frozen up the chin, following the jawline and then running along the ridge of the ear onto the rock—spilling down the slope, joining with a stream, finally freezing into a sheet of ice.

He pulls his hands away, sliding them the chin, following the jawline and then inside his jacket and under his armpits. “My running along the ridge of the ear onto the goddamn Raynaud’s.” rock—spilling down the slope, joining with “Who’s Ray No?” Fisher saying it like a stream, finally freezing into a sheet of ice. two separate words. Long, bloody fingers. “It’s a disease you need gloves for.” He takes his hands out and blows into them, “What d’you mean it’s not working?” but Fisher’s looking back down. “I mean it’s not working.” A cold wind rolls over the embank- “It was working before.” ment—the brown hair lifts and waves in “Not working now.” the wind and for a second the gesture’s so Wally tries the key again, but this easy you’d almost think he was just rest- time even the dashboard lights won’t ing. But the skin’s gone bone white and the blink. Scrap metal. That’s what they give lips are frozen, curling back, and those eyes him—won’t paint her, won’t service her. don’t shut and Wally wonders what kind He wants to get angry, tries, but only some of a man would lie naked on a rock or what kind of numbness rises up from his belly. kind of a man would put him there like He stares out the window at all that asphalt that. in either direction. No one’s passed them 25

the entire time they’ve been here. wood, but, when the pyramid is built, He can feel Fisher twitching, his big he wants to be the one to light it. Wally mouth winding up, but he gives him a look lets him grunt over the matches for a few and grabs the radio. He cuts through the minutes before taking over and getting static and gets the dispatcher on—arguing the whole thing burning. He slowly gets with him about their unit number, report- some feeling back into his feet and hands, ing the body, explaining the dead battery, watching the chimney red, pumpkin orange clarifying that the battery and the body are flames, the little twist of blue playing in two separate dead things, trying to give the throat of the fire. He pushes a big dead some idea of their location a few hours out piece of maple in, lifting a cloud of sparks— of the city on whatever back road they hap- lighting up the outline of the body a few pen to be stuck on. Back to static. feet away. “What does he mean ‘We’ll get to you “Don’t see why we got to be so close to when we get to you’?” him.” “He means we’re special constables “So we can keep an eye on it, the van, driving an empty prisoner transport and and the road.” they only give a shit about real cops.” “Creeps me out.” Fisher zips his jacket and pulls the hood Wally looks across the fire at the young- up, then sits glumly with his arms crossed. er man. Fisher’s big arms are wrapped “This is the wrong kind of special, Kag.” around his legs, knees pulled up to his It’s just past five and the light’s got that chin—his whiskey face just barely visible, funny look when you know the bottom’s eyes darting nervously. Wally laughs, a about to drop out on the day. Wally reflex- single short bark. “Didn’t you come in from ively balls his fingers and toes, trying to Wikwemikong?” urge some feeling into them—the heater’s “Yeah.” not coming back on and the temperature’s “Shouldn’t this be your natural ele- still dropping in the cab of the van. ment…nature?” He swings the door open with a squeal Fisher’s eyes swivel to Wally, and he of rusting metal. gets that twist to his mouth again. “Christ, Kag, we live in houses now—you know Fisher bitches while Wally gathers the that, right?” 26

The strobe of firelight catches the dark Wally sees the fear coming in on his shapes of trees, dragging long shadows partner, the body making a space for itself out of them—the forest seeming to lean in, next to the fire, and he clears his throat and crowding next to them at the fire’s edge. starts the way the old timers always started There is no wind, the only sound the pop- with him: “Knew this one cop, working late, ping of the fire. stalled out on a country road.” He tells the “What d’you think—?” one with the hook in the door handle and But Fisher leaves it like that, shaking then the one about the knocking and the it off with his head and burrowing down boyfriend hanging in the tree, and at the into his knees. Neither man has broken the end of it Fisher’s fear returns to its nor- heaviness to say much about it. Speculate mal level. The body crawls back into the about the why and how. Haven’t used the shadows and the two men sit more easily words him or body or said anything about around the fire. “dead” except on the radio. Something “Ow!” Fisher’s holding his cheek, and about the silence feels appropriate, or may- looking around wildly. “Something bit me.” be it’s an excuse to ignore the other feelings Another something hits the fire with a creeping in with the night. hiss. A pause and then the sky’s vomiting Wally tries to imagine cutting Fisher’s pebbles of ice—fire sputtering, miniature throat, watching him die, taking off all his explosions on the rocks and the ringing of clothes and leaving him there, on the rock metal from the van below. Fisher jumps above the road. It doesn’t fit. He just can’t up and runs for cover, but Wally’s yelling conjure up that much hate for something. brings him back. He tries to imagine coming out here, naked “Take the feet.” in the wilderness, and cutting his own He’s already got his hands under the throat, wanting to do that. It doesn’t fit armpits—the feeling of the flesh, cold and much better, but his stomach doesn’t turn hard, coming through his gloves. Fisher’s over at it. looking down at him and the body like “Maybe an animal done it.” Fisher’s he’s gone insane, shouting over the rushing eyes on Wally again, something almost sound of the hail all around them. hopeful in the tone, like this might undo it, “Where are—?” or make it more understandable. “Take the feet!” 27

Wally starts to drag the body, but all torn up or some animal make off with Fisher grabs it around the ankles, lifting it?” the stiffened thing between them. They “No . . . just rather keep my job, is all. struggle down the embankment, hailstones Rather we didn’t have him back there. cracking off the body, ripping small pock- Guess he’s better than some of the shit- ets in the frozen skin. Wally, blinded by chuckers we drive around with.” the downpour, bangs into the back of the Wally slides the slot door closed. “It’s van, stumbling and losing hold of his end. not a him anymore.”

Fisher looks at him with a big grin that moves back some of the worry he’s been sucking on. “Love to see them find us all here in the morning—three buck-naked men in a van.”

The head hits the gravel, bending the neck The two men are sitting in the cab, forward at an unnatural angle—the gashed wrapped in the coarse wool of the emergen- throat seeming to yawn open at Fisher, who cy blankets, breath already frosting over the lets go of the whole thing. windows. The gunfire rattle of hailstones Wally swings the rear doors open, but has slowed. Fisher can only stare down at the body, not “We gonna freeze to death in here, saying anything, but Wally knows he’s ask- Kag?” ing why. Why why why. Wally regards his partner, sees the joke but feels the concern underneath it. “They Fisher peers through the slot into the back say if you wanna make it through a cold of the van. “Celia’s not gonna be happy night in the Arctic, best thing is to hunker with me working at no Deluxe Fries.” down in a bag naked with someone else.” “It’ll be fine, Fish.” Fisher looks at him with a big grin that “It’s in the handbook. You don’t fuck moves back some of the worry he’s been with a . . . a crime scene.” Saying it all sucking on. “Love to see them find us all official-like. here in the morning—three buck-naked “You rather we leave it out there—get men in a van.” He puts his chair back, David Kaarsemaker, The Forest (2012). Oil, acrylic and charcoal on canvas, 48” x 48”. 29

reclining, scratching his smooth chin with a bare hand before shoving it back in the mitt. “Drive ’em, drop ’em off and drive back, but goddamnit, Kag, if you didn’t have to stop on the coldest day of the year. Be eating dessert right about now, I guess. Celia’s apple pie, apples off her dad’s farm, still warm. She probably do a fresh loaf of bannock too—never ate the shit growing up, but she makes it so thick and flaky, it just melts into your mouth. The side, she’s got some baby carrots with butter and a bit of honey . . .” Wally listens to Fisher working his way backwards through this meal, sharing each dish, the smells and textures, his voice becoming thicker with every slice of rare steak, mouthful of garlicked potatoes, mur- muring into the easy ritual of setting the table, the hiss of a beer cap coming loose. Opening the front door, the warm rush of air as you cross from the rest of the world into your own little piece of it. When Fisher moves off into sleep, Wally breathes on the window, drawing a circle with his glove and rubbing a port- hole through the frost. He’s hoping for the moon, a few stars, just a bit of light so he can know which way this van is pointing. But nothing can be seen, only this great hungry darkness. 30

He thinks about the body in the back, socks and rubs at his feet, unsettled by the and tries to make a story for this man. Tries non-feeling when his numb fingers touch to think of the lonely kind of life you’d his numb toes. Nothing he can do seems to have to live for this lonely kind of end to it. bring the sensation back. He looks over at A plain face, no identifying marks on the Fisher, head rolled on his shoulder and a body, no identification of any kind, noth- line of drool down to his chin. ing to call his own. Probably middle-aged, There’s the creak of metal from the halfway into some kind of life, some kind back, and Wally turns his head to the slot to of career. Nothing really fulfilling. No listen. A sudden cold gust, like an exhala- kids. Colleagues, people to shoot the shit tion, seems to leak in around the seams of with—talk about the hockey game—but no the slot and he wonders if one of the rear real friends. Drinks too much. Watches too doors has been left open. much television. Spends too many evenings He reaches out and fumbles with leaden alone. No devastating failures but no real fingers at the slot, finally getting the catch sense of accomplishment. Had some poten- and sliding the door open to see two mar- tial at one time, now no real value. No real bled eyes pressed up against the opening, loss. staring at him. A second exhalation from He pulls off his gloves, blowing into the other side and Wally is hit by a coldness the bowl of his hands. As he pulls away to he’s never known. rub them, he sees his fingers already going He slides the door closed again. yellow-white with the cold and then the He falls back into his seat, his breath shine of the ring he probably shouldn’t be coming out in a cloud—disbelieving al- wearing anymore. ready. He wants to open the slot, to prove A wind is kicking up outside, gently the late-night ramblings of an overactive rocking the van like a cradle. imagination, but he is paralyzed by what he might find. The numbness crawls from Wally wakes because the feeling’s gone his fingers and toes inward, turning his legs out of his hands and feet. His fingers feel and arms to stumps. It takes minutes or thick as he pulls them out of the gloves, hours, but the cold seeps into him—quiet- jams them under his armpits and holds ing each organ, stopping his blood, shrivel- them there. Then he takes off his boots and ling his penis, slowly turning his body into 31

a great weight. His head is being dragged you is fine, but I’m just done with all this down by this weight, to stare at the pale, shit. Don’t know how you put up with it so useless thing attached to it. He knows the many years.” flesh is dying, but all he can feel is this great Wally nods and checks the speedom- fatigue at having the long road behind him. eter—Fisher’s all amped up and driving The many times he’s asked why. Why why too fast as usual, but this time he doesn’t

He puts his hand on the glass, thinking through this sensation, the cool surface against his palm. Outside, a light snow has begun to fall, settling on tree branches and dusting the highway. why. No real value. No real loss. say anything about it, turning to the win- Lights and colours reel around him, dow instead. He puts his hand on the glass, igniting this useless body, and when he thinking through this sensation, the cool finally hears a knock at his window, Wally surface against his palm. Outside, a light finds he can move again. snow has begun to fall, settling on tree branches and dusting the highway. The cavalry is an asshole named Simpson “They don’t hurry up, not gonna find who makes a lot of noise about taking their out anything about this guy’s story.” Fisher badges and dumping all of them back on adjusts the mirror and brushes at his hair. the side of the road, before he finally gives “The first snow covers everything.” them the boost they need and tells them Wally slides the slot door open and to take the corpse in anyway. There’s light looks into the back. The hold has a padded coming over the hills to the east as they bench on each wall and a bucket under one take off down the road to swing onto 17 of these benches for emergencies. The first and head back into the city. Fisher’s driv- rays of sunlight are coming in at an angle ing and talking a mile about his big plans through the rear windows, splashing across for the future. “. . . I get back I’m gonna put the floor. He only notices he’s been holding in for the big-time—provincial, city, don’t his breath when he sees the body laid out, a give a damn. No offense, Kag, driving with thin vapour rising as it thaws. Up, Away, Here, Gone Andrew MacDonald

Sometime between 1 p.m. and 2:30 p.m., on July 20, 1998, our father and mother dis- appeared. We saw them get in the hot air balloon in Central Park. We waved, kissed them goodbye. Not goodbye-goodbye. Just see-you-later. “So we’ll meet you back home?” our mother said, pulling her hair back in a floppy ponytail. She was wearing special clothes for the trip: hiking books, a parka, hyper-UV- protected sunglasses. Our father dangled the car keys from his finger in front of me. “You dent it, I’ll kick your ass.” Before getting in the balloon our mother turned to us and said, “We won’t be long,” though I wasn’t sure why such a thing needed saying. Now I wonder, about that statement and other things. The weather is one of those other things. Cold weather is typically prefer- able to hot weather when it comes to hot air balloons. They took to the sky in mid-July, a day so hot the dew of the grass stunk, as if it were sweating like us. And they flew in the middle of the day, not at just after dawn or just before dusk, the two best times to fly hot air balloons. Going over archived weather reports, I found out that a thirty-six mile an hour wind was blowing. Repeat, conditions were not ideal. (Study; 2010). Watercolour and coloured pencils, 8.5” x 18.5”. Sheppard, The Egg (Study; 2010). Watercolour Dave Up, Away, Here, Gone 33 Andrew MacDonald

Did our parents consider that each long on jumping out of the balloon and drifting section of the hot air balloon is called a gore? out to sea? Or that neither of them had a pilot’s licence? Sometimes I find Gert arranging cue Me and Gert watched the balloon fade cards with a description of each item scrib- to a speck until heat lines and clouds swal- bled on them. lowed it. We went home and ate dinner “You won’t find anything there,” I tell and watched a movie, then another movie, him. until Gert fell asleep on the other end of the He looks up and says, “‘When the com- couch. The dinner we made them for their poser withholds less, the opposite occurs: anniversary was starting to smell, the roast he forces us to perform gymnastic exercises going spongy in the gravy, the beans drying more skillful than our own.’” to salted husks. Another quote from Dr. Lévi-Strauss. Eventually I fell asleep too, until the “That doesn’t even mean anything,” I next morning, when the hot air balloon com- say back, though later I reflect and come to pany called. Their balloon flew off course understand that maybe the world has some and eventually landed on Ellis Island. hidden meanings invisible to me. I heard the man on the line sucking spit through his lips. “It was empty.” Gert tried to kill himself two weeks after our “Empty how?” I asked. parents disappeared. He created an entire The spitting sound got louder. “Empty pulley system designed to choke himself as in your parents weren’t in it.” to death, affixing a wheel to one end of the Technically, the basket wasn’t empty. In- garage, running a length of cable along the side were half-eaten sandwiches, a bottle of roof to the garage door. The cable had been wine with the cork still in, some unopened roughly bent in the shape a noose, a towel condom packets, a well-trampled newspa- wrapped around the part that would loop per clipping about whales that may or may around the neck. The idea was that the garage not have been in the balloon before they got door would open and Gert would rise with it. in. Thankfully, one of our neighbors saw It’s easy to see patterns when taking Gert hanging and cut him down using some inventory like this. The newspaper clipping, gardening shears. for example. Did it mean that they planned That was three years ago. 34

Is Gert better now? Depends. He hasn’t film on them that suggested they were from attempted suicide in over a year. Of course, he another century. A cluster of zits on her is no longer my brother, either. Whenever I try forehead peeked out from under a babushka’s to call him by his real name, he says nothing, shawl. Gert put his arm around her and does nothing. Call him Claude or, the name he hugged their bodies close. prefers, Dr. Lévi-Strauss, and he will acknowl- Generally speaking, Gert doesn’t meet edge your presence. girls. He barely leaves the house, except to go As an experiment I leave a hundred to the library or the bookstore. Girls? I don’t dollars in an envelope and tape the envelope think I’ve ever seen Gert converse with some-

Gert tried to kill himself two weeks after our parents disappeared. He created an entire pulley system designed to choke himself to death, affixing a wheel to one end of the garage, running a length of cable along the roof to the garage door.

to his door. On the envelope I write: “THIS one of the opposite sex, let alone date one. ENVELOPE SHOULD ONLY BE OPENED If in fact Gert is dating Mary. BY GERT.” Breaking into Gert’s email account, I learn Two days later the envelope is still there. that he and Mary have been corresponding Three days later the Scotch Tape’s glue with each other on a website called Historical dries out and I find the envelope covered in Dating. That, in turn, leads me to an online footprints near the washroom, the hundred pop culture encyclopedia that defines histori- dollars still inside. cal dating as a sub-cultural movement where people take on the identities of historical A girl around Gert’s age started coming by the figures and seek out the like-minded. house. Gert introduced her as Mary Everest Gert has assumed the identity of the phi- Boole. “The mathematician,” he said. losopher-anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. Mary stuck out her hand. “Pleased to Mary claims to be a mathematician from the make your acquaintance.” nineteenth century famous for inventing curve The lenses of her glasses had a blurred stitching and a didactic book on algebra. 35

Even though Gert is seventeen, somehow private investigator found Rudolph’s phone I can’t imagine him having sex with any- number listed in my father’s Rolodex. one, let alone having sex with anyone while I pondered this piece of information dressed in a suit from the 1970s. In an effort and tried to connect it to the hot air balloon to understand Gert I sign up for an account disappearance. “Maybe he threw her off the myself, and the historical figure they assign balloon, or tried to, and she pulled him down me is George Washington. Immediately I’m with her.” matched with Joan of Arc. According to the “That’s possible,” the private investigator website, there are eight Joan of Arcs in New said, scratching his chin. York. Within the hour I get an email from a “Or maybe he felt so awful about throw- man in Akron who goes by Richard Nixon. He ing her over that he jumped over after him- wants to know if I’d consider having a three- self.” I turned to Gert, who was trying to copy way historical reenactment with him and his Lévi-Strauss’ signature on a sheet of tracing wife, Frida. Immediately, I change the parental paper. “What do you think?” controls on the computer to limit Gert’s access “The past is the past is the past,” he said, to historical dating websites. which as far as I know wasn’t a Lévi-Strauss quote. For two years I investigated the disappear- Out of all the people I knew who would ance. It dawned on me, as I stared dumbly have sex with someone not their spouse, I at the police report I paid someone a lot of would not choose my mother. She made pasta money for, that I wasn’t qualified to investi- from scratch because she thought buying it gate anything. I had failed out of most of my from the store was cheating, and gave our engineering courses in college, dropping out father scalp massages of such vigor that for the at the end of my third semester. next eleven hours you could see his skull dot- It was Gert who suggested a private detec- ted with pink imprints of her fingers. “She’s tive. “Why not? We have the funds.” got the touch,” he’d say, goofy with endor- So I used some of the insurance money phins, and then they’d kiss and hold hands to hire a private investigator. We learned that and watch Perry Mason. my mother was having an affair with someone Once the private investigator learned as named Rudolph. Evidence suggests that my much as he could, I asked him if we could father knew about Rudolph. For example, the say, with only marginal doubt, what had 36

happened to our parents. know what the hell this is.” “They got in the air balloon in Central Later, after Mary leaves, I tell Gert she Park,” he said. “And when the balloon landed can’t come over anymore if she’s going to they weren’t in it. Everything else is only mess up the walls. He ignores me until I give conjecture.” him a nudge. “I’m serious.” The walls of our house are covered in math- Gert pushes me against an alphabet of ematical equations. variables and tells me to go fuck myself. If they were Gert’s, I might leave them. The following week I decide to follow But Mary doesn’t live in our house. Ostensibly Mary home. Leaving our house, she walks she has her own walls to vandalize. four blocks east, gets on the subway, and rides “Don’t you have a home?” I shout when it until the East Borough. I make notes: which I see her writing something about parallelo- train to take, how far to walk, the number of grams on the ceiling of the bathroom. “Don’t the house she goes into. you have your own walls to write on?” I wait twenty minutes and walk up the Without looking up from the edge of the concrete steps of the porch. A man with a bathtub, where she’s drawing a triangular hooked nose—the same nose Mary had—and prism, she says I should talk to my brother. a maroon smoking jacket answers the door. Only she calls him Claude. “Can I help you?” “Talk to Claude,” she says. “I cleared it “Your daughter, is she here?” with Claude first.” She turns to me, her glasses He calls a name I can’t hear over his balancing on the bridge of her nose. “Dr. Lévi- shoulder and squints at me. “What’s this Strauss. Talk to him.” about?” I point out that there is no Lévi-Strauss. “My brother Gert,” I say. “I think he’s dat- That the person she’s talking about is my ing your daughter.” brother, who is seventeen and not a continen- He snorts. I watch as Mary materializes tal philosopher. “And none of these equations behind him. Her glasses are off, her clothes make sense. Believe me, I know. I studied standard teenage fare: a green band T-shirt, math in college.” I lick my finger and start ripped jeans, socks that don’t match. Aside rubbing away a series of prime numbers ar- from her hair, which is still tied into an archaic ranged in the shape of a saucer. “I don’t even Victorian-style bun on the top of her head, you 37

wouldn’t know that for the last two months shop in Little Italy. He orders a tiny espresso, she’s been masquerading around our house as while I settle for carbonated water. a grande dame of mathematics. “There is some news on your case,” he “Do you know this person?” her father says. The way he says case makes me feel like asks her. “Or someone named Gert?” Without I’m in a detective movie from the 1930s.

My head starts hurting. Briefly I consider saying no. For three years my parents have been like Schrödinger’s cat: alive and dead at the same time. looking he points at me, inadvertently jabbing “I thought we knew all there was to my chest with an uneven fingernail. know.” Mary eyes me up and down. “Never seen The private detective shrugs. “That’s the him before in my life.” thing about knowledge: you can know every- Her father escorts me off the premises, his thing one moment and nothing the next.” hand between my shoulder blades, guiding According to the private detective, there me like a puppet. I yell over my shoulder that is a tape. Mary, or whoever she is, will not be welcome “A family visiting New York from in our home anymore. Her father’s grip on Canada happened to catch your parents’ bal- me gets tighter and for the sake of preventing loon on tape. The balloon, time of day, all the further conflict I assure him I have the wrong details are right.” house, that I’ve actually mistaken his daughter My head starts hurting. Briefly I consider for someone else. saying no. For three years my parents have “Good, that’s good. Say it one more time.” been like Schrödinger’s cat: alive and dead “Wrong house,” I say, “wrong person.” at the same time. This tape could release the Three days later I see Gert and Mary kiss- poison that kills them both. Or, I remind my- ing in the study. He is a good ten inches taller self, it could bring them back to life. Maybe it and engulfs her like a weeping willow. could fix me. Fix Gert. We could both go back to school and get jobs and wives and eventu- The private detective and I meet at a coffee ally become normal people. 38

Inwardly I repeat one of Gert’s Lévi- he asks if I’ve ever been north of the forty- Strauss quotes: “The scientist is not a person ninth parallel. who gives the right answers, he is the one who asks the right questions.” This is my The deal is this: for the first five thousand question: are my parents dead? dollars, the Canadian will show us the tape.

A pair of Dobermans speeds out from the front door of the house, circling the car a few times before pawing the windows. Their barking wakes Mary, who taps the glass as if the outside world were a fish tank.

As if intuiting my thoughts, the private Another two thousand and he’ll make a copy. detective reaches into the folder and pulls During the plane ride to Canada Gert and out a large black-and-white photograph. He Mary volley intellectual observations back slides it across the table and dabs a bit of and forth. It’s more complicated than their espresso off his lips with a napkin. “This is a speaking a different language than I spoke. screen shot. You can judge for yourself.” They don’t seem to be speaking the same lan- Sure enough, it’s a picture of a hot air guage as each other, either. My brother keeps balloon, frozen in the sky. Digital lettering in talking about ethnic cleansing in Borneo, the bottom right hand corner announces the while Mary explains the intricacies of tensor time and day: 1:47 p.m., July 20, 1998. Chew- calculus using what appears to be a modified ing my bottom lip, I lean so close to the handheld abacus. picture that my eyelashes brush up against a cloud. According to Gert, Mary’s parents think she’s “Well?” the private detective says, on a ski trip with the school. He refused to plucking the photo out of my fingers. come unless we brought her too. “You have I ask the private detective how to get the to understand,” Gert says, “that it’s the con- tape. “I want to see it. I want to meet who- nections between things that make life, not ever took this picture.” the things themselves.” Delicately placing his empty cup down, “An apt metaphor for the triangular 39

prism,” Mary says. “A conflagration of right The Canadian is tall, rangy; he wears angles creates the illusion of three-dimension- jeans and a faded navy blue basketball jersey ality.” that accentuates a silvery tuft of armpit hair. Over the course of the flight, Mary has One clap from him and the Dobermans stop shifted to the middle seat. From where I’m barking and plod amicably to his side. He sitting it looks like Gert has grown a second waves us out of the car. head out of his shoulder: a curly brown “Shit,” Mary says. something erupting beside his ear. The Canadian turns out to be a slice of From Pearson Airport in Toronto we wholesome, so jolly he whips up lemonade rent a car and drive for two hours, so that by from scratch. The inside of the house smells the time we arrive at the coordinates, Mary of steak and marijuana smoke. “Pardon the and Gert are a pile of teenage love dozing in mess,” he says, whisking a stack of newspa- the backseat. The Canadian’s house is small, pers and National Geographic magazines from bookended by a tractor trailer and a garage the coffee table. “Go on, take a load off.” with a caved-in roof. According to our map, Gert starts to take off his shoes and the he lives in a place called Montague Town- Canadian stops him. “Don’t bother. The ship, though his closest neighbour is at least heat’s not so good in here. Feet are where you ten klicks away. Woolly pine trees stripped of lose your heat the quickest, you know.” branches near the middle stand high in every “Actually,” Mary says, “recent studies direction, their tips puncturing the skyline’s have disproved that. In fact, you lose up to setting sun. fifty percent of body heat from your chest.” I pull into a gravel driveway and give The Canadian claps his hands together. Gert a pinch. He wakes, rubbing both eyes “All right then. I suppose you’ll just need to before extricating himself inch by inch from keep your coats on too. Want something to Mary’s grip on his waist. eat? Got leftovers. Some grade AA Angus, if “We aren’t in Kansas anymore,” he you’re feeling carnivorous.” yawns. A pair of Dobermans speeds out from Gert hugs his arms around himself and the front door of the house, circling the car a shakes his head. “Let’s just get it over with.” few times before pawing the windows. Their barking wakes Mary, who taps the glass as if The Statue of Liberty’s torch punctures a the outside world were a fish tank. blob of clouds. In the background children’s 40

voices are shouting. The balloon enters the pinpricks spill out of the basket. They plum- picture. They wave. I swear I can see my met with little fanfare. mother’s silver hair, my father’s rounded “Jesus,” I say, grasping at the remote. cheeks. “Rewind it.” The balloon starts fading away, distance A wetness forms in my palms as the dots piling up between it and the camera until the rise and back up into the balloon’s basket. flame keeping the balloon aloft is not much The Canadian clears his throat. “Didn’t even bigger than the flicker on a lit candle wick. notice that part until me and the ex watched With a blip the screen freezes. the whole tape through. Shit, I didn’t even “All right,” the Canadian says. “There’s mean to record it.” your free sample.” “Fuck,” Gert says, pressing play, pressing “What do you think?” I ask Gert, whose rewind. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” mouth is open, tongue working the crack between his two front teeth. The Canadian’s washroom is cold, damp. He turns to me, a smear of condensation More National Geographic magazines on the seeping from the sides of his lids. “‘Just as the toilet’s lid. Wedging my face under the faucet, individual is not alone in the group, nor any I let the cool water pass over my forehead. one in society alone among the others, so man The door opens and slams before I realize is not alone in the universe.’” Mary is in the bathroom. I feel her poking me “Does that mean you want the tape or in the ribs. Under the tap I hear nothing but not?” the Canadian asks. the sound of water making a pool in my ear. I hand over the envelope. The Canadian Mary reaches over and turns the water counts the money out loud, accentuating ev- off. I stand up and turn around: her arms are ery hundred dollars. “There it is. Five grand folded across her chest. I can see her breath as to the cent.” it leaves her mouth, and I realize I’m shiver- He presses play on the VCR. Gert leans ing. forward until he’s doubled over, chest flat She hands me a towel. “Get your money against his knees, neck outstretched like a back.” chicken waiting for the guillotine. On screen “Come again?” the balloon keeps rising. Finally, just as it’s “It’s fake. The videotape. The rate of getting out of range, two specks the size of deceleration is incongruent with the weight 41

of the objects falling.” She shows me the dribble of snot runs down his nose, pooling equation. Written on her palm, it extends on the hood of his upper lip. from the lump underneath her index and The Canadian takes a sip of lemonade. middle fingers to just below her wrist. “As- “Two thousand, friend. Won’t even charge suming that the difference in weight between you for the tape case.” your parents is greater than twenty pounds, Mary clears her throat. “We have a and their total weight exceeds two hundred couple questions first.” pounds, they should be falling faster that “Two thousand,” the Canadian repeats. they are.” Mary pinches the skin above my elbow. “Says you.” “You want to say it, or should I?” Mary takes the towel from me and uses it I pull away and count out another stack to clean her glasses. “Says the laws of phys- of bills, stopping at every hundred just like ics.” the Canadian did, adding the extra two According to Claude Lévi-Strauss, the hundred and fifty I brought in case he tries to world is made up of binaries. Oedipus, for wheel and deal. example, simultaneously overrates and Mary starts to say something but I’m underrates blood relations. That first year not listening. I sit down next to Gert on the I made a list of all the possible reasons couch. A cloud of dust rises and falls from the why two people could get into a balloon in cushions. Eventually Mary sits on the other Central Park and not be in it when it lands side of Gert, resting her head on his shoulder. nineteen miles away. The first thing I wrote “I’ll leave you three alone for a minute,” down was “double suicide.” When I stopped the Canadian says. “Dogs need walking.” making the list, the last entry read “spontane- The screen door slams shut, sending a ous combustion.” From that point on, all of wave of cold into the house. The only warmth those reasons were true. And false. Opposites is Gert next to me, Mary on the other end of bumping heads so hard they start to look the the couch. A pulse of heat travels between same. our bodies. In the living room, Gert blows his nose In silence we watch as two dots that with a thunderous honk. Wads of used toilet could be Mom and Dad go through the entire paper litter the landscape around him like cycle of life in seconds: birth and death in the snowballs. “I’m getting us a copy,” he says. A blink of an eye. Tekar, Fragment #39: The Red Lady (2012). Aerosol paint on wall, 9’x12’. An Imposter 43 Ryan Paterson

Dale looks at the two cards on the table between us and asks where I found them. I open my coat and point at the inside pocket. Right here, I tell him: They were in the pocket when I got it. He picks up one of them—the driver’s licence—holding it between his thumb and index finger, so that he can see both of our faces at once. He looks just like you, he says. Pretty close. No, Dale says: I’m serious. He stares at it for a couple of minutes without saying anything else. I figure he’s trying to decide whether or not I’m serious. Mark Johnson, he finally says: It could be anyone. When’d you say you got the jacket? I tell him that I bought it at that second- hand place last night. It’s real leather, I say. He puts the license down and picks up the other card. The one from the apartment complex. I tell him to look at the back and he flips it over. Red pen: Erica written in cursive, a phone number underneath. Huh, Dale grunts: This is all pretty messed up. What’re you going to do? I guess I’ll call the number. Call Erica. Maybe I can figure out how to get this back to him. 44

He puts the card back beside the licence, put things together. and looks at me: Sooner rather than later, she says. Why bother? Just drop it in the mailbox Today? I ask. I figure it’ll all be easier if or something. His address is right on it. I just show up in person. Explain everything I don’t say this to him, but there’s no then. She does seem to know the guy, at way I’m going to put it in the mailbox and least.

She opens the door right away—she must’ve been waiting. She has on jeans, a tank top, and a heavy cardigan that she hugs closed as soon as I come into view.

forget about it. It’s too much of coincidence. She tells me she’ll be at the apartment by I need to get something out of it—some kind noon. When I ask her where, she says where of closure. do you think. I’m going to call her, I tell him. Then After she hangs up, I look at the front of I slide my chair out, collect the cards, and the card. It has the name of the building and grab the cordless on my way out of the the address. When I look at the address on kitchen. the driver’s licence, I see that it’s the same building. Apartment 310. A girl on the other end says hello. After I say hi, she asks who it is. It’s an obvious I knock right below the spot where the num- question. One that I’m totally unprepared ber 310 is screwed on the door. My other to answer. Before I can put an explanation hand is in the jacket pocket, clutching the together, she sighs into the phone. two cards. She opens the door right away— It’s Mark, isn’t it? she asks: I’ve been she must’ve been waiting. She has on jeans, waiting for you to call. What took you so a tank top, and a heavy cardigan that she long? hugs closed as soon as I come into view. She I try to explain, but she cuts me off: doesn’t seem to recognize me, but she also You need to come by. doesn’t seem to know that I’m not Mark. I don’t say anything—I’m still trying to I’ve been waiting two weeks for you to 45

call, she says. Yeah, I tell her: You said on Look, she says: Lindsay told me all the phone. about you, so I know what you’re doing. Don’t be an asshole. Lindsay told me Can you just take your stuff and go? you’d be an asshole. Whatever Lindsay told you, I say, things I know she’s not talking about me, but are different now. I’m serious. I still don’t want to hear it. I apologize and Erica still has her sweater pulled closed, tell her I didn’t mean it that way, but she but when she looks at my face, a sly smile ignores it and calls me inside. Following crosses hers. She doesn’t say anything, and her into the apartment, I can’t help but look we both just stand there in her room—in down and imagine her without the cardi- Mark Johnson’s old room. I take a few steps gan. Or, maybe with the cardigan, minus towards the boxes, and she takes a couple everything else. back. Where’s Lindsay now? I ask, as we pass You just moved here, right? I ask, squat- through a little hall into a kitchen area. ting down to pick up the boxes. Then I look Back home, Erica says: You know that. up at the front of her jeans: We turn left, into the apartment’s only Well, I’ve lived here my whole life. May- bedroom. She goes into the closet, bends be I could take you on a little tour of the city. over and drags out two boxes: See the real sights—not the touristy stuff. Here’s your stuff. You’re lucky I didn’t Fine, she says: but if you say or do any- throw it out. thing that borders on asshole territory—at I look down at the two cardboard boxes any time—tour’s over. OK? in front of her feet. I figure now would be I tell her that’s fair and ask if I should the best time to explain the situation to her, just give her a call, and she says that’s fine. but I don’t—I don’t want to. Instead, I start Then I stand up and she’s right in front of trying to make small talk, asking her if she me, so that I have to look down to see her just moved here. When she says yes, I ask face. She kicks a box with her slippered foot: where from, and why. You still have to take care of your shit, I’m from Brampton, she says: I came though. here for my master’s. Then she hesitates for a moment, like When I get back to the flat, I walk past Dale she’d slipped up in telling me anything: and drop the two boxes on my bed. He fol- 46

lows me to my room and leans against the watching, Dale finally tells me to get rid of doorframe. the stuff. I tell him to fuck off and mind his What’re those? he asks, tilting his head own business, and he just shakes his head towards the boxes. again and walks out into the hall. I give him the gist of what happened at the apartment. As I unpack the boxes, I place the stuff They’re his, I say: Mark Johnson. around my room. Most of it isn’t very excit- You stole his stuff? ing, and it all seems to add up to what I I told you, I had to take it. I don’t think expected. But, getting to the bottom of the he was coming back for any of it, anyway. second box, I find some surprises: A hash He shakes his head and watches me pipe. A portable scale. A couple of pretty while I open them up and start digging bizarre porno DVDs, including one called inside. They’re mostly filled with the kind Rape Fantasies. There’re also some books on of stuff anyone would leave behind: a slo- street fighting and martial arts, and a butter- pitch trophy with the little plastic man on fly knife. I’m not so comfortable with these top. An old geology textbook, the spine things, so I don’t mix them in with my own rippled and split. A motivational poster that stuff. I do stack them on my desk though. says GROW, with some inspirational quote They still might help me figure out who underneath. Mark Johnson was. There are a few photos near the top, When I’m finished, I take a look around. and I cycle through them: Mark and another The room is cleaner than it has been in a guy with their forearms raised, showing off while, and it looks pretty good: the GROW matching ram’s head tattoos. Mark with a poster on the wall, and everything. The quart of vodka in one hand, and a girl that knife is pretty cool, and I find myself sitting might be Lindsay in the other. Mark at the at my desk playing with it—watching in the beach with another potential Lindsay in mirror while I open and close it. It matches front of him, his hands around the waist the jacket perfectly. I stuff it in the front of her swimsuit. They all make sense, and, pocket of my jeans and call Erica. seeing them, I feel like I know the guy al- ready—or, at least, know the type. Towards the end of our tour, I stop on Argyle After standing there for a while and Street and wait for her to catch up to me. 47

You can’t see it once it’s dark out, I say. She tilts her head up: Will you slow down? she shouts ahead. I have to admit, you give a pretty good I remind her that I told her not to wear tour . . . Want to go get a drink or some- those sandals, and she reminds me what she thing? said about being an asshole. Really? I turn and look at her. Oh, come on, I say: I’m only joking. Yeah, why not? I’m sure you know a She just smiles. place. I point at a window in the church next We’re about to head back when she to us. It isn’t too dark yet, and she can still takes one last look at the window.

I tell her the story behind it. That during the Halifax Explosion, a reverend—or someone—was praying in the window. After the explosion hit, his silhouette was burned into the window. see the silhouette stamped on the window- Hey, she says: I thought it never disap- pane. I tell her the story behind it. That peared. during the Halifax Explosion, a reverend— I look back too and it’s dark enough or someone—was praying in the window. now that the black shadow isn’t clearly vis- After the explosion hit, his silhouette was ible. burned into the window. It’s been there ever It’s still there, I tell her: You can’t see it since. now, but it’s there. Did he die, she asks? I’m not sure. Probably. I take her to Tom’s and we get a cramped Damn, that’s pretty creepy. booth at the back. I figure it’s small enough I guess it is, I say: I think they’ve even and dark enough that there’s no chance of replaced the window, but that shadow running into someone I know and ruining always reappears. everything. We tell each other the regular We both stand and look at the window stuff—a little about ourselves. I’m not sure while the sun drops. Then Erica leans into exactly how to handle it, so I give her a lot me, so that her arm is resting against mine. of vague truths. I do tell her that I grew up 48

just outside the city. That I got a commerce her glass to her lips and tilts it back, leaving degree from Saint Mary’s. But when she a faint lipstick imprint on the rim. I don’t asks where I work, I just say an office—not know why I ask—whether I’m still playing risking the specifics. When she asks where detective, or if I think the information is go- I’m living now, I do say South Street, but, ing to help me, but I do: again, don’t get specific. What did Lindsay say about me, exact- She seems happy to tell me everything. ly? What’d she tell you? She grew up in Brampton and says she’s Erica tightens her eyes and looks right wanted to be an architect since before she into my face. I can’t tell if she’s trying to even understood what the word meant. She remember, or if she’s seeing how Lindsay’s got a full scholarship to U of T and finished words look on me. How close I am to the her BA in April. She didn’t decide to come Mark Johnson she’d been warned about. to Dal for her master’s until the last minute. After staring at me for almost a minute, she Why’d you decide to come here? I ask. shakes her head:

Then I put on my T-shirt and pants, and walk out into the main area. It’s the first time I really look at the place, and I can tell she’s a runaway. Only the bedroom is fully furnished.

To get away from a boy. It doesn’t matter. I can find out for I tell her I understand that. myself. Yeah, she says: I bet you do. Things And she finishes her drink. must’ve been pretty bad with Lindsay—at the end, at least. Erica pays the check, and then we’re back at I’m sort of zoned out, thinking about her place. In the bedroom. I’m sitting at the Jennifer, and it takes a few seconds to regis- foot of the bed, and she’s standing between ter Lindsay’s name—to know what Erica’s my legs. I put my hands on the fly of her talking about. jeans and push the button through the slot. Yeah. I say: It was hard. Then she brings her hands down and takes Erica doesn’t say anything. She brings hold of mine: 49

Listen, Mark . . . small table in the dining area with only two I look up at her face and she squeezes chairs. A couch in the living room, but it’s her eyes shut. empty other than that. I don’t know, she says: I just want to Erica left coffee on, but it’s cold at this fuck, OK? point and I don’t bother doing anything It’s OK, I tell her. with it. Instead, I head past the living room She reaches down and grabs the front and out onto the small balcony. It’s facing of my pants. The bedroom mirror is behind another building, and I can see myself in the her, and as I’m opening the teeth of her zip- windows on the other side. I wonder how per, I catch my reflection. For the first time, many times Mark stood out here and looked notice just how much I look like him. across at the same thing. I’m not sure whether Erica expects me When I wake up, Erica is fastening a bra to be here when she comes home, or wheth- around her midsection, pulling it up over er she wants me gone, but I figure I should her breasts. Her hair is wrapped in a towel. stick around. When I come back inside, I She tells me it’s eight thirty, and I turn wander through the rooms again, ending over on my back and stretch out across the up in the living room. I sit down on the bed. couch with an architecture magazine. This I have to go to class, she says: You can is mostly where I remain for the next three go back to sleep if you want. But I’m going hours. I feel like a ghost—like the apartment to be gone until around four. itself doesn’t know I’m here. I’m not sure if I say anything else, or if I fall back to sleep immediately, but when I When Erica gets back, she has two grocery wake up again it’s one in the afternoon. The bags in her hands. She puts them down on first thing I do is find a phone and call in the counter, and then looks over at me on sick to work, even though I was supposed to the couch: be there five hours ago. Then I put on my T- Hey. I didn’t know if you’d still be here. shirt and pants, and walk out into the main I tell her I’m sorry. I slept late. area. It’s the first time I really look at the She says it’s OK, but she doesn’t say place, and I can tell she’s a runaway. Only anything else, and she doesn’t come into the the bedroom is fully furnished. There’s a living room. She starts opening and closing 50

cupboards—putting things away and taking I put the knife down on the cutting other things out. She asks if I want to stay board, and then I’m on the other side of for dinner. I ask if she’s sure and she says the kitchen—right in front of her. She yes. doesn’t respond when I grab the waist of Do you need any help in there? her pants, or when I’m pulling them and Sure, she says: You can make the her panties down all at once. I tighten my salad—can’t you? hands on her thighs and Erica curls her Of course. legs over my shoulders. I go down on her, She takes a cutting board out and puts her weight supported by her hands on the in on the counter beside her, then gives me counter and mine underneath her. a knife. I can feel her watching while I’m I lift her up so that she’s sitting, legs cutting up carrots. When I turn my head, open, on the counter top. Then I open my she’s leaning back against the counter, pants. She tries to reach out for it, but I staring at me. She tells me she saw me cuff her wrists with one hand and guide today: myself inside of her with the other. When It was on campus. I shouted out to I start thrusting, I pin her hands at her you, but I was on the other side of the sides, palms pressed on the countertop. street. I guess you didn’t hear me. I don’t stop until I can feel her tensing That’s strange, I say, looking back around me. down at the carrots: But it couldn’t have been me. I never left the apartment. Neither of us says anything after. I zip my She pauses, taking a moment to look pants up and go back to my side of the me over. kitchen. For a moment, I stand in front of Huh, she says: I guess it wasn’t, then. the cutting board, holding the knife above I don’t say anything else. I cut the just to feel the weight of it. Erica stays bot- green pepper in half, right through the tomless, sitting in the same position on the center. When I look back over, knife in counter. She’s still looking in my direc- hand, she’s standing there, still staring. tion, but her eyes have turned to glass. She Shouldn’t you be cooking? I ask. doesn’t speak again until I’m dropping I am, she says: It’s in the oven. And everything into the salad bowl, and she’s she turns her face away from mine. picking her clothes up off the kitchen tile: 51

I’m—I’m going out with some people supposed to come around here anymore. tonight. From class. I don’t know—if you Not anywhere near here. want to come. What are you talking about? I say, and Yeah. OK, I say. I ask if I should go— then I look at the girls: shower and change. This is ridiculous. No, she says: It’s OK. It’s just some Erica asks me what he’s talking about. karaoke thing. You can shower here. When I don’t say anything, she repeats Then the oven timer goes off. it to the bouncer. He takes a step into the light and shows us a scar that runs The bar is loud , and I can see kids smok- from one of his triceps past the side of his ing outside the doors. There’s abouncer elbow.

Neither of us says anything after. I zip my pants up and go back to my side of the kitchen. For a moment, I stand in front of the cutting board, holding the knife above just to feel the weight of it. doorman there, too, and he seems to be Glass, he says. pointing and telling them to move farther Erica looks at me: away. You did that? When we get to the door, he asks us No, I say: I wouldn’t do something how it’s going tonight, and everything like that. seems fine until he sees me. He looks me I don’t know what to do. The guy’s in the eyes and asks to see my ID. sure I cut up his arm. Erica’s friends are Are you serious? I ask.: I’m twenty- staring at me, horrified. Erica’s looking at six. the guy’s arm again, an expression on her I reach for my back pocket, and re- face that I don’t recognize. member that all I have is Mark Johnson’s That wasn’t me, I insist. driver’s licence. When the doorman gets it Mark Johnson, the bouncer says: You in his hand, he nods and then looks at me: really think I’m not going to remember? I thought so. You know you’re not I start to fiddle with something in my 52

pocket, and, when I tighten my fingers of you think. around it, I remember that it’s the knife. I Mark, Erica demands. hear Erica say something about just going No, I tell her: I’m not. to another bar, but all I can think about Get the fuck out of here, the bouncer is how this guy is fucking everything says: Go home. up for me. I thumb the latch and start to The bouncer is right. It’s the only slide my hand out of the pocket, still in thing left. I go—I walk away. I ignore a fist around the knife. Eyes only on the Erica calling after me. As soon as I’m out bouncer. of sight, I stop at a drainage sewer and Let’s just go, Mark, I hear Erica say: drop the two cards and the knife through We can go home. the grate. I walk through the South End When I look towards her, though, for nearly half an hour before I know she’s looking down at my fist like she’s where I’m going. When I’m around the expecting something from it. corner from my flat, I ball up the leather The bouncer tells me to leave or he’s jacket and drop it in somebody’s garbage calling the police. can. With the jacket off, I realize how cold Erica’s face twists into that sexy smile it has gotten, and I feel even more anxious I’d seen at her apartment, and I think to get home. about what she said last night—before we Turning onto South Street, I slow had sex. It doesn’t matter to her—what down. I can see someone standing on the happens to me—she just wants to see it. front porch. It’s dark, and at first I think That’s all. I feel so isolated all of a sud- it’s Dale, or maybe one of the neighbors. den. More alone than ever—even before I But, as I get closer, I begin to see the per- found the cards. son more clearly. I can see his face and it The knife is still invisible in my fist, looks exactly like mine. He has his hand but, for the first time, I can feel exactly on the doorknob, and his arm follows the what it is. Feel all the little holes that run door inside. I get close enough that he down the two halves of the handle. For hears me, and he turns and looks at me all of these people, I have never existed. for a moment—looks directly at my face. There’s only Mark Johnson. Then he goes inside and closes the door This isn’t me, I say: I’m not what any behind him. 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 $25/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

Contributors 55 Jan Avendano is a designer and illustrator currently practicing, scheming and making in Toronto. • Robyn Cumming is a photo-based artist working in Toronto. She currently teaches in the Photography Dept. at OCAD and Ryerson University. She thinks everyone and everything is pretty much totally nuts forever and always. • Caitlin Laura Galway is an award- winning fiction writer, editor and Queen’s University student, whose debut novel will be released in 2013 with Aqueous Books. • Matthew Heiti is a Genie-nominated screenwriter and is currently serving as the playwright-in-residence at the Sudbury Theatre Centre. He has just completed his first book. • David Kaarsemaker is a visual artist based in St. John’s, NL. He holds a BFA from Concordia University. • Brendan George Ko is a Toronto-based artist, photographer and oc- casional sculptor who creates veiled, obscured, ambiguous, mysterious, and sometimes magical images and objects. • An- drew MacDonald has published stories in places like The Fiddlehead, Event, PRISM International, The Pinch and The Journey Prize Stories (22). He lives in Toronto, where he’s writing a novel. • Ryan Paterson lives in Halifax. He studied English and Creative Writing at Saint Mary’s University. • Rhonda Pelley is a writer and visual artist living in St. John’s. “Migration” has been recently exhibited as part of The Leyton Gallery of Fine Art’s “Survey of Gallery Works 2012.” • Jacob Rolfe is an illustrator and screen-printer who enjoys exploring strange and wonderful lands. He lives in Toronto. www.thefloat- ingworld.net • Dave Sheppard grew up in Bishop’s Falls, Newfoundland, completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2001 at Sir Wilfred Grenfell College, and moved to Toronto in 2005. • Tekar is a street artist and contemporary mural painter based out of Newfoundland, St. Johns and the Internet. • Darren Whalen received his B.F.A. from Sir Wilfred Grenfell Col- lege in 2005, and his paintings have earned him recognition in events like the 2005 BMO 1st Art Competition, and more recently a provincial Arts and Letters Award. • Colette Urban is an international exhibiting performance artist who lives and works at Full Tilt Creative Centre in McIvers, Newfoundland. www.fulltiltnewfoundland.com.

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.

Riddle Fence also sends warm thanks to Patrick Cotter of Southword for partnering with us on this Irish-Newfoundland poetry exchange and for his hospitality at the Cork Spring Poetry Festival in Cork, Ireland; Dave Hopley and Kim Winsor for their generosity and support of the Riddle Fence Art Fair pop up store; Andy Woolridge, Charlotte May Hobden, Annie Warner, Andy Jones, Mary-Lynn Bernard and Monique Tobin for giving the art fair life; Kym Greeley for inspired signage; Post café for yummy coffee; and Paul and Barry of Compusult for their patronage of Riddle Fence. SOUTHWORDÔ New International Poetry, Criticism and Fiction Online OnlineFree Including work by Billy Collins, Martín Espada,Tess Gallagher, James Lasdun,Yiyun Li, Paula Meehan, Valzhyna Mort, Bernard O’Donnoghue, Colm Toibín and many others. Coming soon, special supplement on Canadian poets and Gregory O’Donoghue Poetry Prize winners including Mary Dalton, Richard Greene, Suji Kwock Kim, Judith Krause, James Langer, Carmelita McGrath, Don McKay, Jude Neal, Patrick Warner & others. www.munsterlit.ie The Atlantic Canada’s International Literary Journal Fiddlehead The Fiddlehead is one of the most far-reaching Poetry literary journals in the world. In Patrick Cotter one issue you might find stories Introduction 21 and poems set in Canada, Aus- tralia, Brazil, India, or the United Fiction States. Interested in stretching your

Caitlin Laura Galway outer reaches and inner thoughts with Dog Fights in Dresden some9 of best writing available in English? First Prize Winner / [RF Short Fiction Contest 2011 Subscribe to The Fiddlehead today!

Matthew Heiti The First Snow Covers Everything 23Thirty dollars will bring you four issues of Canada’s longest living literary Andrew MacDonald Up, Away, Here, Gone 29 journal over a whole year. Or extend your pleasure and receive eight Ryan Paterson An Imposter 43 issues (two years) for only fifty-five dollars. Contributors 93 Visit The Fiddlehead’s website where Acknowledgements 93you can either download a subscription form or use our online payment system.

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ERSE OETS EATURE REv ON PECIAL F S 26 IRISH P

A JOURNAL OF ARTS & CULTURE No.11 No. 11 — WINTER 2012 ISSN: 1913-7265 $14.95 1913-7265 No. 11 —WINTER 2012 ISSN: D ISPLAY UNTIL JULY 2012 POETRY IRISH A RIDDLEF ENCE S PECIAL F EATURE Darren Whalen, Sheilagh’s Brush (2011). Oil on canvas, 52” x 66”. CONTENTS

26 Irish Poets

Patrick Cotter Introduction 3

John Ennis And Are There Fish Still in Galilee? 6

Bernard O’Donoghue They Let It Out Too Soon 7

Martina Evans I want to be like Frank O’Hara 8

Eugene O’Connell Puck 10

John F. Deane Dancing the Dance 11

Dave Lordan Testimonial 12

Matthew Sweeney Cat Burial 14

James Harpur Origen 16

Nuala Ní Chonchúir Paper Anniversary 17

Billy Ramsell What normal people do 18 2

Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin Liz O’Donoghue Who were those travellers 19 Memorial to Six Million 31

Colm Breathnach Patrick Cotter Cachtas/Cactus 20 By a Ruin Near Drogheda 32

Ciaran O’Driscoll Maurice Riordan Wasps in the Session 21 Old Habits 33

Rosemary Canavan Adam Wyeth On Skellig 22 Into the Night 34

Thomas McCarthy Greg Delanty Ghosts of Shanghai 24 Monarch Butterfly 36

Gerry Murphy Paddy Bushe Cortége 25 Himalayan Singing Bowl 37

John W. Sexton Leanne O’Sullivan Cat 26 The Boundary Journey 38

Julie O’Callaghan Howdy 27 Contributors 41 Eileen Sheehan he drives with the windows down 28 Introduction 3 Patrick Cotter

This special Irish poetry feature is part of an ber of poet-academics, all published by the exchange between Riddle Fence and the Irish Gallery Press, which emerged out of Dublin literary journal, Southword. The poetry universities in the 1990s, regularly present included here was curated by Southword edi- themselves as a cohesive group, promi- tor Patrick Cotter. Concurrently,Southword nently critiquing one another in journals will publish a feature on Newfoundland poetry and academic volumes, but the majority of chosen by Riddle Fence editors Mark Callanan, Irish poets can’t be bothered about schools Leslie Vryenhoek, and Shoshanna Wingate. As or groups. Southword now publishes as an online journal, Here we have gathered a selection of you can read them here: http://www.munsterlit. poets (from some born in the 1940s to one ie/Southword/issues_index.html [SW] born in the 1980s), most of whom hail from the province of Munster, many of whom Any effort to corral Irish poets into no longer live there. Their work is as varied “schools” is fraught with “issues.” Thomas as any selection of Irish poets would be. To Kinsella famously described the 1970s an outside eye some of them may display a grouping of Irish poets from Northern tendency to express themselves in a Hiberno Ireland as a “journalistic entity.” I under- variant of English (Dave Lordan being an stood he meant that poets who arguably obvious example), some may write about had no aesthetic unanimity were arbitrarily unmistakeable Irish subject matter (such as identified by others as constituting a group the work here by Ciaran O’Driscoll, Le- and being marketed as such. Others simply anne O’Sullivan and Rosemary Canavan), chose to accuse Kinsella of attempting to dis- others have their eyes in these pages set miss the achievements of the Northern Ire- firmly on abroad (Thomas McCarthy and land poets, interpreting Kinsella as meaning Liz O’Donoghue); many of the poets write that the success and visibility of these poets about experiences or observations which was down to the vagaries of promotion and are peculiarly their own but could arguably ephemeral relevancy to current affairs. happen anywhere (Maurice Riordan, John Sexton, Matthew Sweeney). German poets and writers famously arrange I used to be in the habit of saying that themselves into groups or schools every Irish poets of the deep South were more generation. Irish poets rarely do. A num- inclined to be influenced (particularly in 4

structure) by European and American poets rather than British poets like their Northern brethren, but even the latest generation of British poets seem now very much influ- enced by the looser structures of American poetry and the absurdist tendencies of many European poets, rather than the socio-real- istic, “well-made” poems of Hardy and the Movement generation of the ‘50s. There has been a definite seismic shift in how poetry in English is being written and received by a younger generation in the twenty-first century. It can be sometimes dif- ficult to discern such shifts while many fine older poets are still writing and publishing in a manner of an older age. It is so easy to forget that William Shakespeare and John Donne were contemporaries if seemingly a century apart aesthetically. If this cross- generational selection of Irish poets has any cohesion it may be more visible to an outside eye, an eye in Canada than to one at home. Individual differences between poets have always counted for more than regional differences and this will become ever more important as regional differences shrink in an Anglophone publishing world united by the internet. Jacob Rolfe, A Dream—Part I (2011). Edition of 25. Screen-print on rag paper, 14” x 18”. 6 And Are There Fish Still in Galilee? John Ennis

Not all the songs of Sigur Rós will bid them back Or the praying nets that break with old heaving ho For the empty vaults of Iceland. Nor broken laths, Nor metal vertebrae of hulks slooping by the shore—

These point a finger at what’s been done, undone And mostly in our time, the last throes of progress Genesis with its factory ships let devour the seas The icy gorge of Grendel and his Nordic mother.

But beneath the girders of a warehouse where late the voices Of workers made whatever music was possible in their time, Jónsi’s great lament rises to a piercing scream We will not accept this, We will not accept this

To kids. Teenagers. The old who flock, listen by any wayfarer’s sea. Just one more huddle of souls in famished hock to usury. 7 And Are There Fish Still in Galilee? They Let It Out Too Soon John Ennis Bernard O’Donoghue

They let it out too soon: the story that there was no hope: the fatal flaw this time beyond redemption. Not that it wasn’t true: there was no hope, and nine months further on we’ll all be standing in the rain sharing umbrellas, watching the gouts of clay tumbling downwards.

But they had let it out too soon, because in those final months we could not speak decently of anything else: who would win on Sunday, or whether they were accurate with their dire forecasts for the coming summer, or whether it was right to bomb Fallujah.

They’d let it out too soon because there are two kinds of funeral: the first when you know the family and have to turn up for appearance sake. The other when it’s your friend with whom you’ve sat, not knowing what to say, and it hardly matters who will be left behind. 8 I want to be like Frank O’Hara Martina Evans

but I’ve never leaned unhurriedly on a club doorway listening to Billie Holiday. Most of my time in this city I’ve been a mother and I know I’ve spent too much time in Sainsburys, Dalston branch even if it does have its own inimitable vibe and a huge range of root vegetables. My own roots sink deep in the garden. I can’t bear to leave in case I miss a single bloom or one of those odd powder-blue butterflies passing through on their way to Hackney Marshes. I swing in the hammock to the echo 9 I want to be like Frank O’Hara Martina Evans

of police sirens but I’ve never leaned in a club doorway, my poems in my pocket like Frank. My books are stuffed with shopping lists and I can’t believe that’s Frank. Once at eleven a.m. looking for the new GP surgery in Green Lanes, I stuck my head in the doorway of a Turkish men’s club and they scattered from their chess like leaves. I felt a bit dangerous then, like Elvis in ’56. I think Frank would have liked it, the way one brave man approached me slowly the palms of his hands held out as if he was about to catch something. 10 Puck Eugene O’Connell

‘and also the deeps’

The goat who came to live in a house In a remote townland after the man who’d Lived there all his life had died, a man ‘Who wouldn’t hurt a fly’… Left of his own accord, once he’d got the scent Of one of his own, a she-goat who lured Him to her own place in the hills. Left his calling card, gobs all over the floor— The indignity…

Until I saw the Aga lifted out of its mooring In the hearth, the ceiling holed by someone Who had broken in, someone in the know— Someone who’d got wind of a death, the smell Of money on his twitching nostrils. 11 Puck Dancing the Dance Eugene O’Connell John F. Deane

I feared the craziness in her. She walked always with determination, certain of her direction. Then stopped, gazed round as if some darkness had overwhelmed her. Or was it light? She turned, and headed home. Her clothes heavy and black, perpetual winter, perpetual mourning, a black beret perched anxiously on sparse grey hair. She lit candles in the parish church, knelt a long time in almost stillness. For what was it she knew, what was it touched her that had never glanced against me? She danced sometimes in the rain, a slow waltzing movement, her hands embracing air. Years later, long after she disappeared and her house collapsed in lethargy, she is a beacon for my own, resisting, faith. 12 Testimonial Dave Lordan

He was hardcore for years pure hardcore anythin goes like but shir he was tryin to get de oul head togeder de last few months since he moved back down from de big smoke before de christmas. an’ off de stuff supposed to be or near as be damned to it anyways workin from mornin till night on de roofs like a fella with no life atall he’d be out and about with his ladder before twas bright even shir didn’t i see him up on the church roof wan mornin when i waitin for de early

bus ta Cork an’ he like a shadowman above dere took de rings out boy an’ de long sleeves de way to hide de tattoos an’ gone very quiet not a peep out of him down in McCann’s an’ he used to be shtone mad altogeder shir d’ya remember the time he put the stud through the bridge of his nose an’ the blood pourin down into his mouth an’ his pint an’ he sippin away at it like twasn’t

13 Testimonial Dave Lordan a bother on him. puttin away de few bob an all i’d say he was for himself an’ that oul doll Rosie, english wan, bit of a crustie like smell of that incense offa her you’d nearly shtart inta de rosary. Should o’ seen her above in McCann’s after de removal, bawlin’ boy bawlin’ oh yeah de mains was burst on her alright de shudders an all shir dey knew each oder a good while supposed ta an’ he was mad inta her but she wasn’t inta de madness like an’ only took him on for the while he was straight dere was pups an all planned i’d say between dem de way dey’d be folded inta each oder peckin away like two canaries in a cage

I’d a peek at himself inside in de coffin dey done him up lovely boy fine bit a colour in him pure feckin cherry like an’ a grin on him like he was sorted bigtime like de whole thing was workin out like he knew he was gone so high he wouldn’t ever have to worry about comin down again anyways are you comin out or what it’s Saturday night like McCann’s is buzzin an’ dere’s a load a quare wans on a hen bunny tails an all on em an’ shir you know i’ve no taste for that oul ketamine shite on my own 14 Cat Burial Matthew Sweeney

Above the hole in the ground, an oak dropped leafy branches, between which I had to duck, to throw in the dead cat, then spoon back all the dug-out earth.

I’d picked that site because the beast had sat in the tree, hoping to claw small birds down to the ground, to devour. She’d never managed to do so once,

but each time one feathered creature swooped down, she uttered a weird cry and swiped at the air, always missing. I used to stand there, laughing at her,

which earned me a glower and a hiss a hunched back, and a wagging tail, after which she’d leap down and run into the kitchen, to lie there and yowl. 15 Cat Burial Matthew Sweeney

Once, I remember, she was confronted by a rat, but turned and ran. I understood, and told her so—and won a scratch. Still, I’d sometimes feed her anchovies.

She’d rarely pass beyond my garden but this last time she did, and nibbled meat laced with rat-poison. I found her feet up, in the dried pond, ridiculous.

I tried to blame the Scottish neighbour but nothing sticks here. Acts of God, or of the Devil. Anyway, she’s gone now— subsumed beneath her favourite tree. 16 Origen James Harpur

The slow awakening of summer Courtyards of Alexandria again Adrip with bundled honeysuckle A wine cup warming in the sun Such sweetness from the Song of Songs! Let him kiss me with the kisses Of his mouth. Unbearable The season and the rising flood Of love, unbearable the stench Of ripeness in the groins, a ripeness That pushes him, a harvesting— And relief, one sickle-moon slash Two tiny worlds cupped in his hand. 17 Origen Paper Anniversary James Harpur Nuala Ní Chonchúir

Lovelocks on the Brooklyn Bridge were fastened by other lovers, their keys lie in the river silt, secure among the dead.

This city conspires with us, mostly, but sometimes it pulls like the sun fending off the moon, and we are warier on its streets.

Graffiti shouts: One blood, one love, no one comes to anyone completely untouched, so we are gentle with each other, erasing our past lives with ease. 18 What normal people do Billy Ramsell

Am I just a contented dream that you’re slipping from my breasts crushed onto your back, my sylphic copper form?

Or are you slipping discontentedly into a dream of a rented and peeling, fag-scented bachelor bedroom?

Is that the ocean’s ceaselessly circular score, borne on the breeze through my half-open balcony door

across an orchid-dotted sliver of karst? Or is it actually traffic noise; a privacy-piercing rising siren,

the engines in blended waves that are just like static hiss or rounds and more rounds of applause,

the grind and crunch of the trucks changing down, each train’s drone approaching and diminishing, each time-tabled ululation?

Is it my hand that’s artfully kneading, again and again, your half-awake cock, or your own,

or just some awful lump in the mattress? Is it mine or the tea-coloured room that’s just fantasy?

Is the wind seasoning hibiscus in my high-ceilinged chamber with salt from the gravelly shore? And am I here? 19 What normal people do Who were those travellers Billy Ramsell Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

Out there at the edge of the stubble field Slipping past, in pairs or singly, their gait Betrays them, the cloistered shuffle:

An old recognition, like fear Persisting as the lost path winding In shade refuses, regains

Its rutted dust each third summer. Something has intervened, they are not Elemental as before, exile has changed them;

They are thin as air, as a leaf that has stayed A century inside a book. They slip like knives Behind the arcades of thistle, on their way

To the emptied shrine. Only the soldiers In their chopper can see where the grass changes colour Over the foundations. They take aim, and

The moving figures fade from the earth one by one. 20 Cachtas Colm Breathnach

An cachtas istigh id chroí súnn leacht ó áit éigin i bhfad thíos ar fad,

bí buíoch dá dheilgíní a choinníonn amach uait gach éinne ar a bhfuil iota chun uisce d’anama a bhlaiseadh.

Cactus Colm Breathnach

The cactus in your heart draws sustenance from somewhere very far down inside,

be grateful for its thorns that ward off all those who thirst to taste your spirit’s water.

Translated from the Irish by the poet 21 Cachtas Wasps in the Session Colm Breathnach Ciaran O’Driscoll

There’s a wasp in the session, zig-zagging among the dancing fiddle bows. I can see the hills of Clare from a window behind the keyboard accompanist, who’s annoyed by the presence of the wasp. Neophytes sit with instruments en garde, in expectation of doing battle with a jig they’ve learned. Nattering non-stop, another wasp plonks himself in a chair reserved for players: music has pressed his talk-button. Praise in this culture is indirect, addressed to the instrument—That whistle is going well for you—or to the time and toil devoted to the craft— It’s not today nor yesterday you took up the fiddle.A stout countryman pauses on his way from the Gents and stares at the lead fiddler as if staring could yield up the point, the mystery of the music. When the global economy collapses, these tunes will still be played—wasps or no wasps. A dozen or so digital recorders, some of them so small they must have been designed by Flann O’Brien’s Third Policeman, are planted near the session. The wasps have gone, one through an open casement, one out the door. Somebody calls for a song. The Clare Hills are looking good: I see them in the window as if for the first time. It’s not today nor yesterday they learned to play the light. 22 On Skellig Rosemary Canavan

If you should approach the island as I did, weak and sick from the trip, it would loom from the mist like a mirage born of hope, or a drawing in an old book of fantastical stories: above the twisting, ancient steps a pyramid of rock soars up—you have to trust the drop—and at the ledge that juts over the swift fall of the slope you see how the monks clustered like gannets that shriek on the neighbouring island,

how the place was a refuge, too far and too storm-tossed for marauders. And if some laboured on terraces, laid the unending stairways, 23 On Skellig Rosemary Canavan

how many died feverish and spent on the stone floor of the cells? How many, maddened by fasting, launched themselves into the void, fancying they were seabirds or angels? Walk the five hundred and forty- four steps from the harbour, not counting or watching the sea under you, just fixing your eye on each freckled slab, bordered by the astonishing green of sea campion.

Up and up! Until the Needle and God’s Eye is reached— and God’s heaven beyond. 24 Ghosts of Shanghai Thomas McCarthy

Here is the ghost of caged birds singing in Shanghai And the cages hanging adroitly from a ginko tree, My sleep is filled tonight: or not my sleep, But a flock of wakeful stonechats. I part the blinds to see Four AM traffic beneath where the owls fly, Those Chinese owls that count sheep like me.

The sheep of this night that pull their wool Over the night sky. Their hours are hopping From cage to cage. Our glass is empty In the night sky. Our whiskey is gone. Only a school Of Chinese whispers rises from the Nanking Road. A delivery truck returns with the ginko tree

That my sleep left abandoned and night Is quiet as a streetlamp with Zhao Lihong beneath. Now a ghostly hand raises me off the floor And sets me back upon a translated perch, a hand That is knarled as tree bark; persistent as a man Dimming the lamps; setting the feng-shui once more. 25 Ghosts of Shanghai Cortége (for Matthew Sweeney) Thomas McCarthy Gerry Murphy

Somewhere, back at the traffic-lights perhaps, the chief mourning cars may have lost contact with the hearse— and then caught up again, only to find the ice-cream van clipping along cheerfully behind the coffin.

Either that, or the Ice-cream man is dead. 26 Cat John W. Sexton

My black coat is speckled with husks of egg; fleas navigate the currents of my fur, zig-zag over my itching skin; ticks cluster behind my ears like jewels. In the corner of each eye are crusted tears of gunk. Infection has hitched cunningly to my claws, my scratch will blacken your blood in days. I’m no pussycat, I’m just cat. I’m the shadow of the crossed path, the ninth cat in a bad week, the cry like a baby in the darkened hedge. I’m the mog who shat the moon black. Don’t tease my ear with your finger, puss-puss me like some stuffed toy. I’m the cat of black luck, the hiss from the basement, the compiler of rats at the back door, and nobody’s purring pet. 27 Cat Howdy John W. Sexton Julie O’Callaghan

Dropping my tea bag into the compost garbage I look up to behold a row of old-timers swinging their legs off the top of my stone wall. It’s a great Kildare day so they figured they’d catch a few rays. I glance over at them (I don’t want to make them self-conscious) and execute a ‘howdy neighbor’ wave. People who are no longer with us deserve an Irish spring day, too, —right? When I am no longer with us I will sit on that wall doing the same. 28 he drives with the windows down Eileen Sheehan

I am the bruised lips he is leaving; the face on the pillow;

the door he pulls shut.

I am the hair he plucks from his shoulder,

lets fly with the wind.

I am the distance he covers,

the miles put behind him.

I am the mark on his belly, 29 he drives with the windows down Eileen Sheehan

dark as a clot: already fading.

I am the smell he sloughs from his skin.

I am the nothing, the no one,

the nowhere he’s been to:

the lie on his tongue.

I am the corpse weighted down in the lake.

I am the evidence gone. Jacob Rolfe, A Dream—Part II (2011). Edition of 25. Screen-print on rag paper, 14” x 18”. Memorial to Six Million Liz O’Donoghue 31 Berlin—a stone’s throw from the Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, Hitler’s Bunker, the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag—the middle of history. I This is the dead zone a virtual cemetery thousands II of I look but gunmetal there is grey no name thalassic to this III concrete sea this wading slowly stelae solid fluid into the swell grounded monolithic I’m not rigid main that afraid now fills as the water the cold climbs over IV war space my head there are mid‐ocean’s no names too deep on these to see the headstones horizon impenetrable V it’s peaceful slabs there’s a down among immutable softness the satin immovable to this stones engulfing hardness sinking into petrified a touch of cool velvet waves conscience but we know an undula‐ who they were ting ‘sorry’ VI contrite I’m still concrete breathing an acknow‐ emerging ledgement from the tide out of an ocean of death into a warm autumnal sun.

32 By a Ruin Near Drogheda Patrick Cotter

That midsummer night during the moonlit hooley the air woozy with the perfume of a thousand exhaling blossoms and still he spurned her moves and slumbered instead with the spiders and the beetles inside his father’s tomb. Against one wall a stele with carved recesses, each displayed a special offering: the blue ribbon won by his champion landrace; the mirror used to detect the interred’s last breath; an apple from the seed he had planted as a child; the Orange Lodge bowler the family was ashamed of and too afraid to throw away; the candle, prize of some shady initiation ceremony nobody spoke about and the still feathered carcass of the homing pigeon, carrier of messages from his father’s mistress, who danced now overhead alone in the crowd, her belly enwrapped by a big brown belt handed down the generations, sporting, as legend goes, Oliver Cromwell’s stolen buckle which had glowed hot and red with foreboding every September eleventh since 1649. 33 By a Ruin Near Drogheda Old Habits Patrick Cotter Maurice Riordan

Pushing sixty, I still feed toe-clippings to the Venus flytrap, a habit picked up from my Aunt Kit, then balancing on one foot I step into track bottoms and pull on each mismatched sock. Downstairs, I hug the teapot to my chest for our mutual warmth. If I pick my nose, those pickings go standing by the window I mouth asshole at some unsuspecting youth. 34 Into the Night Adam Wyeth

We drove through dusk up the mountain pass, pushing through villages without stopping. The promise of a last petrol station died. The gauge flashed red. The clutch kept slipping. Darkness fell—dragging its black tail over us— rubbing its musk against the windscreen. The husks of old tyres piled high like totems marked an end to the last village. We were ascending towards a new century, the dust from the lowlands behind us; our heads getting lighter, the air turning sweeter with pine. 35 Into the Night Adam Wyeth

The car started to steam like a sick animal, panting. None of us spoke, willing ourselves forward. When we reached the peak, I put her into neutral and we rolled with the windows down, only the sound of tyres tearing over tarmac. Then out of the blackness, glittering lights appeared— as if the heavens were below us. We followed a dirt track to a lodge where friendly faces welcomed us in. Plumes of smoke enveloped the car. Watching our phoenix rise, we walked into a new era. I thought we might have died. 36 Monarch Butterfly(for Bill McKibben) Greg Delanty

Another, another and another flutters Through America. I wish There were a monarch version of On The Road Recording each flaglet’s psychedelic trip Of endurance, each a watermark of the soul Held to light, antique symbol. These flames, lighting off wing-veins of coal, Have waited long enough To wing-sign “Take a leaf From us, laying ourselves down in a dark wood, Myriads all together, souls not leaving the body At death, but emerging into life, a single flame Blazing up from our teeming underworld. Emerge From your furled chrysalis, become Us all, become the humonarch.” 37 Monarch Butterfly(for Bill McKibben) Himalayan Singing Bowl (for Éanna) Greg Delanty Paddy Bushe

Enclosed in and enclosing its own Concentricity, this bowl dreams Of being mountain, inhaling its own Exhalations from valleys, absorbing Its own silence, silencing its own Ringing, in ends and beginnings. 38 The Boundary Journey Leanne O’Sullivan

I

Not to the boundary waters that part our two counties

but to the great Atlantic itself,

where pebbles rush like beads against your hands

and carry out cures for the dead.

Where the roar of light and tide litters about my eyes

so I begin to see you and not to see you

too late.

The stars that are not yet there glimmer like fires

beneath the breathless air.

Remember when we were really there once at the unbarred pier 39 The Boundary Journey Leanne O’Sullivan

and the air and the light and the day all passed

into a break on the ocean,

and the singing of your hands beside me

was every permanent thing.

II

And who was it travelling with you that day before your farther journey across to England, showing the way, June sun warm on your back? I believe it when you say it was just yourself, one suitcase strapped to the back of the bike

and knowing the way alright, to bed down for a night in Mrs. Monley’s guesthouse in Castletownbere; where you stood alone in the darkening room and levered electric light for the first time from a switch on the wall. Jacob Rolfe, A Dream—Part III (2011). Edition of 25. Screen-print on rag paper, 14” x 18”. Contributors 41 Colm Breathnach is an Irish-language writer. He has published six poetry collections, a se- lected edition and a novel. In 1999 he was presented with the “Butler Award” by the Irish- American Cultural Institute in recognition of his work in poetry. He has been translated into Scottish Gaelic, English, German, Italian, Slovenian, Chinese and Rumanian. He received an international residency fellowship from the Shanghai Writers Association in 2011.

Paddy Bushe, born in Dublin 1948, now lives in Kerry. He writes in both Irish and English. He has published nine collections of poetry, the latest being My Lord Buddha of Carraig Éanna (2012).

Rosemary Canavan is a poet and novelist. She was brought up in County Antrim and now lives in County Cork. Her collection The Island was shortlisted for the Vincent Buckley Poetry prize at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and a second collection, Trucker’s Moll, was published in 2009. She has also published children’s books, and worked on digital art projects.

Nuala Ní Chonchúir is a short story writer, novelist and poet, living in County Galway. Her third poetry collection The Juno Charm is just out from Salmon Poetry. Her fourth short story collection Mother America will be published by New Island in May 2012. She is nominated for the 2012 Pushcart Prize. www.nualanichonchuir.com.

Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin was born in Cork City in 1942. She was a founder member of the literary journal Cyphers. She has won the Patrick Kavanagh Award, the Irish Times Award for Poetry, and the O’Shaughnessy Award of the Irish-American Cultural Institute and the Griffin Poetry Prize. She is a Fellow and Professor of English at Trinity College, Dublin, and a member of Aosdána.

Patrick Cotter, born Cork 1963 where he still lives. He has been Irish editor of www.poetryin- ternational.org. He works for the Munster Literature Centre and curates poetry and short story festivals for them. His latest collection is Making Music (2009).

John F. Deane was born on Achill Island, County Mayo, in 1943. He is a full-time writer, cur- rently editor of Poetry Ireland Review. Founder of Poetry Ireland, the National Poetry Society, he has published several collections of poetry, most recently Eye of the Hare, Carcanet, 2011. He has published some fiction. 42 Greg Delanty was born in Cork in 1953. He now lives in Vermont where he is artist-in-resi- dence at St. Michael’s College. He recently edited The Word Exchange, an anthology of transla- tions from the Anglo- Saxon. His Collected Poems appeared in 2006. He has received the Patrick Kavanagh Award, The Alan Dowling Fellowship and won the British National Poetry Competi- tion.

John Ennis is a poet, editor and anthologist. He retired (31 August 2009) as Head of Humanities at Waterford Institute of Technology, where he was also chair of the Centre for Newfoundland & Labrador Studies. He has published twelve books of poetry. His last publication is Oisín’s Journey Home (2006), a work in praise of the people who built and served Newfoundland’s now defunct railway.

Martina Evans has published three novels and her fourth poetry collection, Facing the Public (2009), was a TLS Book of the Year and received the 2011 Ciampi International Poetry Prize. Petrol, a verse novel, was recipient of a Grants for the Arts Award in 2010 and will be published in September 2012. She is Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Queen Mary, University of London.

James Harpur’s fifth collection of poems,Angels and Harvesters, will be published in May 2012 by Anvil Press Poetry. He has won a number of awards for his work, including the 2009 Mi- chael Hartnett Award and the 1995 British National Poetry Competition. He has also translated the poems of Boethius in Fortune’s Prisoner (Anvil Press, 2007). He lives in West Cork.

Dave Lordan was born in Derby, England, in 1975, and grew up in Clonakilty in West Cork. An internationally acclaimed live performer, he is the current holder of Ireland Chair of Poetry Bursary Award. His latest collection is Invitation to a Sacrifice (Salmon, 2010). Find him on Face- book or at www.davelordanwriter.com.

Thomas McCarthy was born at Cappoquin, County Waterford, in 1954. Winner of the Patrick Kavanagh Award, 1977, Alice Hunt Bartlett Prize, 1980, and O’Shaughnessy Poetry Prize, 1991. Member of the International Writing Programme, University of Iowa, 1978/79 and Visiting Pro- fessor of English at Macalester College, Minnesota, 1994/95. A former director of writing work- shops at Listowel Writers’ Week and The Arvon Foundation. He works as a librarian in Cork. He is a member of Aosdána. His latest collection of poems is The Last Geraldine Officer (2009). 43

Gerry Murphy was born in Cork in 1952. End of Part One–New and Selected Poems ap- peared in 2006. His most recent volume is My Flirtation with International Socialism (2010).

Born in Chicago, Julie O’Callaghan has lived in Ireland since 1974. She is a poet for adults and children. Tell Me This Is Normal: New & Selected Poems, (Bloodaxe, 2008) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Her most recent poetry collection for children is The Book Of Whispers (Faber, 2006). She is a member of Aosdána.

Eugene O’Connell’s most recent collection of poems is Diviner (Three Spires Press). He is working on a new book of poems.

Bernard O’Donoghue was born in Cullen, County Cork in 1945, and he still spends part of the year there. Since 1965 he has lived in Oxford where he is now a Fellow Emeritus in English of Wadham College. His Selected Poems was published by Faber in 2008, and his most recent poetry collection is Farmers Cross (Faber 2011).

Liz O’Donoghue (poet/film maker) was born in 1960 in North Cork and now lives in Cork City with her son. Her collection Train to Gorey was published by Arlen House, 2008. She translated the Lithuanian poet, Sigitas Parulskis, for the Cork City of Culture 2005 translation project. Her most recent readings include Shanghai International Liter- ary Festival and with Brian Turner, acclaimed war poet.

Ciaran O’Driscoll was born in 1943 in County Kilkenny, and now lives in Limerick. He has published several collections of poetry, Life Monitor (2009) most recently. Liverpool UP published his childhood memoir A Runner Among Falling Leaves. He has won the James Joyce Literary Millenium Prize and the Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellow- ship in Poetry.

Leanne O’Sullivan, born in 1983, was raised on the Beara Peninsula, County Cork. She has published two collections with Bloodaxe, most recently Cailleach, The Hag of Beara (2009). The Mining Road is due in 2013. Leanne was awarded the Irish Chair of Poetry Bursary by Michael Longley. 44

Billy Ramsell was born in Cork, Ireland, in 1977 and educated at the North Monastery and UCC. Complicated Pleasures, his debut collection, was published by the Dedalus Press, Dublin, in 2007. He has been shortlisted for several awards and has read his work at many festivals around the world. He lives in Cork, where he co-runs an educational publishing company.

Maurice Riordan was born in Lisgoold, County Cork, in 1953. He studied at McMasters and now lives in London where he has been a professor at Imperial College and Goldsmiths College and an editor of Poetry London. His latest collection is The Holy Land (2007).

John W. Sexton (born 1958) is the author of four collections of poetry, the most recent of which is Petit Mal (2009). He is a past nominee for The Hennessy Literary Award and his poem “The Green Owl” won the Listowel Poetry Prize in 2007. In 2007 he was awarded a Patrick and Kath- erine Kavanagh Fellowship in Poetry.

Eileen Sheehan is from Killarney, County Kerry. Her poetry collections are Song of the Midnight Fox and Down the Sunlit Hall (Doghouse Books). Anthology publications include The Watchful Heart: A New Generation of Irish Poets (edited by Joan McBreen/Salmon Poetry) and TEXT: A Transition Year English Reader (edited by Niall MacMonagle/ The Celtic Press).

Born in Donegal in 1952, Matthew Sweeney is based in Cork currently, having previously been resident in Berlin, Timişoara and, for a long time, London. His last collection was his retrospec- tive selection under the title The Night Post from Salt Publishing (2010). A Picnic on Ice, Selected Poems (2002) is available in Canada from Véhicule Press. Bilingual collections of Sweeney’s work came out in Germany and Holland in 2008.

Adam Wyeth moved to County Cork in 2000. His debut collection, Silent Music (2011, Salmon Poetry), was highly commended by the Forward Poetry Prize (2012). His poetry has won, and been commended in, many competitions. His work appears in several anthologies including The Best of Irish Poetry (2010). Wyeth runs an online international creative writing workshop at www.creativewritingink.ie.