“E Flat” – Ivana Velickovic

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The windshield wipers,
unable to keep up
with the onslaught of rain,
conduct the evening’s nocturne,
making the street
seem so soft.

The lights,
they bleed, dissolve,
delicately struggle to keep the night alive
through the threat of approaching dreams.
But they persist,
twinkling like slight touches
on piano keys.
Each flat note an
intentional drip of the rain.

Filmy logos flash like traffic lights,
except they all feel like
green.
Go, quickly now.
And yet I don’t.

I step out of my car,
leave the door wide open.
The streetlights cheer and brighten
as I walk into
a watercolour dream.

 

these words by Ivana Velickovic were inspired by the work of Lin Bao Ling

“Taste of Leaving” – Jess Glavina

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The off-whites of your apartment
The buzz of your kitchen lamp
The halo it casts around your red hair as we wait for your friend

The fewer days you have to leave, the slower it feels

The essentials:
The two people you must say goodbye to.
The books to return. The one to get back.
The borrowed transit card. The money you owe.

I leave like I came
Moving alone through the city
A zigzag
Promises spoken lightly
turning to finishing nails in my pocket

these words by Jess Glavina were inspired by the work of Evelyn Bencicova

“City” – Samantha Lapierre

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City, please be gentle with me. Be kind when I close my eyes and the pitch black becomes starry neon lights. Be sympathetic when I ride the streetcar alone, when I fall on the sidewalk and bust my knee open, when I descend wobbly stairs into basement bars illuminated with glowing red lights.

There are streets lined with Internet cafés, shadowy music halls and hole-in-the-walls that all house anonymity. I feel like a very small anonymous blip on your ever-growing radar.

Our necks twist and turn as we leer to recognize a familiar face. We pick fresh fruit from the market stands; cars whiz by and I hear a bicycle bell in the distance. Dead fish rest in storefront windows and people shuffle by. Everybody is hastily going about their own business.

I’ve given you a year of my life, and I’m not sure how much more I have left to give. City, please be gentle with me.

 

these words by Samantha Lapierre were inspired by the work of Olaf Hajek

 

breaking news in montreal

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BREAKING NEWS IN MONTREAL: Woman thrown off balcony is pronounced dead at the scene – in other news one million, six hundred thousand and ninety four people not thrown off an astounding amount of balconies

(young artists in denial that they don’t own the mansions depicted in Renaissance paintings grow up to paint mansions; where are apartment building entrances with those random titles on glass doors- The Benmore, The Stallion, L’étranger- in front of heavily stickered mailboxes with variations of, NO FLYERS, NON, and POR FAVOR, HOMBRE, beside faux-marble stairs; we don’t need any more accidental replicas of Atwater’s informally-gated streets; where is Parc X; where are the apartment buildings with balconies of lone chairs and plastic wrap around iron, with shirtless men in sunglasses, surveilling the garbage-bag-placing-process of his neighbours, every Tuesday; where are the buildings with nice lobbies and average apartments; where is cote-des-neiges; where are our bicycles and lines waiting for the bus; where are paintings that embrace the lack of space, not 4 humans to 2 acres but 50 in 2, no wasted space when you connect, right?)

BREAKING NEWS IN MONTREAL: Middle-Eastern man deported for terrorism charges, born in Canada we’re still undecided where to send him – in other news three hundred and twenty thousand middle-eastern-Québecois not charged, although suspected, said to all continue lives in Montréal

(at what point does the state say, alright, busted, we don’t know how to feel like we’re needed when we don’t have a group to protect you from, we just want to feel valued, if you have any suggestions we’re feeling kind of vulnerable, please send them our way, this shit is getting old, we love you)

BREAKING NEWS IN MONTREAL: Black male suspected in armed robbery is presumed guilty – in other news five hundred thousand, three-hundred and twenty four people of colour will continue to live lives in Montréal, despite also being presumed guilty

(Montréal, listen: We love you. We know you can’t really afford to buy us that last round, but don’t worry: My brother is visiting from Toronto. JK 😉 We know you’re the uncle who gave us our first beer, and we get how you’re keeping strong in your middle-age with the festivals, trying to keep the bars open till 6, etc., and, I agree, let’s not talk about the financial district, the disappearing suits thing – it’s cool… We know our neighbourhoods aren’t 100% everyone hanging out together, hamburger, falafel and miso soup picnics, sure, our ethnicities do not interact like they do in the cartoons of our high school textbooks, under “Multiculturalism in Canada,” (or, in the least, white anglos with white francos) but, uh, could we have a festival based on the merit of the musicians, and not Officially Sponsored segregation?) 

BREAKING NEWS IN MONTREAL: Alcohol may have been a factor in Tuesday’s fatal crash on the 40, not the congestion – in other news literally millions of cars who have passed that spot on road have been pretty okay since : There is a 0.000001 chance that you will die on the 40 today

(cue the commercial that generally says, hey, death is less fun but buy this car and you’ll have friends and you’ll all laugh to somewhere vaguely rural like past Laval and drink on a dock, even if it isn’t your dock, or look a rock, and uh yeah we paid someone to shoot here, but there are so many docks and so much space away from the city, you can escape all your neighbours!)

BREAKING NEWS IN MONTREAL: Concordia survey finds female students more likely to judge self-worth by appearance than male counterparts – in other news when you force a mold on liquid chocolate it will likely harden into that mold more times than not

(Montréal, honey, we love you, tell your police officers we know that they are good people, tell your protesters that everything will be alright, even if it won’t, let’s hold hands and change the way that we train our police, let’s change the way that our classes get treated by the system that values money, even if it’s tough to insert a heart on our coloured currency, because, baby, we just want to share a Boréale Rousse with you by the canal, come feed me curd while I read you French translations of Richler)

 

word by Liam Lachance

colour by Evluk

I’m the center of the galaxy

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I am the center of the galaxy:People and buses and buildings and cafés curl around me, the main character of the city, planets orbiting the sun. (The fan slices air toward the radiator, fighting a -37C draft from this old window.) Being the center of the galaxy requires that you are in the right universe, the right city- otherwise, you might agree with that saying about how it doesn’t matter where you are, but who you’re with… The universe is more important than the stars. (You can’t help but blame your ancestors for having moved to such a frozen place: Who stumbles upon this death cold climate, where birds are flying away from, and says Hey, honey: I think we really found the place!) Control from the center means that everything happens to you, or that you are making things happen to others: All phenomena is because of you and your actions, at the center of the story: You receive the most praise or have the worst luck, stand in the longest lines, behind the worst drivers, in the hardest jobs: You confess in an intergalactic reality show booth, sharing your life with a camera for planets who want more of you, you, the star. (You can’t imagine how it could be colder, how things could be worse, with cold toes, your blanket only going so far, even if, sure, Mars whispered that, hey, -37C is warm to me, no offense, you know that they’re just trying to sound tough like Canadians who laugh at emergency closures when snow stays on the ground in the states, or Toronto.) What does it matter if the planets have problems- You’re a galaxy: Things happen to you for a reason, and, whether or not Mars is colder than your room, people rely on you- your life is unimaginably complex, different, and more challenging than these planets. (Planets couldn’t understand the troubles of a galaxy if they sent trillion dollar space equipment, whether manned by Einsteins or monkeys.) Spring is just around the corner.

colour by Nina Geometrieva 
words by Liam Lachance