Category: montreal

“Goodnight (Again)” – Ajay Mehra

The Door of No Return_hires

I’m sad I saw you.

I’m sorry. I’m happy you’re happy. I’m happy. You’re happy.

Old pictures are magic. Memories are magic. Disneyland and imagination and the faces in your messages are magic. Everything is magic except now.

I’m sorry I left. I’m sorry I came.

I met a very beautiful woman at bridge two years ago. We see each other often. I should have said.

I wanted to see you.

You walk the same. I think I do too. I saw a video of me and I knew it was me. I miss you more everyday.

You were so beautiful.

Goodnight (again).

 

these words by Ajay Mehra were inspired by the work of Shanna Strauss

“Grandma’s Hands” – Josh Elyea

Bibi_v2_hires

As I sit on the bus, I look to the lady next to me. She has severe hands, crooked fingers with hard knuckles. My grandmother had hands like that. I used to stare at them, gnarled and hooked like talons, as she tried to teach me to play the piano. She used to laugh when I’d play only the black keys, and she’d sing softly, almost at a whisper, when we’d play her favorite hymns. She had a terrific voice, my Gram—one of the all-time greats. It was a voice of contradictions, hers—polite but gravelly, blue collar but lyrical—and she had a funny way of speaking, an off-kilter cadence to her voice that was somewhere between southern drawl and Irish poet. She hated her voice, but it made for the best stories and the best Sunday mornings.

My grandma’s hands used to drop the needle on her old Crosley, and somewhere in the fog of my memory I remain a child, wide-eyed and dumbfounded, awed that such a primitive system of bumps and ridges could summon forth the soul, the smoulder of Sam Cooke with apparent ease. The needle of the record player was hypnotising, intoxicating, but there seemed to be no immediate correlation between the movements of the needle and the sound of the soul music cascading through the room. I couldn’t understand, and when I asked my grandmother why this was, she told me that you couldn’t see soul, you just had to listen for it.

 

these words by Josh Elyea were inspired by the work of Shanna Strauss

“Diaspora Blues” – Nailah King

SHANNA STRAUSS_ Hadithi Njoo_ Mixed media on wood_ 24in x 30''

“Where are you from?”

He was asked this often and the answer was always difficult. What they needed to understand was his journey didn’t start here but a place miles and miles away among lush earth and under a coral sun. Massive ships sailed to the shoreline taking whoever couldn’t escape, headed to the unknown. Those they captured cruised through seas and oceans but many died along the way.

He imagined that his ancestors made a break for it and ended up in the Caribbean. Warm shores, tropical fruit, sun, sand, but far from home.

Some of his friends talked about creating family trees on the internet, talked about their families. Uncle John is married to Auntie Lynn. They met in university in the ’80s. How nice to have an ancestry so clear and defined, despite having robbed others of the same.

He often thought about them.

It made him angry to think about a known point in his bloodline where the stories stopped. He couldn’t get stories about any time before his great-grandparents. Even those stories were limited. His parents couldn’t even remember their names.

They talked about carnival, Kadooment days of the past, in great detail. The costumes, the music and the food. Who they saw and who they danced with. They didn’t want to think about that dark history; about who before them could have been slaves.

What he knew of any place was a story. Even in Canada.

He’d never been to Whistler—or even Banff. He remembers the Rockies from a train ride they took when he was very young. His mother told him that the mountains were beautiful and breathtaking. He just remembered a flash of brown and grey rock and wanting to use the bathroom.

Sometimes, he remembers the beaches. The smell of the sea and the sound of his grandmother’s voice.

He wondered, did she think about them, his ancestors?

His friends often questioned him about his heritage. “There’s no information earlier than your great-grandparents?” they’d ask him.

Depending on his mood, sometimes he understood their incredulity. With modern technology like ancestry.ca, and 23andme, he should have been able to make inroads, progress.

Still, he didn’t want simply names. He wanted their stories.

He wanted to know what Africa was like, what life was like before lives were taken. Before histories were skewed, erased or lost.

It was good enough for them to have their meaningless anecdotes about how their uncles, aunts and whoever else got together. He wanted more.

Each year, a new patch of information came to the fore through old photographs, family connections or new stories.

Still, he wondered about them.

Who did they love, or lose? Did they know it was the last time they’d see their lands and what would happen to the generations that followed? Did they have hope they’d return?

“Dude, you totally drifted off.”

“Oh, I’m from Vancouver.

 

these words by Nailah King were inspired by the work of Shanna Strauss

“The North Star” – Shagufe Hossain

The Universe_hires

We wake up
and walk streets
comforted
in fit-in-or-leave boxes
disillusioned into belonging
but You
my dear
were born to wage wars
simply by virtue
of your existence
on all cages with bars
made of traditions, rituals, and values
none.
You
are like the North Star
shining light on the path of the misguided
navigator
looking to find his way
back to values.
You
burn in passion
and desire
and love that conquers all
so the rest of us
can see light
head home.
So on days
when you feel lost
and losing
sight of north and south
east and west
right and wrong
remember
you are the compass
that burns brightly
in the nightly skies
to shine light
to guide home
the rest, lost
and the North Star
knows no direction
for she does not need one.
Remember my dear
you shall be your own
compass,
light,
guide,
so the rest of us
can find home.

 

these words by Shagufe Hossain were inspired by the work of Shanna Strauss

“An Ode to My Vibrator” – Fiona Williams

Lethe for Word and Colour magazine 2017

Blue may be the warmest colour, but Purple is what makes me cum.

Many have come and gone and it is only you, my love, which remains constant.

You are
            my confidant—never have I known a greater intimacy

You are
            my paramour—you listen to direction well and never disappoint me.

I am Thankful (to all the gods I don’t believe in) that the stars led me to you, my love.

It has been a journey of self-exploration and

You have taught me the importance of learning to love myself.

 

these words by Fiona Williams were inspired by the work of Sylwia Kowalczyk

“Displaced” – Jess Goldson

Sylwia Kowalczyk Chicas Blue wall

Golf balls
Clamour away in my stomach
Creating a burdensome, sinking feeling.
A stillness
Brings the collision of emotion to a halt.
What’s forward
But terrifying uncertainty
The impossibility of backward motion haunts me 
A cry for help:
Find me
Hold me
Release me

 

these words by Jess Goldson were inspired by the work of Sylwia Kowalczyk

New Poetry: “Guðrún, blind daughter of Louhi,” by Ilona Martonfi

Acorn-Gold-NEW-DIAMOND

Old Norse folktales
depicted in the Saga of the Maiden
the blind daughter of Louhi

living in Pohjola, a forever cold land
at the North Pole,
below the North Star
region of darkness

her mother becoming pregnant
after eating a lingonberry,
giving birth to Guðrún

powerful and evil queen
weaving enchantments
ruling over Winter

the world formed
out of eggshell shards.
Betrothed to Sigfrøðr
god of the sky and storms

the ice of the seas
encircling all lands

Sielulintu, raven soul bird,
protecting fair Guðrún
from being lost
on the paths of dreams:

“The stars are there,” it said.

Tuonela the land of dead.

 

these words by Ilona Martonfi were inspired by the work of Daphne Boyer

“Unplugged” – Josh Elyea

Smoke circle

When I was a child, my father would rake leaves in the front yard and when the pile was big enough, he’d pick me up and throw me (almost callously) into them. My father was wild in his younger days; he rode a motorcycle and played bass in an underground funk band. He settled down though, when he married my mother. He had a daughter, and found work as a cashier in a record store of dubious structural integrity but impeccable cultural acumen.

He killed himself when he was sixty-one.

***

There’s something slyly atavistic about the way the leaves, dried out now since they’ve fallen, feel against my hands as I rustle them gently. From behind the mountain, a small line of smoke stretches thin across the setting sun. Smoke signals at sunset, he says.

We’re quiet after that, for a long time. Uma Thurman had it right; you know you’ve found someone really special when you can just shut the fuck up and sit comfortably in silence, if only for a minute. Silence is a rare thing, and people don’t bother to make time for it anymore. How could they? There’s too many distractions, too many addictions. Screens everywhere, and sitcoms and internet dating websites, reality TV shows and political debate shows and the horrid, overwhelming cascade of contemporary pop music. There’s education and employment, no alternatives, and you’re left to choose between an outdated, meritocratic institution or the dreaded 9-5, an existence that’s so alarmingly mundane it’s turned an entire generation into alcoholics, assholes who waste their weekends on outrageously priced booze and horrific hangovers so as to forget that they owe their time, their lives, to companies who speak only in terms of profit. There’s internet pornography, advertisements and an endless supply of empty entertainment, assailing our senses and undermining our character, our concentration and our connections.

It’s all a joke, a joke with a vicious punch line that relies on the inherent irony of a situation whereby the most connected civilization in the history of humanity is destined to die alone, each and every one of us connected to the internet and nothing else. Where in this hilarious chaos can one be expected to sit and think on the endless potential of the universe, or even the endless potential of the self? I look again to the man beside me, and I tell him I’m afraid that not even the autumn leaves can save me from my vices, from my addictions both good and evil.

Don’t worry, he says. We’ll take refuge in the wilderness.

Don’t worry, he says. Once you’re unplugged, everything will be alright.

these words by Josh Elyea were inspired by the work of Daphne Boyer

“Basic Aid for Minor Scrapes,” by Finn Purcell

le_potager

CW: trauma, child abuse

The end of March smells like fresh wounds.
I wake up with wasps in my lungs, thorns at my feet,
the heat bleaches through my window
and I am back there but I am not back there.

It will take ten minutes of stillness
before the threat of the sting ceases,
before I can ease the air to my lungs.

In that nervous quiet,
I remember
I forget

✢

I was born a week too soon, the only on-time I’ve ever been.
You are rushing down the hall to get this shoe and that card —
“Come on, can’t you help me here?!”
My small fingers stretch over the table, clamp around your purse strap, and I pull
until the sack lurches and thuds and spills.

You are in the doorway, noiseless and on fire,
I am on the floor, tangled in handles.

“Are you fucking kidding me? What the fuck are you doing?
Look at this fucking mess! I can always count on you!”

In my uncle’s car, he is laughing. “What took you so long?”
“Well, you know this one,” you say, waving at me.

✢

I was fresh skin and tripping rocks,
wholly infant, tender and wild,
what did I know? what did I know?

✢

A shower is just a shower until a shower is
a white noise sanctuary
to drown you out, to drown me

until you become thunder
banging at a cracking door,
muffling demands, shimmying
a steak knife through the lock mechanism
to get me, to get my attention
again and again

23, I forgot.
24, I remembered.

✢

I am fourteen and I am asking why you hate me.

You are hurt, indignant, asking
“when am I so horrible to you?
when I buy you clothes? when I cook you dinner?
when I let you have friends over?”

I am fourteen and you are right
and it’s only me, ungrateful.
(I am ungrateful still
and maybe I should be better.)

and when we fight, you are saying “let me guess,
you’re going to make me the big bad wolf,
you’re going to twist me into a monster
when you’re the monster!”

so I am being quiet
and I am on the floor
and already my skull is a pulse in a spin cycle,
bleached for nine more years.

✢

A recurring nightmare started at six:
me and several others, shadows creaking,
trapped in a house we couldn’t leave.
A monster slips and slithers the halls
while I hide in low corners.

Sometimes, someone disappeared
and the courtyard statue would bleed.
Sometimes, people would visit the outside
and I would scream from the upstairs window.
They never heard.

✢

School pictures, grade four. I am ten.
You are showing me how to put on concealer
because this is what happens when I won’t stop crying.

I stop crying.

✢

One of my exes stopped coming over the day you threw a plate at her.

“I was aiming for you” you told me,
and “What’s the big deal? It’s just a plate”
so I told her the same.

✢

The ashes I have become
will carry, will scatter,
will soot all they touch.

✢

I’d been moved for months before anything came out,
before “that’s just my mother”
became “oh” and “wait” and —

Now I am mechanisms, symptoms.
Now I am “what else have I forgotten to remember? what else have I? what else?”

Some scars have exact stories,
others appear in the morning, throbbing without explanation.

✢

Do you remember the time
you and Dad removed the training wheels
and I, overexcited, took to the sidewalk,
sped up and down the street from one corner to another?
Hot July sweat tickled, stuck the hair to my neck.
Black leaves willowed against one another in the sun.
The spokes whizzed and my legs churned
until I hit the rock.

The handlebar seized, I flipped,
and you came running.
You cradled me
while I held my scraped palms to bleeding knee.
Soft, warm tears.
You rocked me back and forth, pet my hair, sang to me,
and Dad rummaged for the First Aid.
I wished I could scrape my knee every day.

If I remember you are my sunshine, my only sunshine,
will I forget the skies are grey?

✢

The end of March smells like fresh wounds,
smells like eggs cracking and butter on toast.
In the midst of the spatter, I am shivering.
My hands are not my hands.
I am the nest, the keeper of the wasps, only the container,
the bodily visceral memory
that I can’t remember,
I can’t forget.

I am crying over eggs and I don’t know why.

 

these words by Finn Purcell were inspired by the work of Daphne Boyer

New Poetry by Francine Cunningham: “Whales can’t save us all—but they try”

blue_bird

The child waits,

drawn with shaky fingers
the thick lines of a blue whale’s eyes come into focus
out of the abyss of the great white ocean
the form is coaxed into being
and with the life ink has given stretches its fins

scratchy and ruthless the strokes of the pen dig into the paper
tearing tiny holes into the surface of the water
but nonetheless,
the whale grins as bubbles tickle its thick heavy body

the sound of thudding boots on carpet makes its thunderous arrival outside the door
and still the child waits
shoulders hunched around ears
eyes trained on the figure
silent in the middle of the page

a splinter of sound against the door
the pen lifts, the child listens
thrashing in the stagnant water
the whale gasps for the breath of true life
follicled mouth
begging for movement

the pen smashes down against the eye
and in desperation, blots more black against it
willing it to see, to see, to see
to witness
and for a moment out of the blackness
there is a hazy figure, blue paint, red carpet, pictures shaking against the wall

but then suddenly the pen digs too deep
crashes through
and the whale sinks
deeper, deeper, deeper
until neither can see
only wait

 

these words by Francine Cunningham were inspired by the work of Daphne Boyer