Tag: toronto

“The Best Lover” – Charlotte Joyce Kidd

Twin_Blouse

I think the best lover would be really scared of dying. They would come home early every night. They would never bike in a busy city, never drive at all. They would never jaywalk. They would never do drugs—maybe pot once in a while but only on a couch, between four walls, when they’d checked the forecast and there was no chance of natural disaster. They wouldn’t drink too much, make enemies, ever go off their anti-depressants. Even when they stopped being mine, I wouldn’t have to worry. There would be no chance of disappearing endings, of being left holding feelings severed at one end.

I think the best lover would want to spend all their time with me. They wouldn’t be able to imagine anything else they’d rather be doing. They’d hold my hand while they went to the toilet. We’d reuse the toothpaste foam. When we’d walk in public, they’d tangle their fingers in my hair, palms not enough, scalp warmer, closer to bone, closer to brain. They’d cancel their Saturday nights, make every hour 8 a.m. Sunday, when together is unthinking. They’d sit behind me in my classes. They’d finish my sentences in therapy. They would text me once an hour just to tell me a joke.

I think the best lover would have a million lives, so that each time they fell out of love with me they could be reborn. They would walk in the door of the night they first met me, look around. They would come up and say hi, knowing nothing yet.

 

these words by Charlotte Joyce Kidd were inspired by the work of Miza Coplin

“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

“Starlight” – Nailah King

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Lena loved to move.

Through space, through life and across lands.

The first thing she ever learned when travelling is that, as you land, the lights dotted along the skyline will take your breath away.

One summer she crept onto roofs in Barcelona waiting for nightfall. Against the purple sky, lights twinkled back at her, the warm air rushing over her, her wine-kissed lips chapped against the sea air.

In movement, she felt free. Each new place cast a spell on her—she walked differently. Sometimes a stride of confidence, sometimes one of fear.

Her mother often asked her: “When are you going to settle down? When will your heart be still?”

She couldn’t answer.

Her mind was often so cluttered. A voice would whisper darkness into her ear. When she couldn’t move, she woke up, either alone or with a lover, in despair.

Many nights she’d walk along the train tracks behind her childhood home, wondering if she’d be hit and if she’d be grateful. Or, sometimes, she wondered if she could run fast enough to hop onto the train and ride it to places unknown.

Bright lights were a beacon of hope; new experiences and people.

On sleepless nights, she curled up by the window waiting for sunlight. Her body marked by tiny incisions from the past, she thought about each scar—a map of the past. She wondered why there weren’t passports for sorrow. To mark the ebb and flow of sadness and joy, destruction and rebuilding, regression and growth.

Once, when she was in the hospital, she booked a flight on her phone.

The nurse screamed at Lena but it didn’t really matter. The nurse’s words sounded warped, gargled even, the onslaught of disappointment and disbelief drifted over her. All she could hear was the sound of the ocean. She closed her eyes.

She heard the blaring sound of the train horn and raced along the tracks, dawn rising behind her.

 

these words by Nailah King were inspired by the work of Lin Bao Ling

“White Light” – Charlotte Joyce Kidd

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To have your body be struck by a force that comes from completely within itself

To know that you cannot save yourself from it

That in every silent second lurks a light that will hit you between the eyes from behind your forehead

That cold will come in waves and shivers will grate the underside of your skin

That something will gurgle up through your trachea until you are sobbing not because you are sad but because the sobs have always existed inside you and want to see day

To try, desperately, to stave it off, to force it down with anything that you can grab and pull into yourself, through mouth and eyes and nose

So that it explodes in the seconds between: the moment when your feet touch the ground, before you have reached for the curtains

Light brighter and sharper than the sun you were trying to let in

Assaulting your eyes without your permission

Shaking your body like a silent church organ

This thing that is you now

That feels like it will not leave

It will

I promise

 

these words by Charlotte Joyce Kidd 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

 

“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

New Prose: “Broken Eggs,” by Charlotte Joyce Kidd

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I used to be very sad. Even just a few weeks ago, I couldn’t get out of bed for days at a time and once I didn’t brush my teeth for a month. Yes, I used to be sad, but now I am goooood. I have been okay for three weeks and that’s the longest it’s been in a while.

I’m running a bit late for a thing I’m supposed to go to and I have $12.23 (Canadian) in my bank account, but I’m trying to go easy on myself and think about the big picture. I was hungry when I woke up so I bought myself eggs (because I’m trying to take care of myself, even though I’m late for a thing).

Now I’m biking home and I keep thinking this phrase over and over. I wonder what it’s from. “Girls with kind eyes who talk too fast, girls with kind eyes who…”

Oh. Whoa. Oh. Yep.

Now I’ve fallen over. That makes sense. I wasn’t looking where I was going. My knee is a bit scraped and my eyes are burning (am I going to cry?) but still (in the big picture) this is fine.

The egg carton looks squished. I open it to check and then the carton rips and eggs start tumbling out, as if in slow motion, every single egg until they’re all on the sidewalk. This isn’t so bad, though. Some of these eggs look like they could be salvaged. I pick one up and the clear mucus, the uncooked egg white, slides out onto my fingers. The yolk plops to the sidewalk. This happens with a second egg and then a third, and I want to say damn it and go home, but I am not a person who gives up on herself, not anymore. Maybe I can pick up some of these yolks and just put them back in the shells.

I slide my fingers under the first yolk, feeling my nails chip against the sidewalk, and I manage to grab it, whole, globular and slippery. Ha! I am like a surgeon. I have million dollar fingers. I put the yolk back in its casing and then put the egg back in the carton.

“Hey, are you okay?” says a stranger whose sneakers are in front of me.

I look up and smile very wide. I can’t see their eyes. “Yes! I am fine.”

“Okay,” they say, and their sneakers leave.

I hope it’s not anyone I know, because I guess I look pretty crazy.

I start to feel frantic for a minute or two, when it looks like the next egg won’t come off the pavement, when it’s sliding around in my hand like a baby who can’t hold its head up yet, but then there you go, got em all.

There will be a few bits of rock in my scrambled eggs (Just the yolks. Is this healthy, like eating just the whites?) but that’s okay. Could be much worse.

 

these words by Charlotte Joyce Kidd were inspired by the work of Kelsy Gossett

“Ode to Being 24” by Samantha Lapierre

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I used to get angry with myself for getting drunk at bars, in dimly lit clubs, at bad house parties.

I was 21 the first time my drink was spiked. I threw up in front of Tequila Jacks while my friends complained that the bouncers would never let them in as long as I was with them. I went home alone in a cab.

I would rip my tights from falling down on concrete, throw up in hotel bathrooms with pristine white floors, cry in groups of friends I’ve since unfriended, and have a smoke outside for good measure.

I’m so much more careful now with the company I keep, the liquor I avoid, the bars I go to.

DJ Emmett plays the Spice Girls for me on request. Winston buys us tequila shots at Babylon. We down Jägerbombs at Zaphod’s and regret it, but not too much.

 

these words by Samantha Lapierre were inspired by the work of Kelsy Gossett

New Prose by David Emery

Dimension

A house is not the same twice. Even if I stare long and hard and try not to blink and let the breeze distract, the house changes right in front of me. That was and was not my room. That was and was not the crooked porch roof. Was that wall always that short? It’s not the way I remember it and can’t be. How dare the house change? How dare it bend time and space? A person can’t be prepared to expect that. It used to be simple to start at the mouth of a neighbourhood and make your way to the belly. When you’ve been gone from a neighbourhood for twenty years, and you make your way back to that neighbourhood, that neighbourhood tries to throw you up.

Some neighbour I don’t recognize gives me a dirty look from two doors down, watching me to see what I’ll do. She’s tired of watching kids break through the plywood planks, carrying spray cans in their backpacks; when she calls them out they laugh at her wrinkled face and toss rocks at her Oldsmobile. You can’t blame a woman like that for being suspicious. I don’t half believe I’m standing here myself. Down the road, kids play ball hockey, treading new marks into freshly seeded grass, thrashing their sticks against the concrete curbside, taking chips out of something that always kidded me into seeming permanent. It would always be the same street and the same sun and the same gardens and trees, but at some point it stopped being the same. Now it stands here like a forgetful elderly relative, politely asking for a reminder, some flicker of a memory I can lay before it to make the house say, “Yes, I am the house you remember; you have all my love, you always have and always will.”

You don’t grow in a house. The house shrinks around you, becoming too small for your body until you have to escape through a front window before it splinters and cracks from clenching at your waist. Mostly they don’t bother to knock houses down. Curious. They stay standing and you keep growing and before you know it everything is in bits and pieces. This house is a standing nightmare. I wish I had the guts to step inside and reclaim that bedroom that was and was not mine. I’d yank the plywood out of the window and stay looking out at the streets until the sun went down, and the kids playing ball hockey were called in to eat, and the falling sun spread rays through the branches of the trees that have also changed, and the woman eyeing me suspiciously called the police on me.

If I’d been dragged out of here by force twenty years ago, that might have killed the urge to come back. I wouldn’t be standing in front of this house, watching it change, feeling myself shrink, feeling digested.

these words by David Emery were inspired by the work of Mairi Timoney

New Prose: “January 20” by Ajay Mehra

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The knurled cloth handles of Nicos’ hamper cut into his right hand.  The straps are connected all the way to the base of the bag and the weight of the laundry keeps pushing them apart.  They’re too short, now that the laundry is folded and holding the bag to its shape.  You switch hands but there isn’t enough time to rub the indentations out of the left hand before the pain in the right hand is impossible.

Nicos puts the hamper down on a bench facing the front window of a coffee shop.  People sit looking out onto the street—at the sidewalk and the bench and the parked cars and the road and the storefronts across the road that you can’t make out what they are from here.   You have to rub your hands with each other and look out as well.  How does anyone sit on this bench with the coffee shop staring them in the face.  You’d have to seem surprised all the time that you’d caught someone sipping or biting or reading.

You can’t sit next to your laundry on a bench.  It looks like you’re waiting for someone to come help you, because people can’t tell it’s done.  Is it still laundry when it’s done, and folded.  It’s laundry when it’s dirty, and while it’s getting clean, and while you fold it.  It’s clothes when you put it away.  You can sit next to clothes.  Clothes are like shopping.

Nicos had sat next to half his laundry at the laundromat.  Only because all the machines were full.  You can sit next to your laundry in the laundromat, if the machines are full and you have enough for a good-size load.  And if it’s a clean laundromat.  How do laundromats get dirty.  Car washes get dirty and the dirty ones have the strongest sprayers so you go to the dirtiest ones.  Luckily the closest car wash is filthy.

You don’t care about how a hamper carries when the machines are in the building.  Or when the laundromat at the corner is clean.  Who sends you to a dirty laundromat.  There isn’t another laundromat between here and home, so you have to buy another new hamper.  The store that sells hampers isn’t on the way either.

these words by Ajay Mehra were inspired by
the art of Pasha Bumazhniy