SOLILOQUIES EDITORIAL COMMITEE Lizy Mostowski Editor-in-Chief Candice Maddy Creative Director Robin Graham Managing Editor Steph Colbourn Online Editor Dave Crosbie Senior Fiction Editor
Ali Pinkney Senior Poetry Editor
Karl Fenske Associate Fiction Editor
Domenica Martinello Associate Poetry Editor
Hailey Wendling Associate Fiction Editor
Colleen Romaniuk Associate Poetry Editor
Matthew Dunleavy Graphic Designer
POETRY
after W.C. Williams I have taken the gun that was in the icebox and which you were probably saving for later
Kevin Kvas Chekhov’s Gun
Forgive me it was happiness so cold yet so warm
even within a single shard of the glass net, ostensibly not a shard by the even di men sions of the clean cut rec tangle, the cen tre can not hold its water, which the contents of the liquid crystal Hi Def are 2.4 times their age per
cent
(3.2 of consent):
the age
Sven Kivka Poessy1
the screen, turns a waterworks fantasy, spread-pisses pixels from a webcammed htt pee triwoman2 all its pisser-fucker-shitters backwards spread spry mandible pincers
slash. slash.
colon.
of pink-eyed
albino ants with a hidden holistic intelligence (sexonomics), and tonsils for teeth, 1 2
dedicated to http://willisdomingo.com/willisdomingo/index.htm http://www.submityourflicks.com/videos/64090/3-hot-girls-go-crazy-on-cam.html
chatt
er
ing,
chatte
ring
une chat noire scrub ahead, brother – it’s a window washer; so they j erk, je rk, jer k k, all faster. then change them kkkkrkcht. copy that? watch them change into one new one skin like a protective cover for an ipod: a beaudy hardAPPLE®core split halved by mirrors;3 orson welles could’ve shot this: dappled lite head in one window pussy in other
Sven Kivka Poessy
the symbolism is so erect as tho in a DP, like when two windows are open4 specifyzing customizing favourite parts two at a time like readingwritingtwo books at a time open your ooks lyyr what a time it’s ich been over http://www.kindgirls.com/video/courtney/75/2 http://www.submityourflicks.com/videos/42594/my-hot-boobs.html + http://www.submityourflicks.com/videos/33286/oiling-up.html 3
4
Feel Bad, Guilt, Unproductive, Complicit: but Love it. Love. It. Love the Guilt, too. And feel Meta-Guilt. pregnant, voyeur, lesbian, amateur, hairy, perspective, OK – find some femnist naked poessy next time. (was that not unintended enough to be out of controll?cf. my footnote fetish)
Sven Kivka Poessy
the centre can not hold? the centre can un fold: a royal flush of wet, spitballs; Prufrock also measures life in wet tissues; milkjugs minus milkness flap up, flans in the face pelvis-visible-held strong-thigh legs to the shoulders compressed-accordioned bellies obscuring borderline anorexic ribiness, wormhole contortionists, ethernet - cable - lea s he d, more flexible than I nternet, the man who folded himself. “Have you ever tried to suck yourself off?” – R. “I wrote a poem, once. ...Like you said, I guess everyone tries it. I could never reach.” “What did you like better? Poem or Orgasm?” “Orgasm.” “As for me.” “I mean, Orgasm has the better ending. The protagonist hand gets resevered from your penis and reality re-attached, the world unfreezes from the carbonite of peripheralized perception, and you find out you’re just like your father. Everything ends on a downbeat. And that’s what life
Sven Kivka Poessy
is: a series of downbeats.” “Sex.” “Iambic pentameter.” “Personally, when I masturbate I prefer attempting and failing to synchronize my hand to highly syncopated reggae-jazz fusion.” “Me, I prefer not to have to handle it (myself).” “Love.” Shakes head. “Self-disgust.”
Sven Kivka rr theory
There’s candy in the cupboard. There is candy. There is cupboard. There is agreement. Now there’s candy in the cupboard. Picture the candy. Candy. Picture the cupboard. Cupboard. Candy. Cupboard. Now picture yourself. Then have yourself Go to the cupboard. Now go to the cupboard. Now open the cupboard. Now find no candy. Close the cupboard. There’s candy in the cupboard.
Megan-Jane Renshaw Space
ThespacespacespacespaceYukispacespacespacespacepeoplespacespacespacespacenativespace spacespacespacetospacespacespacespaceCaliforniaspacespacespacespacehavespacespacespac espaceaspacespacespacespacequatrenaryspacespacespacespacebasedspacespacespacespacec ountingspacespacespacespacesystemspacespacespacespacebecausespacespacespacespacethe yspacespacespacespacecountspacespacespacespacethespacespacespacespacespacesspacespac espacespacebetweenspacespacespacespacefingers,spacespacespacespaceratherspacespacesp acespacethanspacespacespacespacethespacespacespacespacefingers.
Megan-Jane Renshaw Old Fasioned with Black Walnut Bitters
I think men should be men, and women should be women, and dogs should be women, and children should be hats, and hockey should be Mexico, and showers should be Friends, and the sky should be feelings of sangfroid, and ants should be the president. I guess I’m just old fashioned that way.
Jay Ritchie I’m Writing this Poem at Cafe St. Henri and I Have Been Smiling for 15 Minutes Straight (Not on Purpose)
A dragonfly broke her wing once and I fixed it with a piece of Scotch tape. This required: the help of a friend, a glass to contain the thing, and about 15 minutes of concentration.
I was still at quite a distance when it caught my eye, a tatty beige rug draped over a fence in the middle of nowhere. But as I neared to inspect it, my footfalls fell into a stunned quiet, and I stopped to consider his life. Young buck in his prime, once a wobbly fawn, birth-damp and black-eyed, blinking away the blur of a springtime forest, the cool air a blizzard of pollen and insects testing the plastic iridescence of new wings.
Mark Lavorato Barbwire
His first winter, head up, twitching his ears to listen in on the shifting beyond the muffled distance, scratching at the snow for twigs that tasted like the biding of tough times, like the first drips that announce the coming thaw. His summers spent on the edges of meadows looking in, breaking off to tussle with others, the budding spikes of his antlers. How he bounded over fences like low-lying shrubs, until he came to this one, where his timing went all wrong. Landing with his belly square on the wire the barbs sunk deep into his hide, burrowing further in with every panicked kick, trying to unbuckle. His hooves could just touch, but not enough. His herd gazed helpless. It might have taken days, a week. Long nights in a stupor, hearing things he couldn’t run from in the dark, while the dark in his eyes gradually opened up. They are holes now. Dry limbs still reaching, still in a bounding arc, on his way to the ground.
The heartbreak and backaches we suffered from summer nights spent in the flatbeds of Ford Rangers parked in farmers’ alfalfa fields. The sugar rush make-out sessions, our sunset stained tongues and orange crush/cream soda slurpie saliva. The unwitting Ukrainian grandmothers who taught us to roll joints, trained our flour-dipped fingertips smoothing the seams of so many perogies.
Natascha Simard Manitoba girls.
The mosquito bit legs we scratched ‘til they bled, our arms strained each spring hauling sandbags for the Assiniboine. The snow banks blessed by our M.D.M.A. pee streams, maybe not names written, but our territory trekked through to home.
Natascha Simard I would not “always love” Hannah.
The day Whitney Houston died Hannah and I did not sleep. On Super Nintendo she was Donkey and I was Diddy, both smoking BC Blueberry till the next morning when Hannah said she needed coffee. I followed, Diddy to my Donkey Kong, as she led me through Charleswood to Tim Hortons. Inspired by weed and lack of sleep I stomped through snow in Hannah’s Uggs, hunting for unicorns in Ironwood scrub. Found none, but around what used to be Roblyn and Moray, this was before Moray changed to William R. Clement Parkway, I spotted a White Tailed Deer as she grazed, scrounging Brome Grass, bare at the edge of a shovelled driveway. Hannah and I stopped to watch the doe, kissing briefly, but unable to breathe. Our snot had froze. “RIP Whitney” Facebook posts would peter out within a week, In DKC 2 Diddy doubles with Dixie.
distended green bulb, alluring and lonesomely you sit and wither. The wind brings you trophies of your past the lupin of your late forties, the signal of your son’s breath. cornish mulled hen hen henry sing us a song, tear off your clothes, your flesh a milky white melody. cobblestone childhoods, sing-along soldiers a pretty ribbon, blue noose
Rowena Ren Poem
poppy juice. swell, sinister love-maker. prune me, my innocence is yours.
ART
Gillian King Making Bacon
Zoe Ritts Everything Vanished
Brent Morley Smith Untitled
Brent Morley Smith Untitled
Gillian King is a painter and multidisciplinary artist from Winnipeg. Holding a BFA Honours in Painting from the University of Manitoba (2011), King has shown in various galleries within Manitoba, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec. She recently completed an independent residency at The Banff Centre and was selected to exhibit at ‘Taking it Global: Canadian Moments’ at Espace Projet in Montreal as well as ‘Decent Exposure’ at the Living Arts Centre in Mississauga in 2012. In 2013, King looks forward to holding an independent residency at Sparkbox Studios in Picton, Ontario and a solo show at Galerie Chez Nous in Montreal, Quebec. King currently lives and maintains a studio in Mile End, Montreal. Sven Kivka is a Canadian of Russian, German, and Norwegian descent, currently residing in Ottawa, Ontario. His artwork has been mainly of a more public nature - graffiti (illegal) and performance art (ill-attended) - although he did once try to found his own poetry & arts journal. He is currently living off Employment Insurance. Kevin Kvas is a student at Concordia University. His work has appeared in The Puritan, Matrix, Ottawa Arts Review, Leading Edge, WTF?!, Kasma, and Tesseracts.
Contributors
Mark Lavorato is the author of two critically acclaimed novels. His third is forthcoming with House of Anansi in January, 2014. His first collection of poetry, Wayworn Wooden Floors, was published by the Porcupine’s Quill in 2012. He lives in Montreal. Brent Morley Smith is initially from Calgary, Alberta, He moved to Montreal in 2011 to study photography at Concordia University. He initially began taking photographs in 2005, and what previously was a casual pastime, developed into something more passionate.
Rowena Ren is a nice girl from Vancouver. She is studying studio art, psychology, and philosophy at Concordia. She finds inspiration in absurdity, goats, nonsense and Prussian blue. I think she might like to be a slippery little dolphin but who’s to say. Rowena enjoys performance art, and practices it unwittingly. Megan-Jane Renshaw: Raised surrounded by apple trees and horses, I made my pilgrimage to Montreal in hopes of catching a glimpse of Leonard Cohen in a park; I am fairly certain he checked me out one time. I am currently studying Literature and Philosophy at Concordia and I never finish anyth. Jay Ritchie has published fiction and non-fiction in The Void, poetry in Headlight, and journalism for FFWD magazine. His short story “Brandon and the Dew” was shortlisted for the 2012 Matrix Magazine LitPop awards and can be found in Weijia Quarterly.
Contributors
Zoë Ritts is an artist and student living in Montreal. Her academic interests tend to consider ideas of architecture, history, and critical theory, while her art practice reflects similar interests in space, memory, and decay. “Everything Vanished” is from a larger series called Bulgakov: Heavily Abridged and Illustrated (2012) Natascha Simard is a Concordia Creative Writing student. She’s from Winnipeg, Manitoba. She has spent way too much time feeling homesick; nostalgia is her worst addiction, other than the Internet. She enjoys ripping paper into tiny, perfectly symmetrical rectangles in her spare time.