(parenthetical) issue twelve march two thousand and sixteen
contents - issue twelve
Chips ------ $2.99 poetry by Ben Robinson penelope poetry by Kyle Kinaschuk The Cornfield poetry by Lori Baker Martin You and Me Are Not Friends fiction by Eric Rubeo 1998 poetry by Reid Millar Moment(oh) poetry by Amy LeBlanc Self-Portrait as Aesop poetry by Ali Sohail On Reading poetry by Claire Farley Winter Scene poetry by Alexandra Greene Sexting Message 1 poetry by Jordan Laffrenier No Doctor poetry by Adam Abbas non-fiction— On legacy and sentimentality by Nicole Brewer
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Note from the Editors
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Chips ------ $2.99
I handed him my poem scrawled on the back of a receipt from the supermarket, or something like that
Ben Robinson
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& he stood before it, like a set of faulty automatic doors, and said, “what does it do?�
§XXXIX: long hair & eyes overgrazing pastures again while penelope stresses §XXIV: conjuring lifetime absence like may softening my hand, & i trespass a pollen sun grave with a praying archivist in an earmarked death yard §LXXVI: reposing in the films of time, bild turns abbild, & the hic et nunc slips to uncover stained images of leaden teeth that will have been reproduced by machinic phantasms lifting your name, which i have always known, but never will have known, even if athena’s dumb bird awakened me to the timbre of your voices, yet the past creeps over
penelope
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bodies like nightmares, & the night gathers §XLII: antigone hanging cautious & hidden with secrets buried in ossuaries, but a slow death, my dear, we only know that graves, if they knew, but tea, crisp & sweet, this house, death, or you search for the most prudent & rational use of resources such as time for the future or nice discussions face to face, but time is a serious economic unit, a pyramid of fraud just ask franklin
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§LXXVIII: penelope put a nightmare in my hand while daydreaming of an injunction to sacrifice time like a doron, & i invent in your language a mémoire
involontaire that will have always been a reminder of tomorrow’s daylight, but i keep forgetting the future, & your name will wake the foams on the coast someday when i have learned to listen to the listening of your tongue as you strip petals off lilies to read in bed on standby protecting wahrheit like wahren or even a rubbing strake (slow elevations, cigaretting mnemosyne, and
§LVII: long hair & eyes between the new pastures, penelope unstresses
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the sight & palms of separation)
Kyle Kinaschuk
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The Cornfield
Lori Baker Martin
When the corn was high, an undulating green sea that stretched for miles, I’d go to the edge, by the flat-topped rock, and throw stones at crows while the stalks rustled and hissed. Father said, Don’t go in, but that summer, I’d duck inside and hide and I’d hear nothing but the sussurating stalks and see nothing but the rippling green. My sister’s friend Anna married an old man who made her and now she would have a child. She cried in church in her old blue dress, and mama said, What a shame. Under a horned moon, she slipped into the corn. We searched and called, all night and day. What would make her go? the old man said. When I been so good to her? They carried her out, faded and dried, her eyes wide open. What did she see? the women asked. Kneeling there, unnoticed, I knew: it was the dark of the leaves and the song of the corn and nothing.
You and Me Are Not Friends
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You and Me were on the playground when Me fell off the monkey bars and onto his right leg and, lying on the pavement, Me wasn’t sure if it was broke or not but it hurt like hell and so he cried, and, although You wanted nothing to do with Me, she ran up the hill and pulled at the duck tail of the recess lady’s shirt and the two came back running, and at the scene the recess lady said “shoo, shoo, move away” because almost the whole fourth grade had formed a small crowd, and then she said “dammit, this is how we lost the swings,” and of course Me heard none of that—he was still crying—but the whole time You stood there saying nothing and that was something, Which would have made a good story to tell at a graduation party or perhaps a wedding if You and Me had been and stayed friends, but they were not and they did not, and in fact they became enemies, for it was You who had climbed up the ladder to those bars in the first place and tickled Me’s armpit which led to the laugh and subsequent fall, and so you can begin to understand why You and Me were not friends, But more than that, they were not friends because You told Me he smelled funny and Me spread the rumor of a time You had a numbertwo accident and where You liked baseball, Me liked dark movies and worst of all, You was good at mathe-fucking-matics, Which is why it was good, truly good, when Me learned You was leaving and that the time they had left was short; You’s parents had other plans, which involved their careers and New York City, and Me most certainly did not have a hard time with the news even though he kind of liked being enemies with You, kind of liked knowing that there existed another who thought of him frequently and the power her shame gave him,
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Eric Rubeo
But then the day came, first of fifth grade, when You did not sit down next to Me in home room, and in that cold and lonely seat, surrounded by his peers, Me felt something funny which made him want to write and so when he went home he wrote You a letter which of course he did not send, And as the years flew by and Me grew older, he met other girls like Brittany and Beth, and at some point he forgot all about You, forgot how when he couldn’t walk without crutches You carried his brown bag to the lunchroom for him, forgot how even after the cast came off You would beg for forgiveness at least twice a week, forgot how three days before You left, she threw herself off the monkey bars in one last reach for redemption even though Me cried out “don’t!” just before she did, Except it’s not quite fair to say Me forgot about You because when he was older and packing his things, removing his scent from his parent’s house for good, he found that letter in a bin of old school things and in that moment he thought of You and was sad for what he remembered, and so he drove it to the post office and said “I’m sorry” to the envelope, and when he dropped it in the metal tub and closed the shutter with an unforgiving thunk, he imagined the letter being loaded in a truck and then that truck being driven all the way to New York City where it arrived at a central hub and made its way into the tote bag of a mail carrier who stopped at a homey apartment complex in Lower Manhattan where You’s parents would find it in their mail slot so they could forward it to her, wherever she lived now, so she could open and read what he had written and maybe, if Me was lucky, smile as she remembered, but of course none of this happened—Me never knew her New York address—so when the fantasy ended, he pushed down his right foot hard on the gas and began again the process of moving on.
1998 I will finish this poem one day. I will also die one day. The two won’t happen consecutively, but both will mark the end of an energy. The energy of putting my pen to paper. The energy of my parent’s sheets. The energy of thought. The energy of love. My wrist is tired. I am tired. The love that made me capable of thought that has made me capable of poetry has made me capable of fatigue. This poem was written the instant my parents separated in exhaust.
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Reid Millar
Moment(oh) Physical combinations distance these moments with a far too large quantity of you. If my fear of papercuts sounds an alarm I’ll steal your running shoes. let’s stop talking about virginity loss for a moment while I subpoena smokers and people who can’t find the clitoris. you’ll feel every step I take in your spine. This body is 20 Januarys old hollowed in sidewalk talk. Just take your newspaper out of my walls and go.
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Amy LeBlanc
As if in my mind an auditorium burst into applause & the wooden panels peeled off its walls collapsed to a great oak, all the lost forests & let go all sound back to the world. * I place my words on the wind− paper boats on water
to lose their way to you.
* I am stilled by surrender my body I surrender it its simple function of living what isn’t I surrender & all that is mine.
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Self-Portrait as Aesop
* I am the crow in the my hard lump
parable
thirst-pruned− brail to the seeping night stones that blunt my beak &
add only
distance.
* Words like stones that raise and if not drop & break you.
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Ali Sohail
On Reading
what silly tangle of gestures a slow turning over & on the inverse yourself how the hot tongue of language licks here between arrangement & erasure over the exhaustion of repetition
openness
or a word threatens colonization of another the body, like the letter, is divided what tiny spines float in margins where wind erases tumours with its breath
N Cl aire Far ley
for example the way a book is changed when read by others more spacious when used
Winter Scene
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I do not know all the places my breaths have been. The trees, gilded with ice, shoulders strained and arms slunk earthward, know not how beautiful they look. Sky blends into sward, whitewashed on white, seamless. Afternoons exhale, light reflects light. In this weather, each breath is a loss or a life.
Alexandra Greene
Sexting Message 1
I want to strip you naked and cover you in chlorine so I can bring back childhood memories of the way my eyes burned when mom would say “it’s time for you to get out of the pool.” I want you to remember me: so I won’t take off my shirt or my name tag, and I’ll tell you to breathe quieter, and don’t moan: I am going to repeat my name over and over again and I need to ensure you hear each syllable every time.
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I want you to put your cat in the other room... and I want to come with you: I am scared of being alone and I am scared of being naked and I always think death is going to find me in the dark.
Y Then I want to hold you tightly as I reach for a black sharpie and begin to draw what’s left of my family tree on your stomach. You can tell me something dirty (if you want) but I won’t hear you; because I’ll be too focused on the line between my great grandfather and my dad: and how similar they looked (even though my image of them is years apart) and how the line skips my grandfather, and how because of your belly button I can’t make them look alike at all And I want kiss your belly button and I want to make you finish, but not because I have to because I need to because I know he did and isn’t that what sex is: A competition with your ex?
Jordan Laff renier
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No Doctor
Time for the dapper man’s daily walk Immediately after dinner as always. No more plastic spasms only rejuvenation reactivation Prolonging the inevitable is not a sin As he blows a kiss to Kant’s portrait on the mantle. Locomotor once crazy youth one-step two-step to pretend soldier to soldier to civility He repeats the word: Constitutional. To look old and feel young and strong To be like rich men sitting on curbs Watching people go by. Remembering himself as he Loses himself. Automation. Completely in Control while letting go. Firm gait Straight posture Give the arms style swing them gently this is the real world after all. Breathe only through the nose. The mouth needs a rest. Breathe. Walk. The secret of life is breath. When he was a child he would stop to take notice of his breathing To make sure he was still breathing He still does. Breath. Walk. Body separate from consciousness Faith in the body A duty to honour.
He is a good man. One can’t restore colours on a leaf by painting it, they say He is not a leaf and his efforts are not paint. Don’t walk with him. He wondered what would happen if He told his legs to stop He didn’t need to stop But he wanted to So he could know.
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His brain told his legs to stop He looked down at his moving shoes He stopped in the middle of the busy street Shouts and yells all around He didn’t hear them He was looking at his legs Making sure And he started to smile.
Adam Abbas
nonfiction On legacy and sentimentality
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by Nicole Brewer
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Not too long ago, the hashtag-CanLit community was publicly saddened by the news that Art Bar, Canada’s longest running poetry-only reading series, would be having its last ever show this summer, not long after its 25th anniversary. I am also saddened by this, but it doesn’t come as much of a surprise. From what I can gather—from gossip—from people longer-involved than I, Art Bar has been struggling for a while: with turnout, with publicity, with readers, even with their own organizing committee. This is bound to happen, of course. Everything struggles. words(on)pages struggles, and we’re not even two yet; Art Bar lasted over two decades.
contributors Adam Abbas is more interested in what’s muttered after the phone call than the phone call itself. His oeuvre includes the poetry collection A State A Statue A Statute (2014, Steel Bananas). His poetry and fiction can be found in publications such as Lantern, Static, Bywords, and Ultraviolet Magazine. He lives in Winnipeg. Twitter: @adam_m_abbas Claire Farley lives and works in Ottawa, where she is the co-founder and editor of Canthius, a feminist literary journal. Her poetry has been published in The Apeiron Review, The Minetta Review, Ottawater, The Peter F. Yacht Club, some mark made, and by above/ground press. Alexandra Greene is from Toronto, though she currently resides in Montreal. Her writing has appeared in Queen’s Feminist Review, Ultraviolet Magazine, and The Undergraduate Review. She enjoys handwritten letters, feeling the feels, autumn, and the sea. Kyle Kinaschuk is a Ph.D. student in the Department of English at the University of Toronto. His poetry and prose have appeared in journals such as The Capilano Review, filling Station, PRISM international, text, and FreeFall Magazine. Jordan Laffrenier is a writer and student at York University who co-curates the EWAG Word Night reading series and open mic, among other artistic projects in and around Toronto. Amy LeBlanc is currently completing a BA in English Literature and creative writing at the University of Calgary, where she is Project Editor for Nōd magazine and co-coordinator of the SU Campus Food Bank. She hopes to pursue a career in fiction and poetry, and is currently working on a novella. Her future plans include completing an MLIS or an MA in English Literature. Lori Baker Martin is assistant professor of English at Pittsburg State University. She’s had both poetry and fiction published in magazines like Prick of the Spindle, The MacGuffin, The Little Balkans Review, Room Magazine, Grass Limb, The Knicknackery, Midwest Quarterly, Kansas Time + Place, 150 Kansas Poets, and in a Kansas Notable Book poetry collection, To the Stars Through Difficulties. Martin
has taught creative writing at the University of Iowa, Pittsburg State University, and Independence Community College. She has worked as a reader for both The Iowa Review and NPR. She is a founding member of the Astra Arts Festival in Independence, Kansas, and was director of the visiting writers’ series at ICC. Martin has been awarded for her work in The Cincinnati Review and Kansas Voices. She is poetry editor of The Midwest Quarterly. Martin graduated from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop where she was named a Truman Capote Fellow and received the Clark Fischer Ansley Award for Excellence in Fiction. Reid Millar has not yet been defined by a trade. He is not of legal ages: drinking for example, and he cannot vote. Perhaps by the time you read this he will have been accepted into a university of his liking, and will be preparing for a postsecondary experience. Regardless, he is currently in high school and goes to class as often as he can. He has blonde hair, as does his brother, while his mother has red hair and his father has brown hair. He likes to think of his family as a rainbow when they stand near each other. He is a native of Toronto and lover of music. He spends his time flipping through record bins and spending money he doesn’t have (see first sentence above). He once introduced bill bissett to a crowd of people and once had dinner with Steve McCaffrey at an Italian Restaurant. This is his first published poem. Ben Robinson has always lived in Hamilton, Ontario, and recently graduated from McMaster University’s English Department. His poems have appeared in subTerrain, Hamilton Arts & Letters, and Self-Addressed Envelopes found in the mailbox. Eric Rubeo is a fourth year undergraduate studying Creative Writing, English Literature, and Adolescent English Education at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He is the Editorial Intern for the Miami University Press, the (volunteer) Fiction & Poetry Editor of Happy Captive Magazine, and a Writing Consultant at the Howe Center for Writing Excellence. Ali Sohail is an undergraduate student and budding writer currently residing in Alberta, Canada. Some of his recent work has appeared in The Malahat Review, CV2, The Puritan, and The Sandy River Review.
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This publication—issue twelve of the literary magazine (parenthetical)— was published by words(on)pages in the month of March in the year two thousand and sixteen. It was designed, printed, and bound in Toronto, Ontario, by words(on) pages co-founders William Kemp and Nicole Brewer, who used Adobe InDesign for layout, and was typeset and designed using Kingthings Trypewriter 2, Adobe Garamond Pro, and FFF TUSJ. It was bound by hand with paper, thread, needle, and patience. Front and back covers were printed by Sebastian and Brendan Frye at Swimmers Group in Toronto. (parenthetical) could not be produced without the support of Michael Brewer, words(on)pages Director of Business Operations. For this issue, we were unable to pay a proofreader, and don’t like asking for free work—please forgive any inconsequential errors.