SYMPOSIUM
AN ARTS & HUMANITIES STUDENTS’ COUNCIL PUBLICATION ~ 2016 ~
symposium art to soothe your soul an arts and humanities students’ council publication
volume 3 issue 2 spring 2016 Copyrights remain with the artists and authors. The sole responsiblity for the content in this publication remains with the authors and artists. The content does not reflect the opinions of the Arts & Humanitites Students’ Council (AHSC) or the University Students’ Council (USC). The AHSC and USC assume no liablity for any errors, inaccuracies, or ommisions contained in this publication.
a letter from the editor Your favourite song. The way you fold your shirts. The sound you make when your scared. The way you look when your happy. Your biggest fears. Your tiniest ones. The laugh when you’re trying to be polite. Your laugh when something’s actually funny. The way you hold your pencil. The movie you watch on a sad day to cheer yourself up. Your McDonald’s order. Pepsi or Coke. Blue and Black or Gold and White. Your ideas. The weather that makes you want to spend the whole day outside. Your family. The weather that makes you want to spend the whole day inside. The people you knew and the people you know. 7th grade. Haircuts and outfits you wish never happened. Your favourite t-shirt. The first time you found your passion. What you talk about when you stay up past midnight. Vulnerability. The things and experiences that have left you without any words. The things that you didn’t know if you’d finish but you did. The things you’ve said no to. The things you’re proud of. The things you aren’t. The people you text about that random thing that you just saw on the way here. Traditions. What you’ve always believed in. What you never thought you would. The kind of gum you chew. Your favourite meal to cook. How many alarms you set in the morning. The strangers you’ve smiled at on the street. Shows you watch over and over again until you know every line. How you sit on public transit. What you drink on a warm summer day. Questions that have made you think. The corner of YouTube you end up in at 2am. Things that make you laugh as soon as you even think of them. Your expectations. The way it feels when they’re met and when they aren’t. The aspirations you tell everyone. The ones you confess to only a few close people. Your decision to come to Western. First year. Your guilty pleasure dance party song. Second year. Innocence. Third year. Your approach to all-nighters. Fourth year. Nostalgia.
Editor-In-Chief
Sarah Botelho
Academic Managing Editor
Lauren Sayers
Creative Managing Editor Copy Editor Layout Editor
Katie Fowler Emma Lammers Julia Vance Special Thanks to: Massimo Perruzza, Alicia Johnson, Hina Afzaal, Alero Ogbeide, Megan McGinley, Sofia Berger and Megan Levine.
All of these are just a couple of the pieces that make up your Identity.
This year, our publications team decided IDENTITY was a perfect theme to capture the talent and diversity of the Western community. We are so greatful that all those published in this issue of Symposium have decided to share what idenity means to them with all of you. Enjoy.
- Sarah Botelho
Dark Pelts Ann Kamau I eyed Colour, and kissed my teeth, “Pack your bags, I got a restraining order today. You broke all of your promises, and I’m sick of cleaning up every mess you make.” Colour walked out, closing the door but leaving the window open. “You are me, and I am you. Are you ashamed of yourself?” I laughed like a chainsaw. “You said jobs would be ants, massing on the countless anthills on the corner of Bloor and Helpless, because rare meant precious commodity and we were the best blood diamonds a company could get.” Colour smiled, “You stopped being cargo long ago. You let your worth be determined by strangers, I kept to my corner. You –” the slap rattled in the air “My worth was your chessboard,” I spat. “You reassured me the guns were to preserve humanity, even when those guns swallowed shields and more dark pelts lined their walls. You said you’d lay low and hush up–” “I did” “and you’d stop playing games with people’s heads that made little girls in peach overalls pour bleach over ebony skin–” “I did” “So why, when I’m walking down the street in neon pink and lime green pants, do I become a background?” A cackle grew from under the bed as the figure writhed out and Judgement smiled “They never think to look on the corner of Bloor and Helpless.”
artwork by Alexis Pronovost
The Wine Song Tracy Kong Overtop my sparkling wine glass, I take a swim in my love’s eyes. Without a splash, I slip into the cool blue of her two pools. Soft ripples wash over me as Prosecco bubbles lift my spirits. The glint of copper in her hair lights up my sleepy face like the moon. Low, hollow hums drift lightly into my waterlogged head. The sounds speed up and become high trills. Notes of the song dance high and low, fast and slow. Helene’s loving gaze, like spotlights, search my smiling face as a choir of liquids waltz in the savoury air. The blissful song carries my mind away as I look into Helene’s eyes. She is as calm as the day I found her napping beneath a lemon tree with her feet on the rocks. The air was dry with a twist of citrus. She woke up when I picked one of the fruits right above her. We sat and ate lemons all afternoon. I can taste her tangy lips on mine as my mind is carried into the night. Silver against china interrupts the musical notes. I float to the surface of Helene’s eyes. Back in reality, I break my bread slowly. Helene sneaks me a smile. I wink at her over my brimming wine glass. The bubbles race to the surface. She edges off my espadrilles with her wiggling toes. The tops of my polished feet float to the hem of her white linen dress. Pretentious philistines make meaningless toasts. The clinking of crystal breaks the ringing sounds. We butter our bread to avoid questions from the boring businessmen with their booming voices. Helene crosses her ankles around mine. We cup our ears to hear the wine song without success. She tips her head at me meaningfully. We excuse ourselves from dinner with feigned civility and walk hand in hand on the dimly lit path toward the big tree. The voices fade slowly; the low hums begin once again. “I don't want dinner. We came to hear the wine sing.’’ “We would never hear it over the talking.” “Let’s try again.” With our backs against the giant tree trunk, we sit in the soft bed of grass where the green blades have shot up so far in competition for air, they have fallen back down upon themselves. We close our eyes lightly and open our ears. The wine song floats over softly. It swims through the dew and dances over daisies. The cool night wind carries it farther with each gust. The inebriating tune follows a path lit by the stars and moon. Animals flash their sharp, golden eyes. As it reaches our passive ears, we sigh our soft sighs and breathe the air sweeter. The tree behind our backs becomes warm with the smell of firewood. Cloudy white mist carries the notes along like a five-bar staff in thin air. The music carries our spirits away into the night. We throw our heads back and the music yanks us away into the glittering sky. Helene squeezes my hand with anticipation. We pass a wide stream, deep yet so clear. Jagged jewel-toned rocks sit at the bottom. Dull sparkles radiate from under the waves. Hanging from the misty musical staff like schoolchildren on monkey bars, we dip our toes in and skim the water. The staff lowers and dips us in quickly making us squeal in surprised laughter. I look up to see Helene wet and covered with a soft sheen. With cupped hands we take a long sip of the cool water. It quenches us from our eyes to the our toes with the taste of grass and raindrops.
The staff climbs higher as we stretch back like open books, with nothing to do but search for the dippers. Soon, we overlook an endless field of lavender, flying in our musical path, with our feet hanging down. The lavender bushes look up playfully and tickle our soles. The scent swung back and forth between herbal and floral. We inhale more deeply than ever before; the scent fills us with colours of green and purple. As the song quiets down, we shrink and fall onto the ground. The lavender bushes tower over us. The stems lean over to brush our hair with their bristles. Our bouncy curls cradle our faces as we lean in for a cheerful embrace. The humming choir grows loud and we grow taller. Lavender flowers shrink before us without a sound. The musical staff drives up and we blow across the sky. A fig-leaf scented breeze hits us as we glide through the orchard on one foot. The trees step aside quickly as we tumble towards their roots. They bow and extend their branches hoping for handshakes. With ancient bark smiles, they offer us apples, pears, and plums nested in soft baskets made of fresh leaves. They bow again and their treetops tickle our chins as we zoom off on the mysterious music mist. I feel secure with my hand in the firm grip of Helene. I glance at her eyes, careful not to fall in. I wobble. She flashes me an enchanting smile. I feel dizzy, almost falling over the edge. Instead, I fall into her arms and nuzzle her neck, breathing in her eucalyptus scent. After a few Eskimo kisses, we look down to see that we had been hovering above a glittering pond upon the music staff. The water is covered with lily pads as big as king-sized duvets upon which bunches of tiny golden lilies sit still with big smiles. Large iridescent frogs in every colour imaginable jump back and forth across the seemingly endless pond. They soar so high up we almost catch them. We build up the courage to jump on the back of a fuchsia frog. As it is about to dive into the pond, we let go and land on a pillowy lily pad. Completely in-sync, we hop around, giggling nervously every time we stand still and the leaf begins to sink. The hazy mist scoops us up and we dissolve into a pile of relieved laughter. The five-bar staff floats toward a candlelit garden patio and drops us off lightly. With a simultaneous thud, Helene and I land in our weathered wooden seats to find everyone working on an enormous pavlova. We smooth down our hair and look up to see that everyone is too busy talking about themselves to notice anything or anyone else. We lean back and smile in euphoria. Finally they polish off their dessert and focus their gazes on us. Their jaws drop. “Girls! What happened to you?” I check my reflection in an old silver spoon confusedly. “We went on a walk.” “Where are your clothes?” Helene smiles. “What did you do?” She dipped her finger into her wine glass and ran it around the smooth rim.
come again another day Noelle Schmidt i am an umbrella, blown back in the wind metal limbs straining to hold thin kaleidoscope skin from being wrenched into reeling debris, flung free to wash up, crumpled, on the landfill shore of junction creek; i was not built to weather the storm wide open, let me fold closed, until the sky stops clawing at the trees, let me be, until the raindrops fall not like bombs, not like enemy soldiers, i am not a soldier, let me be, until the raindrops fall like raindrops, the kind that will run rivulets to my edges and spill onto the grass, the kind that play mood music on porch roofs, and puddles on warm asphalt waiting for bare-foot dancers; until then, please, let me fold closed; umbrellas blown back in the wind tend to break.
Within 9 Metres of Exit Kyle Birch Straw hat, scarf around your neck, fashion the summer heat makes you suffer for. At your lips, cigarette and a juice box. Now, leaving, a tear of spit, silently falling until it joins its predecessors with staccato impact on the grid stonework, sweet poison to perverse this barren ground.
Vaporization Robyn Obermeyer Every morning I make the shower hot enough to melt candle wax or make weak coffee: heat turns skin gooseberry red, blemishes forced from their hiding places, the rot of autumn leaves exposed by melting snow.
the sharp sting of heat on weeping skin, lungs filled up with enough steam to keep me burning until next morning.
Invasive vines on a sapling, redness creeps up from my ankles, curls around legs, chest, neck,
Roses And Violets Camille Intson a love letter to the magazine that published and then censored my writing. roses are red violets are actually not blue, they’re violet that’s why they’re called violets and they’re all flowers anyways, you impotent racist.
(is that what you want to hear? — said the angsty cynical self-absorbed piece of teenage mongrel shit to the literary journal that only accepts appropriate content from writers under 21 years of age.) at this rate we’ll be censoring Shakespeare and Nazi genocide statistics. “to be or not to get nice Uncle Claudius an ice-cream cone?” said Satan.
To BE - for Nourbese Phillips Jesyka Traynor
Wicked things, done and said An ideology of oppression Horror refined and cultivated From the basement up An erasure of the core An erasure of the matter An erasure of the spark A designation of the ones living And the ones living but not accepted As alive Non-human Non-entity A matter in space Existing but unacknowledged We are capable We participated What we have done We can redo If we do not dredge up The cesspool of history The bloodiest and intentional of crime And liberate The marked Not as unmarked (we can’t forget accountability) But urged Through the blown up door Of history To BE
artwork by Sofia Berger
Forgotten Breakfast Safeera Gillani That morning, I had woken up two hours earlier than I normally would have. I brushed my teeth, fixed my hair into a nice ponytail, and walked downstairs to help my mom out with breakfast. My mother and I exchanged “good mornings” and I quickly got to work by taking over her task of cooking omelets for my brother, my mother and myself. Since I could walk, I’ve always helped my mom cook as much as I could. It was our version of retail therapy. While I have learned a lot about cooking from my mother, next to her, I look like a child playing in a sandbox. Before my mom could take a moment to relax, the phone rang. Answering the phone with a breathless, “Hello,” I watched, confused, as my mother’s eyebrows slowly scrunched together in shock. Before I could string together a sentence to ask what the matter was, my mother dashed out of the kitchen, in the direction of the stairs. When she returned to the kitchen, I noticed that she had changed out of her pajamas and into jeans and a t-shirt. “What’s going on?” I asked, my voice shaking slightly out of worry as I watched her grab the car keys off of the fridge and slip on a pair of shoes. “It’s your grandfather,” she said, speaking quickly. “I need to go.” My grandfather had been sick for all of July. He had gotten pneumonia and had needed to be admitted to the hospital exactly a month ago from that day. “Alright,” I called to my mom as she made her way out of the door. “Call me when you get there and let me know when he’s okay!” I remember hearing a faint knocking at the door only a few seconds after hearing it close behind my mom. I remember opening the door, to find my mom there, shaking, tears spilling down her face. I remember my eyes darting from her eyes, to her tears, to her lips, as they moved, whispering, “Dad…. Dad…. It’s dad…” I remember it all clicking into place in my head. I remember taking the keys from her hand, reassuring her that I would drive her to the hospital. I remember comforting my mother, as she mourned the death of my grandfather. I remember staying strong for my family and refusing to cry the week leading up to the funeral. I remember weeping as they took my grandfather’s body away, clutching my mother’s hand like a lost child who had just found her mom.
Ballet Zachery Bliss It’s a worrisome game we two live here and play, me and the dancing man on the ceiling. I lie still in my bed, he looks down above head, and neither of us say a thing. I pretend he’s not there, he pretends he’s nowhere, as we writhe in this restless medley. Constantly dancing, sometimes ceaselessly prancing, but the man is always as solemn as me. We do this night after night, we paired here in this plight, me and the dancing man on the ceiling. We lived true to our silence, a world undisturbed to divide us, till the night he descended on me. He waltzed wanton upon me, then quick-pinned me so strongly, as he grasped my neck gracefully. He squeezed and he strangled, as I dangled and dangled, off the edge of sure finity. Then I fell and I fell, through fell skies and dry hells, while the dancing man still strangled me. Spots grew in my vision, and the man said “Now listen! As I tell you what happens to thee”
“I’m going to mangle your soul, I’ll make you dream to be whole”, the dancing man whispered to me. “I’m going to make you my slave, then I’ll dance on your grave!” The strangling man shrieked out with glee Then he grew silent and somber, filled with fury no longer, his eyes pondered sonderously. He leaned down and he kissed me, said “Was a pleasure dancing with thee”, and I saw my eyes no more did see. As he danced off in the distance, he yelled back that he’d miss us, and I realized the dancing man was me.
Sam Boer
Saliva I am your spit. I make small talk with Earl Grey at the bottom of your kitchen mugs, Linger on the lips Of water glasses scattered on sills and shelves. I sleep between the bristles of your toothbrush, linger behind your molars, and swim underneath your tongue. I can get caught in your throat,
bring tears to your eyes, emerge, truth and brood, into the kitchen sink, smelling of yesterday. I am the silent, wet words that creak from your sleeping mouth, the miniscule pool on your pillow. We rarely speak about me. But I make your morning breath what it is.
Keira Lindgren
Georgia Scenario: Yellow air, the sky lightens with soft electricity, the night has fingers and a throat. Scenario: A gas station church, higher than anything else, above land crying out in all directions, Scenario: My mother mourns her marriage that removed her from the mountains while my father’s absence pours into us, blistering, like kettle water. Scenario: We whisper in languages we learned from cars on the highway. Scenario: Billboard calls out HELL IS REAL but we already knew that, we even sort of hoped for it. Scenario: My mother prays to the wrong god and in her blasphemy, births me into a body I cannot love.
art by Jill Smith
When We Make Love in the Morning Meg Desmond Voices sound from outside the window. A car horn honks in the distance. I hesitate before opening my eyes. It’s still dark enough in your room to justify staying in bed for a little longer, and letting my eyes fall shut again. It’s light enough to know that the day is upon us; reality is upon us. It’s light enough to think about staying in bed with you all day, letting the hours slide by with our breaths, rather than being aware of every hour less that we have left. I don’t want to go home. I don’t want to leave you. I let my gaze slide over your features, dark because I’m blocking the path of the sunlight from the window. Your eyes are closed, though you were the one who kissed me awake just a minute ago. If I could only go back to that minute, when I felt as peaceful as you look right now…. I let my head rest against your bare chest, and my eyes slide shut. You trace your fingers slowly down my spine, and I feel the tingles all the way up to the backs of my ears. I can hear your heart beating right beneath me, and the vibrations in your chest as you start to speak. “What are you thinking about?” I take a slow breath. Muffled voices still sound from somewhere outside your window. “Nothing,” I say. On the bedside table our watches tick, slightly out of sync. Which one is counting a real second? How long is the space in between the two different clicks? You kiss me, softly, on the lips. What if neither of our watches is counting a true second? “What do you want to do today?” I ask, thinking that we can’t lie in bed, with the voices and the watches. “You.” You grin up at me, and I laugh. This is your usual response. Is there even such a thing as a true second? “What time is it?” I ask. “Twelve thirty. We have six hours.” Six more hours, then another month apart. Another visit, another month, over and over until we graduate, until we can be together, in the same city. I move on top of you, pressing my lips down on yours. I kiss you passionately. I don’t want to leave you. You tense beneath me, soften, and move your hands to my waist. I wish I could spend the day in bed with you, napping, talking, wrestling as we try to tickle each other (even though I always lose). I want to rile you up, so you have something to think about when we’re apart. I want to walk with my hand in yours and argue over what to eat, because neither of us has a firm opinion on it. I want to talk about all the places we’ll go one day, when we have the time and the money – when we can finally be together. If we can make it through another year, maybe we could make it to Istanbul, or Egypt. We could spend a month in Australia, then backpack across Europe. Someday, we’ll have it all. We’ll have a mansion overlooking a lake, a
golden retriever, a library full of books, an indoor pool, a bed with glow-in-the-dark stars covering the ceiling above it. Maybe we’ll even have kids, once we’ve stepped foot on each continent. We are always telling each other this, as if we need constant reassurance. Life will work out for us. Won’t it? I think about the future more than you know. But I also wonder about the distance between seconds, between us. When seconds turn to minutes, hours, months, years…. I can picture us filling those seconds, which is why it scares me so much to think about them. So much can happen in those distances. I don’t want to lose you. If we can make it through another year apart, how many seconds will we have spent together? More than I can count. All those seconds add up in my mind, giving me something to dream about on the ride home, or when I’m back in my own bed. “I don’t want you to leave,” you say. “I don’t want to leave.” We both know I have to. Life is waiting back at the bus terminal. “Two more years,” you say. “Then we can be together.” I kiss your earlobe, gently, wondering how we’re going to make it through all those seconds apart. But we did it last time, and made it to this moment, this second. “We should get up,” you say. I wish this moment didn’t have to end. I hear your breathing again, sharper as we kiss. I hear the disjunct ticks of our two watches, and wonder again about the distance between them. Is it a millisecond? Two? I wonder about the relativity of time, what all the distances mean, and what it is that moves us through the distances, and unites the seconds. I don’t know if we will make it through another two years before time destroys us. What can we count on to keep us together? How will we defy time and distance? “I love you,” you say, and the answer hits me. “I love you,” I say. This moment. This second. This is ours. I kiss you a last time before rolling out of bed. I am ready.
photography by Danielle Sing
Wilf Barclay
Nova
So far past the event horizon
Is it any wonder That when we fell We collapsed Into ourselves Like two dying stars
That time ran slow A river of blackstrap molasses Deep and thick and unstoppable We fought hard But we sunk together Into that sweet sugarcane paradise
Action/ Inaction I want you. And for twenty minutes On the pull-out couch in your basement You wanted me too. *** I can’t look at you the same way. Believe me, I’m trying. But you look like the taste of your lips Your neck Your hips. I wouldn’t dare ask if you felt the same Because the law of averages is scary And talking to you is harder now And I have people to meet And I have other things to do But I’m writing about you instead.
Dance With Me Lyrics by: Camille Intson
Said the devil to my soul, “Breathe it in, this time alone.” Pretty woman — settle in, you were born to fickle skin Watch the rain bleed in your step, make the night one to forget And every loving word I’ve ever known’s a foreign garden road Every love a summer rain, watch the world turn ripe again And every day, the cold comes through — taken back to me and you And all that I stormed through. Crucify me with your eyes, parted lips and petty lies “Look how beautiful you’ll be,” says the man who’ll dance with me And every thought of love I’d ever cried became a cold goodbye No more dancing in the storm, heavy heart stops growing warm And every stupid thing I’ve ever heard became unspoken words No more pretty as can be, I was born to dance with me. Said the bedsheets to my skin: “humble down and cuddle in — “Play pretend in dreams of sin, weakened under boyish grin.” And every other man who passes by — can see right through me. No more clouds of feeble hope, dreams of lovers — now I know Pretty girls? Achilles heel. Do they feel the way I feel? Pretty woman? Foreign dream. What does it all mean?
A 20-Year-Old’s Midlife Crisis Lyrics by: Kaitlyn Purvis
Grabbed a bag, my favourite shirt, I’m leaving in the morning. I know it’s oftly sudden, but I’ve got to go. Bought a plane ticket at discount, it leaves at 9 am. I know it’s oftly sudden, but I’ve got to go. Taxi’s been called, thanks for the breakfast, I’ll sure miss home a lot. Don’t worry I’ll be back and we’ll pick up where we left off. Hello my dear, My end is fuzzy, but you sound as great as ever. I know it’s oftly sudden, but I’ve got to go. The phone calls get shorter, And I can’t let on my wonder where else my course has left to go. So long until I find my way back home again. Around here just isn’t what it’s been. So long, till I find my way back home again. Like the flowers in the Spring and the birds in the trees, I’ll find my way back home again. The streets down here are busy, The hills they are much higher, And the ocean tasted sweeter than they said it would have been. Down twisted road, I carried home, everything I own. I’ve missed you and I know it’s oftly sudden, but I’m coming home.
Footnotes
Shooting Stars
Hannah Briggs
Megan McGinley
If we keep reading one another like books, we’ll be disappointed by the lack of happy endings. We cannot contain people to prefaces, chapters, sequels, or volumes. We rise and fall with our actions and we’re both the heroes and the villains of our story arcs. We cannot solve love triangles or murders or mysteries in 300 pages or less. We cannot read all that someone has sacrificed, or the spark between two people that refuses to sizzle out. We can try, and we do try to read, in attempt to make sense of each other, but we cannot confine someone’s personality, as wide and deep as the visible universe, to the two-dimensional space in our brains reserved for reflection and resolution. If we keep reading people like books we’ll be disappointed because we’re not finite: we’re all subject to change.
You have guns for eyes shooting blue bullet stares. They hurt you more than they hurt me, I like the colour blue. You’re covered in salted scars. Still blood in your mouth from three weeks ago. I couldn’t taste metal in your kisses. When I kiss you let me grab your lips with my teeth, pull your skin off. After your neck, slide one arm out after the other, we’ll hang your sadness on the bathroom chair over night. I’ll sit with the moon breathe on your skin til’ there’s no sad cell left, no weeping pore. Love can’t fit in this room with us it bursts through your broken window into the night sky, salted with stars. I’ll cradle you like the moon you can shoot stars with your eyes.
art by Jill Smith
Pre-Dawn Enlightenment Matt Prout
My Sunday dawns are often black: blinds sealed, each noise a blot. But yesterday a white light flashed, and dreams gave way to life.
My mending eyes saw blurry green: fog-shrouded jungle and Sun. A sluggish river, thick and brown, nudged mist and sight downstream.
The ground below was tightly weaved: inked-dirt into lime-leaf and weed. The jungle-rug rippled, with no wind nearby: black lines quivered and wound.
A maunyi ant army is one-hundred soldiers: two-inch hunters, armed and plated for war. Stingers stab and teeth bite after being cleavedoff: with hot-pliers-twists in each pinch.
Maunyi don’t march on rivers— lifeblood of man and fish— But in water swam killers— razor teeth, stinging-gills.
One path seemed a vista— not home to fish or ant— and ’mid vine, plant, and root— grew ripe-red passion fruit.
Tomato-lemons, hard but moist: puckering-away jungle-must. Liquid-sugar streamed-through blood and sight: in shade, yellow eye-shines were spotted.
A steaming kettle swiftly screamed: eyes only swelled, still sleek. With whistle checked, Survivorman fled, as hands fingered sheets on my bed.
A mashed TV remote control began Sunday too soon. At first, events spawned cravings for journeys— in the end, I merely felt thankful for shelter— and blinds.
The block of marble cheese had been finished the night before and the only dairy that remained in her fridge was the individually wrapped, processed sheets of cheddar. She took two slices of bread and defiantly cast them into the toaster. With a glint of stubborn challenge, she looked to the stovetop to revel in her triumph. This was her apartment and she was a grown woman who could make grilled cheese in the toaster if she wanted to. Amber Westbrook was only starting out in the realm of stable adulthood, having finally pressed herself through the thick membrane of her early twenties and falling into a sway on the surface of twenty-five. Her boyfriend’s romantic presence in her life had been fluctuating in its three year duration, her own sinusoidal feelings for him having faded four months ago. Just a week ago he had expressed a desire for more a constant arrangement. Daniel offered her a move to his apartment in the downtown core and the adoption of the sirens and street noises of the night along with it. Amber’s flash of pride passed quickly when her gaze slid towards the living room. She glanced at the boxes that lined the fringes of her apartment, filled with the beginnings of her packing. Daniel had given her a key to his apartment that day which she had meant to drop back into his unsuspecting palm and thus begin her search for another key, another palm which she would hunger to merge with her own. Instead, her hand only twitched at her side as she let his pinky slowly curl around hers and allowed all the other fingers to follow. She captured the cheese in the now toasted bread slices, refusing to watch the light expose its synthetic surface. After placing the sandwich on a plate, she shut it in the microwave. Amber watched it spin slowly, the edges of the cheese slice conforming to the shape of the bread. The finished product was laid before her on the kitchen table, the cheese only half-melted into a disappointing configuration. The woman clutched her bangs in a fist and her chest heaved with the motion of sobbing, but her body only released muffled laughter as she took a bite of the sandwich while looking at the boxes around her. She ate it without gaining even a bit of satisfaction. She wasn’t hungry anymore.
Laura Brooks
Gilled Cheese Sandwhich
Memory as Film
A free-floating voiceless face,
her silence seduces my broken words cleaving to mimic her origin— a something shawled in skin blunting a soul that figures the veil. She’s expecting to be known ending the gaze like a period, as if I could be the final prophet and snuff us out the eternal maze, but the beams flicker and flee past the stretching frame and so does and so does
she; I am a projector caught on a reel, trying to seam prosthetic film.
Adam Mohamed
I remember that blooming day when sun tapered through glass, spilling quilted bands of green pastel; there was, among everything, a sequestered face half seen in and out of the absconded beam: she, a crypt, looked at me with etched inscriptions pressed in the deep blue of iris. I could not read what she saw at the scene.
artwork by Alexis Pronovost
Avant-Garde Mind Rayna Abernethy The fire started in my brain, and by the time it was done most of my memories were gone. Spontaneous combustion - I really should have gotten insurance. They hadn’t let my brain, they had just warped into something unrecognizable. That same moment of hesitation when you hear your voice for the first time on a family video. I gathered the ashes that were left, trying to salvage them into a pathetic attempt at architecture like children making sandcastles. What I was left with was avant-garde art, something you would find at the MoMA, a little plaque next to it: “Rayna’s Memories. Neurons and Synapses. Organic” written on it. I took stock of what I had left. I still remembered where I had broken my arm in the fourth grade (Children’s Museum). I still remembered the time I cheated on my French exam (and then won the award for highest mark in French). I still remembered the day my sister was born she pulled my hair (I still haven’t forgiven her). I still remembered my name, my birth date, where I lived, my friends’ names. All of my important memories were still there, a little singed on the edges maybe, but still intact. The minute details, however, details as fine as the intricate veins on a leaf, were gone. I wondered about those details, was I still the same person without them? Or was it like the theory of teleporting. That to be able to teleport our atoms would have to be disassembled and rearranged; you wouldn’t be the same person when you arrived from when you left. Infinitesimal shifts of the self.
The Essence of Strife Emily Wood Tell me that these scenes from the film of A life are bloopers that are fuzzy in the
Tell me that when it grows that there will Be a sound stage with music
Corners taken from security footage Up in your room when we did things
That sounds like the time when you Ate things for the look of them instead
Like lie and lie and lie and lie. Tell me that moment when the girl
Of for what they tasted like and those Things you eventually began to
Knows that she is holding a flower And that flower is coloured with
Dislike but still miss. Tell me these things will appeal to the
Guts and those guts are her own, And more begrudgingly, others’,
Murderer in me and the beekeeper too Working to kill but keep the buzz alive,
That she will put it in a vase and by Hollywood, My God, it will grow.
Trim the spirit, the fat, out.
Education Alex Glaros
A log wall rough hewn, with axe and laughter. A dock withering, sentinel to a thriving lake. Children turned adults learned to cook over fire, canoe, cut firewood. And now their children‌ A tv flickers, under flickering stars. Scrabble collects time, next to a Kobo while Attenborough plays the song of a bird from a speaker, or is it coming from outside?
artwork by Amy Skodak
A Game for the Fool Mack Hammond At first bred with such pure hope, and ignorance, and bliss; in winter it would breathe. So that when the snow fell down I would tilt back my head, open my mouth, and trust the world from which it came. Then a surprising lack of in-between. Seeming that it would take minutes, days, years for all I knew‌ but it would come. And among the trivial ways, beauty would appear: showing itself, then showing itself out. Winds can only whistle for so long before there is nobody left to hear them. But eventually, a love should last. In it: life anew, one for me, and one for you. The wonder of life, seen once through two. So that in time again, the ignorance grew.
front cover art by Alexis Pronovost