The McGill Tribune Creative Supplement Fall 2021

The McGill Tribune

Fall 2021

CREATIVE SUPPLEMENT

Untitled, Hugo Solomon

a brief history of a car crash Natalie Carberi I got into a car crash last year. I remember screaming as I turned swerved at the intersection, smashing into a bright red sports car. I broke my bank account paying the insurance fees. I broke my left wrist. I couldn’t write my final essay for English – I typed it one handed. It was supposed to be about what I wanted to do when I finished high school. I lied the entire way through.

I passed my driver’s test two months before the crash, a year before I met her, before I decided I’d rather spent money on university than a speedy metal box. My hands were shaking as I drove, but I passed.

I stuffed my permit in my wallet and the first thing I did was hit the highway. Nowadays, I think the first thing I would’ve done is call her. I would’ve offered her a ride and she would’ve said no.

“Marissa,” she would’ve said, voice staticky with bad reception, “Why are you laughing?”

Banging my hand on the dashboard, I would’ve told her, “Because now I have lower insurance fees.” And she would’ve laughed but she wouldn’t have gotten it. I would’ve hung up, and cranked the rock station.

I almost told her I loved her, once. We were sitting on the curb of an unlit street, waiting for the bus. We had a total of seven dollars twenty between us: she’d lost her wallet and I’d maxed all my credit cards.

The was gum stuck on the concrete. Montreal is wonderful until you have no money.

I amused myself by translating the road signs. She laughed at my French and told me the real translation, and I insisted she was wrong.

I offered her a cigarette and she smiled but said no. I shrugged and lit one even though I didn’t feel like smoking anymore: the embers lit up my fingernails until they were glowing red, and I thought they might catch fire.

There was no light, but I couldn’t help but thinking she’s gorgeous every half-second. She wouldn’t believe me if I did. She used to tell me that she was too skinny or not busty enough or unfashionable or whatever. I can’t see what she’s talking about. One day, I’d describe it to her in great detail. Probably while she was asleep.

So I had a pack of almonds, and I offered them to her. We hadn’t eaten dinner, but she still didn’t take me up on my offer. She’ll give me cookies and lend me money but never accept a thing in exchange. I wish she would.

It was dark, and I was half drunk, so bit my lip and tried to work out a love confession. I hate love confessions. There’s no way to make one without sounding pathetic. I tried to think of how to ask her out. The words were right there but I couldn’t say them. By the time I’d swallowed my pride, the bus’s gleaming headlights had pierced the hazy night, and she was already up and gone. I dropped the coins into her hands and thought about what it would be like if the bus crashed and we both died tonight, how I’d feel never having said a word to her. My fingers were over my pulse, the one on my left wrist, and I wondered what it’d feel like if she pressed her lips there.

I left university last year. Couldn’t stand having a permit but not a car.

Got a job as a truck driver. Sometimes she texts me: little things, so much schoolwork think you might’ve made the right decision. And I’ll laugh like I would’ve laughed if she’d ever asked me about insurance rates. The last thing she texted me was, you’ve got all the luck.

I laughed and responded with of course I do, but lucky people don’t get into car crashes.

Holding stars in your hand Ashlesha Shringarpure

Untitled Herrinah Zhang

Swallowing the Pip

Akasaka

Clementine Larrouilh

Jinny Moon

Unsettling how this colorado-weird settles Something to do with this Grippy sticky strangeness was it a want, did you need, I need To do: groceries - Citrus Upside-Down Cake something bitter in how my name tastes orange, get rosemary and oranges are love don’t forget are sun-soaked souls don’t forget the Nutmeg Flour and Butter but then, but what, but why did you do Was I sweet? Was I tempting? Did my peel entice? did you mean to do: you forgot the Sugar and Ginger The orange is a whole you Split into halves and quarters and eighths you Spat out the pips every unsavory bit And ate me alive for all of my tenderness

Montreal in November Laura Tobon

Untitled Hugo Solomon

Collage Study no. 12 John Vaccaro

Untitled, Like a Sigh Evelyn Burvant Yesterday I watched the earth make love to the sky.

It was violent and red, and the abyss above me was turned dark and bruised.

The clouds bent down to pool around mountain peaks and the sea reached her fingers up to stroke the moon.

The wind swept through every tree body tickling bark with their hollow tongues.

Like a painting every brush stroke was carried in the fingers of a god.

From here, where do I go? what do I do?

Like ships cast out into the maw of the waves I’m swallowed up and every piece of myself I thought I was drifts away hoping to cling to a bit of the sky or be lifted by the wind.

Maybe I will take in some of their grace, and feel the thunderstorm in my body still.

La fille de la rue de la Paix Quitterie Drouhet

Knot

Sébastien Géroli

Two Canadas

Kate Addison Erica Brown

snaggle toothed love

Sea and Sky

Kristiaan van den Hoeven The cold of the grass against my feet felt like bliss. My toes were brown from the garden. The hostas seemed lazy in the sun, dozing with the dog in the August heat.

The back of the yard was lined with a bush, and either side with a cedar hedge that always seemed to absorb every ball that flew into it, reluctant to offer them back up without the price of fifteen-second terror, scratched, reddened hands, and stomachs aching from laughter The soil in that part of the region was spongy and marshy because of its proximity to the river, and so maples predominated, but our backyard featured a crab apple tree that yielded nothing but those gnarled little things that made our beagle sick. We tried to make apple sauce once. We failed, but we laughed.

Urban forest canopied those winding streets, named after French départements that included charming, quaint names like ‘des Pyrénées,’ ‘des Vosges’ and ‘d’Alsace.’

The same six models of generous houses were reproduced, and people for whom the Canadian dream of the 1960s really had come true collected in the area.

But my mother didn’t send me to high school there. I went to school where the urban forest didn’t grow. Where the streets had potholes and were lined with squat, grey houses. Where the electricity lines failed to shelter the people from the glaring sun. Houses had only one car, or none. My neighbor had four.

It was a very different Canada from the one I knew. A Canada where kids had to save for their trip to Greece, where some kids didn’t have enough to eat, where my friends’ parents had substance abuse problems and they came to school with sleepless eyes and souls heavy and deprived of opportunity.

That Canada was just across the boulevard. But on this side, the sun filtered through green foliage into the lukewarm poolwater.

The Bison Erica Brown

Interaction Erica Brown

I will never have the wisdom of the bison, the calf asleep in the tall grass on the hill, the knowledge that comes from nearly knowing your end.

Reaching the edge of extinction, and coming back.

And yet, when I hold the jaw of the babe, He begins to share what he knows.

Against my own body, the top of the joint presses into my bicep, and the curvature follows the crook of my elbow, it fills the the palm of my hand, and tapers off perfectly at my thumb.

He sits in my arm - skull of the past and the present.

And though I get the sense that most of the knowing is held in the massive shoulders, The juvenile still plays loose with his thoughts, and they bleed all over.

Extracted right from the grass of the earth, and pounded by the molars that are only now loosening from the perfectly formed bone.

Relaxing into the duff and foliage of the forest floor.

He was in the process of seeping his knowledge back down into the dirt, that it had given to him in the first place, when I found him.

And I think when I hold the jaw I can feel some of the wisdom rubbing off into my arms.

So that when I hold the bone through the night, my dreams are enlightened, and the end doesn’t feel so final.

Walden Pond Maeve Reilly

Forbidden fruit Elise Bundschuh

Forever Stuck Yasmine Guroluk I made my way, through the trees, The wind whispering soft lullabies; The songs of nearby birds, traveling through the sky.

Dampened dirt, beneath my toes, Alone at last, no one to keep Satisfied; With lingering smiles, And innocent eyes.

Restless bones, and shattered souls, Cursing the past, that they stole, Always looking Over— A bruised shoulder.

It’s a... coming of age film.

A motion picture, blurred at the edges; Forever stuck, in my hometown.

Tomato Soup Rory Daly In a photo I think I have long since lost, a younger me sits in a high chair. All around me is my meal, a tomato soup that I am failing to eat. That is not to say it isn’t on my mouth—it is there, and on my hands, and on everything else in the picture. I cannot say I am less of a messy eater nowadays. However, I still enjoy a good soup.

I refuse to believe a man who knew the joys of soup could truly be disenchanted with life.

Tasmin Chu

But of those paintings, there is one that is strangely out of place. It is his greatest work—a simple illustration of two elders eating soup. One of the pair is smiling. The other is making finger guns at someone or something we cannot see.

study in red

There are no works as haunting as the Black Paintings of the Spanish artist Francisco Goya. In a house on the edge of Madrid, he made his finest works, expressing misery for the condition of his patria, which was slowly backsliding into a medieval state after years of reforms. They say each is dripping with this melancholy and disillusionment.

Letter from the Editors: The McGill Tribune is proud to present the Fall 2021 Creative Supplement, highlighting the creativity of the McGill community in the form of poetry, prose, photography, illustration, and mixed media. We appreciate all of the excellent submissions; we had a great time putting the project together. Though the last year has been difficult, it is inspiring that artists have persevered and sought out creative outlets amidst the chaos. We hope that as you wander through the pieces, you can discern the hard work and talent of each creator, and the feelings they are trying to express.

Ruobing Chen, Creative Director Jinny Moon & Xiaotian Wang, Design Editors Marwan Shiraz Khan & Abby de Gala, Web Developers Sequoia Kim, Editor in Chief Taneeshaa Pradhan, Social Media Editor Kate Addison, Photo Editor Sepideh Afshar, Opinion Editor Lily Cason, News Editor Tasmin Chu, Features Editor Sarah Farnand, Sports Editor Kennedy McKee-Braide, Managing Editor Shafaq Nami, Science & Technology Editor Noah Vaton, Multimedia Editor

Night Out, Yanna Tri