offSIDE February 2010 by Black Moss Press

OffSIDE A Black Moss Press E- Magazine

February 2010

Featuring : Sandi Wheaton Terry Griggs and Robert Earl Stewart

It’s not every day that you get to meet some of the great personalities behind a great book, but talking with Terry Griggs, was one of the most interesting conversations I’ve had in a long time. She is every bit as humurous and insightful as her writing, which her interview with Amber Pinsonneault shows. This issue begins with insights from poet Robert Earl Stewart and bestselling author Terry Griggs, who enlighten us on their writing practices and the state of writing and publishing. It also includes one of my favourite passages from Griggs’ newest Novel Thought You Were Dead; a novel that defies classification, though working on the fringe of the mystery genre. We are proud to bring you a special Top Shelf this month: photos from Sandi Wheaton’s photoroute66, which we also used for our covers this month. Rather than attempting a critical response to Sandi’s stunning photography, I’ll let these images speak for themselves. Enjoy! I know I sure did.

Chris Andrechek Managing Editor

Contents: 3 5

Robert Earl Stewart Interview

February 2010

Earl Stewart’s Select Poetry Publisher: Marty Gervais

Terry Griggs Interview 7 Selection from Thought You Were Dead 9

Managing Editor: Chris Andrechek Editors: Amber Pinsonneault Jordenne Rachelle

Top Shelf featuring Sandi Wheaton 10

Designer: Chris Andrechek Poetry and Prose 12 Front and Back Cover photos: OffSIDE is an e-magazine operated by BLACK MOSS Sandi Wheaton PRESS, a Canadian publishing house that has been in operation for more than 40 years. We publish poetry, fiction, non-fiction and photography. Many of our books have won national and international awards. Send submissions for OffSIDE to offsidezine@gmail. com Black Moss Press 2450 Byng Road Windsor, Ontario, Canada N8W 3E8

Produced by the Black Moss Press editorial team in conjunction with the English Department at the University of Windsor.

Robert Earl Stewart to follow up his debut book, Something Burned Along the Southern Border is hard at work on a novel, poetry and some short stories. With her newest young adult novel, Nieve, set to hit the shelves this April and working as Writer-inResidence for the University of Windsor, Terry Griggs is a busy author this time of year. But both Earl Stewart and Griggs were kind enough to take the time to sit down with OffSIDE’s Amber Pinsonneault to talk about their works and writing in general.

Robert Earl Stewart Amber Pinsonneault:What made you want to write? Rober Earl Stewart: Falling in love with books at a young age made me want to write. By the time I was in third grade, I was totally hooked on reading and, not surprisingly, it’s become a life-long obsession. At first, it was The Hardy Boys and The Three Investigators, but then I moved into more ‘serious’ (for lack of a better term) books by John Bellairs, Daniel M. Pinkwater, Paul Zindel, Gordon Korman and those books dovetailed into Salinger, Vonnegut, Fitzgerald, Nathanael West, Thomas Pynchon, right through to the novelists like Joshua Ferris, Jess Walter, Roberto Bolano, Jonathan Lethem, Haruki Murakami, Alix Ohlin, and poets like John Ashbery, Albert Goldbarth, Karen Solie, Campbell McGrath and James Tate that I’m reading right now. As diverse as that lot sounds, it was a very seamless progression. But very early on, when I picked up those frightening John Bellairs books, and those freaky Daniel M. Pinkwater and Paul Zindel books, I realized that there was a lot of cachet that came with being a writer, and I liked that. I liked the power writers had over me, and the other people I knew who loved books. I also liked the power writers also had over people who feared books and reading. I still like that. There’s a shamanistic side to writing and being a writer. Being that conduit between ideas and the paper; interpreting the world for others—there’s a lot of magic in there. I like the magic. AP:Do you remember your first poem, how have you grown from it? RS: There’s a poem in Something Burned Along the Southern Border (my debut collection) called “The History of Baseball”. It’s not the first poem I ever wrote, but it’s the first poem I wrote after an 11 year hiatus from writing poetry. It was a very conscious hiatus. I wasn’t interested in poetry during those

years. I wasn’t reading any poetry. I was writing fiction (with little success as far as getting anything published goes). So, when I was moved to write “The History of Baseball”—and it happened very suddenly; I literally leapt out of a pool of water to run upstairs and write it down—it had a very fiction-like narrative to it. Really, it’s a story about watching my wife teach our son Nathanael how to hit a baseball off a tee on his second birthday. A lot of those earlier poems were longer, more narrative-based, with a “lower lyrical density” (as my good friend and poet Paul Vermeersch would say). Over time, with more exposure to a world of poetry I didn’t even realize was out there five or six years ago, I think I’ve been able to move away from narrative in more of my poetry, though I still enjoy a good narrative poem. I enjoy mistranslations and other poetic experiments, now. I also enjoy fixed forms life haiku, sonnets and sestinas. I’ve had good teachers and mentors who have coaxed me out of comfort zones. AP: How did you feel after having your first collection of poetry published? RS: Blessed. And I mean that. Blessed. Nothing in my life feels so horrible or urgent now. Just getting the phone call from Stuart Ross, my editor at Mansfield Press, in Nov. 2008, telling me they wanted to published my book—it was an indescribable sense of excitement and relief all at once. As I writer, there’s always self-doubt. At least, there is for me. Sometimes, it’s a crushing self-doubt. So, finding out that someone else thinks it’s worth something, that it’s publishable, is very affirming. In some cases, it’s even vindicating.

“I liked the power writers had over me, and the other people I knew who loved books. I still like that.”—Robert Earl Stewart Not everyone thought I was doing the right thing, wanting to be a writer; being willing to sacrifice traditional domestic roles, employment and financial opportunities. I realized I was doing the right thing. I was following an instinct that was of me, but has very little to do with me—writing and poetry chose me, not me it. Now, of course, there’s a whole new set of pressures in trying to write something that is at least as good, and hopefully better than, and different from, the first book. These are good pressures to have, though.

AP:What is the process of your writing? RS: One of my creative writing workshop participants just asked me something similar the other night: He asked me what his writing process should be, and I was thankful to be able to tell him that I had no answer for that, just as I’m glad to be able to say I don’t think I have any discernible writing process. If I do, it’s completely opaque to me. I carry a 192-page, lined Moleskine notebook (orange label) and pens with me everywhere I go. I always write stuff down. I spend a lot of time sitting in front of my computer. I print up every version of every poem I write and date and number them. I back stuff up onto an external hard drive as well as onto the Internet for safe-keeping. I think having a day job, being a husband and father of three, plus the part-time creative writing workshop job, and being involved in a few other things outside of the home, prevents me from having a set writing schedule. I read and write a lot in a some select coffee houses and bookstores around Windsor and Essex County. I listen to music when I write. I can’t imagine breaking it down to a process. AP: How long does it take you usually to write one poem? RS: I’ve written poems in one take in 25 seconds. I’ve written poems that have 17 numbered and dated revisions over several months. I have no idea what’s going to happen when I start writing a poem. I work on it until I’m satisfied. AP: Did you learn more from the poets you studied in University or those you discovered on your own? RS Definitely the one’s I discovered on my own. I read some great poets in University, though: Ondaatje, Berryman, Lowell, Hardy, Hopkins, Eliot, Pound, Dickey…. But, like I said earlier, they didn’t excite me the way fiction writers like Thomas Pynchon, David Foster Wallace, Cormac McCarthy and Paul Auster excited me. It wasn’t until I stumbled upon poets like David Berman, James Tate, Billy Collins, Campbell McGrath, D. Nurkse, Paul Vermeersch, A.F. Moritz, David McFadden, Matthew Zapruder and Christian Hawkey that I got into poetry—and that was four years after I finished my M.A. that I stumbled on any of those poets. It was meant to happen that way. I’m certain of that. AP: What inspires you the most from a day-to-day basis?

RS:Books, my wife and children, and a really simple belief that I am doing what I was put here to do. AP:What challenges do you encounter while writing? RS: The Canadian fiction writer Lee Henderson said “Work is the murderer of writing.” I believe that. And if you’re wondering what he’s talking about, he’s taking about time. Finding the time to write is a challenge. And although I’ve already explained how I don’t have a process to my writing, that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t appreciate more time in which to not have a process. Self-doubt can also be a challenge. There are times when I’m just not satisfied with my output—I don’t feel connected to myself or the world and I try to be more open to things, like a receiver, but then I sometimes feel like I’m forcing it and I get caught in this mode where I’m literally walking through the grocery store wondering if anything that’s going on around me is a poem. Usually, by this point, I am aware of how I’ve stepped into this trap again, and I know the way out is to simply not struggle against it—like quicksand or a stiff current. Reading is the way out. Not reading to be over influenced, but reading to be immersed in the entertainment and joy of good books. AP:What are you currently working on? RS:Well, I’ve got a bunch of poems written for whatever collection comes next. It’s got a working title, and a lot of it stems from being a newspaperist in the county. One poem “The County Reporter” is a multi-part poem that covers some gruesome, traumatic stuff I covered in my first summer with The Windsor Star—including a kid getting hit by a train on the way home from a bush party, a former Windsor mayor being killed in a car accident, and the emotional brutality of a 4-H livestock auction at the Harrow Fair. I’ve also got a bunch of short stories that are in various states of disrepair on note form. And, the novel I started working on in Feb. 2001 is now back in play, celebrating it’s ninth year as a work-in-progress. AP: OffSIDE magazine also features students looking to be published, what would you say to them to keep them inspired? RS:Don’t be intimidated by nay-sayers, but don’t be closed off and ineducable, either. I always tell my creative writing workshoppers that if there’s one skill I could impart to them that would help their writing, it would be reading. I don’t think young writers, or any would-be writers, read enough. And you should read contemporary stuff. Don’t read strictly within the safe

confines of the canon or the syllabus. Take chances with what you’re reading, and take chances with your writing. If you’re willing to listen, and grow and put in the effort, then someone is going to notice. And, despite self-doubt, if you know what you’re doing is good, you’ll know it in your gut.

Malt Shaft

© 2010 Robert Earl Stewart Chastised for not visiting him in the hospital, we hadn’t the big, cold heart of the prairies, yet (it hadn’t developed in us, the tenantless gulfs of the void, working in the guts of a malt elevator); hadn’t the thirst unslakable, to tell him how he’d leapt in the strobing of space,

He’s seven and he’s standing in front of Adolphe Vogt’s Coming Storm During Harvesting. He stands out like an amber-gold field against the purple storm— from one coordinate of the room to the next, a cartoon skeleton alternating corona and abyss, a stand of birches turning the rare white of their backsides to the crescendo, the lightning of the whip— and the nothingness before the instant of creation, and he says he will paint a painting called The Beautiful Lake, and it will be of people standing in a church, gripping the cable with smoke, looking at a piece of paper and praying. and fingers of smoke becoming ash, I am afraid for him. Buoyed and afraid because I know and how we laughed, hysterically, it might be a struggle for happiness until we cried, passing him rigid as a plank, for someone so sensitive; who sits on a bench before a cartoonish painting of a doe-eyed blonde’s head up the shaft to daylight, wreathed in blossoms, where our cachinnations rang like demons. and says “there was a huge fire at her town and she was the only one to survive it,” when told Christmases what the painting’s called: there are bunnies in space, © 2010 Robert Earl Stewart kittens in baskets. Bizarre hats, deer sleeping in trees. Three men lean on shovels in the snow, When we see where the band is setting up for a wedding, staring at a point in the air. we consider running home and putting on Carrying twenty-three dollars of kielbasa our nice shirts and ties and coming back for dinner, wrapped in butcher’s paper, on which claiming to be cousins of the bride. I’ve written an anonymous letter, I am lured in tighter by the falconry of their gravitas. So Long, Vince Guaraldi My intent was to finesse this year’s © 2010 Robert Earl Stewart installment between the doors, a coiled child in swaddling clothes, Where most used and rare shops have a cat, but I am insinuated as the fourth— this one has me, stretched out below Freemasonry, a father and his grown sons, a bear in a track suit, thrown recklessly around a man paying a sausage-based debt— and introduced to a spot in the chimney an armchair, under a wooden giraffe; where you can see straight through under the wooden cross-hatching of mullions; to the sky, the pressures of a hundred under the spell of the mystics making hay Christmases, the attendant winds and thaws having loosed in the self-help section, and ready to smash the mortar to a space Vince Guaraldi’s piano to fucking pieces my son expects fireflies to inhabit for another note in the afternoon’s alphabetical forest, in the summer. blackballed like an irreligious libertine and stripped of his acacia laurels. Just over my shoulder a pictorial biography of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, 1910-1997

Terry Griggs Pink Eye

© 2010 Robert Earl Stewart I have resorted to pageant threats, asking my daughter what hospital she would like to attend in the antiseptic cold of a night so dark it’s dry. She’s refusing to take her medicine and weighs her pediatric options— The mouldering Catholic? The sleek Metropolitan? And Christmas is streaming past the van windows, ever-changing frames of film of space station control panels. If only one of the fleeting buttons could help me right this ship, correct the trajectory of this impossible threat, get some medicine down her throat and deliver me from futile fraudulence in the eyes of a feverish little girl, her cheeks scalded hardpan stung sparkling with tears beneath the solstice. Her brothers have tried to bribe her to drink the apothecary down with drawings of her looking strung out pink and mummified on a plan-view bed; also, something conjured out of blocks and beads: the grey one so alligators don’t destroy the sun; the blue so sharks don’t destroy the moon.

Phantom Limb

© 2010 Robert Earl Stewart Kenesaw Mountain Landis’ father’s leg is pressed somewhere into the mud of Kenesaw Mountain, Georgia, like a rib going back to the clay, and staking out a name. The leg called out to the once and future Commissioner of Baseball from the smoke of the battlefield, a meteorite of bone and muscle churned under the mountainside by the gun wheels as Sherman closed on Merrietta, lost forever in the slide of gore; an Ohio surgeon’s forelock disappeared in the confused and angry south— he was its embodiment in the world, and he exacted its bidding: on the red scourge organizing on the post-Reconstructionist beach heads; on the transporting of women across state lines for purposed unbecoming of the former heavyweight champion; grinding the Black Sox out against the millstone of his heel, before entering the A’s clubhouse and asking Mickey Cochrane for that tea.

Amber Pinsonneault:When did you begin writing? Terry Giggs: I began writing when I was a child, but not in any consistent way. Many writers speak of filling up notebooks with fledgling novels as children, but not me. I was too busy running everywhere, doing kid stuff. Writing more determinedly took hold in highschool, got deferred in university--although some of my essays were pretty creative, not sure how I got away with that--and then I returned to it post-graduation. I began publishing around 1982. AP: What motivates you the most to write? TG: I’m most often motivated by language itself. This may be some sort of neural quirk, but I’ve always found words themselves fascinating--plump with information and suggestive. A casual browse through the dictionary can turn up any number of ideas. Some words will catch my eye and I’ll feel a thrill of interest. They just seem to spring open, secret doors into unknown rooms. Beyond that, I’m motivated by subtext. By the mysterious goings-on beneath the surface of daily life. What does story telling represent for you? Either through your own writing or others? Story-telling makes life richer, I think, more comprehensible. Stories can deepen the understanding of one’s own life, the lives of others, the culture-anything going really. They’re an emotional resource, and story-telling can give you a sense of control over what is largely uncontrollable, which is psychologically useful. Lorrie Moore, the American writer, has a neat theory about this, about why we make art. She says that it’s something that has evolved, hard-wired in the brain, to keep us interested in ourselves as a species, so that we don’t get numbed out by consumerism or apathy. Or despair, you could add. It keeps us thinking and engaged. For my part, though, story-a telling is primarily an aesthetic endeavour and need have no worthier aim than entertainment, high or low. AP: How does your process of writing evolve and how long does it take you to write?

TG: The process typically begins with a generative scrap. Not a fight--that would be lively!--but a small something, a word, or phrase, a title, an opening sentence, an image, an anecdote, an observation. It can come from anywhere, but whatever it is, it persists. For some reason, it gets snagged in my head. I don’t question this, why it appears to have relevance--and resonance. Eventually, if it doesn’t fade away, it will take on substance, or unfold, and other seemingly non-related fragments will begin to attach themselves to it. When this happens I start a notebook so that I won’t forget anything. If this doesn’t happen, then it may retain a glow of interest, but is too limited or thin to pursue. A nifty conceit, but not much beyond that. The writing itself begins when it feels opportune--you just plunge in--and is fairly openended and exploratory. But it has direction--it’s more like walking on thin ice than in thin air, and generally proceeds with an inch-worm velocity. Once begun, a novel may take on average, three to four years. A children’s novel, a year or two. Hard to say, as I sometimes work on more than one thing at a time and distractions of all kinds invariably get in the way. AP: Who has influenced your writing? TG: No idea, but I’m very fond of the stylists. Those who write with verbal flair and humour. AP: How do you think of a title for a short story or novel? TG: Titles show up without much effort. Unless they don’t, of course--then they’re impossible. As mentioned above, a title can often provide the starting point of the whole deal--it’s the tophat out of which I pull the rabbit. Even if it’s not, I’d be loathe to start something without a title. Even my grocery lists have them. It rarely happens, but a title might change in the course of the writing or during the publishing process. My novel Rogues’ Wedding was called The Iconoclast’s Journal up to the last moment. I prefer that one actually, although it was unpopular at the publishing house.

“If an editor were to roll up his/her sleeves and say to me, “Well, let’s get to work!”, I’d clear the room fast.” —Terry Griggs

Excerpt from, Thought Your Were Dead, AP: Do you edit your own work a lot? TG: Yes, rigorously. If an editor were to roll up his/ her sleeves and say to me, “Well, let’s get to work!”, I’d clear the room fast. I don’t mind some editinglite if it makes sense, or copyediting, but otherwise I know what I’m doing and I strive for exactitude. I don’t need someone with a BA in English advising me. Hunting down meaning in a manuscript, editors can be tone-deaf to the rhythm in a sentence, or overlook the total weave. In the biz this attitude is seen as misguided and arrogant, but . . . tough. An art dealer wouldn’t suggest to an artist that s/he change elements in a visual work, would they? “What’s with the coy little smile, Leonardo, can’t you make her laugh? Let’s see some teeth here.” That sort of thing. AP: Your use of language is extraordinary; does this come easily to you? TG: It comes naturally, if not easily. Language is the main attraction for me--in writing and reading. Give me an involved or intricately structured or wittily deployed piece of prose. Something spendthrift and generous-hearted. I’m not a fan of the laconic, stripped-down style. I should add, though, that in writing, I don’t want the language to eclipse the other compositional elements. I love a good story, artfully told. AP: What experiences of yours make the transformation into your writing and why? TG: Much of my work up until recently focuses on island life, in one form or another. I grew up on Manitoulin Island in Lake Huron, and that was clearly a formative experience. Again, not a lot of the island writing concerns my experiences there directly, but the imagery, the small-town life, the stories in which I was immersed, have all been important sources. I was raised as a Catholic and that’s gone into the mix. With regard to such writerly strategies as killing off characters, drowning has been my death of choice--and that, unfortunately, is another not uncommon island experience. One with a literary pedigree at least.

YA novel, Nieve, satisfies my darker inclinations. And while there are fantastical elements in all of my work, fantasy has a much freer rein in the kids’ books, which I enjoy. I guess my fav genre is something of a combo, whatever has some stretch in it--a hybrid and more accommodating form. The satirical mystery I’ve recently published, Thought You Were Dead, is part detective fiction, part farce, part orphan narrative . . . a book of many parts. Which is not going to make your typical mystery reader overly happy, but it amused me well enough. AP: Are you a writer full time? TG: I am. Not sure how I’ve manages to pull it off so far except to say that I’ve never gotten around to some other more sensible and lucrative pursuit. Many of the people I know who are my age are now retiring, or close-to, so I guess it’s kind of late for me to become a neurosurgeon. Although I might--beware. Otherwise, I’ll just have to keep writing until I hit the wall. AP: What word do you constantly find yourself havinghard time spelling? TG: Ha, points for an original question. Ocassionally. No, it’s . . .occassionnally? I always have to look that one up, and not just occasionally. Something about the double consonants throws me, or makes me want more of them, perhaps from the habit of my own name. AP: Say something, anything, controversial.

TG: Another original one! Okay, let’s see. Of the countless numbers who take up writing (a worthy pursuit, no question), many have their hearts set on publishing, naturally enough, without realizing that if they manage it (tricky in itself ) they’ll be entering the service industry. Not flipping burgers exactly, it’s more like selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door, but with less remuneration. Publishers expect writers to hustle in every way possible, unless they are among the elite of top-earners. Basically, you get to be both the organ grinder and the monkey. As J.D. Salinger is quoted as saying in a recent remembrance of him in The New AP: What type of genre do you enjoy writing the most? Yorker, “There are no writers anymore. Only bookselling louts and big mouths.” That being the case, I’ll now shut up. TG: It’s hard to pick a favourite. Although writing is never easy, I have a good time doing whatever I’m involved in. The children’s books are great fun to write and have given me considerable pleasure. The Cat’s Eye Corner series is a bit madcap, and that suits a certain aspect of my temperament, whereas my new

by Terry Griggs Courtesy of Biblioasis Press

Elaine made a mnph! Sound of compacted exasperation, internal gears being stripped, and stalked off. Chellis followed at a discreet distance, ducking behind slowmo mall-crawlers, practicing his gumshoe trailing technique. She strode purposefully into a lingerie shop, which he knew was a bluff. Elaine never shopped for sexy underwear, being a devotee of non-nonsense, 100% cotton granny pants. If Vaughan was getting to pull lacy thong undies off Elaine’s lovely rear with her perfect teeth, Chellis was prepared to shoot himself. But he didn’t think so. Peering through the store window and observing her as she flipped through racks of scanty, silky merchandise, he could tell that her thoughts were running more on practical, inventive lines than on erotic ones. He knew her. She was the girl-next-door. Literally at one time, when they had all been growing up together, she and he and Hunt. In those days, the door of her house had been painted an eye-ball-peeling red, whereas now, on uppity Hitchcock Crescent it was an elegant, mist-grey-creating an illusion of easy entry-and heavily, brassily beknockered. (As was the woman who swished past him into the store. Two highly convincing power points! She gave him a sidelong, knowing look.) Elaine may have exchanged one door for another, and one raucous, brawling working-class family for a small, smug, nouveau rich set, but she herself has not changed…much. Her head swiveled sideways like an owl sensing a minute, but telling, disturbance in its personal space. Chellis ducked down and ooched along until he was beyond the store window and its pornish, get-with-itprudes display. He found himself facing the open entrance of the next shop, which happened to be a bookstore, which also happened to be what he needed. Heck with Elaine. She’d come looking for him anyway, annoyed that he wasn’t still shadowing her. Crouched, he was wellpositioned to perform a zippy Russian Cossack dance – a suitable bit of ethnic, mall entertainment – but instead, knees creaking, he rose and stretched. He could stretch willfully all day and not achieve a truly towering height, but contented that he’d been restored to his full, dignified self, he entered this commercial establishment where the clerks might not have gained any intimacy with the wars on display, but at least rarely asked if they could help you. Not bloody likely, was the only true answer to that. What a relief, this linguistic oasis, even if it was a chain and pervaded by a mallesque unreality. Here be books. Here be books to slake and concentrate and revive the wandering and dehydrated mind. Here be

books on sale. Last season’s must-haves heaped on front tables and reduced to the price of bum wad. Buy a stack and stock your privy; be blessed with piles of a more edifying nature. Chellis was not immune to the lure of a good bargain when it presented itself, but he found the remainder table depressing and indecent. Words are cheap. He hustled past, eyes averted in case he got snagged by a title he’d meant to read when it was all the rage. He wandered more slowly through the fiction section, Mrs. Havlock’s contributions winking slyly at him as he passed by. As previously instructed by the author, he stopped to place a few volumes face out, dimming the lights of the competition by either smothering their books with hers, or misfiling them. He occasionally did this for less-knowns as well, obscure writers he happened to like. Chellis, the Robin Hood of literary distribution- or the Puck. In the genre section her volumes were all spine, but these did not require his gallantry. Her darlings here had grown legs, as they say in lit biz. Legs! They were veritable centipedes that scrambled off the shelves and into customers’ hands, where they dug in their little heels and clung fast. These books could not be put down, as they also say. Chellis skimmed past the kids’ section, letting himself be tangentially seduced by covers burgeoning with magicians, pirates, bears in pants, and a worm sporting a Tyrolean hat. He was seriously tempted to sit down on the juvenile chair provided and have a long, lingering read of Goodnight Moon. That bunny, now there was character development. And mystery. And a bowl full of mush. Chellis knew that his inner child would be thrilled and his outer one becalmed, but he did not pause. The How-To books were beckoning. But, goodnight brain, the Dummies and their ilk had apparently conquered and wiped out the humble, non-nonsense indigenous species. How did this work? You tell people that they’re stupid and inept and they can’t get enough of it and make you a millionaire? Right, so, Chellis perused the wares on offer: The Cro-Magnon Guide to Accounting; The Bonehead’s Book of Autopsies; Meatloaf Instruction for Meatheads; Modern History in Monosyllables; Checkers for the Cranially Challenged; The Little Book of Aphorisms for Little Minds; Lafs for Losers; The No-Brainer Guide to Advanced Calculus and Gardening; The Sun Also Rises, eh? Astronomy for Assheads; You Wittle Wascal: Tantric Sex for Fuddists; Clueless: The Dolt’s Manual of Detection…wait, Chellis paused over this last one, then reached up to pull it off the shelf.

Shelf Top

Windsorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Sandi Wheaton journeyed a month along the historic Route 66 from Chicago to Los Angeles taking over 60,000 photos, both digital and on black and white infrared film. The result: pictureroute66. Featured in OffSIDE this month is a slice of Wheatonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s awe-inspiring project. For More on pictureroute66 go to http://sandiwheaton.com/ or check out her work at the Art Gallery of Windsor at the Here in My Car exebition running until March 28th.

The question eating away at damaged, young parts of me- how do I tell my mother my brother is getting married? It’s ingrained in me like some ancient female blood rite, some dependant murmuring from Jewish ancestry of the “good daughter”. “My brother’s getting married in August. Did you know?” Does she know? No one knows. She’s not invited. He has adopted himself into a motherless kind of world, where his women are blonde and love him unconditionally without limit. My dad found his blonde, appropriately a therapist, his my-mother replacement; she’s breezy, light, airy, thin, a little wisp of woman who eats only whole and organic foods. I remember being thirteen and finally caving into my own sense of worthlessness after a night of leaning over the toilet pouring snot and tears into the septic tank. Facing my dad and another day in the morning, telling him I needed therapy. “Dad, I need therapy.” Enter therapist: willowy limbs and electrified platinum in combination children’s clothes and tailored too-big everything else. I remember looking at the main seams and estimating where her edges cut sharply into the air between her and her suit. She’s tiny. Easily broken. She was the second-try blonde: a little more bleach, a little less crazy. Than the first, the cop, the woman with power radiating out of her bones and a sad, sad smile; she ran away to Mexico and told no one. She came back with a tan. She still talks to me sometimes. My mother was everything dark and dense when I was a kid. I remember her hair, and how it felt like straw. Resting in between her breasts, just tall enough to perch my chin on the middle strap of her bra, with masses of black silk drenched down her back and covering me. She was in shadows, she was shadowed- I have a distinct picture of her face, and the big purple bags swinging below her half-awake gaze. I could close her eyelids with my fingertips and she would drift to sleep. She was exhausted. I don’t remember a lot about the time when my family included her, as she was then, still calling herself by an English name, staying up for weeks delivering life into the world and sucking her own out. I felt her hands one day and she was an old woman, paper thin, wasted away, spotted and worn out in all the spots that worry rubs. In between, I have flashes. I remember her crying over supper. Gabe, being screamed at around the dinning room table. Hiding underneath the edge of my parent’s bed and pretending the rest of the world didn’t exist. I remember walking out onto the back porch, watching my dad brush off

his knees and his cheeks and turning away from my mother to smile and greet me- they both cried a lot. She left on thanksgiving weekend when I was eleven, and all I saw was a box of Kleenex disappear into bits of cardboard in my hands and then blank for about two years. Then I found my own blonde: sugar sweet and addicted to cocaine, full of fire and burning up quickly. I loved the purity of the heat of her passions, especially for me. I spent hours, days, our whole relationship, touching her, like soothing a tortured animal; she had never been made love to. Her body revolted against orgasm, and before she ever came she had to get rid of flashbacks. A heart I had no idea was frozen inside me melted into a puddle of wet hot intensity. She put her trust in me. I put myself in her. I found inside herstory: gang violence and robbery, sex and drugs, abortion and guns, addiction and mental illness, abuse and trauma, self-inflicted pain and blood. I would write her story, but it is not mine. I got lost in it, gave her my ears and my heart and skin and eyes and tongue. When she flipped, she became her past- and all she wanted was a future with me. I listened, harder than anyone before, in awe that she was alive every time she took a breath, amazed she could still stand after baseball bats, worried every time her breath faltered or I could feel her feening. I came home... to our bed, quaking and shaking and I carried her down the hallway to the shower dripping blood. I could do nothing but clean her, hold her, be as careful as I could to find where she had cut and heal what she had no idea she had done. She was less than a child to me then, an animal- dirty and vulnerable. I have never bathed anyone before. She needed therapy, and I told her often (though she didn’t listen to me). I needed therapy to get her out of my life. I closed the door on her huge pupils and gaping slack jaw when she couldn’t speak. There was nothing I could do but go to bed. We’d had a party for Halloween, “Devil’s Night Down the Rabbit Hole”: she drank too much and didn’t remember the night, including buying MDMA and tripping out in the bathroom by herself for 8 hours after the party was over. Covered in vomit, joker make-up smeared down the wall and decorating the toilet bowl which she hugged; an image so vividly seared into my head I had to paint it to define it. I woke up the next morning and told her she should never drink again. And, while she lay on the bathroom floor and told me her whole body was in pain (her denial is physical) I sat on the toilet and explained to her that her body hurt because she was upset, but that I was breaking up with her. She had invited eleven of her friends that weekend to stay in our small house. I cried all day all over the house to each one of them

individually. No one went upstairs to check on her- her friends are the ones who know better and just say, “It’s just her, she’ll be fine.” And then we went our separate ways for the Christmas break. I spent the whole time telling each of my friends all the things that’d been happening in my life: a simple version, but the whole truth. I was horrified each time by the reactions, and I realized how she haunted me. We came back to the same house. She’d spent the break drinking and finding a new girlfriend- she abashedly told me, “I drink now, it’s not a big deal, don’t worry about it.” In my head I screamed and ran away from the person I knew she was allowing herself to be. I let her stay in the house for another month. She was finishing her highschool degree, two simple credits away and two years too late: it was the only other reason she’d moved in with me so far away from her friends and family. I became more and more afraid each day I watched her- scared by her proximity, how little she understood or cared for my thoughts on her behaviour. I stopped sleeping and eating. She slept with her door open and I couldn’t enter the hallway to piss. The day she was out of the house and I finally moved out all of my clothes from “our” room I had a panic attack and thought I was going to die. I found myself bawling on the phone to my father, expressing my fear of her and old buried fears of my brother’s addiction to coke. I lost all trust in her. I put it all together, and more than the sum total was that I had never wanted to so violently throw someone out of my life, and had never had to before. I told her she needed to leave, herself, that I didn’t care how long it took for her to collect her things but that she could no longer be in my home. She shrugged it off, and left. I found myself. I found my voice. And I finally lost my writer’s block.

The Office Worker

Under her suit sleeves, hiding pin-prick holes, twisted ink ran up her arm: barbed wire, deranged dragons, and mangled hearts, all of which blurred with fervor and fury as she strummed her dissonant chords. Months passed of peace at night, awake and undreaming, murmuring the reveries we gave up on when we signed our souls to these lives. In the quiet moments of pristine dark, and barely burning candlelight she made shadow puppets of dogs, of elephants of Dostoyevski’s beard. Suddenly she transferred, and I never saw her again. She got a memo from GOD, The real God. A promotion, I guess.

Friends in a Quaker meeting are a bouquet – are the hand clutching the bouquet. Are red cardinal flowers – birds along the banks of Georgian Bay. We’ve been meeting an hour a week for 200 years. We gesture outward; birds

poised between resting and lifting – I knew a girl once. At work, she sent out memos, ended them From GOD; Glorified Ordering Dimwits a.k.a. upper management. She’d page me to her office Just to hand me a post-it that read “I kind of like you, I guess.”

a silence held as Naveeta holds her orange sarong wide of her body in order to wrap it, to wind the string round her waist, to tie it.

In that moment something floats away or gives rise to the present – the way my eyes fly open.

Electronicus

© 2010 Brayden Beaulieu A string of ones and zeros hangs me feet above the ground. The breathlessness of circuits balances movement every purpose complete. I am a sleepless shell carrying emptiness— wires microchips unable to dream the machine. I never dream what I am. Now words fall flat from dented speakers. Ink sprays blue and blotted onto white paper. I do not know the words the language I once spoke or any language deeper than OPEN CLOSE

crisp brown-yellow; freckled green perched dying-gaze to the recurring scene earthy triumphant; receding life for day is day, but tonight is night green-brown-black; black-brown-green but all going black for today is .

ace to face I’ve played my hand tick tock jack fooled round with Queen or it seems to give Regan her place to where my ace has gone rather to rip my king he’s had his fun with her and hates his friend a fish hook only 2 Queens are better to double up, down round and round with jack did she ever for the “lucky ladies” however, it’s rarely played with such scare and dare to give king a chance to win his coin and my chips however, the dealer chooses my bestest Joker to come on by and move queenie over oh, that Joker how he laughs and cries and so does king with queenie looking to jack as my king and Joker are quite the lookers and steal the coin from the middle deal my 2’s are looking double I would never split them up unless they were king and queen but after, finally finale with a boom my rockets come to my pocket and to where he’s gone? Here in my pocket is the ace with his twin staring at my face I play them off, since they’re young and my chips start to create a wall Kingdom, rather and the twins beat their parents king queen have great offspring to cash out on

poet in the street with a stop sign helping poets across amidst the poets honking horns in unison listening to poets on the radio talking poet to poet about poets poetry: oh a rose is a rose is a poet is a song about the poet bikes past the poet with the sign, hand smacking off beat singing a song about dead poets old poets poets to come

poet bikes past a small poet wide green eyes, the song fades into the distance and the poet walks on green eyes blazing, the grass spurting from the ground and smog rising away from cross-the-river smoke stacks poets sitting under trees on benches climbing up and down dinosaurs, the poet looks up at a poet lost in words in a paper by a poet about a poet talking lines talking stanzas talking poetry

I’d be concerned if I felt love in my cheek. That’s not a good place for it. You don’t know that. okay. What if it is the best place and that’s what it means to really be in love... but but because it is the purist form of love the government doesn’t tell you about it since the love you feel in your heart is more common more relatable more marketable Let’s make out.

ISSN: 1923-0370 Offside No. 2