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text magazine is a Canadian bimonthly publication of poetry, poetic social media epigrams, flash fiction, photographs, artwork, and other interesting culture. It is not-for-profit, free to read, and published six times a year. EMAIL // textlitmag@gmail.com WEBSITE // www.textlitmag.com Contents Copyright © 2015 text magazine for the authors COVER ART // Rio Trenaman title // A Cover for Another Mother website // riotrenaman.com FIND IT HERE // Bocca Café, Iron Oxide Art Supplies, Java Expressions LTD, Javawocky Coffee House, Jumpin Java Cafe, Literacy Nanaimo, Mad Rona’s Coffee Bar, Mon Petit Choux, Nanaimo Arts Council Gallery, Nanaimo Art Gallery, Perkins Coffee Company, Serious Coffee at Beaufort Centre, Smitty’s Nanaimo, The Buzz Coffee House, The Old Crow, The Vault, Vancouver Island University, Woodgrove Centre SUBSCRIPTION // If you wish to begin subscription, please email us at textlitmag@gmail.com. A postage fee may apply. SUBMISSION GUIDELINES // Submit interesting writing and works of art, such as poems, flash fiction, poetic social media epigrams under 200 characters, instagrams, or other photography or art, to textlitmag@gmail.com. We will respond as soon as possible. As a new, free, not-for-profit publication there is no reimbursement for publication. We ask that you please supply a biography under 200 characters with your submission. If you are accepted, your piece will be available on our website. Please note if your submission has been published elsewhere or is a simultaneous submission, it is suggested you read an issue to decide if your work fits our magazine. We reserve the right to not publish submissions we deem not fitting to our mandate. If you wish to advertise with us, or distribute our magazine at your business, please email our managing editor Shaleeta Harper // shaleetaharper@gmail.com
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SHALEETA HARPER // editor in chief & publisher PHILIP GORDON // editor ANTONY STEVENS // online content manager COBY MCDOUGALL // graphic designer JOY GUGELER // publishing advisor SILVIA PIKAL // proofreader ROBIN A. SAMS // proofreader
BIG THANKS to the friends of text magazine DISTRIBUTORS Bocca Café Iron Oxide Art Supplies Java Expressions LTD Javawocky Coffee House Jumpin Java Cafe Literacy Nanaimo Mad Rona’s Coffee Bar Mon Petit Choux Nanaimo Arts Council Gallery Nanaimo Art Gallery Perkins Coffee Company Serious Coffee at Beaufort Centre Smitty’s, Nanaimo The Buzz Coffee House The Old Crow The Vault Vancouver Island University Woodgrove Centre
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ADVERTISERS & DONORS Cascadia Poetry Festival Deb Clay Funk your Fashion Garden Gnome Yardworks Gordon Halkett, Century 21 Realty Grace Matthams NY LA Fresh Threads Pro-Print Express Rosemary Sidle Susan Harper Tina’s Yorkie Treasures WordStorm Society of the Arts
Dear Readers, This summer has been all sun and wildfires, and that’s what we’re seeing in this issue. From upbeat pop culture to the injustices of rape culture, we’ve got stories to make you laugh, and poems to make you feel guilt at the nape of your neck. We have art folded into our pages that will make you question what you remember. Amazing people have contributed to this issue, and it is exceptional.
Remember to ask questions as you read. Why
does this piece make you uncomfortable, or smile, or wistful? Remember that the reason you’re looking at poems, and art, and stories, is to feel more, to think more. Remember you aren’t a bystander in this situation. You are reading poetry because you are complex, because the world is infinite and you are a huge piece of that infinity.
Five issues of text have come out, and more
people are reading us in Nanaimo than ever before. We’re having trouble keeping it stocked up! We’re looking for volunteer distributers in other cities on Vancouver Island, so we can really start to spread our pages across BC. Hit us up if you want to see poetry everywhere. We are all volunteers, and we believe that what we do can make you remember what living is like, and the times in your life that you nearly forgot, because they’re stacked behind crates of important dates and files and anxieties. Remember the sunshine, as we edge into fall, and don’t forget the wildfires. Enjoy this issue. Shaleeta Harper Editor in Chief text Magazine textlitmag.com .
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Bluesfest, 2010 RYAN PRATT In cavity the scar up your chest belies two: one sore to touch, rigidly hands on hips awaiting the tide, the other; some restless birthright tic crossing vicarious wires belly out. The current directs dry ice, seeps fence ribs thick enough our chins tip the reeds. Nothing clogs. You don’t hear the music, you hardly see French bodies trouble Nepean bay. The sand and liquor make slush.
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nonsensical sensibilities LAURA MACDONALD There is a time for rhymes though other times it is a crime to tack in pattern, to attack themes with your tongue, to pack in a suffix that suffocates meaning like stuffing a turkey with a duck and a chicken, just sticking them in for embellishment and flourish when the bird was a perfectly good dish before this, before all the dressings, before all your messing because, though we all want to be more inside than outside, we wear our words like medals on our starched lapels (or at least adjacent, if you want accurate placement) though, in truth, it looks more like soup that slops on our best suit as we too zealously search for some decadent diction and sometimes the thought gets lost in the niceties and sometimes flavour gets lost in the spices until you can’t tell which dish is the chicken and which is the fish and you can’t hear the poet because each word is loaded with wit and not weight and sometimes the form is demeaning to meaning, diminishes finishes, clutters what matters, muddies the waters, adds rime to the climb: sometimes a rhyme is a rhyme is a rhyme (though not every time).
// NICK RAVO
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// BRIAN MICHAEL BARBEITO
My Cup Runneth on Empty LAURA MACDONALD I would sell my soul for coffee pot that would sit on my countertop patiently percolating until I poured some blood-and-guts coffee loaded with gritty unfiltered words into an oversized novelty cup letting them spill over onto my notebook and I would drink some of them and edit the rest and only when my coffee and my words and my tongue and my heart dried up like a kettle on a red hot burner would I begin to wonder what it means to have a soul and whether it’s just the part of the tongue that lets you quench your thirst. 6.
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pancakes at midnight LEAF KOTASEK 1. the frying pan was clean but the mixing bowl had old crumbs stuck along the blue glass rim we used it dirty when you mix pancakes at midnight there’s no time for soap 2. midnight butter–melt yellow on gooey–hot pancakes we stood & ate them at the counter olive oil oats eggs flour honey baking powder & milk pancakes at midnight are too milk– sweet oat–smooth for syrup
Auden @ Apple < Poetry [is code that] makes nothing happen > // NICK RAVO
(pace Aram Saroyan) Dyslexsia // NICK RAVO
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unfair electric bill is something like rape
[tw: rape, rape culture, electricity bills] LEAF KOTASEK he says bc hydro raped me they overcharged me it was bullshit i stammer something like that’s not rape but
i want to ask him how the ptsd has been does he have panic attacks when he dials down the cold or does he mostly have those when night knuckles shut his eyelids & does he shake himself awake & think he’s really still reading that unfair hydro bill sobbing how will he pay for therapy what will he tell his family does he shudder when his fridge thuds i want to say i know how hard it is to talk about these things bc hydro & their bills i know most people won’t believe him will blame him he must’ve begged bc hydro to overcharge the shit outta him that’s what they’ll say but not me no i really feel for his ego & wallet
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LEAF KOTASEK we are flaming unicorn gods1 we transilluminate & unzip our genders we step out of them with our toes pointed we unhook our ankles from the old wet folds of the genders you zipped over us like body bags we reassemble our transilient bones & glitterfuck in the streets we run our pronouns up on snappy flags we will not assimilate so kiss our jiggling asses our salty fishnet –encrusted thighs this is the transverberation be ready for the wild rumpus 1
just for right now, “gods” is a gender-inclusive term.
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72 Hours: Part Two BARBARA HARROUN When she got nervous Beth talked, and she’d been told she was funniest when she was nervous and slightly drunk. She drove Butch to a liquor store two blocks over. She was twenty. He was twenty-two. He was also two inches taller than she was. He had black hair, shorn so close on the side she could see the white of his scalp. She wanted to rub her palm against it. He wore a polo shirt, and she didn’t like that he popped the collar, but her brother did too, and she thought it must be a Marine thing she didn’t understand. Like the cologne. It filled her shitty car and left a waxy sheen on her tongue.
He nodded mostly and shrugged, but she liked
how deeply he listened, and how intently he watched her. He had dark eyes, lovely eyelashes, high cheekbones, a deep tan, and a small mouth. He smiled rather than laughed, but he had nice teeth, really white; later, she would find out, he took pride in his teeth. He wore a small, black obsidian arrowhead on a leather cord. It rested in the small pool of his clavicle.
When he talked, it was a whisper, and all the
vowels were Louisiana soft. She had to ask him to repeat himself when he said, “What do you want?” They were sitting in the parking lot. “Just beer, or whatever sounds good to you and Bo. Whatever you normally drink.” It was
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a Friday in May, warm, and she watched the college kids walking in as groups, walking out carrying cases like boom boxes on their shoulders. He came out, weighed down, but refused her help, and when she went back to her own door, he called, “Just a second.” He opened it for her, offered her the seat belt, asked if she was in, then closed the door firmly, and patted it once. She was a founding member of Feminist Action Alliance on campus, but here, this gesture moved her terribly.
He showered while she made him macaroni and
cheese, and he ate it, the entire pot, and she sat across from him and watched, drinking cold beer with all the windows in the kitchen open. He smelled like her shampoo, and toothpaste, and he wore the same jeans but a new white t-shirt. She felt such tenderness for him that when he said, if she didn’t mind, he’d stretch out for a bit, she told him that she’d just put clean sheets on her bed. She’d be in the living room, reading.
Five minutes later, he came out with a pillow and
his own blanket. She moved to get off the couch, but he said, “No, stay put. I’d like your company.” He curled up, so much so that he wasn’t touching her. She reached for his feet. She placed them in her lap, rubbing one until he groaned, and then the other, until he was asleep.
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Crush LAUREN MILICI He is the boy asked to leave through the window. I am a curse on the lips of a married man. Together we sleep, but do not dream. The stars, nothing more than hanging lights.
Aristotle on the Greek Debt Crisis, Summer 2015 The golden mean.
// NICK RAVO
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Cannot transform myth #12 RYAN PRATT The girl who was my crush at the start of the party found me in the foyer, its hall & closet barricaded by a couch laid flush across the doorway. She asked if I could pass her her coat. Leaning into the shutterless space, I kissed you & grabbed the wrong coat. The blue one, she repeated. Again I vanished into the dim for your lips & clasped a hanger off the rod. I think this coat was green. She laughed as I savoured a third try, lost in the diminishing wardrobe of a drunk.
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Mr. Hard-Luck’s Life’s Work J.J. STEINFELD Late last year, on an unusually hot midafternoon, Mr. Hard-Luck, as he had been thinking of himself on and off for the last ten years, both humorously, and not so humorously, was fired from his fifth deadend job in ten years, he found religion. Rather, he decided there and then to start attending church after a decadelong lapse of considering himself an atheist with no meaning or purpose in his life. That hot midafternoon of his unceremonious firing, he decided that somewhere in church he could find the meaning and purpose that had been eluding him. Mr. Hard-Luck, who has had so many starts and stops and restarts in his life, somehow did find the meaning and purpose he desired. While he stopped attending church after one visit, he is still counting the angels on the head of the pin he found that Sunday in church.
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LAURA MACDONALD Where do the words go when the only poetry I can write is about poetry? as if my mind has been skipping those hot yoga classes and can no longer stretch beyond the paper and the pen and I can’t tap into the collective consciousness because the gateway through my own subconscious has been chained and padlocked by some overzealous security guard who doesn’t want anyone to “lose a finger” on his watch (he didn’t become a security guard for the paperwork, after all) and so my mind sits vacant and condemned, a treasure trove of rusty nails and dark staircases and industrial freezers that reek as freezerburned carcasses rot and the only poetry left is the really bad graffiti but the years have not been kind and the phone numbers have all been disconnected or crucial digits have crumbled off the wall.
Juliet LAUREN MILICI Something about the scar below her lip and the mess of yellow ringlets; someone’s pin–up or mistress, prom queen in Carrie–red. That girl could make a cherry knot its own stem.
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Untitled JOHN LOWTHER A truly green vomit, befitting someone like you. When someone is entitled to your kindness, angrily demands something of you,
or even shouts and berates you, the service workerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s job is to smooth it
over as if it werenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t happening.
It's possible to engage in mechanical sex with someone you're passionate about. Someone please tell me none of this is really happening. It's a little hard to dissolve someone in salad dressing. To think someone actually sat around writing this is disturbing and a case study
in mental illness.
// MEGAN JANESSA
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// NAOMI WAKAN
Untitled JOHN LOWTHER They bought their position with saccharine and trust. It's marketing. Do not use for drying pets. It is once again a dimension of the crisis of negation. It rapes my fancy. You put on a cheerful mask. I hadnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t been thinking about the concept as a product. Bite the flash. Boil off the fuel of night. Elvis will be watching what you really thought of him. My dog says hello. I think he walked outside. The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re going to have some pretty annoying virtues.
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a piece from: on u // for u // to u KYLE KINASCHUK
)ps your name rests a oun
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four/two/en/joy: a decoy & ruse to obscure u but i marks the page as such in secret four the one who weights // i speaks yet will not have been a dressing the other a long the way, nor is i measuring with a yard stick the totality of space this letter necessitates four the characters & typeset are of no concern to i but really all that means any thing here is announcing a secret in plane cite dis/closing an en closure (quod vide jf) i phoning allowed a scene of what will never be spoke in or give in while youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re in flesh (re member what i said to u because i all ways shows) so two the joy that refuses the tit le of pure bliss, i will wander thru the bitter nite w/o coffee sleep-dreaming of a u who lonely exits in memory & futurity // so aft an other sun-time i sits across from u in a dim restaurant thinking tragedy // oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; confess now their tooth brushes will never touch
nd here sort of like an epitaph who secretly desires to become an epigraph won bright day
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Jill is a painter BENNETT ALLEN Anything else, Jill? She lies to children Yes she does He paints a Neon carrot that apparently means something about Self-immolation About how it’s also self-nourishment She can’t even do it She isn’t even In the zone In the zone it’s an Athletic term With it She brings him to me and Those oil paints won’t smear They’ll work the corners and Bleed out bleed out not quite bleed out Until they’ve reached The only smokestack on the island
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Unromantic Texting J.J. STEINFELD
The lovestruck teenager, hurrying through a hallway of his high school to get to an English class in which a final exam on contemporary poetry, an exam he hadnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t studied at all for, was about to begin, walked faceÂfirst into a wall while texting his sweetheart who was already sitting in class, eager to begin the exam for which she had studied half the night. She loved poetry and dreamed of becoming a published poet, already writing poems in imitation of Emily Dickinson, whose poetry she adored. He, on the other hand, found poetry boring and useless and had plans to become an airline pilot. The wall, in real time, laughed louder than the sweetheart.
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Ghostwriter SPENSER SMITH After the meeting A man Thirty years wiser Asked how I was doing I told him Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m okay, just going through a break up He looked at me and said I have had the shit beaten out of me I have been kicked right in the balls But nothing hurts quite as much as that Experience makes poets Of us all
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// MEGAN JANESSA
An erasure poem composed from the fifth movement of T.S. Eliotâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s The Waste Land SHLOKA SHANKAR
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Rhetorical BOB BROOKS
EITO
// BRIAN MICHAEL BARB
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Barbara Harroun Bennett Allen Bob Brooks Brian Michael Barbeito J.J. Steinfeld John Lowther Kyle Kinaschuk Laura MacDonald Lauren Milici Leaf Kotasek Megan Janessa Naomi Wakan Nick Ravo Ryan Pratt Shloka Shankar Spenser Smith
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