The Zine Issue 04

Fall 2019 Edition 04

the Zine t eZ e

A collection of local art and writing

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Zine Team Production Production and and Design Design Elyssa English

Design Design Assistant Assistant Mikaela Collins

Judges Judges & & Editors Editors Nadia Tudhope Chandy Dancey Anoop Dhaliwal Jessica Barclay Mikaela Collins Darien Johnsen

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Contributors Sequel Adamson is in her second year at UFV. She literally lives beyond Hope in a tiny town called Yale. Sequel only writes when angry. She has a very short temper so she writes often. Her other talents include poorly timed jokes and answering the same four questions at family gatherings.

James Tait is a fan of iced tea, industrial techno, and dogs.

Darien Johnsen is a global development studies student at the University of the Fraser Valley. She’s been writing stories and poems since age seven and is slowly exploring new mediums of expression. She’s trying to work out the kinks of life past, grow forward, and not slip into oblivion in the process.

Wren Ashenhurst-Toews is an aspiring writer and artist. They fell in love with the written word because of their parents, who read to them often as a child.

They began to write because they weren’t connecting to what they were reading. In their free time they can be found writing or illustrating with a variety of traditional and digital mediums.

Elyssa English is an artist (both traditional and digital), freelance illustrator, graphic designer, and production manager with The Cascade. She is always seeking to expand her skills and explore new opportunities. She does too much and has no intention of stopping.

Mikaela Collins is the creative director at The Cascade, and also an English student, though she has no idea how she ended up as either one. She enjoys sleeping, cooking, and tormenting her coworkers by looking at Furbies on the work computers.

Emilie Kvist is a fourth year

student at UFV, currently completing a Bachelor of Arts with a major in history and an extended minor in visual arts. They have always loved creating work in many different mediums like sculpture, painting, mixed mediums and dance. The ability to express one’s self creatively often allows one to personally resolve times of stress, while in the same moment striving to add positive into the world.

Chandy Dancey is a fourth year biology major, chemistry minor who love the arts just as much as the sciences. A critical thing you should know about her is that she has immense nostalgia for 2009, and at any given time wishes she were playing DS games and watching early 2000s anime.

Nadia Tudhope has always wanted to be a writer. Her hobbies include getting lost in books, having strong opinions about fonts, and obsessing over audio dramas. She is a fourthyear English major, or has been an English major her whole life, depending on who you ask.

Andrea Sadowski likes to take

photos of beautiful people doing the things they love most. If you can’t find her in the Cascade office laughing at memes on her phone, she is most likely in her van that she lives in, squatting on someone else's property, or lost somewhere on a mountain .

Martin Castro is.

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Contents 1

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Photography | Darien Johnsen Gasping

Poetry | Sequel Adamson Fucking Ants

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Visual Art | Emilie Kvist Dance movement

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Poetry | Sequel Adamson Plenty of Fish in the Sea Your Sheets

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Poetry | Nadia Tudhope Skin condition

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Visual Art | Elyssa English Tactile

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Photography | Andrea Sadowski Phillip

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Visual Art | Darien Johnsen Communion

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Poetry | Wren Ashenhurst-Toews An Excerpt from the Diary of an Interdimensional Traveler

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Photography | James Tait Memories from summer

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Poetry | Nadia Tudhope Phagophobia and Other Paradoxical Fears

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Poetry | Wren Ashenhurst-Toews Static to Noise

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Poetry | Martin Castro Police Called After

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Poetry | Sequel Adamson Spiders

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Poetry | Darien Johnsen you're ruining my pizza & favourite movie

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Poetry | Mikaela Collins Taking the FVX to Chilliwack: a jukebox musical

Poetry | Chandy Dancey diaspora dinner

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Poetry | Darien Johnsen Lego bricks in space

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Poetry | Sequel Adamson Eve and the Apple of Evil

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Poetry | Chandy Dancey Metastasis

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Visual Art | Elyssa English It is what it is

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Poetry | Nadia Tudhope [Extended sounds of a brutal axe murder]

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diaspora dinner

by Chandy Dancey

i crave the demerara and its syrupy sweet sugar like the color of my skin in the heat. i’ve only ever known the kool-aid used to chea t my ancestors in jonestown who drank its dece it. i am dressed today in a white saree to see the cremation of recipes by the carribean sea. i mourn my cultural death without guarante e that i can pronounce the words to an adequate degree. i ache for the taste of plantain, renowned, served as chips in my hometown. i travel through taste but am let down when i’m told i’m white, but my skin is brow n. i’m deaf to the warning when my elders say sugar that’s white will rot and decay. i’ve become bleached flour in the gourmet dessert where my refinement is put on display.

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Fucking Ants

by Sequel Adamson

Wood.

Wooden bed posts.

Wooden treehouse.

A wooden bunk bed frame with a twin-sized mattress.

Spruce ceilings.

These wooden visions of my youth scar my memory.

They seep through my brain.

Like ants, they march lines across my skin.

Cedar, pine, plywood, particle board.

I am just another golem Knocked on wood Over

And Over

And

Over Again.

My fault.

Until I learn to stop fucking with ants I see carpenter ants Take down full trees Bit By

Bit. They cover the roots, tunnel through the cracks, eat through the bark.

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Dismantling houses, Ceilings, Bed frames.

Crawling until I am covered with bugs.

A vibrating black swarm, Finally blurring my eyes So that all the images of wood Just Black Out. “knock on wood”

Emilie Kvist "dance movement" acrylic painting 24x30 2019

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Skin Condition

by Nadia Tudhope

In kindergarten I befriend a girl at daycare because we have matching scaly red skin on the insides of our elbows and almost-matching names and together we scratch-scratch-scratch our elbows and the skin never heals, scaly red forever. Scaly red all year, like a best friends bracelet, like a secret handshake.

One winter I wash my hands so much they crack open and bleed whenever I try to write leaving little red smudges on my paper.

I colour next to them in pencil crayon, pretending it’s confetti I drew on purpose.

One winter I have to wear socks on my hands when I go to sleep, because my skin won’t get any wetter

no matter how much lotion I put on

and they crack often.

It’s very hard to turn pages with socks on your hands But I manage.

Now, I use twice as much paper towel as anyone else to dry my hands, and still the spaces between my fingers are so dry and it stings.

I have never had such high-quality hand cream, and still my hands ache with dryness. New places are getting dry: the sides of my wrists, my throat. The insides of my elbows are scaly red and itchy, in a way they haven’t been in years.

My sister had the nastiest flu back in May, and even handing towels through the crack into the bathroom was enough to set me off.

Scrubbing my hands after every towel, even though there was no skin contact.

We ran out of hot water from all the showers she was taking, and toilets she was flushing from all the vomiting and diarrhea, a shower every ten minutes, from all the vomiting and diarrhea (I told you it was a nasty flu)

but you can’t scrub germs off with cold cold water.

I was almost crying because there was nothing but cold water and the noises from upstairs (vomiting and diarrhea and shower after shower)

my skin was already raw from all the boiling-hot hand-washing but there was no more hot water and I needed to scrub the germs off, even if I had to take off a few layers of my skin off to do it.

I came thisclose to boiling water and pouring it on my hands (it’s not self-mutilation if it’s in self-defence.. Feeling the germs on them, like an itch, a thousand tiny bugs trying to burrow) when the water ran hot again.

I got sick anyway.

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5

PRESS A FLOWER place flower here

Andrea Sadowski "Phillip" Photography 15x23 2019

An Excerpt from the Diary of an Interdimensional Traveller

by Wren Ashenhurst-Toews I slip in between the stitches of the multiverse like I slip in between the pages of books or between the notes of music I exist on the static between channels, the static speaking my name, screaming in my ears.

It doesn’t like it when I try to sleep without white noise.

It needs me to be grounded.

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It happens at the most inopportune times.

The slipping.

When I am distracted or not able to fully keep myself tethered to solid ground.

Sometimes I think that I slip when I sleep, when I am defenseless, unable to keep myself from slipping out of one reality and into another, struggling to remember whether or not this was the one where the world was ending, or the one where I have a midterm in twenty minutes, or the one where I'm hopelessly in love, or the one where those thoughts never dare cross my mind.

I find myself falling asleep in one universe only to wake up in another. I have lost count of how many places I play pawn to. The divergent lives I lead, how I cannot approach every problem the same even if I’ve already solved it in half a dozen other contexts.

This is just the backstory for a hopeless traveller who doesn't think you'll remember their confession the next time he sees you. Maybe we won't even know each other when next we meet.

Sometimes I can see where the timelines diverge.

I see a flash of what happens in someone else's life.

I just so happen to be the observer. And the observed.

All this is to say that I saw him today, in two different lines. And then the break where he leans forward and we kiss.

His lips soft. And warm.

He breathes my name onto my lips and it tastes sweet for once.

The world falls away around us as we slip into memories.

Remembering in that life before. When we were inseparable.

When he would kiss me in the morning and in the night and as we sat in each other’s proximities.

Where the blueprint of his lips were memorised and not a thing to piece together from imperfect memory.

I swear, I swear he saw it too. The flash of some recognition in his eyes.

But we don’t speak of the things we see.

I let myself slip back into the mundanity of the line I have access to.

I take my midterm in one universe and eat lunch in another.

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lego bricks in space when we met our heavens clicked into

place

like lego bricks. but i saw the playdough left over smeared and smudged into the carpet like galaxies. collisions planets stars explode and die a supernova black hole deformed spacetime forcing space to make

more space.

i

need

my

a big bang second time ‘round. cosmic web & galactic cannibalism.

I can't even see out my spaceship’s front windshield window anymore! thousands of pieces of debris litter little lego bricks like candy garbage floating sucked out and oxygen vanished. the universe out of alignment a tilted axis spinning backwards.

space.

running to keep up.

by Darien Johnsen 10

Eve and the Apple of Evil

by Sequel Adamson The tale of Eve trusting a snake — or two.

God favored man as his divine creation.

No wonder Eve left for pagan rites and sweet rituals of flesh.

A holy-ordained, arranged marriage is still a slave trade.

This is garden variety inequality Adam only wanted to taste her fruit, fill her with sugar, put down no roots.

Adam wears no leaves because God put no shame in his body.

He took it out of him in the shape of a rib and created the mother of all of my sin.

Pain and punishment.

Having to carry to term the world’s mistake — her mistake made in the dark, underneath a tree.

At the birth, her legs spread open like Pandora’s box.

All her sin and shame flow into her daughters, and anger to the sons.

Forgive me father, for I'm confused; How can we praise a woman for preserving her fruit, but cast stones at another who refuses to stay ignorant?

I just can’t seem to find any truths.

The mistake made by the flesh of female persuasion; the hunger for knowledge suffered by our ovarian ancestors was never forgiven.

Making all of me descended from sin.

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metastasis

by Chandy Dancey

something foreign and sacred has occurred. the source is a carcinogen: your lips, triggering the growth of a tender inflammation. a seed predisposed to germinate within the tissue of my recessive wound. like all living things it begs for life, for growth, and i cannot deny its right. i am the cocoon and this cancerous sore glows ruby red under your lapping tongue.

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Elyssa English "It is what it is" Spray paint on canvas 24x30 2019

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15

[extended sounds of brutal axe murder]

by Nadia Tudhope

It’s not a very traditional weapon for a protagonist, is it? The axe?

No suave teen heroes of sci-horror shows go around swinging those.

Too obviously geared to murder, I guess. A little overdone.

Good for chopping wood, but that’s boring.

Good for cutting up the old sofa, but that’s boring.

Good for hacking up that cursed table in the basement but now you’ve let all the ghosts out.

An axe is a weapon of two pieces, and those pieces are also weapons, just like you, dearheart.

Any well-turned piece of wood is an eye-gouger, a bludgeon, a spear.

A blade is always a blade no matter what else it is pretending to be.

A blade is good for a lot of things: cutting others, cutting yourself, cutting up chicken for dinner.

Cutting hearts out of chests to inspect them and let them bleed on your hands.

An axe is good for a lot of things: bludgeoning with metaphor, breaking when you need it.

I borrowed the axe from the back shed, the one with all the ectoplasm on it, And I chopped the door between us down, but you’d already left, sneaky thing.

There is a whole forest of doors between us and an axe is always calling out for wood.

The same way a blade is always calling out for blood (and so are you, sweetheart).

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Darien Johnsen "Gasping" Photography 23x15 2019

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PLENTY OF FISH IN THE SEA YOUR SHEETS

by Sequel Adamson

Elyssa English

"Tactile"

House-paint and ink

on stonehenge paper

22x30

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2019

I will someday not be enough.

Your tongue will turn to ash, and your stomach to gravel.

Your hands will spoon feed me lead, until I sink farther, held down like a violent baptism drowning.

Down past the pretty girls as the pressure builds, down to the bottom feeders where my body will become the communion of those rejected, thrown from heaven to this underwater purgatory where I wait, as line after shitty line is cast trying to bait my hook, lure me into their traps.

I long to be caught in your net though I know I'll only be gutted and served on a platter with a lemon wedge, a side of potatoes, and a shot glass of hate.

Darien Johnsen "Communion part 1" 21x16 inches 2019

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Darien Johnsen "Communion part 2" 21x16inches 2019

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2019

23x15

Photography

"memories from summer #1"

James Tait

Phagophobia and Other Paradoxical Fears

by Nadia Tudhope

when you think about it, everything is, in some way, being eaten. words get swallowed by minds and decay sucks skin from bones, the earth digests our corpses, and we chew on all its fossils in return, and dogs will eat anything, won’t they? we are all afraid of being eaten of mouths, and teeth, and things that bite so we invent monsters to consume us, shambling, rotting things to be trotted out as fiction, because we like our fear baby-proofed and exorable. how horrible, we said, when the serial killer ate his victim. how disturbing, we said, when we heard about the nine days it took for her to be consumed. we are all, in some way, in the slaughterhouse headshot-numbed and being drained of blood, being cut into pieces and packaged for consumption. human flesh tastes like pork, apparently. do you think pork knows? a pig will eat you if you leave yourself unattended with them. isn’t it funny? that these soft-toothed animals will eat us just like we eat them just like everything is, in some way, eating and being eaten? an endless mobius strip of teeth. there are so many things that look like mouths and are happy to consume us caverns and unfinished houses with yawning-maw basements and every economic system that seemed like a good idea at the time. that’s just the way it is — everything eats. everything is eaten. we are all our own monsters and always have been.

23

Static to Noise

by Wren Ashenhurst-Toews Hello?

Can you hear me?

I’m… I’m knocking, but… You’re… you’re not responding

anymore.

Maybe this was a bad idea.

Look, I just, I wanted to

What I mean is, I miss you… okay?

Are we civil enough to acknowledge that we meant something to one another?

That, out of all the people that were around,

you were still the one who made me feel safe?

Like we were going to

be okay.

I know, we had our problems, and I know that my life has only gotten better—

Well, no, I’m not okay, I like how it sounds though.

I’m alone in a different context, I… I still care about you, but I don’t think

I don’t think we should see each other anymore.

Which is weird to say because we haven’t spoken in months.

It’s hard when you only have a few people in your life.

To lose one of them is like

you’ve lost a vital part of your family unit even if you were not good for each other.

We were not good for each other.

I was shrinking and passive

and you needed strength and

understanding

and you were venom and thorns when I needed...

I don’t know what I needed.

We got on each others nerves, but we fought for each other, But, I was fighting harder, and not just against the enemies, but you as well.

It’s better this way,

I know—

I know it’s better this way But, I still miss your static.

But I’m happy for the quiet.

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by Martin Castro

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Spiders

by Sequel Adamson

I never thought that four years from then you would be that gut wrenching, breath stopping, dizzy feeling you get inside after your heart collapses into a million pieces.

Those teenage, adolescent, hormone-filled questions that dance off your tongue up from your stomach filled with spiders.

Your words crawl in my ears, make permanent webs in my brain.

I have arachnophobia.

Your words blacken my name.

Black as a widow; they’re warned to stay away.

Those red targets you’ve marked on me make me seem as poisonous as your words were to my body.

The grip you had on my thigh.

The look you had in your eyes.

“Come on Baby, just let me try.”

Stop.

I want to scream.

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Stop.

There are hands cocooned over my mouth.

Stop.

But I cannot scream, and your breath just gets louder, and your spider limbs wrap around my body as you suck my dignity dry, leaving me an empty shell.

Now, when I see you I choke on the cobwebs still stuck like guilt in my memories.

The venom from your bite still burns in my flesh, but all I can do is stay silent as I suffocate from the smell of my blood in your throat.

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you’re ruining my pizza & favourite movie

by Darien Johnsen

i don’t write love poems but i’m making pizza and i can’t stop thinking about you in the crust. it’s my favourite kind & i want to eat it but i can’t stop thinking about you in the pineapple. it doesn’t taste as good as it usually does because i can’t stop thinking about you. i dreamt about you three nights in a row and on the night i didn’t dream about you you were the first thing in my thoughts when i woke up. my chest heaves and it feels like i've been struck when i think about you. i feel bubbled over joyous laughing at the sky when i think about you. i'm watching my favourite movie a romantic comedy for those who can’t admit they’re romantic (hurt). it’s been my favourite since i was 14 & now i’m 24 so it must be a pretty good movie but the main character has the same name as you so every few minutes i can’t stop thinking about you.

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the critics keep saying it’s a comedy but it makes me cry every time. am i as crazy as the girl in the movie? i wanna ask you more about your past and your political views but mostly i just wanna watch your eyes crinkle at the corners like paper when you laugh that genuine laugh i hadn’t heard before that comes from your gut (hearty). i'd never heard such a beautiful laugh never really been attracted to laughs but yours sounds like music and God. my heart pounding to the beat of your laugh the first time i heard it breath-stopping making time stay still slow-motion memory of you on the grass & i can’t stop thinking about you dammit. you’re not worth this many thoughts i know but my head & my heart don’t seem to have the same plan. my head telling my heart that the unattainable is unattainable because i’m not worth attaining so i can’t stop thinking about you.

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Taking the FVX to Chilliwack: a jukebox musical

by Mikaela Collins

1. Take Me Home, Country Roads - John Denver 2. Bus Stop - The Hollies 3. On the Road Again - Willie Nelson 4. Bus Stop (reprise) - The Hollies 5. I Will Wait - Mumford & Sons 6. The Bus is Late - Satellite High 7. Walkin’ Down the Road - Eric Clapton

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Thanks!

Regular weekly editions of The Cascade newspaper can be found on stands and benches across UFV campuses and in coffee shops around town.

For more information visit ufvcascade.ca

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The Zine is published by the Cascade Journalism Society