T V
H E
E G
L I T E R A R Y M A G A Z I N E
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T V
H E
E G
L I T E R A R Y M A G A Z I N E
winter 2018 vol. 14 no. 2
The Veg Literary Magazine is funded by the Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) of McGill University. The content of this publication does not necessarily represent the views of the AUS or McGill University. veg.magazine@gmail.com facebook.com/thevegmagazine printing by
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Friends, This is the Veg. Its cover is tactile and warm. Its pages, a mature off-white, are creamy and honest. The black of its type is decisive. Place it on your coffee table where guests or your roommate’s mom may see it. They will think, ‘yes, this friend thinks and is thoughtful. And doesn’t it just tie the room together?’ They are probably right; fall on Mount Royal is a complementary color to contractor-grade white. But, of course, the Veg is more. The Veg is ten editors in a small room saying, ‘this moves and we would like to share.’ The Veg is poets, artists, chewing their thumbs in thought, feeling and counting, counting and feeling, building meaning like sturdy furniture. And the Veg is a piece of what they have seen and what they know, for our poets are always pushing about for something fresh and animated by clarity. So yes, the coffee table will do, as will the nightstand, or in your bag like a granola bar. The Veg is meant to be handled; your coffee stains are becoming. We are grateful to read and to share. We are grateful to give this art the weight of our paper.
Thanks for your attention, Joseph + The Veg
Editors: Adam Eldred Jason Gales Emily Hoppe Sam Kessler Maia Klee Lulu Lebowitz Emily Mernin Joe Mulholland Zoe Shaw Sean Sokolov
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contents
Ten Degrees at the End of October
A.S. Krause
cover
Victoria Butler
inside
Miranda’s Room
cover A Monkey Seeks His Congregation
Jack Ball
5
MW Jaeggle
6
Victoria Butler
7
Sean Higley
8
Charlie From the Window Sill
MW Jaeggle
9
The Temple Complex at Memphis
Daniel Galef
10
Jack Ball
12
Olive Andrews
13
Danijela Stojkovic
14
Notes on Whales Cod Tongues A Night on Io
A Party for My Mom, Who Writes Stories About Her Mom. Greyhound Archaeology
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Toadstool
Sean Higley
15
Louis Sanger
16
A.S. Krause
17
Alex Emond
18
Boris But
19
August 22nd
Louise Hill
20
Lagos, 2018
Ayo Ogunremi
22
Beanwater
Danijela Stojkovic
23
Aaron Eagle Perls One
Christopher Barnes
24
david diao
25
Suvij Sudershan
26
Boris But
28
Heartbreak Themes from the CBC Expo ‘67 Fowl The Neons of Wanchai
Metro Shadow Three Routes to Delhi Over
the Yamuna, Driving
After the Rain
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A Monkey Seeks His Congregation
Jack Ball
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Notes on the Whales Tofino days, the striated grey. Shorn surface cast ashore: three breached, ten more by dream-end. Park officials, carcass clinicians, “ain’t nothing to see here, folks, just a pacific enigma, some peninsula strays.”
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MW Jaeggle
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Cod Tongues
Victoria Butler
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A Night on Io
Sean Higley 8
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Charlie From the Window Sill The rain at a real forty-five degree, clouds the like of Turner’s, bent gardens, rocked window; it’s all barely perked the cat’s ears – the whole thing aint Zeppelin at Carnegie Hall, but go ahead, write it down, I take him as saying.
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MW Jaeggle
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The Temple Complex at Memphis The hot delta sun strikes the gleaming apex of the pyramidion at Memphis and the reflections glitter and shimmer and waver, uncertain, as in the last seconds of a dream over the faces of the waters sleeping in the deep soul of the river. Aneb-Hetch, the city of White Walls, and so sit the white walls, scuffed and deflated beneath the bulk of a red Cadillac, the sphynxish hood ornament, in streamlined chrome, asking the mosquitoes: “What walks on four wheels in the sunny afternoon?” A sandstone colossus of the King surveys the horizon, and sees it good, before returning to dream of the underworld and sharing a peanut butter sandwich with Ammit. Across the state and thousands of years stands the bone-white fluted conglomeration of the Parthenon in Nashville, and to the south (further to the south), in Rome, GA, the iron pillar atop which suckle the twin demigods who will, one day far off in the future, three thousand years ago, grow up to found the empire to end all empires, which doesn’t, but looks nice trying. Meanwhile, the Cadillac has been driven off by a record producer to bring news to Cleopatra that Caesar’s flames have set alight the U of T Health Sciences Library,
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and she has killed herself with a cottonmouth gapper by the river lank; and from then on, as we know, is just the world drifting silently apart, with a few similarities popping up here and there. The distant, muddy sounds of a Richter-tuned blues harp can be heard drifting on the hazy breeze, or maybe it’s a papyrus-reeded mizmar, and the red disc of Ra, as far away from the pharos and the pharaohs as we are, is dying again and again behind the Mississippi hills.
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Daniel Galef
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A Party for My Mom, Who Writes Stories About Her Mom.
Jack Ball 12
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Greyhound chest bind on the bus! ppppppenalty the gas station in the dark that knob in your spine the pricklesting on your tongue and something bad
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Olive Andrews
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Archaeology under opalescent moss and unstretched peel there is a spine fetal and unclenched. no daylight for spines, only the pink colour from vertebrae nuzzling, the whales breaching under hosiery that holds the ocean like a lung. a single petal draped across some thoughts and archaeology, a blueprint floating in red ribbons and red systems continues to disintegrate and compensate in a complicated stretching.
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Danijela Stojkovic
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Toadstool
Sean Higley
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Heartbreak Themes from the CBC at night the lights remind you of her love the way they’re bent as if in prayer like you against the wind you’re walking home and in the darkened whispers there you fall asleep, and dream of words of love and hate and all the in between. “i know who lives in rupert’s land, it’s you with fur you’ve stolen, eaten there the words you write but never read. (a special sort of poet)” “you wrap your gifts in lonely fur you caught and killed the other day you’ve killed off all the bison here but that’s okay.” and all the things she drew amongst your notes are gone so when you go to look you will not find her there because she’s cried all she could about leonard cohen.
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Louis Sanger
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Expo ‘67
A.S. Krause
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Fowl Coat in mud, dried on prospective hay – a shallow beige rustles. Clouded rolls of vapour suspend above flatland boundless. Black specks shuffle through the crowd of themselves towards our camp where we’ve laid a lifetime perched in prone mulling over old days lying still in bed as fowl smells and sounds float in through walls like this fog that dangles and drifts, its weight poised on my throat, in a blanket of infernal trifling. An aggressive demise represses everything felt and wept, the chilly morning leaves no burden. Dog gone and a crack from the barrel. Softly, the feathers fall.
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Alex Emond
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s
The Neons of Wanchai Even in a drunken reverie I dreamed of bioluminescent corals Fossilized upon these damp and dusty streets. Gauche-gazed, light-asundered, Inertly bursting with decoded life-like Shapes that have forgotten to form words. Electric chatter speaks over The slow-burn of neon heat, buzzing Like the rising gossips of dilapidated tea ladies. So I watched your flowers fade. They look older and gaunter than children. Lithe brown bodies Dripping like burning jewels, Waiting to adorn another body In possession of a molted moment. Bodies bolded in bellowing flashes, Flushed cheeks, Folded mouths cannot scream. And beyond, where the neon did not speak, A hollow body Decomposed of glass and gases, I shall think of you, Inert, colorless, noble without trace, A vibrant emptiness that could if it could.
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Boris But
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August 22nd 10 am We knew it was going to rain. A sky that black in morning, you would have to be a fool not to bring an umbrella. I watch it shower from my three windows onto the green trees and the fools running. I feel smart and safe. 2 pm Well
this the sky
seared itself
on like a rage must be
twisting
and pour
different white and
trees
what Saigon looks like
give up from the storm
is something
into some
when those onto the
hot people
is the only cool they get all year out in it grateful.
I open the door
turned
and step out
so
tropical scene heavy
clouds
and the wind the people stand
like all Saigon.
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3 pm I sit, now. I watch the rain thin from torrent to mist. I knew that it would. I saw the sun piercing through the skin of the white sky like the yolk of a poached egg. I knew it was rushing to end, to wring out, to right. I don’t know I want it to
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Louise Hill
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Lagos, 2018
Ayo Ogunremi
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Beanwater you left beans to soak, I am told by blue ink in your drunken cursive timbre singing. the water twinkles drinking morning like skin. the bowl sits on its water halo optimizing my unsteadiness into a shy divinity. we wait for midday watch it slink. my life resides in the eddy of these beans blooming like plump hot currants
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Aaron Eagle Perls One Back-pats for that casting off. You’re wrapped around the staying power To knitting-wire this beret. Headlong – your egg-bald noggin Should faintly bobble against cold And stitch-trappers have perches Between lilac, green.
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Christopher Barnes
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Metro Shadow
David Diao
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Three Routes to Delhi over the Yamuna, Driving There are three ways to get to Delhi from the Eastern side of the river Yamuna. These three routes have changed, been paved over, been potholled by the monsoons, been the source of government scandals, prayers, car crashes, and ruined plans of reinforced steel.
Until recently, which is to say about ten years ago everybody took the Nizamuddin Bridge, northernmost named after Nizamuddin Auliya, Sufi saint friend of Amir Khusro poet of if I may Delhi (some call him parrot) both buried together the dargah they still sing qawallis full of evening strolling through the park next to it lattice of trees lattice of sandstone the echoing songs of dead dead Delhi the soft red notes among lattice branch parrots between words waiting Of course the second was strange blue steel latticed bridge scattered with the panels of rust in August I could have sworn it creaked sending shivers along the veins of our car this one is always foggy scattered around the banks 26
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you can see washing clothes bulls wading the waters pretensions of cars washed into a single reflection sky upon sky the river invites you down offers most clear view washes drowned into the sea among the soap the frothing waste and the patterns of the rare fish latticed When I was six they opened this, the third, lane upon lane clean and tarmac highway “Toll Bridge” a company had done this (as Companies go) charged some rupees to go through smooth a dreamless night one night our lights glanced at a gleaming red entrails of broken dogs what hell had raged this a nightmare painted these murders stringed along the highway blood sinking through tar to Yamuna the red red scratches the parrot’s beak streaked Delhi
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Suvij Sudershan
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After the Rain When the rain fell My father held a black umbrella For my mother, the two Pressed close enough To be holding hands. I walked beside her and him, Cotton-soaked, a wet shadow, Wishing the rain would never end.
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Boris But
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