WINTER 2022

literary magazine winter 2022

vol. 20 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. internet veg.magazine@gmail.com instagram/facebook thevegmagazine tumblr vegmagazine

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Dear reader, To everything, there is a season. Fermented leaves are blowing in the streets again, spiraling as if it were the first time. At the Veg, it’s the season of resurrection - thanks to editors and contributors fresh and familiar.

I am not the first to write bad poetry about spring, but luckily for you, the artists and poets in the coming pages have more deftly reimagined classic recipes, or cooked up something new altogether. The Veg has no set theme - last year’s canopy is this year’s seed bank, and we’ve let things spring up as they please - but patterns tend to emerge nonetheless.

Returning from hibernation to the waking world, be an investigatrix.

Notice what’s left in the low-tide mud. Look for some faces you’ve forgotten. Maybe when you look through the magnifying glass, you’ll find it’s ok: you remember.

Take a look! What’s the use in being coy these days? Turn, turn, turn.

Jubilantly, Will & the Veg editors Haider Ali Will Barry Tessa Furey Audrey Michel Kate O’Connor Olivia Shan Yuke Song

contents poetry A Derelict Day Dream Seafood Chowder A B C...Zebra Requiem Lighthouse Improvisation No.7 Bindlestiff The Youngest I’m Stuck A Zama City Fever Dream On Charlie Brown

Daisy Sprenger Violette Drouin Carmina Berbari Daou Carmina Berbari Daou Ruxandra Chirila James Jarrett Damian A. Fitz Erica Brown

7 8 10-11 13 14-15 16 19 20-21

Carmina Berbari Daou

24

Empiricism Yigu Zhou Salar de Uyuni Erica Brown Divinity Ava-Udeane Ellis Untitled Elias Doering Emotional Distance Yigu Zhou Teeth Morgan Sharpe Untitled Elias Doering Burhan Buudai - Lara Erdenee God of Wheat Sketch 1 Ava-Udeane Ellis Social Loafing Yigu Zhou What Am I Doing Here Erica Brown Peace Ava-Udeane Ellis Beef Tendon Yigu Zhou

Front Cover Inside Cover 5 6 9 12 17 18

art

4

22 23 25 26 Back Cover

divinity

ava-udeane ellis 5

elias doering 6

a derelict day dream Frustrated with my usual lot in love, I retreat to a back room luridly wallpapered with iridescent frogs To write not so cryptic fan-fiction poems on pilfered construction paper An alternate universe where this strange festival in the sawmpdump of my used-to-be-home-town is not so hard to reckon. I mean, the queues and clues that hang invisible to me must surely be domain free to the rest of this motel crew And the young emergent documentarian With an unpronounceable middle name is just too cool beyond words I don’t even want to sleep with her you morons I just want to BE her to breath her, too see her smile in my direction But alas, she has an ersatz beau And I am sent to crash on the five person sleeper couch With the clinging twins, Betsy and Lo.

daisy sprenger

7

seafood chowder When you miss home you make seafood chowder.

Shrimp comes in two plastic bags, Haddock, in styrofoam.

I would say we’re too far inland for fresh catch, but it’s like that everywhere, these days.

You’ve always liked to imagine a profound, spiritual connection with the ocean, But the truth is you grew up twenty minutes from the coast and never went.

You put too much cream in your chowder, too much butter on your bread.

You can’t remember what low-tide mud feels like between your toes.

violette drouin

8

emotional distance

yigu zhou

a b c … zebra Part 1A Bra Ca Dabra: Everything is magical, Fantastical, Gigantically, Huge.

I grow.

Just Kidding. I will never Learn. I go to school on Monday morning, and at Nights I am On the Playground on Queue, Ridding the Seasaw.

Tuesday’s and Thursday Under the same Vendetta.

Wednesday.

X-plain: Y am I a Zebra ?

10

Part 2A Broken Childhood.

Don’t Ever Fantasize.

Gifted.

Humble.

Imaginary.

Jokster.

Kid. Leftie.

Mindful. No. Painful.

“O” but in Shakespearean.

Quirks but not intended.

Runaway but you run back into yourself.

Self-loathing, Triggered, Underestimated: Verbalizing your Woes is…

X-eptionally hard when You are a Zebra…

carmina berbari daou 11

teeth

12

morgan sharpe

requiem To broken words Fix me to your idea of Aether. Meaning, I’ll feel you close when you aren’t. Tomorrow, as Hugo prescribed, À l’heure où blanchit la campagne, I’ll close my eyes to see you. My brow is furrowed, you are hiding in stillness. A silent lament pounds my ear drum. Melancolía. With an accent on the I graved Neruda. No worry if our words don’t justify our needs, we will borrow them. Expiring. Our words will stay. Their words will stay. You cannot give them back. Is it possible your stillness awaits me to breakoff mine? Because we believe, ultimately in closeness.

I’d like for you to speak my language. My parents borrowed their vows from Gibran: ‫اعم تدلو دقل‬. Born together, but my english broke apart.

Eighteen years ago you saw me for the first time. A funny child.

You scared the speech out of me and now I hate kisses. Say. Say we believe ultimately in closeness. How does one do that?

Speech therapy— unperfect is too close to say it was.

Say words in my mouth. Speaks so that I don’t have to open my mouth. To blow words with empty vowel sounds like a kiss. Say stay.

Somewhere I have a picture of myself hiding behind myself. I was born outside of the cave and I can’t unknow. Say smile.

The technical term for this is Meno. Me don’t know because everything means slightly something else. Say go gently. Everything you say is wrong.

Whisper the shit out of the thoughts you breathe.

carmina berbari daou

13

14

blackberries, your dark green dress thrashing in the salty wind. You knelt

to speak to us. I watched you walk into the redwoods to pick

the heavy fog that clung to those dark waves. and the seagulls that rarely liked

blue whales that broke the surface to smell

in the lighthouse. together, with the

We lived Together

lighthouse

15

ruxandra chirila

touch the tips of your fingers to the mist. Let the ghost of your damp skin touch my face.

never still. I will watch you pick blackberries and they will fall like warm wax and stain a trail to me, to our tomb that reaches to touch the sky. I take you to the top and you

like teeth, they garrison our keep. we shall not have anyone here in our light house but us, my love, and the seaweed trim of your dress that thrashes and flows.

But there is no one here but us, my love, standing side by side, perched on the long waving grass above those jagged white rocks that line the coast

lurks beneath the foam-lipped ocean. waiting for us to slip and fall.

to a goddess. the lighthouse creaked open for you like the mouth of some deep-sea creature that we know

in the moss; rabbits were not afraid of you, they let you crack their soft necks like sacrifices

improvisation no. 7 Shadow pools beneath the hilltop. I stand in blinking socket amidst fertile clotting and the dark is antiseptic

james jarrett

16

elias doering

17

burhan buudai - god of wheat

18

lara erdenee

bindlestiff the youngest Playing cards and bootblack wrapped like pork bits in a dumpling in a handkerchief skewered on a stick.

This is all I need, all I bring with me as I walk out the door, Bindlestiff the Youngest, aged 7 ¾, and I swear on the ace of spades, now suspended behind me like a worm on a hook, that I will not be back.

I am a refugee escaping an authoritarian regime: Grounded, two weeks, my only crime, eating the whole jar of honey.

I will put my bee-stung tongue to good use.

It will shine silver in the moonlight, belting camp songs fireside.

All will love me, especially the jailhouse boys; they will appreciate my card tricks, and the sheriff, how his shoes shine.

damian a. fitz 19

i’m stuck a zama city fever dream Meld the bison jaw with my own and let me speak my truth Force the moose vertebrate into my spine and let me stand up honestly Replace my femur with that of the deer so I may finally step to where I am a meant to be I rise under the full sun at midnight Black flies swarming in a halo above my head The oil on the water’s surface reflects my greed back at me I’m higher than the water tower and waist deep in the muskeg From above, I can watch my love and I walk into the woods to bury our respects I was already blind at the wheel in Whitecourt, Alberta When I came to tears thinking of her So many more than 500 miles from any home I had I couldn’t have gone back even if I was near How loud it all must have been The hungry huffing and helicopters All I remember from my own blackout is the tremendous roar Death is deafening in the most surprising way Acid bled straight through me And I held you in my lungs the fear drained from my nose in a trickle of blood I cut the brakes but still screamed through the crash It is impossible to name the feeling of driving by the kicking horse rest area At 100 miles per hour you can see the shadow of the old Grand Marquis and the two cowgirl cops riding upfront

20

I was leaning on my bumper when you delivered my prophecy Drunk and angry you finally spoke the truth That my future went on without you and we’d leave eachother like the flame through the Cariboo I am the fire And you are the mountainside Let me show you my body “Stand by Me” style And we’ll bond over images of rotting flesh and river valleys That I will still treasure long after you’re dead

21

erica brown

sketch 1

ava-udeane ellis 22

yigu zhou 23

on charlie brown I don’t hear adults when they are talking. On the TV screen, I see life from the perspective of a dog’s life. I am trapped on the TV screen. A Consumer Reports survey found that 23% of Americans dread holiday music. Children aren’t acknowledging the fact that they are going bald because it is just a cartoon life. I can now make the conscious decision to stay a child.

carmina berbari daou

24

erica brown

25

peace

ava-udeane ellis

26