WINTER 2021

LITERARY MAGAZINE WINTER 2021 LITERARY MAGAZINE WINTER 2021

LITERARY MAGAZINE WINTER 2021 vol. 19 no. 1

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

Dear reader, Our issues never have a theme, but one way or another they usually wind up revolving around a nebulous set of ideas, feelings, and images. For instance I recall editing past issues marked by swimmers and bodies of water. This time, grass and greenery, one side of a conversation. I invite you to search for other strands. I’ve never been sure if that is a better reflection of the preoccupations of the artists submitting or of the editors choosing submissions. More likely it’s a mix of both.

The Veg is just a little scattering of a few people’s concerns at a certain place and time in history, so I’m tempted to avoid gratuitous clichés such as the idea that the magazine is especially “of our time” or that the particular turbulence of the last twelve-odd months is encoded in the poems and pictures here. But of course, timely things spring up: the uneasiness of a social encounter on Mont-Royal avenue; a deserted coastline; a tug towards the highway and the open spaces it promises.

Maybe these things would have sprung up anyway. Who’s to say?

Whatever through lines you find, I hope something strangely familiar emerges from the frost.

Yours, Sophie + The Veg

contents white tiger

lauren bashin-sullivan

cover

strawberries

madeline holton

continental

madeline holton

5

gabriel jamieson

6

painted ladies

lauren bashin-sullivan

7

untitled

emma gibb

8

mount royal

daniel belshaw

9

inside cover

breakfast to the man in the beige, white house

avenue west oreum i

megan gialloreto

10

oreum ii

megan gialloreto

11

past and present

julia paquette

12

gabriel jamieson

13

subprime sugar daddy

damian fitz

14

necessary

sasha k.

16

uza & ost

erica brown

17

big under the moon

james ivison

18

love (tofino) tommorrow the weather should be excellent

satisfaction

in chinatown

fishing shacks

kaelin barry

21

my brother

james ivison

22

untitled

emma gibb

23

dad

madeline holton

24

man teeth

sabrina papandrea

25

my mere departure,

gabriel jamieson

26

isolation (victoria)

julia paquette

28

the chinese

anson clark

29

untitled

oona albertson

30

untitled

oona albertson

31

vineyard house

damian fitz

32

pink magnolia

lauren bashin-sullivan

33

my reason for return

potrait of genghis khan

editors: Will Barry Julie Demet Tessa Furey Sophie Garnett Kyla Ion Hannah Kirijian Lulu Lebowitz Audrey Michel Olivia Shan

continental breakfast

madeline holton

5

to the man in the window of the beige, white house I see your glass head as it shines around the room your right hand floating with a mug, steaming.

This glimpse elates me, as I smile through shadowed window pane and crawl fleetingly into your life.

I like to imagine you speak of me to your wife, “there they are again, sniffing the roses” as we pass by.

I miss you when I arrive at night to empty timber chair and lonely table, the air coldly sweeping then still.

Sometimes I see you on the porch but I get nervous that we are taking things to quickly and I look away.

Our nods, perhaps imagined, are enough. To see your legs, straight and standing, is too much to bear.

The days I see your oval back, hunched above the window sill, are the days I fear that we are losing what we had.

Sometimes, luridly, I imagine we speak. And it is upon these days which I no longer care to wonder past.

And quietly I sit at home, with dog wailing to be walked, unable to move, drenched in definitive dread. gabriel jamieson 6

lauren bashinsullivan

painted ladies

7

emma gibb

untitled 8

mont royal avenue west I walked the length of Mont Royal Avenue West.

The spider said he would be there, thin-legged and hard to catch, very true, but still so fragile, honestly. Why else was I there?

Why the virtual agreement, in broad daylight, to all but poison ourselves? midst of lockdown, with all the cupboards closed?

I suppose we had to see each other, to stop our jutting legs from freezing in place, like dolls. But I don’t think he truly wanted to see me, or anyone else, in the end.

daniel belshaw 9

megan gialloreto

oreum i

10

megan gialloreto

oreum ii

11

julia paquette

past and present love (tofino)

12

tomorrow the weather should be excellent Grey tunnels wilt into the mountainside, the passing cars turn to mice, huckleberries grow along yellow-dotted lines.

gabriel jamieson

13

subprime sugar daddy Listen Baby, I’ve gotta go.

Daddy sells mortgages: Dead leases on new life, (And some people need more than one).

Like your Aunt Roz With the Shih Tzus.

Each one of those dogs Needs a big yard and hardwood floors.

Or your Uncle Leslie Who paid an extra ten K For a walk in closet: wasn’t easy With his credit score.

Or Cousin Joe, He needs a meat-locker and a tall, Thick hedge against publicity, And a peace-and-quiet soundproof basement.

Daddy’s got money to hand out And more to collect— You like the violin lessons, baby?

Well no kidding— On stage, screeching bloody like a vulture: Just like Daddy, You’ve got them predatory instincts.

14

Well Daddy’s got the whole county paying for built-in jacuzzis So that you can rhapsodize, scratch the strings with your talons, And it makes him so goddamn happy to hear you do it, Baby.

But he can’t listen right now, But he’ll be at the rehearsal, He promises.

damian fitz 15

necessary satisfaction this was what I remember of the dream: melting in my hands, held under hot water running watched my brain soften and slip through the spaces of my sticky fingers. the hairdresser glances and worries about her plumbing and what it would take to keep her dying business alive. the salon was so dirty and made all its money from kids buying their t-shirt in irony. why was it so funny to them? when I woke my hands were still clawed like that, a wide-toothed bowl of flesh like to beg like in the way that only animals hold things, usually to eat. for a moment I was an animal the way we are in the seconds before our life rushes back to us you don’t know your name, you hit snooze, tug the curtain and sometimes there is this feeling that I am occasionally poking my head into the present but otherwise crawling into and out of my bed for work, entertainment, or some other necessary satisfaction.

sasha k.

16

uza & ost

erica brown

17

big under the moon in chinatown It got colder and colder and summer finally slipped away for good. And in these times before falling asleep I would often lie in bed and feel the cold air coming in and dream of wheat fields, of drifting over the city and out to corn fields and pumpkin patches with scarecrows standing in them, and out over to the mountains beyond the city with the big moon, and every night I would go to bed early and this dream would come to me.

All the old people around town and my grandma were getting to me. I began to see out there every night something more about the long past and the long long future, about time, cause in these dreams the fields went on and on, and the mountains did too, and still there was something past those, and that too went on forever…

As it got colder I felt it all over, the slow terrible hoping feeling of these dreams. I heard it in the sound of the man playing saxophone on the street corner, in my grandma’s voice; I saw it in Jonas’ sunken eyes, in Anne when she cried. I heard it in the sadness which came shovelling out of Pops when he played on the piano. I felt it some days when I left school. I saw it in angry paintings of God, and the fear which accompanied them everywhere. I saw it in the old redbrick buildings of the neighbourhood, the old smokeshop, the old movie theatre. The streetlights switching on at half past seven. The gnawing of the past on the present, the brooms, the bowling alley, the bells of the church.

Anne and I went to go watch a movie once at the old theatre near my house, and halfway through the power cut out. The theatre is real old, like with old couches to sit on and big draughty ceilings and just one screen. We went to watch some early movie for Halloween. It was one of those ones with a boy and a girl who get lost in a storm and

18

have to pull into a strange castle or cemetery for help, and die in the end anyway. There was this couple necking in front of us the whole time. Anne got bored halfway through and started playing cards. I watched till near the end till when all the gravestones gave way and out came skeletons, and monsters, and hideous things. And worms. Then just as the main character was about to get it, boom. The electricity fizzled out and the screen went black. Power outage on the whole block. Anne and I walked home in the rain alone with our coats over our heads.

That day was a bad storm. The wind blew in, doors opened and slammed. Pops sat in his study and worked away. I went up to the attic and sat up there while it banged and thumped, and watched the rain bucket down onto all the roofs outside. I imagined the graveyards of the city getting drowned and every old thing crawling out of the muck and floodwater. I imagined the church pastor kneeling under his roof and praying. The lamenting, the rapture. When the wind abated the silence of the world in the attic made me think of that old song: “The mute milkman makes his rounds, the mute milkman makes no sounds, but goes on.”

When the power came back on an hour later I went down to make tea, and found Pops in the living room on the phone looking out the window saying, “No, no, it won’t pass anytime soon.”

It moved on just in time for the end of the month and the lantern festival. The festival is this big thing at the end of the month mostly for the kids, in which everyone in the neighbourhood makes lanterns out of candles and glass and coloured paper and hangs them up in doorways for whoever’s passing by to see. And on that night they play music everywhere on the main street, and people are all about dancing till late even on a weekday, and crazy old men from around

19

the park walk through the streets and see tangibly for once the lights and halos they see often in the sky.

And on this night on this particular year I was in adjacent Chinatown with Charles and lanterns strung up all around, and music.

Everything was so loud and alive. People were pushing carts everywhere and all the shops were open and noisy. Old faces peered down from second story windows just to get a look. Charles kept jumping around and talking about Ava and the new coat he had bought. He was saying, “Yeah it’s so nice, it’s so nice, yeah she’s so nice, you know…” And he skipped everywhere and spent all the money he had left on mooncakes and desert.

From Anne's room that night I watched the lanterns spread out over the city like little stars, one for every house, and I imagined all the bad things that could happen, and I imagined all the good. Jonas pulled up downstairs in his old beat up car and shouted out of it like an old man. We went downtown to see his uncle. His uncle said, “Listen... look at my suit. Look at your aunt, she likes my suit. My suit looks good. It's ok. It'll be ok.”

james ivison

20

fishing shacks

kaelin barry

21

james ivison

my brother

22

untitled

emma gibb

23

madeline holton

dad

24

man teeth The man with no teeth had missing teeth because he fell down the hole and passed the tongue and into the throat cause the candy was sweet plus the brush was bad but knock did the hands and missed the nose but got the teeth then gone the teeth so the man had missing teeth but wow the gums and bright the bumps, so black the hole and deep the cheeks, then ouch the throat to push the meals and worked the tongue to keep the man out of the hole that made him lose the teeth.

sabrina papandrea

25

my mere departure, my reason for return To come and go from green grass meadows each time I shed a sulking suit of skin and begin again down lonely linear lanes no twists amidst its gravel breathe as careless cars pass by with heavy shadows into perfect evening sunset pink on the brink of town rolling around restless.

From the meadow I venture, each time my schedule states, and into town across mounds of brown dirt without a shirt and barefoot and falling eyes-tired past pear trees beside calming-down fire below interconnected wire; free to roam the skies but never alone.

And the town is a blur, I only remember her with green eyes like meadows which lie next to me and yellow buzz of bees keeps me walking, seldom talking thinking of your bristle hair that shares your shoulders and stares at me as it dances on your neck.

I say hello and hand you your check and you check if its right

26

and you write down a note and you never have spoken but the paper screams thank you and I leave and I don’t believe you think of me after, not until I come from meadow once again, until then I go to sleep in the green-eyed grass; our hidden uncommunicable emerald meadow.

gabriel jamieson

27

julia paquette

isolation (victoria)

28

the chinese portrait of genghis khan Who is this man dressed in simple white?

Face, a mask of serenity’s flight. The flowing White beard surely a sign of a knowing sage, Well versed in imperial Chinese arts, Taoism, The Mohist school. Sunken eyes, how many Oceans have you travelled? How many debates With scholars have you won, or lost? It does not Matter. An arched smile, victor of fortune’s wheel; Rising up from nothing, a true reforming zeal.

But this is no Chinese sage; for it is the face of The Chinese exterminator, a son of Eternal Blue Heaven. How the eyes now seem drowned, The beard forked; the white, temporal hypocrisy.

Tell me which shell-shocked artist painted you?

And was the calmness hard to paint, with each Brushstroke the lashing of the whip, a scream? Now Dead, we must give the judgement of history its due; Conqueror and wise man, how well you marry the two.

anson clark

29

untitled

oona albertson

30

oona albertson

untitled

31

vineyard house Careful there, I see you running up the stair With— Oh my, what a fine choice!

But be careful What you say.

Silence is like your golden hair; This house is a flimsy thing, The walls are all lattice work, It sways in the wind.

And the foundation is manure, It really stinks in spring When all those flowers on the trellis bloom And, intrigued, Quiver at whispers.

So beware, beware Of the room you share; He is not your only company.

damian fitz

32

lauren bashinsullivan

pink magnolia

33