the veg literary magazine winter 2019
T H E V E G LITERARY MAGAZINE winter 2019 vol. 16 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
Reader, You feel air underneath your shirt and suddenly it’s April. Are you late for Spring? No. Nothing’s soft yet. The tops of the trees still poke. The melt is still ice in the morning. It’s not yet the future. But it’s late enough in the past to appreciate it. We at the Veg are remembering loneliness in the subdivided headings and columns; a stranger amongst the stones of Rabat, the shadow of a centennial moon, and a peanut forgotten under 32A. This issue is made of tilts and charges. Winter art ruptured. Hazard. Cactus. This Veg drapes itself around the spiky garden, in the middle of the city, threatening to shred at any moment. It is sprawling, yet respectful of margins. Barbed, yet nurturing upon the page. The words inside urge you to climb and see the cacti graduate into broadleaved giantesses. Keep this in mind as you cross the little tundras back to yourself.
Tentatively, The Veg
contents inch
julia paquette
cover
pseudo-cacti
Lauren bashin-
inside
sullivan
cover
nurture
julia paquette
5
cryogenics
josie bitter
6
at 4000m above sea level
emily huang
7
ryan grewal
8
on the qinghai-tibet railway II after the statue of euterpe in st. george’s gardens almost totality
lauren bashin-
sullivan
clink
lauren bashin-
10 11
sullivan untitled
pierce bowie
12
untitled
julia paquette
14
pura besakih, bali
oona albertson
15
untitled
josie bitter
16
francis
anna jee
17
driveway digs
oona albertson
18
nite rights
ryan grewal
19
hazard
camille pass
20
butterfly
drew powell
22
jetsam
hannibal de pencier
23
time of the month
florence heap
24
rabat 10:52
gideon salutin
26
rabat 11:38
gideon salutin
27
three week old adult
camille pass
28
track changes 3
hannah kirijian
30
the great bridge
lauren bashin-
31
in the sky
sullivan
marrakech 7:93
gideon salutin
32
untitled
michael shaw
33
inter alia
ryan grewal
34
untitled
dylan rekers
36
pabonka hermitage
emily huang
37
something else
heather nolan
38
editors: Julie Demet Adam Eldred Jason Gales Sophie Garnett Emily Hoppe Maia Klee Lulu Lebowitz Louis Sanger Sean Sokolov
nurture
julia paquette
5
cryogenics But GOD dont let me wither (at least not fully). Probably best to do it now before thy intellect sours (I have Alzheimer’s in my genes) or the crassness of a mid-life crisis converts liberal to communist or I decide the world IS too much with us and the precious cargo imitates Pollock on the wall Frostbite encroaching on leather soles that promised warmth grants me preview (much obliged) Plus those moments when I’m next in line and my motherboard seizes up Awkwardly agape at cardboard stuffed with cheerios And metal tubes of tomatoes (impermanent tranquility). I’m gonna get cold anyway.
6
josie bitter
emily huang
at 4000m above sea level on the qinghai-tibet railway II
7
after the statue of euterpe in st. george’s gardens Your bones are always wet, she tells me, with blood. We’re sitting in gardens that were burial grounds three hundred years ago. The pigeons seem anxious in this city. They make me anxious too. The first body-snatch happened here, she tells me. Three resurrectionists stole Mrs. Jane Sainsbury in 1777, for use in anatomy. I wonder if the ground remembers her or did they put her back? A pigeon pecks at a bit of lettuce flinging it over a headstone
8
I wonder if her bones remember anything, or are they too dry.
9
ryan grewal
almost totality
lauren bashin-sullivan
10
clink
lauren bashin-sullivan
11
untitled One night God woke me with a rough hand and said, “Tomorrow we ride for an unconquered wild to clear a wide and burning tract of earth, as those that stand there now shall be swept down low before us like an autumn windrow; and as your children flail upon them in eternal threshing, you and I from the parched red rocks will squeeze milk and honey.” And so we rode, camped, eyes burning in the fires. But one dark eve he turned upon me, crept above my bedroll and started kicking in my ribs and head; and though I screamed He aimed to kill me. In the end I managed to lay hold of a rock, and quickly sliced my foreskin off with it— and throwing this gruesome thing at His feet, 12
He laughed, shook His head and let me be. And the next day we rode off under a clear sky with Him whistlin’.
13
pierce bowie
untitled
julia paquette
14
pura besakih, bali
oona albertson
15
untitled Once a quiet zephyr, which once ruffled my papers sprawled on a manicured lawn, now angry and passionate now hurls itself at our metal corpus free peanuts frantically flailed now rolling on gum-stained carpet we sway with it submit ourselves to side swipes caress the clean jagged wings our weapons of choice mold themselves in careful formation particles dive out of the way we clench and they catch us on a cloud suspended for another minute. a silent cacophony of metals melding meddling melting coarse and sucked into our artificial bird our steel swan in little tubes deposit on my head (what brings us up brings us down fills inner tubes in my chest) unable to shake wandering brain wondering if ours will be a controlled crashing or an unexpected one (is there a difference)
16
josie bitter
francis
anna jee 17
oona albertson
driveway digs
18
nite rights The insides of my ears and asshole dissolves, expanding, a morning stretch. Sunrise, as I saw it, the next day: an orange sliver, a reflection of the little gold hoop in your left nostril, and your mattress spring in my back. It’s important to remember everything every detail or else what’s even the point? Baked beans pot soaking in sink. You broke your clothes rack late last night. I wanna stay over more often. I’m sorry I spilled my poppers all over your bed while you put your dick on. I like your little gold hoop and your filthy apartment
19
ryan grewal
hazard We’re all eating poisoned fish! Was only 5 years ago but i’m writing about it for class strange to write about tectonic plates when someone watched their parents drown in their living room drifted 10 miles off to sea on their rooftop just as easy to be “struck by lightning” it’s not special or interesting but the scars are so beautiful and what a thing to be beautiful to be a fractal to be lightning.
In my stagnant puddle more water comes in the form of droplets sliding up my wormy body carcasses on concrete easy to forget
20
what it is like to squirm blind away from the mud. Peacock feathers in a jar you bought: you wanted flare a renaissance boudoir but the ants still run up your countertops they don’t care air gets so heavy like this the sky just gives up tears into the sadness “easy, with gusto”
to be drenched well, that’s the best part.
Wonder what it’s like to be radioactive my rate of decay (y) comparably better than some 50 years maybe?
Bile filled and beautiful
more fish in the sea.
21
camille pass
butterfly
drew powell
22
jetsam there’s a rubber duck with an eyepatch who thinks he’s better than me. he sits in a dusty corner beneath my lamp like the monarch of my desk commanding quiet authority over a kingdom of detritus pens mugs bottles notepads receipts an apple core and me. The sovereign of flotsam, half blind, bright yellow... there’s a rubber duck with an eyepatch who thinks he’s better than me.
hannibal de pencier 23
time of the month I will only be happy when I am dead and I can actually see everyone being really sad at my funeral eating one too many slices of the pie: your face running away from itself little fat Easter-egg legs apparently this has usable meaning we remain unconvinced dream hand dissolving into dream crotch is this hot or disturbing? I call you baby want to kiss all the airplanes that have ever disappeared I am anti-legalization because then my dealer will be without a job and he is so nice and he has a family! the yearn: an all-American montage life in which I am a first-rate boxer the yarn: my dad once claimed that he was sheep Jesus oh when will this wind take my face forever!?!
24
CONFESSION: when the self-loathing gets too much I cut v-necks into all my t-shirts felt-tip chest hair bicep-brain fight dirty for me shots of milk from egg-cups it’s for the calcium oh no wait it’s for ping-pong if I were medieval I would already be dead now anyway
florence heap 25
rabat 11:38
gideon salutin
26
gideon salutin
rabat 10:52
27
three week old adult
There is loneliness in subdivided headings and columns but there is also a space with frozen margaritas and hands rubbing your back. Many love languages later you decide what’s best on the yellow quilt. Many love languages later, it’s the little things that get you, the lights being put up in your apartment or an offering of soup. When the little things are given they are gone and so are the little parts of you. There is so much time left and elapsed that it holds to your pinky toes that you suddenly become very aware of in damp boots. Kissing is pretty gross but so is asking to be loved. Especially when you try speaking to the lakes that come rushing by minutes apart on the highway out the passenger window. Socked feet in the sunny spot on the dashboard we keep throttling a dead chicken with these questions. These days night dreams get scarier and scarier and you have to walk around for a bit in the apartment to remind interlocking limbs where things are and that she is dead now. She died in your mother’s arms in the house you grew up in. Not the house in the neighborhood that they once dubbed, “Jew Town”, but the one that still technically you belong to. Her legs crumpled on the gravel-- it is our fault. She loved to sleep and sleep she did in my mother’s arms because that’s what you do when you are ready to go. “We didn’t want to ruin your Friday night” because that’s all I live for here in the tundras of Ohio, another beer in the same bar. Childhood ends with the death of your childhood pet, and I am a fresh three week-ed adult. Resistant to change and the weather my mother decided that grass wasn’t fit for Southern California and though this was met with applause by the neighbors the short limbs on her daughter’s long terriered body would no longer find support in the lawn holes burned by her piss. I memorized the view of a second story window in my teen years believing in the forever tenderness of those twilights and the witch’s house next door--no one in or out except family and loud children on Sundays to use the pool. Immortalizing the gnarled tree in the front yard splitting into two still self sustaining lives. I painted and I sang songs out the window collecting the parts of myself to give to others thinking they were important, thinking I was bigger than my twin sized bed. They chopped the limbs off last year when the Witch died and the corner property was finally up for sale. We walked by dusk purple in bare feet, I never put her on a leash especially when there was nowhere to go. She acknowledged her freedom by taking her time with each tree and turning around occasionally to see that my body was still there. We raced for the last stretch of block around the corner 28
to the peeling grey back gate every time, even when she shouldn’t have been running. Rituals persist in the life of a household dog, hours at a time outside spread on her belly with her snout poking out through the crack in the fence and the concrete. My father, the most emotionally insulated or stunted member of the family shed a tear the morning after when he turned on the kitchen lights and made coffee on the cold tiles without her. In her old age she never wanted to be touched. In a way I believe that it was because she didn’t want us to feel the bones coming through. Very far away, I settle into my bed knowing she left us at home. I think about how my home will probably be the next corner lot to go after the Witch’s house. I told a fortune teller my problems at the bar the next night. Choosing to write on an intricate questionnaire form in capital letters rather than checking off boxes what I thought was wrong with me: LOVE HURTS. She thought I was probably referring to the numbskull boy to my left and the electric current that ran between our fingers, but that couldn’t have been further from the truth. I had been talking about the kind of love that starts on your 6th birthday and dies after your 21st. She made me pull out a card from her tarot deck and laughed as she read the word “success” out loud. Almost scoffing she told me “y’know maybe I’m reading it wrong” and sipped her third mixed drink for charity. She asked me how old I was and I told her three weeks since my childhood dog died. Then she adjusted her wig pulling it higher over her scalp and giggled a little scratching words onto the faded prescription pad. I walked away and read it to myself. She just wrote: “chill the fuck out,” and she’s probably right.
camille pass 29
30
hannah kirijian
the great bridge in the sky
lauren bashin-sullivan
31
marrakech 7:93
gideon salutin
32
(untitled) Some nights my dreams are filled with such strange images that leave me aching, alone, lonely and I will get out of bed, slowly and carefully because the neighbours hate noise and I’ll see you, the picture I took of you, on my wall and I many years ago remember when we were ourselves, and I can’t help but laugh like how I, we used to and did I capture the colour of your eyes? Do I love your brown or mine? Is it yours or anything I gave you yours, ours or just me making you and you made me so lonely, so cold, and so I can’t help but to go back to bed and dream of eyes too wide to be real, and of the soft warm dirt of the gardens we each summer up on the mountain planted our dreams, carrots and parsley.
33
michael shaw
inter alia I wish I had someone to sleep with and I wish to be amongst others. LOST COCKATIEL COCO flies by our patio table on white printer paper CALL (267) 317-6080 REWARD ! I say I only allow myself one crush on a white woman at a time and he tells me that’s horrible, laughing. How the fuck do you look for a lost bird? Like in the trees or something? He asks me who likes sleeping with people who looks like you and I think about how I want a brown-green man in my bed so I can forget my limbs. Gay people I tell him. Do you think there are enough lost cockatiels in town that coco won’t be lonely?
34
Anyway who would rather be amongst others than sames.
35
ryan grewal
untitled
dylan rekers 36
pabonka hermitage
emily huang 37
something else after “Something Else� by Paul Muldoon
when i saw the iron-railed balcony the height, the grace of it, i thought of gannets, of sharp plummets, soundless entry of how olympic divers are rewarded for silence for not disrupting the peace how, watching some electric blue sluice from the shaker i told you i was six months sober and, tossing aside the orange peel, i drank the motley punch down, headed for the open bar, which made me think of something else, then something else again.
heather nolan 38