B LO D W Y N MEMORIAL PRIZE 20 1 6
CHARLOTTEVANRYN AMYLEBLANC SARAFLEMINGTON RUDRAPRIYARATHORE AMILCARJOHNNOGUEIRA SUSIEWINTERS KLARADUPLESSIS DANIELKINCADERENTON
THE FIRST TIME I EVER USED THE PATH CHARLOTTE VAN RYN I asked him if he’d ever killed anybody; he said focus Charley. I told him everything I knew, told it to him straight. He was probably using mind-reading technologies, so I knew I couldn’t tell him the slightest of white lies like I usually do. Which is too bad because I’m the sneakiest liar in all of White Oak. Did you know her? he asked. Yes I said, in a sort of sneaky way I knew her. How do you mean? he asked. She lives in the middle of the forest where I do my finest lurking, I said. I live on the edge of town, so I have the whole forest to myself except for Mrs. Williams. Her cottage has a yard and a dirt path, but I am an adventurer so I don’t use paths. Did she know you were spying on her? Did you ever talk to her? he asked. No and no I said. What was she doing when you spied on her? he asked. Well, I said, she was like an animal. Sometimes she was doing boring things, sometimes she was doing wild things. I don’t understand much of what she does. She moved like an animal, like she was always scared of something—I don’t know from what because she is a human and we are on the top of the food chain—but she was always waiting for something to come out of the trees. Sometimes she would garden but when she did she would always pause and look up. Sometimes it looked like she forgot what she was doing and would stop. Sometimes she would come out and rip all of the plants out of the garden and chuck them across the lawn. Her eyes were always shiny. She’d make tea every day and when the weather was good she would sit on her porch with it, but I never once saw her take a sip. She would stare into the forest; she wasn’t looking at me, she wasn’t looking at anything. Most of the time her mouth was moving but I couldn’t hear any sound come out. Usually she’d toss her tea into the flowers. I understood her in some way though. We are both hybrids of the animal kingdom, that’s why I watched over her. Did you ever speak to her? he asked. I had nothing to say, I said. I was her silent protector. But you watched her a lot? he said. FIRST PLACE FICTION
Yes, all the time, I said, almost every day when school got let out. Every day except for Sundays, which is always church and chores and church and chores and church. Did you ever go into her house? he said. No, I never got too close because my cover would be blown, you know. There is a tree lying on its back by the lawn, that was my hiding spot. It was my best job. I’ve been watching her for months really, ever since she moved in. Do you know why she moved into the cabin? he said. Duh I said, everyone knows that. She used to live in the town beside the hardware store. Mr. Williams moved away when their daughter Aurelia died. I knew Aurelia sort of. She was in the big school, I’m still in the small school. I think I liked her because of puberty. Anyways I never talked to her. So, he said, writing on his notepad, probably a special issued secret decoder notepad, tell me what happened to you today, from the time you woke up until now. Are you in the FBI? I asked. No Charley I’m not, he said—but I knew he was lying. I woke up earlier than my parents, just like every other Saturday. I did my stretches and changed into the army pants Uncle Gabe got me from New York. I went into the kitchen and found that Mom had got the hot dogs I wanted, they were in the freezer. So obviously the day was going pretty well so far. I ate one frozen and put two more in the side pocket of my pants, it’s the only one with buttons—I move around a lot and need them to be secure. I put my boots on and a t-shirt and was in the forest quick. There are lots of terrible, dangerous things in that forest, that’s why I have to go in every day. Nobody goes in there, that’s why they don’t believe me when I tell them all about the battles I’ve won. I can’t believe Mrs. Williams can live right in the forest every day, it’s scary. I would never go there at night. I’m scared even in the day time but I have to be brave. I went to the cooked chicken tree and kicked it for a while. I call it that ‘cause it’s rotting and when you kick at it the chunks come off like a quarter chicken dinner. Branches and bushes were scratching my ankles; my army pants are too short now because of puberty and my long socks were in the wash. Close to the blueberry patch, I started to smell something strong and different. I heard cracking sticks or something larger. All of a sudden I was a dog. I was sniffing everything and getting closer to where the smell was coming from. Soon enough I could see smoke, even though I was a dog and eyesight is my weakest sense, I couldn’t help but see smoke was everywhere. I leaped over branches with my nose in the air. I ran and ran towards Mrs. Williams’s cabin, using my tail for balance. CHARLOTTE VAN RYN
When I first saw the fire spilling out a window I wasn’t a dog anymore. I waited at my usual stump, watching the flames curve out from the far side and up onto the roof. They were mean and roaring and quickly ripping through the wall of the house. I smelled roast beef—which I thought was strange—then I remembered Mrs. Williams. This was the first time in my whole life I went into the clearing, stepping from outside of the forest. I got as close as I could and looked into one of the windows where the fire hadn’t reached yet. I could see now that it was the kitchen that was burning up, but closer to me was the living room. There she was, lying on the couch. I paused from my story and looked at the secret agent. Don’t tell Mom this part, ok? I said. Ok, he said. I mean it, I said, I know I’m a kid but don’t be tricky. Scouts’ honour, he said. At that moment I knew he was true. I ran in the door and over to Mrs. Williams. The smoke was so thick I coughed and my head felt wobbly straight away. The side of my face nearest to the kitchen was burning hot. I squinted my eyes and found her body laying still. I tried to lift her but she was heavy, she’s a small woman but still a grown-up. I’m sure she had rocks in her pockets. I grabbed her wrists and dragged her off the couch, across the living room and out of the door getting her dress dirty on the ashes that had blown over. I was walking backwards which was pretty tough. When we were on the grass I fell back coughing. I lay there listening to the crackle of the wood breaking up. Mrs. Williams was not moving, but I could see her chest go up and down. It was just a matter of time before she woke up again. Then I got nervous; I wouldn’t know what to say when she woke up. I’d never talked to her. I thought maybe she will be hungry, so I grabbed the two hot dogs from my pocket. They would taste better roasted of course but I didn’t have time. Mrs. Williams gasped and propped herself up on her elbows and looked around. She saw me, and then turned her head to the burning house. I looked back at her. I should have told her that I had hot dogs if she was hungry. She got to her feet with tears in her eyes and ran back into the house, closing the door behind her. I looked through the window but there was so much smoke I couldn’t see anything. I heard her coughing but then it stopped. I didn’t know what to do. I had FIRST PLACE FICTION
seen a beetle once walk straight into a campfire—no survival instincts—but she was better than a beetle. It started to get really hot so I held the hot dogs tight ran with one in each hand. I used the path for the first time, taking the road all the way into town. Behind me I could hear a crash, wood snapping and the tin roof shaking like thunder as it fell. When I got into town I went straight to the comic shop because Burt, the owner, is the only one there I can talk to. Hey nature boy, Burt said. Cut it out, I said. Why do you have hot dogs in your hands? he said. Because Mrs. Williams’s house is on fire, I said. Stop making things up, he said. I yelled to him that it was true. For the first time he brought himself from the colourful pages to really look at me. I was covered in smoke. He ran to the telephone and called the police. I ate the hot dog in my left hand while I waited for them to show up. It was still a little bit frozen. I was still hungry but saved the second one for Mrs. Williams. Then you came in, Mr. FBI. The agent looked scared like a kid. I know you don’t believe me, I said. It’s ok, people never believe me, I said. Then his phone rang and he got up, pacing around. He had given me a blanket but I brushed it off. I wasn’t cold, if anything I was boiling. He lowered his head and hung up the phone. He came back over and sat beside me, putting his hand on my shoulder. He offered me a ride home. I said no thanks, I knew how to get back on my own. No, he said, I want to take you. I could only see some of the sky through the window of the backseat. I ate the second hot dog.
CHARLOTTE VAN RYN
a photo:
a picture story amilcar john nogueira
a basement bedroom, inside a photo album the resting. the famĂlia. Amy, found. orange light in the photo. blankets and two peeking eyes. three months. paper marker. cursive on the back and this is why you hide in a basement scrapbook cribbed curled and tucked between page and red-light exposure in
?
but who took the photo, i ask, as we continue round and the rain drenches us through windows and clothes, windshield wipers
she begins, this time just the question, and it storms the car doors/ croaks the radio.
mon ami she begins the story in her mother’s tongue, we are all little grenouilles, in a big marais.
my friend, she starts, because this story can only have friendship. family drowns a postcard of the ambassador bridge
picture: in the car, mum turns into a roundabout and begins the story:
a photo:
amilcar john nogueira
the only bedroom, inside a crib photo of the smile cursive and the story where Amy. found plastic crib bars in the photo sat forecast and too many eyes. three months span on the back and this is why you hide inside a breath, you open your lungs, close your eyes, and never exhale
but behind us no one talks and in front
the back of the car has been empty for years, she remarks
his breathing, she states, is a flawed circle.
she exhales as her storm takes the wheel, he hasn’t built a crib since then, he can’t now.
and the speed limit increases so that we drive through the night.
your father can’t build the crib for your nephew.
picture mum: in the roundabout, mum turns into the conversation and continues the story:
a photo:
FIRST PLACE poetry
a box too small, giant divider in between for two bodies for where Amy. flame reduces skin, bones. in the box sat family and too many times written and rewritten this is why you hide inside garage lumber, so hands can pull pine and un(ite)
in front windshield wipers weather a tide. subside
instantly the sky separates. rain slows as she turns off the roundabout
and the roundabout empties we. alone. except our voices warming the car.
when we die the storm sings, puts us in the box breaks the law.
—and I say stop just stop—
when we die, she says.
this picture: in our roundabout, mum finds words:
a photo:
amilcar john nogueira
our bodies, two, swell, wooden box in a palm the same photo. with Amy. our handful of dust? in fingers, famĂlia and shovels break hard ground, dates the picture this is why you hide in ink, re-inked, re-ink-inked so lines gnarl about an empty room and -)))
drown / dry
tide, i, tight-eyed, water fills the seats, washes the glove compartment, windows windsor, under water
if a car drives itself, when does the roundabout end?
i erase storm songs as thunder strikes oak trees
when we, we, die i wrote
picture this: i never learn to drive. oil sputters, engine light fades,
a photo: swell, alm . Amy. our ? in in round, in you hide in in in in lines about and
FIRST PLACE poetry
and a shine that hides indents.
dad says, dad can’t say. they replace the floor with unweathered wood
so you took the photo?
dad says, we have a copy, but we can’t re-produce it.
i dig up the concrete floors
but no wheels on the crib,
i show mum she says it’s the same photo.
i check the album but basements flood.
picture me: the photo: gone. who took the photo?
what we lost in the fire amy leblanc
eight: what are you looking forward to? I stand at the edge of the barn and watch the oak tree go up first. From where I’m standing, it looks like the tree is spitting its leaves, trying to save them from the wreckage. The trunk splits down its center, shuddering more leaves out into the air. Fall is a beautiful time for it all to burn. The fire spreads. The tendrils of smoke drift across the field and latch onto the siding of the farmhouse. Not long now. There are no more footprints lining the way from the oak tree to the farm, but now oak leaves litter the ground and the low riding smoke snakes between the two. I try to clean my hands, but the gasoline spreads across my palms and seeps into the fine lines. It pools under my fingernails and I hear the crackle of our radio from inside. A news report about colour blindness, I think. I think about what Grandma used to say as I watch the tree shudder in the smoke. We don’t know what it’s like to be the ocean.
amy leblanc
one: what do you think brings you here? Grandpa says the people in this town honk their horns to talk to each other; one short honk to say hello, three times to warn that police are down the road with breathalyzers, and one long for when the hockey team wins. Grandpa says we should honk our horn when we turn the blind corner just before the farm; that way whatever’s on the other side knows we’re there. Grandpa says you don’t want to miss something just because you didn’t listen. Grandpa says if you see a kid on a bike honking their plastic, clown horn, you better smile at them, too. Grandpa says they might squint at you from under the visors of their helmets, and you’ll remember when your muscles were loose and lanky like theirs. Grandpa says never forget that. Grandpa holds the horn down the whole time he rounds the corner. Grandpa doesn’t slow down, because he has flowers in the trunk and wants to get home to us as fast as he can.
second place fiction
two: what is the problem from your viewpoint? Grandpa sweeps his hands across the maple tabletop and sends the funeral home forms floating down onto the linoleum. I think he wanted them to fall faster, like pots and pans might have. He wanted them to crash and dent the floor, but they just float down until they coat the floorboards like petals. I think he wanted Grandma to be cremated here at the farm, but the funeral home won’t let him. I don’t want him to know that I saw him throw the paperwork; I keep my eyes just above my Maya Angelou book. I used to close my right eye and walk around the house to see what Grandpa saw when he walked. He told me what he has is called Glaucoma and there was nothing we can do about it. I found the word in my science books and saw we could fix it if we went to the doctor fast enough. It wouldn’t go away, but we could make it better for him. When I told Grandpa, he said like hell I’m going to the doctor. know what they’ll do to me? they’ll take it out. I’d rather have a bad eye in my head than a bad eye floating in a jar. All I could picture after that was an eyeball floating in the centre of a jar and Grandpa walking around with a hole in his head like an open mouth that never spoke. He rakes the forms up off the floor and walks out the door. I run to the window to watch him leave. The cat follows him out the door, and they leave two pairs of footprints in the snow. Grandpa’s footprints are straight and evenly spaced but the cat’s footprints snake around his like smoke tendrils.
amy leblanc
three: what makes the problem better? We had to burn the cat. Grandpa was turning the blind corner and didn’t see her in time to stop. He honked as he turned, but the cat didn’t move. The screen door creaked, and he came in with a brown lump in his arms. He carried her the same way he carried firewood; her straight body leaned against his arm and shoulder. Grandpa settled her down, packed her in hay, poured the gasoline and lit the match. My eyes watered with familiar heat and it all sounded like crackling leaves. We had just lost the chickens and their ashes were still dissipating. The smell coated my nose and wouldn’t leave, no matter how many times I blew into Grandma’s handkerchief trimmed with violets. I kept expecting to see it coated in black when I pulled it from my face.
second place fiction
four: and how does that make you feel? I reach my hand into my pocket to feel for the metal angel that Grandma gave me. I feel its weight in my palm and trace the pressed angel’s shape with my fingertip. She kept it in her change purse and almost mistook it for a quarter a few times when she went to the store. I had to tug on the hem of her skirt to get her notice her mistake. Tugging on her skirt released a puff of old cigarette smoke smell from the fabric. I liked to think that I could associate a time and place with each iteration of smoke. It could have been from her cigarette, sitting at the back of my school gymnasium for the spelling bee. Or it could have been the smoke bouncing off the closed car windows when Grandpa was driving us home. It could have been the smoke dispersed when she took her scarf off at the front door. She used to say that she hated the smell of old cigarette smoke. I never understood why. Instead, Grandma loved the smell of gasoline. She kept her handkerchief tucked into her sleeve and sometimes loose tissues, too. I used to follow behind her, picking up the ones that dropped to the ground. I followed her trail of tissues and smoke.
amy leblanc
five: how are you sleeping? Grandpa asked me to crack eggs for dinner. We’d been buying eggs from the store since the chickens died. He handed me six eggs from the carton that creaked when he pushed the tabs back into place. Grandpa’s hands were big enough that he could hold four eggs in each hand. I took one egg and cracked it against the side of the chipped glass bowl. I half-cracked the egg, creating little rifts in the white shell and then had to peel bits of the membrane back to fully open it. The yolk hung in the centre of the bowl, swimming in the rest of the egg white. I reached for the next egg when I noticed a spot in the bowl. A red smear like string clung to the yolk’s centre. My stomach turned and I cupped my mouth with one hand and pushed the bowl across the table with the other. Grandpa noticed. it’s just a little blood. come on, you won’t even taste it once it’s cooked. Grandpa took the bowl to his side of the table and mixed the egg with a whisk. The red stretched into a thin strand pulled taut, then finally yielded, breaking apart and dissipating into the rest of the egg. I closed my eyes and waited for my stomach to turn itself right side up.
second place fiction
six: when did you start feeling unwell? I keep the cat’s ashes in a box under the kitchen sink. I haven’t decided where to scatter them yet. She liked to watch birds under the oak tree; maybe I’ll scatter them there. I used to go down to the oak tree with Grandma. Grandpa had gone into the city and we were going to have a picnic. She held a basket of apples in one of her hands and my hand in her other. Halfway down the hill she took her hand from mine to cough into her handkerchief. She tried to tuck it back into her sleeve before I could see, but it was covered in red strings, each one wrapping around the violets, crystalline, like a mosaic.
amy leblanc
seven: do you ever feel ashamed? There was a girl named Jubilee who lived down the road from us. I told her that Grandpa died too, and she told me that everything happens for a reason. She said that her dad died in a motorcycle crash and that it was her fault. She said it happened because she’d lied to her mom about the cigarettes she’d stolen from her purse. She said my cat and my grandparents died because my mom and dad weren’t married when they had me. Her voice was gentle and lilting, which made me think that she really believed this. I took one of Grandma’s cigarettes out of my pocket, put it between my lips and left Jubilee making crop circles in the red gravel with the tips of her shoes. I walked back to the farm, and laid Grandma’s violet-trimmed handkerchief on Grandpa’s chest. I’m starting to understand why Grandma loved the smell of gasoline.
second place fiction
salivation susie winters
Contempt for the parlour, for unwashed hair flattened to her damp forehead. For minimum wage. For dirty fingernails, extra flesh, hard floors and bad shoes. For many hot and gutless days to come breathing nectarous, heavy air. A clean, cropped shirt limp from body heat generated by dig after dig in deep buckets. The relentless viscosity of ice cream. Indifference: No one can help where their eyes fall: A big nose reddened, by the providential sun. broad shoulders, crooked sunglasses, six dogs over the day add their scent to the same post. Where was her head the thousandth time the cold counter shocked the peek of her bare midriff? Burning incense in a canvas tent, exchanging foreign wines by mouth, riding across a desert in cars with no seatbelts. The right shoulder stronger
susie winters
than the other, sticky to that bicep, her lower back voicing quiet whimpers. Dead flies swept into corners, little fingerprints cloud the glass. The angled evening sun lights sweet round stains on tables. The beach finds its way inside between toes, in the creases of wallets opening and closing, tucking back into fathers’ pockets. The fathers want black cherry. Inevitably. She tries to guess desires of patrons before they open their mouths: Precocious children want pralines, girls her age want peanut butter or birthday cake or espresso. She wants to be held down by the hair under cold, brittle water, always licking her fingers and they never notice.
second place poetry
venus sara flemington We were suddenly on a lucky streak. Following a very long, very unlucky streak. For example, the movies. Four bad movies in a row. And you being the type of person who could tell right away if a movie was going to suck or not, and me being the type who was clairvoyant enough to start panicking as early as the concession if it seemed like I’d taken someone out to a sucky movie, it was an all around uncomfortable series of unfortunately campy and “ha-ha” date nights. Then, there was X. Popping up everywhere: drugstore aisles, bars, the post office. And you being nice enough to always say hi, and me being nice enough to not comment on how her smile made her look like she was teething, or ask the reason as to why she was regularly done-up as if about to hit Prom ’85, we always had to stop and have a quaint little chit-chat about her newest accomplishments—arts-grants-wise—or about the tragic passing of Dear Aunt Beatrice, who was nothing if not her biggest source of moral support and guidance, as the lesbian of the family, and therefore, the only other dissenter. And on top of all that, the cactuses died. For no reason, as if by suicide to get away from the doomed home they had recently been moved into. And so I was pretty certain that, Mercury retrograde aside, I had become a jinx for you and our love would never be allowed its proper chance to sprout, let alone effloresce, (remember that homemade haircut I tried to give you ultimately resulting in a entire shaving of the head?) and in very little time you would, in turn, begin to despise me and wish we had never met and hope that somehow, in some life, you might find your way back to the inflatable tube man arms of X. And then, Christmas came. But not in the It’s a Wonderful Life sense of the holiday, where we both would learn the power of a positive outlook; more like, in the holidaypacks-of-scratch-tickets sense. Because we were sitting beside each other at the very back of the very last bus of the night, heading home from drinking far too much acrid red wine at a disappointing poetry reading held at the “recently renovated” i.e. recently primer-painted community art gallery, and the heat was cranked far too high for our winter jackets and toques and scarves so we were both uncomfortably sweating through the crevices of our armpits and nostrils, and the reddish + greenish hue our skin had adopted from the alcohol + overhead bus lighting was making us appear even more dismal than we already naturally did. And that’s when I spotted them, jammed between the two seats directly across from us: the shimmering, unopened stack of lottery cards. Of course, it took a while for one of us to get up and “just take sara flemington
them,” being overly anxious over-thinkers plus regular sufferers of mental inertia, but finally, seconds from our stop, I threw my arms up as high as they could go in a puffy winter jacket + two more layers of sweaters and declared, “It’s not like they’re gonna be winners anyway,” and tucked them into purse. Then we stepped off the bus into the refreshingly frozen night. But I was wrong. Ten dollars. That’s what we won. And Jupiter was about to make its move through Cancer. “Can you believe it?” I said to you—sincerely, actually. “Can you believe we just happened upon these tickets? And now we have enough to buy like, four more bus rides? That’s like, two bus rides each.” And you with your ever-salient shrug replied, “Happened upon? Really?” Regardless, that was just the start. Because then, along came the cat. “How is the cat good luck?” you argued, “He’s disgusting and annoying and he gets litter everywhere. And I’m pretty sure he’s slow. Like slow slow. Watch his eyes.” “But, re-examine the point,” I begged. “So I was just walking along, like normal, like I always am, and right there in the window, there’s this little guy! Fresh off the streets, all shaking and on-sale and with a weird squinty eye. Look, it looks like he’s winking. Which is just like how you described your beloved childhood cat that only just two nights ago you had come across an old picture of and went on and on about how much you missed so much, which led right into a conversation about adopting our own little kitten—” “Maybe adopting our own little kitten.” “Maybe adopting our own little kitten. But anyway, here he is, and it was clearly meant to be.” And even though, granted, this particular kitty was a bit off somehow, he did serve to prove my point that good, possibly even great things, were now on the horizon for us. You still didn’t believe me at this point, but you had, at least, learned to love to humour me, and also learned to love the oddly vacant cat, while I was taking a daily inventory of signs from the universe divining our good fortune: 1. Your favourite hat—lost two months prior—resurfaced, magically, while I was cleaning out the refrigerator. 2. The day every single item written down on our grocery list was on sale at the grocery store. 3. The cookie thing (when the second cookie got stuck to the one we bought to share, but the lady behind the counter didn’t notice, so basically we just got a free cookie, which was mostly good for you because then I wouldn’t eat two thirds of the first one after claiming I only wanted a single chocolate chip and leaving you with basically nothing). third PLACE FICTION
4. The second chance you gave me at giving you a haircut, and it turned out to be a pretty spot-on attempt modelled after a picture of Ryan Gosling. 5. The discovery that we had, at one point, attended the same film screening in Toronto, on the same day, years before ever meeting in real life. 6. The discovery that we had ALSO been at the same concert for one of our mutually favourite bands, in Toronto, on the same night, ALSO before ever meeting in real life. 7. The lucid dream I swear we shared. “Maybe you’re right, like, maybe we’re soul mates or something,” you said one day, petting the winking feline and, joking or not, I continued to discover more coincidences to add to the inventory; a rare 1979 Boba Fett Loose Action Figure with Original Back Blaster for pennies in a bin of kids books at Goodwill; the big power outage and thus free popsicles from the convenience store the same night I found some old weed in the bookcase; the twenty bucks in the building’s dryer. Even kitty seemed to be getting a little bit smarter, not batting his turds out of the litter box so often. And with the new moon beginning to wax, everything in both of our entire lives began to feel like it was not only coming together to complete a circle in which we would inevitably end up in the centre of—deeply happy and entirely X-less—but a sphere. Like we existed in some sphere type thing, like a planet, like our own planet following its own orbital path. Or fate. Or something. “You’re losing your mind,” you said to me, combing your fingers through my hair one night as we lay across the couch watching yet another good movie. Maybe, baby, maybe. But maybe, I wasn’t, actually. Because then, as it often happens when things are going well, I started to wonder when it all might start to go wrong again; you know, when karma would decide it was time to balance things out. It was turning into spring, and while everyone around us was getting cheerier and everything around us was getting colourful and good-smelling, I was becoming paranoid that at any moment you’d be calling me at work in the throes of a severe allergy attack, or the hospital would be calling me with news of your newly broken legs due to a bicycle accident (knock on wood), and I continued to I waver consistently between calm and vomit-mode. But these grand fears never materialized. What did end up materializing was the bagel you burned one sunny morning resulting in the whole apartment smelling like singed sesame seeds. “That’s a thing,” I said. “It’s not a thing if I don’t even care,” you replied. And I guess I kind of liked the smell.
sara flemington
So while I was out, walking along again, like I always did, I decided to take a chance and step inside the floral boutique I usually passed by but of course, never went inside of anymore. I meekly approached the thin young florist with a swoopy haircut and very well-ripped jeans who was tying white ribbons around lilac bouquets, and asked: “Excuse me, I was just wondering, which plant would be relatively easy to maintain and, maybe doesn’t require much extra care and maybe, you know, could be left alone for an extended period of time or even accidentally forgotten about and still be okay afterward?” And whose shrill snort should I hear pipe up right behind me, followed by her sudden eagerness to show off all of the green-thumb knowledge she had apparently accumulated over her many years of being perfect at everything, but X. Our lovely lanky phantom X. “A cactus?” she laughed, and began in on how she used to raise orchids, nurse Venus flytraps, shape bamboo stalks into elaborate spirals and hearts and I could feel the acid reflux pushing up my trachea and clogging my nasal cavity. Sensing my panic, the florist stepped out from behind the counter, linked his arm through mine like a best girlfriend, and directed us safely away from X and towards the corner of the room, where the moderate moisture-loving shade-dwellers were kept. “I think you’ll do just fine with one of these,” he said. I pocketed the laminated fertilization instructions. And that was the day I brought home the spider plant. I set it down in the middle of the kitchen table with a dramatic thud, and I stood there and looked you in the eye and I made a promise. I promised that I would keep the damn thing pretty and green as long as I lived in this damn apartment with you, so help me dammit, and I may never be able to cultivate a banana plant or whatever, and even if we wake up one day to a flood or a fire or full body rashes or something, or Mars and Saturn and Pluto all simultaneously backspin right through both of our signs at the same time, I will still be here, keeping everything pretty and green and alive, for you, and for that weird cat over there, and for this plant, and that was about the point when I started to run out of breath, and kind of doubled over a bit, and realized how comforting it felt to know that while I was there, one hand on my chest and one hand stroking the long pointy leaves of our newest addition, you were looking at me with that composed smile. “Okay, love. Sounds good.”
third PLACE FICTION
las meninas i klara du plessis My writing is like the male nude in Western tradition of art soft, even the strongest most beautiful man. I lie / recline my writing is erect in the smallest possible way taut but not extended suggestive then discontinued to potential reaches of the image. Whereas hands can touch / mouths can touch eyes cannot touch. Eye contact is too naked to bear scrutiny, an eye for an eye isn’t physical complete uncertainty as to catching someone’s eye you could think you looked at each other with intention but then she looks aside conniving eyes darting glances between the portrait which is the face and the landscape which is life organs so open they have to close from time to time with a fleeting shudder / shut glistening vulnerable undress. Las Meninas appears in my reading coincidentally repeatedly, a travel scenarioii, me traveling the traveler a woman whose lover says she resembles the Velåzquez lass then seeing the recreation by Pablo Picasso klara du plessis
a poetiii writes essays about Eros describes the blind spot into which the girls are staring / staring down the gaze. The curation of my reading list morphs into an actual gallery of images, am I conscious of the fame before other authors point me in visual / visionary directions. Las Meninas is a whole lot of little girls. Central girl radiant a conduit of light natural light falls like a blessing directly on her temples or light emanates naturally from her, angelic she does not stand she hovers compare Rembrandt’s De Nachtwacht that little girl luminescent locks like wings halo vision among the gloom. The unsightly girl, her face recreated as a moon in the other picture a negative space in the gloaming. Could there be an understudy for the infanta stripping beneath the dress that takes up so much space layers and layers of maidenhood negligee in the finest unheard of fabrics make sure she structurally blows. In the monochromatic room crowded with antiques placed furnishings pieces of value I hope that somewhere I am still burdened with a fragment of girlhood. Fragrance of inconsequence with which he photographs postures are just ways of laying out the body
third place poetry
the wake in an objective observance fear of being caught out in flagrante delicto sofa bed occasional sheets and needing / kneeling to pray he always offers one image to the sitter thanks for posing proposing nothing is the right way to let her down easy. Every night I imagine his body either in front or behind mine I sleep on my side. When he is behind me, his arm reaches over waist and I should feel protected but I feel safer when pressing my defenseless front against his back and breathe the suffocating air from the warm division between us. Emptiness is an edge / on edge / an edge these little feminist anatomies I disallow my body from others skin is way too porous a vessel for what it contains. On the subject of nakedness most suppose an aesthetic agreement to pose is to yield your outline to a definition of beauty to hope that something good will come of it the disappointment of body will be elevated lasting a lofty homage to self. Thinking about this no one I know longs to look worse. Taking off my clothes is a form of in flight hygiene cleanliness cakes to the skin, nudity shamed exactly for its divinity being imagined as being klara du plessis
throngs of models larger than life disproportionate glorious gorgeous anonymous when nobody knows you anymore and everything locks stoically to the perspective of an unassisted eye / naked eye. The maids of honor are those pictured in the nude. Picasso undresses the Velázquez girls. This is not perverted. He takes things away from them wealth the contrived innocence of their faces / the healthy glow in the cheeks he takes away the ceiling the quiet space the dictated focus fills the space with calculated disarray robes and the painter all curves like a male version of woman smaller curves moustache ceremonial insignia stimulus muse light. In interpretation he is no longer a self-portrait deus ex machina coat check here and there Velázquez towers like a champ. I intended this poem to be way more brute force it’s fine art let the décolletage breathe deeper than the neckline. i. This poem is based on Diego Velázquez’s painting and Pablo Picasso’s version of it, both named Las Meninas. ii. Lynne Tillman, Motion Sickness iii. Anne Carson, Eros The Bittersweet third place poetry
toll- free rudrapriya rathore Near the end of the year, the toll-free number flashes across my phone three, five, seven times a day. There’s an odd rhythm about it that orders everything I do. A buzz on the morning subway ride where the train surfaces long enough to get phone signal, like a metallic dolphin mid-leap. A buzz during my lunch break while I eat my cucumber-cheese sandwich at the receptionist’s desk. A buzz when I walk to the grocery store in the evening, or if it’s Friday, to the Owl to get a drink with Phil. And when I get home after dark, two or three more while I watch TV in bed, the phone lighting up my covers with its bluish glow. I never pick it up. “Why not?” asks Phil, sucking down his weekly dose of pub fries while they’re still hot. “Why should I? It’s just a telemarketer.” “You don’t know that.” We’re more than a year deep into Owl Fridays and the waitresses know us so well they give us the same window table every time. Phil likes the curvy girl with the ponytail, though he’d never admit it, and gives his usual order trying not to look at her chest. “Who else would call me this many times? It’s a machine, I bet. Not even a real telemarketer.” “What if it’s your bank?” He licks the salt off his fingers. “It’s not my bank. My bank emails me.” “It could be your insurance company, or your internet.” He glugs his beer. “What if it’s the government or something? CSIS?” We look at each other for a moment, thinking it through. Then he snorts into his pint and I laugh because he’s dripping on his shirt collar. “Alright, I get it. I’m too boring for CSIS.” “That’s true. You haven’t even had two beers in a row since college.” Phil wipes his face. He likes this. If I play along for long enough, he slips his arm around me on the walk back to the subway station. Once in a long while, he comes home with me. We have sex for half an hour and then he calls a cab, waving as it pulls up to the curb. This began when I got the job at the reception desk. Phil’s a manager in the office, I think, or an agent. A buyer. A seller. They’re all something like that, the ten or twenty men and women that pass by me every day on their way to the coffee machine. They look the same: blandly content, middle class. They say the same things on a weekly rudrapriya rathore
rotation. Hump Day! Happy Friday! Nearly the weekend now! Ah, Mondays! Sometimes I play a game where I try and beat them to it. “Almost Friday!” I say as Marie turns the corner, her glossy pink lips just opening up to greet me. She pauses. I think I see a flash of irritation move across her face—or maybe it’s just a ripple in the sea of foundation-powder-blush. “That’s right!” she replies, heels clicking by. “If I’m boring, what are your colleagues?” I ask Phil. He shakes his head and gets up to pay. “You should pick up the call. See who it is.” The phone buzzes two more times that night, and each time, as I lay there in my pajamas watching TV, I look over hoping it’s Phil. CSIS agent here, Ma’am. We’re concerned about the dullness of your daily routine. He might say that, if he called. That sounds like him. I think of calling him, but I can’t make myself do it, can’t imagine what I would say. That kind of spontaneity belongs to a different kind of person. Those people regularly surprise themselves with what they come up with. They find a new version of themselves in every phone call, while I agonize over how to sign off in work emails. Sometimes I sent documents I needed for the next day in emails to myself. I watched them leave and then land in my inbox, a virtual boomerang. Each one pinged, Look! It’s you! But the toll-free calls were different. I liked knowing that someone or something had logged my number. There was an entity on the other end of the line, and it wanted something from me. I roll over and turn off the TV show. It’s almost eleven o’clock. If I did call Phil, he might not answer. That would be the best scenario, I think, if he sat in the dark, too, watching the phone buzz, liking the feeling of being wanted. *** Either the next day or the next week, I get a voicemail. I stare at it with my eyebrows furrowed over my cucumber sandwich before opening it. I almost want to walk to Phil’s office so we can listen to it together, but I don’t. It’s been so long since I listened to a voicemail that it takes me five tries to remember my password, and when I finally get it right, the perky automated voice sounds a lot like Marie. I listen hard, but the message is just silence. Not dead air, exactly, but a kind of quiet hum. When I listen the second time I think I can hear a slight shuffle. Clothes, maybe, rustling against each other. I tell Phil later, when he walks by to get coffee, and he says, “That’s weird.” “I know.” fiction runner-up
“Pick it up! Next time. I’m telling you.” He raises his eyebrows for emphasis. That day I get home and tip over the potted plant on my windowsill while doing dishes. It spills fresh, black soil into the clean dishes on the counter, so I have to wash them all over again. Afterwards, I fix the plant and realize the windowsill’s dirty, so I clean that too, and it gets me on a roll, scrubbing the counters and the floors and the walls of the kitchen, where dirt has been secretly accumulating without my noticing. The top of the fridge where I keep the cereal boxes. The crack of space between the stove unit and the cupboards. I clean until my knees hurt and my nostrils burn from the soap and bleach, and then I listen to the silent message saved on my phone again, this time with earphones, so I can turn it all the way up. The shuffle is still there, hiding under a hum. Something human that does not speak. It starts happening all the time. My voice mailbox fills up every two days, the mechanical-Marie alerting me loudly every time I punch in my password. The messages are always nearly silent, but one in every ten or so sounds slightly different. There’s a muted, tinny beeping through one of them. A sound that could be breathing, if you listen a certain way. A buzz like an air conditioner. One night, I make a spreadsheet so I know how often the noises happen and colour-code it according to the time of day. I type the number into a search engine, but nothing comes up. I even search company directories online, trying to trace it to a corporation. Another night, I dream that something is watching me through the small camera lens on my phone, so I stick a little piece of green tape over it when I wake up. Phil passes by my desk three or four times a day and we exchange nods. Friday at the Owl, he leaves early, after only one drink, so I go home and scroll through the spreadsheet, waiting for the phone to ring so I can make another entry. According to the numbers, I’ve been receiving more calls since that first voice message. It’s no longer three, five, seven times a day but thirteen, fifteen, seventeen. I cross-reference columns, trying to find a pattern, but there’s nothing there except for the fact that I never get the good voicemails, the human ones, more than once or twice a day. It should be scary. I know this. It should make me feel anxious, like I’m under surveillance. But it makes work bearable, to have that phone constantly buzzing in my pocket where no one else can hear it. I suddenly like seeing Marie, because she doesn’t know that she sounds like the automated voicemail lady who greets me so fondly, and I wonder in my daydreams at the desk if Phil is actually the one making the calls, because maybe he doesn’t know how else to tell me he loves me. My mother calls. I hear another call go through while she tells me about her new yoga class, and my hands shiver a little while I think about the new voicemail. She rudrapriya rathore
asks me if I’m dating anyone, and it slips out of my mouth: Yes, I am—actually, he’s here, I have to go. But of course she asks who, and I tell her, A man in my office, we get along great, it’s been a couple of months now. “Well, well,” she says in a tone of voice that suggests she finds this difficult to believe, “What’s his name?” Another call starts on the other line and my palms grow clammy. “Phi-Patrick.” “What?” I resist the urge to hang up on her. “Patrick,” I repeat. Maybe the voicemails have sharpened my ears somehow, because I can hear something that sounds just like if she was sucking on a cigarette. She hasn’t smoked since before I was born, though, and I refuse to ask her. “It sounds like things are really looking up for you, darling. I couldn’t be happier. Just a little while ago you were telling me how bored you were, and terrified of never getting married. Is this Patrick—I mean, is he serious about you?” My hand lowers the phone from my ear. There’s a translucent smear of sweat and beige makeup on the screen. Feeling as though my face is breaking down and sliding off me in wet little puddles, I half-cover the bottom half of the phone and call out to my empty kitchen, Patrick, hon, are you serious about me? and giggle. “He says he’s not quite sure yet,” I say to her, laughing. She laughs too. I hang up and wash my face. *** I love it when Phil is nervous. This I realize at James’s retirement party, which I attend in a blue dress that makes my legs look longer than they really are. A big frosted cake has been ordered from the bakery in honour of James, his name piped over it in green and yellow, and a card that says, Now Real Life Can Begin! has been signed by everyone regardless of whether they spoke to James or not. Phil gives a speech. It’s not clear to me why he is the one giving the speech instead of one of James’s friends. Maybe he is a bigger manager or agent or buyer or seller than I thought. He hands out glasses of champagne in the lunchroom and then takes a few index cards out of his pocket. He reads off them a few things about how lucky we have all been to benefit from the great attitude James brought into the office, and makes a joke about how some people think not working means being less tired, but others think it means being re-tired, tired again. Then he begins to talk about how much we’ll miss him. He must have copied the cards out wrong, because he reads the same one twice. He knows, too, but is too embarrassed to stop, and remains blotchy for minutes after everyone has toasted James and begun to chat again. fiction runner-up
I watch from across the room, near the doorway, and he catches me eye and smiles. I gesture to him with my glass and point out the door, trying to ask if he wants to grab a drink later, but he shrugs and begins talking to someone. Later on, at home, I watch the phone ring. For reassurance, I print off a copy of the spreadsheet, all eighty pages of it, and lay on my impeccably clean bedroom floor listening to the hum of the printer. I remember my favourite voicemails—the breathing, the definitely human shuffle. There will be someone, I tell myself, who can explain this to me. I smooth my hair and tuck it behind my ears before beginning to read over the notes on the spreadsheet again.
rudrapriya rathore
Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin: wry doll of castrating women. Percy Bysshe Shelley: pyre by cheesy shells. Wry fool! Scandalmonger! Twit!
Paul Verlaine: all pure, naïve. Arthur Rimbaud: rat hair, mud rub, vanilla purée.
Forget a call, a stormy wind. Now forget a town. My lilac drowns; yes, he by helpless cry. Tragic women drown softly.
Leave ruin, pal, run. Plea: alive. Rum rut hair, bad anal, pure evil.
Women of arts acting worldly won’t mildly forget a scar won by Psyche’s sheer yell. Be lyre’s speech, shyly. Timeworn scandal, grow lofty; tragic women drown softly.
Unveil a pearl: Peru Anvil Ale. I rub thru a dram, raid bar hut rum I peal, unravel. Evil. Anal. Pure.
Hilda Doolittle: little Dido halo. Ezra Pound: a Zen-proud, loathed lit idol.
Sylvia Plath: a vital sylph. Ted Hughes: thugs heed thy lava lips.
Lethal old idiot lo! Old detail hit or pun daze, I loathed it, doll.
Aptly lavish, Lava’s thy lip, gushed the shy, vital pal.
Oath: lilted idol doth toil allied azure pond. Up Zen road, idiot. Death loll. I loathed it, doll.
Thy villa spa has vital ply. She dug the hedge. Shut thy lava lips, shy, vital pal.
poetry runner-up
anagram rondeaus: a nuptial suite daniel kincade renton
Gwendolyn MacEwen: newlywed canon gem. Milton Acorn: Can-lit moron. (Gem and weeny clown).
Robert Browning: town ring robber. Elizabeth Barrett Browning: a writer; tonight, Zen babbler (brown bong trier).
Can we? Downy-leg men, new men, wangled, coy? Moonlit narc, can newlywed men go?
Bring robot wren. Bring ten. Borrow the brown blazer, a bitter gin. Bring two, reborn.
Can dewy glen women own newly caged men? Coronal mint, can iron molt? Gown-clad new enemy, can newlywed men go?
Bring brew or not. Borrow ring-bent babe, bizarre gent. Throw lint. Betroth writer, nabbing zeal. Rent ribbon. Grow reborn. Bring two.
daniel kincade renton