(parenthetical) fifteen
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(more) winning work from the 2016 Blodwyn Memorial Prize
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ISSN 2368-0199 fifteen dollars cdn
(parenthetical) issue fifteen september two thousand and sixteen
(parenthetical) issue #15 © 2016 all copyrights remain with respective contributors ISSN 2368-0199 (Print) ISSN 2368-0202 (Online) fonts used include Kingthings Trypewriter 2 © Kevin King 2010 FFF TUSJ © Magnus Cedarholm 2009
www.wordsonpagespress.com words(on)pages is: william kemp, co-founder and poetry editor nicole brewer, co-founder and fiction editor michael brewer, director of business operations
contents - issue fifteen Note from the Editors
what we lost in the fire
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fiction by Amy LeBlanc
second-place winner of the 2016 Blodwyn Memorial Prize in fiction
A List of Reasons to be Happy
poetry by Kate Foley
Poem in which I worry about the reading matter of the young woman sitting next to me on the Bloor-Danforth line
poetry by Sue Chenette
Even Greater Apes
fiction by Jordan Moffatt
Perry White, Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Planet
poetry by Terry Trowbridge
two-bit pick-up line
poetry by mwpm
preferred posture
poetry by a.m. kozak
Las Meninas
poetry by Klara du Plessis
third-place winner of the 2016 Blodwyn Memorial Prize in poetry
Heartbeats
poetry by Tiffany Babb
big ups for Blodwyn Prize winners! More exciting times! After a great issue fourteen with several Blodwyn Prize-winning pieces, we are excited to have two more in issue fifteen. Congratulations again to all eight amazing writers who placed in our inaugural Blodwyn Memorial Prize: FICTION The First Time I Ever Used the Path by Charlotte Van Ryn what we lost in the fire by Amy LeBlanc Venus by Sara Flemington Toll-Free by Rudrapriya Rathore
POETRY A Picture Story by Amilcar John Nogueira Salivation by Susie Winters Las Meninas by Klara du Plessis Anagram Rondeaus: a Nuptial Suite by Daniel Kincade Renton
In this issue, we have “what we lost in the fire” by Amy LeBlanc, and “Las Meninas” by Klara du Plessis. “what we lost in the fire” grabbed us with the story it didn’t tell: the space and time in between striking, tactile images was haunting, and lingered with us through every round of reading. “Las Meninas” is an incredible feat of poetry, with layers of meaning we’re still uncovering every time we reread it. We loved the language work and rhythm of this poem, which had us coming back to it over and over as we narrowed down our longlist, shortlist, and winners. The Blodwyn Memorial Prize would not have been possible without the support of our amazing sponsors from across Canada. Thank you to BookThug, the primary sponsor of our fiction prize, as well as Insomniac Press, Palimpsest Press, Pedlar Press, and Penguin Random House Canada. We are also grateful for the support of Brick Books, Invisible Publishing, Literary Press Group of Canada, Metatron, The Porcupine’s Quill, Véhicule Press, and Anne McClelland.
Nicole & William #smallpressrevolution
what we lost in the fire
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
j Amy LeBlanc second-place winner of the 2016 Blodwyn Memorial Prize in fiction
A List of Reasons to be Happy
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Nap-time, waking up early to see the sunrise, getting flowers when it’s not Valentine’s Day, nature walks, when they spell your name correctly on a Starbucks cup, wishing on dandelions, salt and vinegar chips, red lipstick, kaleidoscopes, when you successfully throw a crumpled piece of paper into a trash can from far away, holding hands with someone who makes your stomach do flips, soft blankets, instant film cameras, vinyl, being honest with your mother, dancing around a fire pit on the beach, hearing someone’s heartbeat quicken, fuchsia wallpaper, grandpa sweaters, the way someone looks at you the way you look at the moon, airports, strangers, flying.
Kate Foley
Poem in which I worry about the reading matter of the young woman sitting next to me on the Bloor-Danforth line New Trends in Canadian Federalism – not your usual subway reading. Where is she headed in her green sweater and poplin raincoat black curls falling over the just-turned page: Table 4a She has propped her umbrella on the floor, wood handle curving gracefully up between the toes of her boots. She looks a little like my youngest niece. More tables. Graphs. Impact of Changing State Economic Role on Canadian Federalism
“... overt challenges and resulting conflict ...” Forests of petrified syntax nary a live squiggle of lived meaning! Oh, sweetie, don’t go there and don’t ... oh ... never mind But look. A bread crumb trail – her bookmarks, corners of torn paper, moss coloured, speckled with white, or white with mossy dots, almost certainly bits of lined envelope. And, low on one side, a single paper clip, blue and white striped.
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Sue Chenette
Even Greater Apes
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My name’s Sloane, and I’m a genetically engineered super-intelligent bonobo. Bonobo’s the key word in that — I’m super-intelligent for a bonobo. You can usually tell straight off the bat when I start talking. Although my life began as simply an experiment at the Primatology Research Institute of Toronto (PRIoT), I’m now a full-time employee. I’m a field researcher, and a good one. As a bonobo, I’m able to infiltrate the social circles of other bonobos much more effectively than a human would. PRIoT sends me to zoos around the world, where I live for a few weeks taking notes. The bonobos I study don’t realize I’m super-intelligent of course, because that would spoil the whole thing. I work five weeks in a zoo, five weeks back in Toronto at PRIoT. It’s a rewarding job, and I’m glad I can make an impact in the field. We need to work as hard as we can using the gifts we are given. But one day my routine was interrupted when my boss and creator Dr. Rhea Dosanjh called me into her office with a concerned look over her normally stoic face. “Where to this time, Doc?” I said, sitting down on a bean-bag chair opposite her desk. “Cincinnati? San Diego? Utrecht?” “It’s about Jedediah,” she said. Jedediah’s my brother. Not a real brother in the conventional sense, but a brother in the sense that he’s the only other genetically engineered super-intelligent bonobo in the world. He’s working on getting his Master’s of Architecture (M.Arch) at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture at the University of Toronto. “Is he okay?” I asked. “He’s dropped out of U of T to pursue improvisational comedy. We need you to steer him back to the light.” “Isn’t that up to him? What does he need steering for?” “Look, we operate thanks to the continued support of our wealthy donors. A star bonobo architect has more prestige to these people than a struggling bonobo comedian. I’m afraid if he continues down this path, our funding will dry up and the whole gen-eng program will be considered a failure—yourself included.” While I believed it was important to Jedediah to choose his own course, I also recognized that he had a responsibility to everyone at PRIoT to live up to the expectations set for him. And besides that, it seemed like he was throwing his gifts away. I saw some of the studio work he made in the first year of his M.Arch, and it was remarkable. Tree-based condominiums. I accepted the assignment, and decided to dive in undercover like I would at the zoo. I signed up for a beginner’s improv class with The Second City. The instructor for my first class, Reeve, was a tall, white, bearded twenty-something wearing plaid. I thought I’d have to fake any
interest in improv, but I was wrong. The class changed me. Reeve told us all that improv was based on collaboration, a shared sense of living in the moment, and a genuine interest in being surprised by your own imagination. He said that the number one rule was to say “yes, and…” when your scene partner presented you with an opportunity. “Yes,” meaning accept the offer, and “and…” meaning build on it. Just by his articulation of these concepts, I realized that they were both immensely valuable and also completely missing from my life. We played exercises and games over the next two hours that demonstrated those concepts. I discovered how valuable it was to connect to the present. It was the most fun I’d ever had in my life. My body felt untethered, and my mind was clear. I was hooked. I stayed after class to talk to Reeve and I was so enraptured with our discussion that I completely missed Jed walk right past me. Luckily, he didn’t miss me. I’m hard to miss. “Sloane?” He asked. “Jed!” I said, feigning surprise. “Do you two know each other?” Reeve asked. “We’re brother and sister,” I explained. “Ah, I can see the resemblance now.” “What are you doing here?” I asked Jed. “I’m on one of the house Harold teams. What are you doing here?” “I’m taking classes — I just had my first one with Reeve.” “She’s really good,” said Reeve. “Runs in the family.” “You mean that?” I asked. “Yeah, you should take more advanced classes for sure.” “Cool!” I said. “I’d love to immerse myself as much as possible.” “You should come to my Harold show tonight,” said Jed. “I’ll comp you.” “That would be great!” When I saw Jed perform with his Harold team CHiMPs that night, I totally got why he dropped out of U of T. Jedediah was an amazingly talented improviser. At first, you could tell that the audience was laughing just because he was a bonobo. But his characters were so rich with depth and his commitment to helping his scene partners was so pure, the audience began appreciating him just as an improviser. After the show, I told him he was amazing, and he said “I know.” The next day Jed asked me to join his Harold team. Of course I said yes. Over the next few weeks, we bonded in practices and in our Sunday night show. After a month and a half, I emailed Dr. Dosanjh and told her that while I wasn’t enjoying the assignment, it was going to take much longer than initially anticipated. It was a lie. I wanted to explain to her what was actually going on, but I knew she’d be disappointed. What was actually going on was that I felt like I found my place in the world. My whole life I’d been an outsider. As one of only two genetically engineered super-intelligent bonobos, there weren’t a lot of
people who could identify with me. The research scientists I worked with never let their guard down— they always viewed me as an experiment. And the bonobos I spent time with in the zoos sure looked like me, but they made awful conversation and were always aggressively reaching for my genitals. But my Harold team exhibited neither of those qualities. On and off-stage, they were gentle, giving, dynamic, inclusive, and hilarious. Every Harold begins with a group game, where everyone on stage develops something together without having any real idea of where it’s going to lead. This is the most exciting process you can experience on stage, and when you do it with people who you love and trust it feels like what I imagine a warm hug from a family would feel like. There’s magic in improv. I didn’t want to succeed in my assignment to bring Jedediah back to his M.Arch, and I didn’t want to go back to PRIoT either. I wanted to stay at The Second City forever. After three months, however, Dr. Dosanjh got impatient. I met her at her office to discuss my progress. “I’m thinking about quitting primatology to become an improviser,” I said. “But your residency at Emory University working with Frans de Waal starts next week!” Frans de Waal was my hero. When the residency was first offered to me, I considered it the highlight of my career—but now I was willing to throw it all away. “Tell him I’m sorry.” “No Sloane, I won’t. You need to work as hard as you can using the gifts you are given. You’re a superintelligent bonobo, and so only you can bring a unique perspective into primatology. Anyone off the street can do comedy.” “Improv is more than just comedy!” I yelled. “It’s about life skills! It’s teaches cooperation, acceptance, intuition, and spontaneity! It helps you handle adversity, connect with the moment, appreciate the little things, and be open to suggestion!” Dr. Dosanjh let out a deep sigh. “Have you ever heard the story of the squirrel and the acorns?” “No.” “There was once a squirrel who collected acorns. And with those acorns, she built a house. It had acorn walls and acorn floors; acorn tables and acorn chairs; an acorn roof and an acorn door. It was a beautiful house. And then the squirrel starved to death.” “I don’t get it.” “She didn’t eat the acorns, Sloane. You need to use your things for what they’re made for. If improv is teaching you amazing life skills, use them in your life.” Dr. Dosanjh was right. I met with Jedediah the next day over coffee and bananas to let him know that he should put the skills he learned in improv to work in architecture. I told him that improv skills were wasted on improv. He took this as a personal insult. He told me he’d been cast as an understudy for the next Mainstage Revue, AI: Artificial Intelligentsia, and expected me to be happy for him. I told him I’d be
happy if his comedy can inspire someone else out there to apply their skills to become a great architect. We haven’t spoken since. The next day I met Frans de Waal in Atlanta. He had made reservations at a nearby restaurant, and we walked there discussing our favourite anecdotes about our time in the field. When we reached the restaurant, the host told us they were unable to honour our reservation because having an animal in the establishment would be a by-law violation. We explained that I was super-intelligent and had impeccable table manners, but that didn’t matter—we weren’t welcome. “Well,” said Frans, “I guess we’ll have to improvise.” My eyes lit up. “Yes, and…”
5
Jordan Moffatt
Perry White, Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Planet
Re: your career, Mr. White. You could go back to writing for the Sports section, where you first wrote stories about heroes. You grew up playing basketball and football on side streets and now you always coach Little League baseball while you edit stories about the big ones: MLB, NHL, JLA. We played baseball on the same streets you did, and it showed in the last game you reported from the press box. Calling the plays when Metropolis beat Gotham in the World Series, you were the familiar voice, like us, who knew the players, knew what it meant to win and lose on the streets of Metropolis in the games we all played together. Then a decade later, you ran the largest paper in the nation and your first super headline, “Flying Man Schools Brainiac in Earth Justice.” Brainiac, the alien who knows everything about Earth without setting foot on it, fought Superman, on our side but not our team. Whose team? The guy’s name’s a secret, and he can do anything alone, never loses.
The story sucked. And every story afterward. It’s like covering a boxing match with no local boy and no loser-to-hero cliché. Metropolis will cheer but Metropolis will never care. The sports pages are about us, but the pajamas in space are tabloid trash: sex symbols who show up to train wrecks. And now, Lex Luthor’s media empire bought The Daily Planet. It’s all about web content and clicking pop-up ads. The crossword’s got more news than the Editorial page. It’s not your fault, Mr. White, but it’s the future. Syndication is like Brainiac, the internet knows everything but it’s not us. Luthor’s newsfeed is like Superman, making our lives look like they depend on conflicts we will never start or finish. Retire, Mr. White. Write about baseball again, this time freelance. Sit in the press box. Tell us stories about us.
0 Terry Trowbridge
two-bit pick-up line
you ) there s ( have ) enough of me to ( to go ( choose between ) around ( this, that &)& ( the other ) other ( other ( wise some ) one ) two( else will choose ) -bit ( for you ) pick-up lines
mwpm
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preferred posture
pick-up speed to prep the uphill muscles: push into abstract payoffs invent & invest. so nausea, back legs wail stop stop, but logic derails: must fight to stay alive, & plan. there is a view at the edge of the spit & sing old songs still smhw remember to get there—self-talk past dizzy vision. can’t predict experience, it drops onto shoulders at a clearing off a cliff. emotional reflectors below seat, bipolar swoon susceptible to body language tells, crows splintering branches & colours compound exhaustion, reservoir leaks irritability-snaps over brim & caffeine-coated laughs cut like glass no more me than anythg in vicinity: no beauty but there’s breath to breathe, a snippet for stillness to soak my sweaty socks, all bruised from self-sustained abuse. house-speckled mountains reach above the harbour speculate my jealousy—idyllic lifestyle by the pond apparently. announce slow down for children playing, a sign for signs to communicate commuters to a destination i meander. cars see me strait-side postulate wldn’t it be nice to pedal thru slow open forest? cruisein i’m panting cursing rubber energy. fatigue gnaws the inside of my mouth, desert-thirst for endless aquifers. departure carries morphine relief in a wheelbarrow w/ bubbles soft enuf to sleep.
a.m. kozak
Las Meninasi
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 Velázquez lass then seeing the recreation by Pablo Picasso a poetiii writes essays about Eros
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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 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 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 Velรกzquez 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
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Klara du Plessis
third-place winner of the 2016 Blodwyn Memorial Prize in poetry
Heartbeats
Our hearts don’t beat in tandem. It was the first thing I noticed when we laid side by side so late into the night that even the softest noises would fragment the velvety silence that had settled around our minds. Your pulse followed so closely behind mine that it could have been an echo, something my mind conjured up to make me feel less alone.
Tiffany Babb
contributors Tiffany Babb is a New York-based writer pursuing her Masters in American Studies at Columbia. She has been published in the monologue collections Teen Girls’ Comedic Monologues That Are Actually Funny and Kids’ Comedic Monologues That Are Actually Funny, published by Applause Theatre & Cinema Books. Sue Chenette is a poet and classical pianist who grew up in northern Wisconsin and has lived in Toronto since 1972. Her poetry has been published in Canadian literary journals including The Fiddlehead, Descant, The Antigonish Review, CV2, and The New Quarterly; in the British journal Tears in the Fence; and in the Paris English language journal Upstairs at Duroc. She is an editor for Brick Books, and the author of two full-length collections: Slender Human Weight (Guernica Editions 2009) and The Bones of His Being (Guernica Editions 2012). Klara du Plessis is a poet and critic residing alternately in Montreal and Cape Town. Her chapbook, Wax Lyrical, was released from Anstruther Press, 2015, and a fulllength collection of multilingual poems is forthcoming from Palimpsest Press. She curates the monthly, Montreal-based Resonance Reading Series, writes reviews for Broken Pencil Magazine and The Rusty Toque among other journals, and will guest edit an issue of the Town Crier, October 2016, on writing in English as a second language. Follow her on Twitter @ToMakePoesis. Kate Foley is a Canadian-American poet based in Pennsylvania. Her work has been featured in Voicemail Poems, Yellow Chair Review, Germ Magazine, Words Dance, and more. She is passionate about love letters, art journalling, and selfies. You can find more of her poetry at facebook.com/katefoleywriting.
a.m. kozak is a performance poet, community organizer, collaborator, activist and current co-editor of In/Words Magazine & Press who indefinitely warbles between Ottawa & the west coast. Poems appear/will appear in Arc, Matrix, Carousel, and BafterC. Amy LeBlanc is currently completing an honours BA in English Literature and creative writing at the University of Calgary where she is Project Editor for Nōd magazine and co-coordinator of the SU Campus Food Bank. Her work has appeared in (parenthetical) and Nōd magazine. She hopes to pursue a career in fiction and poetry, and is currently working on a novella. Her future plans include completing an MLIS or an MA in English Literature. Jordan Moffatt lives in Ottawa. He performs improv with the Bad Dog Comedy Theatre in Toronto and with Crush Improv in Ottawa. His short fiction has appeared in many places on the web (including the 2015 Broken Pencil Indie Writers Deathmatch) and was recently shortlisted for Matrix Magazine’s 2016 Lit POP award. mwpm lives and writes in Waterloo, Ontario. His writing has appeared (or forthcoming) in Blueprint Magazine, The 22 Magazine, filling Station, Sewer Lid, Otoliths, Sonic Boom, untethered, and MUSH/MUM Terry Trowbridge’s poetry has appeared in Briarpatch, Canadian Woman Studies, The Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, Carousel, The Naswaak Review, and The Dalhousie Review, as well as in several chapbooks from Grey Borders Books.
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colophon
This publication—issue fifteen of the literary magazine (parenthetical)— was published by words(on)pages in the month of September in the year two thousand and sixteen. It was designed, printed, and bound in Toronto, Ontario, by words(on) pages co-founders William Kemp and Nicole Brewer, who used Adobe InDesign for layout, and was typeset and designed using Kingthings Trypewriter 2, Adobe Garamond Pro, and FFF TUSJ. It was bound by hand with paper, thread, needle, and patience. Front and back covers were printed by Sebastian and Brendan Frye at Swimmers Group in Toronto. (parenthetical) could not be produced without the support of Michael Brewer, words(on)pages Director of Business Operations. For this issue, we were unable to pay a proofreader, and don’t like asking for free work—please forgive any inconsequential errors.
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yeah,it means kind of off to the side; part of the whole, but ultimately inessential.
ye
so like poetry?
s ad ds co lo ur .
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with thanks to
siblings & friends writers & readers coffee & tea moms & dads
so like art.