(parenthetical) issue 16: November 2016

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parenthetical sixteen

r m e iab d c

november two thousand and sixteen

kol

ewe

pey ton rap r i tay y lor a rat hor lau e ren ros s dan ie kin l c ren ade sar ton ah

bechard

ivan de monbrison

k.

ste

er

sacha archer

rud

tyl

gabrysh

r.

ca van rly der ros gri ali end e t

phe

ns

ISSN 2368-0199 fifteen dollars cdn

(parenthetical) issue sixteen november two thousand and sixteen

(parenthetical) issue #16 © 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

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contents - issue

Note from the Editors

sixteen

Houseboat

fiction by Carly Rosalie Vandergriendt

36 Finch

poetry by Peyton Bechard

Side Effects, 3 a.m.

poetry by Tyler Gabrysh

Toll-free

fiction by Rudrapriya Rathore

fiction runner-up, 2016 Blodwyn Memorial Prize

two poems about walking backward

poetry by ivan de monbrison

Sensate

fiction by Sarak K. Stephens

Given

poetry by R. Kolewe

Tooth Fairy

poetry by Sacha Archer

Dust

fiction by Taylor Lauren Ross

Anagram Rondeaus: a Nuptial Suite

poetry by Daniel Kincade Renton

poetry runner-up, 2016 Blodwyn Memorial Prize

big ups for Blodwyn Prize winners!

In our last issue of 2016, we are excited to have the two remaining winners of our inaugural Blodwyn Memorial Prize. Congratulations to all eight of our amazing winners!

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 POETRY Toll-free by Rudrapriya Rathore 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 “Toll-free” by fiction runner-up Rudrapriya Rathore, a story that crept under our skin with its uneasy everyday quality: perfectly usual, with a tension and eeriness that never really settles or resolves. Daniel Kincade Renton’s “Anagram Rondeaus: a Nuptial Suite,” our poetry runner-up, had us reading and re-reading for its wit, musicality, and seamless dance with constraint.

We received an unbelievable number of amazing submissions for our prize, and narrowing it down to eight winners was damn near impossible. You can now read them all online in one place on our Blodwyn Memorial Prize page, or find them in issues 14 and 15 as well. The 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, the Literary Press Group of Canada, Metatron, The Porcupine’s Quill, Véhicule Press, and Anne McClelland.

Our first run at this prize was a complete success—at least we sure think so—and we’re super excited to try it again in 2017, so keep your eyes peeled for details on our second annual Blodwyn Memorial Prize!

Nicole & William #smallpressrevolution

k

Houseboat 1

It’s summer. My parents are away at a week-long marriage retreat, but I don’t know that. At my grandmother’s house in the country, I spend most of my time in her swimming pool, studying the lifeless bodies of frogs who drowned thinking they’d found a lake.

2

In the afternoons, my grandmother sets me up with a movie while she sleeps upstairs, an air conditioner dripping and whirring in her dark bedroom. She is part of a generation of women who sleep to forget.

3 One afternoon she sets me up with Houseboat. In the movie, Sophia Loren plays a socialite on the run.

Cary Grant plays an inept widower with three kids.

Where is their mother? says Sophia Loren playing Cinzia Zaccardi.

You’re lookin’ at her, says Cary Grant playing Tom Winston.

4 The men are the first to go, my grandmother reminds me. That’s how it’s always been.

Over Deluxe Kraft Dinner, she looks wistfully at a framed photograph of my grandfather, who died before I was born, on the wall. I note a resemblance to Cary Grant.

5 There is a scene in Houseboat where Sophia Loren playing Cinzia Zaccardi slaps Cary Grant playing Tom Winston across the face. After, she lets out something between a whimper and a squeal.

6 My father is the first to go. He doesn’t die, but rather, moves out. I start spending more time in my grandmother’s pool.

7 I grow up. My family doctor, who likes to wave her speculum around threateningly and name drop diseases, writes me a prescription for the Pill. I date, and eventually, I marry. My husband does not look like Cary Grant.

8 After a few years, he starts talking about children.

9 Then my prescription runs out. I do not make an appointment with my family doctor. Instead I decide to stop taking the Pill altogether because it kills my libido. I am part of a generation of women with dead libidos. That, and estrogen-ridden urine. Entire fish populations are being feminized by our piss.

10 My husband mentions having children again. I explain that waiting to have children fits my progressive worldview and ask him if he wants to go Dutch on condoms. He agrees.

11 This progressive worldview is probably why it troubles me to think about all the non-biodegradable condoms we use ending up in a landfill.

12 In time, there is some confusion over whose turn it is to buy the next pack. So neither of us buy them.

Then we stop having sex, for reasons unrelated to my resurrected libido. It doesn’t occur to me to propose a marriage retreat.

13 There are other things we stop doing, too. Dishes. Sleeping in the same room, bailing out the water flooding the hull of our houseboat. Speaking.

14 Eventually my husband brings home another woman. They hole up in his room. They are definitely speaking to each other, and doing a lot of other things, too. I don’t have to hear her whimpers (squeals?) to know.

15 I pass the time staring wistfully out my window at a school of ladyfish in the water below.

A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle, one of them croaks, probably trying to console me. She is wearing lipstick, and, believe it or not, fishnets.

16 My husband’s new wife is not on the Pill. Or at least, that’s what I surmise when I hear her giving birth in his room. I enlist one of the ladyfish to deliver a note suggesting they move out. They refuse, on account of the houseboating market bubble.

17 Years pass. They have more children, and their children take a liking to me. After a while I start to think of myself as Sophia Loren playing Cinzia Zaccardi in Houseboat, though I am neither a socialite on the run, nor Italian. I don’t have her breasts, either.

My husband and I start speaking to each other again. Tentatively.

Where is their mother? I ask.

You’re lookin’ at her, he says.

18 But I am looking at my own reflection in his eyes. He explains that his wife left him. Or more precisely: I left him.

19 I say I don’t remember doing that. Haven’t I been in my bedroom this whole time? I must have fallen asleep. While he cries, I am secretly thinking of initiating sex.

20 It occurs to me that going on the Pill might help me grow breasts like Sophia Loren’s, so I go see my doctor for a prescription. With her speculum high and waving, she name drops a new disease that is turning women into fish.

21 At last she gets my fins in the stirrups and takes a looksee.

Wow, she says. Spawning must have really done a number on you.

I ask her what she means.

She asks me, out of curiosity, if I experience any sensation at all during intercourse. I say no, because fish don’t have penetrative intercourse. Then she scribbles me a prescription.

22 Riding back to the houseboat, I pass a landfill. Or more precisely: I pass a bunch of garbage floating on the surface of the water. Among the trash, I see a used condom and ingest it. Inadvertently.

23 When I get home, my husband is upset. She can be a real Sophia Loren when she’s angry, but I don’t have the libido for it.

No one slaps anyone across the face. We are part of a generation of fish that do not do that.

Carly Rosalie Vandergriendt

36 Finch The 36 bus finally arrived as soon as I entered Starbucks Just my luck Another 36 bus arrived as soon as I walked out with my coffee ‌ I almost died once while inhaling Nerds out of my hand In the form of a child smeared with chocolate or an old Indian man with a studded briefcase or probably the man behind me who smells like vodka at 10:30 a.m. or a Jew and a Jamaican with the same taste in Lotte of the bus’s backseats Lotte somewhere west of Yonge Lotte lost in light of the day and the night 36 36 36 36 36 36 Heinrich the communist of back then Heinrich the wrought Heinrich the perpetually playful A doe in the wrong legs jutted concrete hooves It thanks the driver and politely it leaves out onto Finch Avenue to begin, continue or end its day.

r

Peyton Bechard

Side Effects, 3 a.m.

Eyelids embossed on the page like you were immersing yourself in some captivating novel, not reading the fact sheet of a new medication.

Checking for the usual side effects, like anecdotes of a main character, the fireplace at your warm back and an afghan draped from another sleepless night.

Bizarre horror re-run at 3 a.m. and the ache of too much popcorn; the freneticism of darkness as you handle every tiny sound with a sudden jump.

y

Tyler

Gabrysh

Toll-free

l

fiction runner-up, 2016 Blodwyn Memorial Prize 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 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.”

“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 crossreference 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 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 halfcover 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.

I watch from across the room, near the doorway, and he catches my 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.

q

Rudrapriya Rathore

two poems about walking backwards

1 à la pointe du ciel le soleil rond et bleu tient en équilibre il y a quelqu’un qui parle à l’intérieur du crâne les mots mêlent leurs lignes jusqu’à former une drôle de pelote quelqu’un d’autre rejoint la rive à la nage parle d’autant plus bas qu’on n’entend plus personne le mur où avance la silhouette de l’acrobate recule pendant ce temps la mer s’ouvre en deux et vomit ton absence

1 on the tip of the sky the sun round and blue is standing still someone speaking inside the skull the strings of words blend up into a weird ball someone else has reached the shore swimming you should speak lower as we can’t hear anyone else this wall that walks the acrobat has in the meantime been moving backward the sea split open vomited your absence

2

2

ton corps remue à peine le vent souffle de côté ta silhouette se déplace seconde après seconde sur une corde trop raide pour pouvoir tomber dans le nuage bleu un oiseau sans ailes s’est posé et ne peut plus chanter ta mémoire dans la mienne l’avait défiguré

your body barely moves the wind blows sideways second by second your silhouette keeps on walking on a too tight tightrope to be able to fall in the blue cloud a wingless bird has just landed and can no longer sing your memory in mine had just disfigured it

m

ivan de monbrison

f

Sensate People come in with the astringent ding of a bell, the soft pseudo-decontamination of the hydraulic pistons on the sliding door, and think that this place is a sterile fortress. No one associates smells with convenience stores—they’re not in them long enough to register the waxy melt of the nacho cheese or the slight acidic taint that bleeds into the air when someone doesn’t fully push the lever on the soda dispenser.

I only notice it because I’m here for longer than it takes to nuke a corn dog. I stand here quietly, benevolently, helping people make change for their snacks or directing them to where the popular essentials for harried travelers are located: Tylenol, Pepto Bismol, condoms. I smile back when mothers with young children use the bathroom and then skulk out without purchase to the waiting family vehicle, offering only a sheepish grin in lieu of actually stopping to commiserate with me.

Not that I have children.

I have a pet rat.

I used to bring Snowball (she’s a white rat—obviously) to work in a small plastic traveling cage, and she fit perfectly between the cigarette stacks and Western Union clipboard, but then my manager caught wind of it from a spooked customer and all of the predictable diatribe (filth, fleas, plague) followed. It wasn’t worth it to explain that rats are very clean creatures. And they don’t smell. Snowball doesn’t even smell like ice. Sniff her and you get a whiff of just—nothing.

My store didn’t have regulars, which might surprise you. But it shouldn’t. People buy gas right at the pump with a credit card now—no need to stop in for a little light banter.

Everyone who lives in town goes to the BiLo for snacks and food and pain killers. My customers who come inside stop here off the freeway, a quick catch of their breath before getting back to somewhere else.

And lucky them, because outside the store, if the timing’s right, that breath in might remind them of Toll House commercials on Saturday mornings in your pajamas. Of arriving home to the smell of food cooking.

The chocolate factory blasts out perfumed exhaust at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. and 3 a.m., so sometimes when I’m coming in for one of those extended witching hour shifts, I get the pleasant greeting of cocoa. I’ll stand in front of the door sensor for a minute or two and let the sweet scent drift in and overtake all of the other smells. If no one stops in for a while, the faintest hint of sweetness lingers for hours as my company. But it never lasts.

Dana started coming three weeks ago. My nose told me she wasn’t in-transit, but I checked the clock just to be sure. 11:15 p.m. Chocolate chips, melted for just 30 seconds. Perfectly tempered. That’s what she brought with her.

She bought a big cup of coffee in my largest Styrofoam cup that night. Five nights on, two off, B shift runs 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. I discovered. She’s drunk fifteen coffees so far, but I haven’t mentioned our travel mugs available for purchase. Her nails are always done really nice, and one time I suggested she check out the nail polish we have. There’s a bright red that I’d thought might look nice on her, but she just smiled and said she already had 20 half-used bottles at home. She didn’t need a new one.

I almost said that she should treat herself, but it occurred to me that maybe she’d already had too many treats.

One time Dana was standing in line—some school trip was coming through from somewhere else on its way to not here—and one of the teenage boys behind her leaned in to sniff her hair. She still had on her uniform from the factory, five different shades of brown in one shirt, plus white stitching for her name in cursive script. Dana leaned back just at the right moment, and his lips bumped into the crown of her head. They smiled at each other for a moment, awkward and friendly, and I rang up more Starburst for the boy’s classmates.

Dana arrived one night without enough money for her coffee, and so I spotted her the 99 cents.

She stayed and chatted for a bit after that, and I told her about Snowball and my apartment. She said she didn’t remember me from high school, and I told her that she wouldn’t have because I was homeschooled. She seemed to like that, told me that home-schooled kids had it the best. She waved her arm around in a 360 degree arc, and said maybe she’d have her own business if she’d been home-schooled.

I didn’t tell her I wore a shirt and tie because I wanted to, not because I had to.

I just smiled, and told her my mom did a really good job with me.

“I bet she’s real proud.” Dana smiled then, and I could see her gums were bleeding a little, just at the tops of her teeth. She took a sip of her free coffee but didn’t wince. After that, I started buying her coffee each night after her shift, and she’d always stay to chat for a few minutes. Of the fifteen coffees, I’ve bought ten.

When she leaves after our chats, I can smell coffee, and chocolate, and blood for almost an hour afterwards, longer if nobody else comes in. They say smell is the best way to trigger memory, you know.

So I go to the BiLo and I buy chocolate chips, and flour, butter, sugar, eggs. I don’t have a cookie sheet at my apartment, so I have to make the cookies using the pizza tray I bought a while ago. It has holes in it, but seems to do okay. The cookies are just going in the garbage, anyway.

Before I start, I make sure all of the windows are closed. I put a towel in front of the door and make sure Snowball’s cage is as close to the stove as safety will allow. She doesn’t seem concerned, and takes a sip from her water drip.

Twenty minutes later the cookies are done, and the aroma has enveloped the entire house.

I wait another 20 minutes before I dare to go into my bedroom and close the door. I bring Snowball with me and, ever so gently, I reach in and take her out of her cage, holding her soft white fur up to my nose.

It is immediately clear that I failed. She smells exactly the same. Like nothing.

I go to work the next day knowing that I won’t buy Dana her coffee when she comes in.

Instead, I’ll try to distract her by asking what her favorite candy is to make.

I think she’ll like telling me about that—after all, she chose her life.

2

Sarah K. Stephens

0

Given

There was rearrangement looking back, green stems and yellow stars on black, daffodils in the tea bowl, bulbs barely buried.

Can I honestly say there was nothing hidden there?

Maybe nothing happened, neither reassurance nor oppression, or if so only cleared plates after the plain kitchen’s pale blue flame, its slack lamentation and the dustgrey tabby scratching at your stepsister’s window, the morning paper of frost before spring.

There was a small tear in the shoulder of your dress, a green wool dress I never saw you wear, bought for the occasion of this memory.

Your stocking feet propped up on the empty adjacent wicker seat beside a cabinet of familiar landscapes or landscape paintings, retouched. A waterfall.

You were reading and only paused once, turning a page, but said nothing.

R. Kolewe

Tooth Fairy

Gesticulating with ghost limbs and another body every seven years, our idea is a fetching body that breaks the bank, beneath the pillow talk of black market whispers.

Shark fin, purchased for shark fin soup, cut from a shark, in the stomach of which was found an arm, asking via dead sign language, While we are what we eat, or so it is said, the body falling from us tooth by tooth, hair by hair, cell by cell, though disowned in detachment, is at all times or, at no time at all, the self?

Sac

9

In the company of petunias, a lab grown nose, pursuing this, finds the scent grown cold, and among answers of excrement and dust, ignorance the prize of knowledge, leaving the ecosystem at large to absorb the shock of dismantled radio identity.

ha

Archer

a

Dust

Diana tried to console herself, now that David was gone, with his foibles. He put their tiny office trashcan against the floor to brush crumbs into it instead of using a dustpan. He squeezed the toothpaste from the middle and expected her to laugh at all of his jokes, even the ones that didn’t make any sense. Especially those.

But even the things she had hated, she now missed. The mug in her hands trembled and slipped. She cringed as it shattered on the floor. “Dammit.”

She knelt, the dustpan wobbling in her shaky grip. David had always made the coffee, its floating aroma the first thing she smelled each morning. Diana sighed. That was the fourth mug in as many days.

At the grocery store her cart looked so empty. David had eaten like a bottomless pit.

Managing to keep her voice from dropping out, she confided in the checkout clerk, who asked, “Are you going to move?”

Diana shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s like he’s everywhere but then he’s not really there…”

She trailed off as the clerk peered unfocused at the side of her face, as though reading the headline on the tabloid behind Diana’s head while waiting for someone else to speak.

Unpacking her meagre purchases at home, Diana kept dropping everything. It was as if her fingers had forgotten how to grasp.

While recycling the plastic wrap from her frozen dinner, she discovered the stacks of envelopes and matching card stock piled at the bottom of the bin. She hadn’t put them there— or had she, in a fit of grief so deep she couldn’t remember?

Wild flames of red and orange glitter bloomed around embossed lettering. Diana and David. D and D. Their wedding was to be themed after Dungeons & Dragons, David’s favorite game.

“Pretty dorky,” she’d teased.

“Oh, but my dearest damsel, I am delighted to declare our devotion with dungeons and dragons.” He’d grinned.

“D” words had become their signature. They dumped things rather than trashed them, dined rather than ate, were delayed rather than late. Good food was delectable, handsome friends were dashing, and enjoyable pastimes were diverting.

Now, of course, everything was dreadful.

Diana reached into the bin, but she couldn’t grab the invitations, the edges of the glossy card stock slipping from her fingers again and again. Maybe part of her was trying to move on.

She went to the bedroom without eating and floated, dreamless.

In the morning she broke another mug, and she couldn’t find the dustpan at first—could have sworn she’d left it under the kitchen sink, but eventually discovered it in the bathroom— and called in sick to work again. They would have allowed a few days for the death of a fiancé, but she couldn’t bear the thought of the pitying glances, everyone handling her like something fragile. She left little unconvincing coughs on her boss’s voicemail.

That night, she was floating peacefully when the bed began to shake. She thought it was an earthquake, but the dresser and the nightstands were still. Only the bed bucked.

The lights flickered and it was as if she could see him in the mirror above her dressing table instead of herself. “David!” she cried.

One light bulb went out with a pop. The other shattered, spraying glass all over the nightstand.

Tears would not come, so she released great dry, racking sobs, her wails shaking the windowpanes. When at last the sobs subsided, Diana dragged herself from the bed and struggled to find the dustpan again, so sure she’d left it under the kitchen sink this time.

The next day, the house was still. But that evening she went to the spice drawer for basil, only to discover upon sliding it open that all of the spices were gone.

There had been a print of Matisse’s “Icarus” in the bathroom that they’d gotten at a museum store. The dark dancing figure against its blue backdrop with yellow starbursts in the background made her feel like dancing herself, though she found the myth depressing.

The print disappeared, leaving a faint rectangle on the wall where the frame had blocked the sunlight.

The little Buddha statue they’d bought in Tibet disappeared, too, and so did her not-sosecret stash of York Peppermint Patties, which she had always pretended to hide from David in a tin under her hats in the closet. Vanished Christmas cards and baby announcements left gaping white holes on the fridge doors; round circles empty of dust appeared on the desk where cups full of pens had once stood.

“All right, David,” she said one afternoon while standing in the middle of the living room.

“I wish we were together, too. But you need to stop.”

But the apartment shook daily, light bulbs shattering so often Diana considered carrying the dustpan with her everywhere. She gave up replacing them and sat in the middle of their bedroom in the dark clutching the dustpan while the room shuddered.

c

When she woke again she discovered almost everything gone. Her clothes, his, the kitchen utensils and the flatware and the winter throws and their Blu-ray collection.

If she left, would he follow her? Haunt her and disappear everything wherever she went?

“David,” she said. She looked around the bedroom, which was empty but for the bed, the mattress stripped of sheets. “Please.”

At first nothing happened and she prepared herself to endure a bout of frantic shaking.

Then she heard him: David’s voice, just outside the apartment.

Diana padded to the front door, the dustpan still in her ragged grip. “David?”

The door opened—and swung right through her.

The dustpan banged against the door and clattered to the ground.

Outside, David said, “Just a few more boxes, guys, and then you can grab the furniture.

Thanks.” David stooped, picked up the dustpan, and twisted it in his hands as he gazed into the room, his eyes searching.

Taylor Lauren Ross

Anagram Rondeaus: a Nuptial Suite poetry runner-up, 2016 Blodwyn Memorial Prize

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin: wry doll of castrating women.

Percy Bysshe Shelley: pyre by cheesy shells.

Wry fool! Scandalmonger! Twit!

Hilda Doolittle: little Dido halo.

Ezra Pound: a Zen-proud, loathed lit idol.

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.

Lethal old idiot lo! Old detail hit or pun daze, I loathed it, doll.

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.

Oath: lilted idol doth toil allied azure pond.

Up Zen road, idiot. Death loll.

I loathed it, doll.

Unveil a pearl: Peru Anvil Ale. I rub thru a dram, raid bar hut rum I peal, unravel.

Evil. Anal. Pure.

Sylvia Plath: a vital sylph.

Ted Hughes: thugs heed thy lava lips.

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).

Aptly lavish, Lava’s thy lip, gushed the shy, vital pal.

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.

Thy villa spa has vital ply.

She dug the hedge. Shut thy lava lips, shy, vital pal.

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.

7

Daniel Kincade Renton

contributors Sacha Archer is a Canadian writer currently residing in Ontario. He earned his B.A. in English Literature in 2008 from Trent University. He was the recipient of the 2008 P.K. Page Irwin Prize for his poetry and visual art, and in 2010 he was chosen to participate in the Elise Partridge Mentor Program. His work has appeared in ditch poetry, filling Station, ACTA Victoriana, 491 Magazine, Eunoia, and as part of Angel House Press’s National Poetry Month online publication.

He has work forthcoming in NōD, Experiment-O, and illiterature. His chapbook, Dishwashing Event, Part One: Tianjin, China has recently been published by no press, while Dishwashing Event, Part Two: Ontario, Canada is forthcoming from Puddles of Sky Press.

Peyton Bechard is a Canadian MA student studying at York University in the Humanities and focusing on the arts in North and South Korea. (parenthetical) is his first publication.

Ivan de Monbrison is French poet, writer, and artist who lives in Paris and Marseille. His poems or short stories have appeared in several literary magazines in France, Italy, Belgium, The UK, Canada, Australia, Switzerland, and the US. Five poetry chapbooks of his works have been published: L’ombre déchirée, Journal, La corde à nu, Ossuaire and Sur-Faces. His first poem-novel les Maldormants was published in 2014, in France.

Tyler Gabrysh is a west coast writer who’s been a contest winner in Geist, Other Voices, and Open Minds Quarterly. His book reviews and interviews have appeared in The Malahat Review, Planet Earth Poetry, and Coastal Spectator. Paperplates will be publishing his poetry later this year. He is yet another writer working on a novel.

R. Kolewe’s first book of poems, Afterletters, is available from BookThug. A second book, Inspecting Nostalgia, is forthcoming from Talon Books in 2017 His work has appeared online at ditch, e-ratio, and The Puritan, and he has been associated with the magazine of Canadian poetics, influencysalon.ca. He also takes photographs. Find Kolewe’s work online at r.kolewe.net, hudsonpoems.net or follow him on Twitter @rkolewe.

Rudrapriya Rathore is currently pursuing an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Toronto. She won the Irving Layton award for fiction in 2014 and has published pieces in the Hart House Review, The Puritan, and The Walrus. She lives and writes in Toronto.

Born in Saint John, NB, Daniel Kincade Renton has been published by Canadian journals and anthologies such as Prism International, Hazlitt, CV2, The Fiddlehead, The Malahat Review, and The Fish Quill Poetry Boat 2010-13. He hosts the Common Reading Series at the Bell Jar Cafe in Toronto and is completing a PhD on Derrida, poetics, and Hypercritical Faith at York University. Frog Hollow Press published his debut chapbook, Milk Teeth, in late 2015.

Taylor Lauren Ross is a writer, editor, and book group facilitator based in Los Angeles. Since earning a BA in English from UCLA, she has published articles in Santa Barbara Magazine and others. Her creative work has appeared in Westwind, Glass Mountain, TulipTree Review, and others. She was an AWP Writer to Writer mentee and the managing editor of The Riding Light Review. Visit her at taylorlaurenross.com.

Sarah K. Stephens earned her Doctorate in Developmental Psychology and teaches a variety of human development courses as a lecturer at Penn State University. Although fall and spring find her in the classroom, she remains a writer year-round. Her short story “Boys” can be found in Five on the Fifth’s March 2016 issue and her flash fiction piece “In Concert” was featured by The Voices Project. Beginning in April 2016, Sarah also now serves as a Fiction Reader for Five on the Fifth. Her debut novel, A Flash of Red, will be released in Winter 2016 by Pandamoon Publishing.

Carly Rosalie Vandergriendt is a Montreal-based writer of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Malahat Review, Riddle Fence, and Matrix. Visit her at www.carlyrosalie.com.

colophon

This publication—issue sixteen of the literary magazine (parenthetical)— was published by words(on)pages in the month of November 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.

is that a word? yeah,it means kind of off to the side; part of the whole, but ultimately inessential.

so like poetry? yes - adds colour.

so like art.

with thanks to siblings & friends writers & readers coffee & tea moms & dads