(
)
parenthetical fourteen
ä july two thousand and sixteen
blodwyn
prize winners
2016
te van ryn|sus t o ie arl wi h nt |c h e t i
including
mem orial
flemingto sara n | t oy| ai nj m fa aa
r o k fr w h om t i w
na
nki|jadie audr a ey| ard w co ed le | e s r
ISSN 2368-0199 fifteen dollars cdn
ohn nogueira|sp e r j n s ca er il sm am g|
(parenthetical) issue fourteen july two thousand and sixteen
(parenthetical) issue #14 © 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 fourteen Note from the Editors
Ticking Clocks
poetry by Coleena Fanjoy
A Picture Story
;
poetry by Amilcar John Nogueira
winner of the 2016 Blodwyn Memorial Prize in poetry
Applied Modal Ontology or Letter to My First Child
poetry by Tai Maag
The First Time I Ever Used the Path
fiction by Charlotte Van Ryn
winner of the 2016 Blodwyn Memorial Prize in fiction
Wednesday
poetry by Jadie Audrey
YYC
poetry by Spenser Smith
Venus
fiction by Sara Flemington
third-place winner of the 2016 Blodwyn Memorial Prize in fiction
Good Times
poetry by Edward Anki
Salivation
poetry by Susie Winters
second-place winner of the 2016 Blodwyn Memorial Prize in poetry
big ups for Blodwyn Prize winners! Right on the heels of our two-year anniversary issue, we have another incredibly exciting (parenthetical). Congratulations to all eight amazing writers who placed in our inaugural Blodwyn Memorial Prize: FICTION POETRY The First Time I Ever Used the Path by Charlotte Van Ryn A Picture Story by Amilcar John Nogueira what we lost in the fire by Amy LeBlanc Salivation by Susie Winters Venus by Sara Flemington Las Meninas by Klara du Plessis Toll-Free by Rudrapriya Rathore Anagram Rondeaus: a Nuptial Suite by Daniel Kincade Renton In this issue, we have “A Picture Story” by Amilcar John Nogueira, which we loved for how beautifully it uses language and form to reflect and complement how much a person can break. This poem strikes a balance between living in language and living in narrative that allows the reader to be simultaneously anchored in the moment and shattered across it. “The First Time I Ever Used the Path” by Charlotte Van Ryn is a story with a perfect voice and quirky narrative that immediately strikes the reader as entertaining and skillful—but her writing is also home to a craft, patience, and subtlety that provided more substance and nuance on every read. Susie Winters’s second-place poem “Salivation” struck us from the very start—it was one of the earliest submissions and it stood out through every round for its tactile language, its deceptively simple narrative, its sticky emotional and intellectual qualities. Finally, Sara Flemington’s third-place story “Venus” is a flawless encapsulation of flaws—unabashedly colloquial, almost underwhelmingly familiar the first time you slip so easily into the anxieties of this relationship, until you arrive at the perfect ending and it all feels like home and you just want to start again. Stay tuned for more winning work in issues 15 and 16, or read it all online anytime! 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
Ticking Clocks It’s darker for longer on the island these days and his mouth turns down at the corners like the shrivelled edges of browning leaves, the wilting marigolds in her quaint garden. Annuals, horticulturists call them. By autumn they have outlived their usefulness. Maybe next year try something more demure than impatiens. This is the season of frowns; wishes for pressed socks, a cup of tea. She wants the warmth of the earthworms, burrowed deep before the frost; currents under south-bound wings, and halved figs. Sleeve-wipes her nose to make believe she’s a child, still.
L
Coleena Fa njoy
A Picture Story
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
a photo:
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
in the car, mum turns into a roundabout and begins the story:
picture:
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
a photo:
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.
in the roundabout, mum turns into the conversation and continues the story:
picture mum:
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)
winner of t he 201 6 Blodwyn Memorial P ri ze in poet ry
a photo:
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.
in our roundabout, mum finds words:
this picture:
a photo: 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
i never learn to drive. oil sputters, engine light fades,
picture this:
Nogueir a
swell, alm . Amy. our ? in in round, in you hide in in in in lines about and
a photo:
Amilcar John
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.
the photo: gone. who took the photo?
picture me:
Applied Modal Ontology or Letter to My First Child wiser men insist that you are still here, bound to this world by the tongue’s queer magic. sometimes I trace the imprint of your almoststeps in the icteric carpet and the stain where the weight of unbeing grounded your chimeric arc. the die-cast trains my mother saved for the thought of you will not release the heat of your pudgy fingers wrapped around their frames. the onesies packed in the box labeled My Grandbaby’s Clothes dutifully moved from house to house remember the plump contours of your imagined body. she knew you’d be a darling little boy. just like me. no, precious nearly-there you were never real, like the fleshy cave that carried you, a possible spark equal parts sunlight and gasoline. and in the space between pillows and bodies that ravenous space I look, but cannot find you.
Tai Maag
?
z
The First Time I Ever Used the Path
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.
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. 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 grownup. 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 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.
ó
Charlotte Van Ryn
winner of the 2016 Blodwyn Memorial Prize in fiction
Wednesday I. did you mean to say you love me half-asleep on a wednesday night with your arms thrown out across the bed like atlas finally accepting defeat? did you mean to say you loved me while you were quoting dramatists to the cracks in the ceiling, throwing words up to the heavens— hoping they’d catch? here, you said, i’ll show you how to spot star-crossed love if you’ll just close your eyes. II. i’m too old for bedtime stories, too old to feel so small, to pray against bedsides and believe the things you tell me. your fingers trace constellations on the sheets if i pretend not to see, and through dark lashes you are film noir, hitchcock romantic. hands flat to feel the universe under your palm, star-count instead of thread-count and white cotton.
III. tell me about chaos, the mother of nothingness, creator of everything, and the irony isn’t in the story but in the peace. sometimes the sound of staying alive with you is so loud, the cacophony of survival: rushing blood, pounding heart, the ache of tired bones pitched so high i forget what it’s like to hear you breathe. but i’ll tell you now: it’s the closest thing i’ve ever heard to the sound the ocean makes before everyone else is awake. break, and regather in the emptiness. IV. quiet on a wednesday night, and you shake the silence to say that if you believed in divine intervention, you think you could love me better.
y
V. if you were loving me at all, you’re doing it so well and so quiet that i think you must be telling an ancient story, and i forgot how to speak the language. we’re a a dead dialect, sweetheart, easy on the eyes but unspoken. VI. for years it’s been all elysium fields, stretching for miles, and miles, and miles. with no horizon line, it’s hard to tell when this started. i’ll just say it like the old ones so you can’t understand: eisai oti kalutero uparxei. VII. if i’m going to talk like an honest person and not a real one, i’d like to say that yes, i see the absurdity in using roman numerals to wax poetic in grecian allusions. but in my defense i’m meaning to invent a whole new language for you. that’s to say this is expansive, all-encompassing, this thing. we’re dropping entire civilizations behind us, spanning worlds.
IX. on a quiet night, tell me about the gentle lies the gods promised, preserving life in dead light. i think fate is just a dime-store construct and destiny sounds nice on hallmark cards, and did you mean to throw your arms out like atlas finally breathing? like you trusted me to hold the whole world?
Ăľ
Jadie Audrey
YYC I found a row of payphones in the Calgary airport. A lonely place nestled inside a lonely place. I thought Telus meant tell us, so I picked up a black receiver and whispered a poem about how solo travel is like being a Manitoba maple staring at your reflection in a surrounding pond. Mostly right, but rippleblurred. On the plane home to Nanaimo, a woman’s seat-back TV went black two seats across from me. Oh, that would be just my luck, she said. As if she had experienced the luck of another human being. As if self-importance doesn’t affect perception. But who am I to come up with these grand statements anyways? There is a baby in the arms of a man sitting in front of me, and her chubby face is peeking through the crack in the seats. We can’t stop smiling at each other.
Spenser Smith
4
c
Venus
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 holiday-packs-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 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). 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. 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.”
¡
Sara Flemington third-place winner of the 2016 Blodwyn Memorial Prize in fiction
ù
Good Times Watching a televised fight while my girlfriend reads a magazine in bed on a Saturday evening I’m happy well as happy as I’ve been for some time which is a long time if we’re going to be frank which seems a reasonable thing to be if you’re going to be anything at all between the cradle and the grave or the urn or however your remains remain after your memories of Saturday evenings and girlfriends reading magazines in bed and two men fighting for something nearly nameable dissolve into big city dust.
Edward Anki
Salivation 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.
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second-place winner of the 2016 Blodwyn Memorial Prize in poetry
contributors Edward Anki’s poetry has previously been published in several magazines and journals, including Qwerty, Mad Poets Review, and The Chaffin Journal. He has also been featured at The Emerging Writers Reading Series, The Art Bar Poetry Series, The Blue Coffee Reading Series, and The Boneshaker Reading Series. His first published collection of poetry, Remote Life, was published in 2014 by Barebackpress. Jadie Audrey is a soon-to-be New York City dweller and student at Barnard College and an even sooner-to-be eighteen year old. She believes in iced coffee in all types of weather, going to movies by herself, hiding pop culture references in her writing, and claiming every airplane at night is an alien craft. Most of her time is spent writing things for her blog (which she fondly refers to as “the void”), and she’s never been published anywhere more reputable than her third grade class poetry book. At that time her, submission was written in crayon; she has since cleaned up her act (but only marginally). Coleena Fanjoy is a Maritime writer raised in New Brunswick and transplanted to Halifax, Nova Scotia. She has a Masters degree in English Literature and her poetry has appeared in The Antigonish Review, The Fiddlehead, Room Magazine, Freefall Magazine, Canadian Literature, The Feathertale Review, and Cactus Heart. Sara Flemington (third-place winner of the 2016 Blodwyn Memorial Prize in fiction) is a writer from Toronto. Her stories and poems have appeared in The Humber Literary Review, The Feathertale Review, The Impressment Gang, and Echolocation, among others. Tai Maag is an insufferably Heideggerian poet and essayist preoccupied with expressibility, modal semantics, and other topics of general interest. They co-curate Fabulist Catalyst and Stories in the Soil in Brooklyn, and their work has appeared in collections by Topside Press and Rosa Negra. They allegedly moonlight as a lefty propagandist and employ a poetic method akin to a particle collider.
Windsor born and raised, Amilcar John Nogueira (winner of the 2016 Blodwyn Memorial Prize in poetry) recently graduated from the University of Windsor with a Masters in Creative Writing. His most recent publications include a chapbook in The Box Set, and publication in oFFSIDE e-Magazine. Spenser Smith is a highschool dropout who somehow studies at Vancouver Island University. He has been the recipient of the Pat Bevan poetry scholarship, and his work has been featured in The Quilliad, text,Potluck Mag, Portal, Incline, Clip Through, and The Navigator. He also wishes to thank the kind baby that inspired his poem. Charlotte Van Ryn (winner of the 2016 Blodwyn Memorial Prize in fiction) studied International Development at the University of King’s College in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She attended the University of Ghana and worked in Accra for the Poetry Foundation of Ghana. She has been a tree planter, a photographer, a butcher’s assistant, and a canoe trip leader. Charlotte currently lives in Toronto where her first novel, Pike, is in the editing process with the support of David Adams Richards through the Humber School for Writers and her partner, poet James Southcott. Susie Winters (second-place winner of the 2016 Blodwyn Memorial Prize in poetry) from Dauphin, Manitoba, studied poetry and screenwriting at the University of Victoria. Two of her poems were shortlisted for PRISM international’s 2016 poetry contest. Other poems have previously appeared in Canthius and This Side of West.
colophon
This publication—issue fourteen of the literary magazine (parenthetical)— was published by words(on)pages in the month of July 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?
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yeah,it means kind of off to the side; part of the whole, but ultimately inessential.
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so like poetry?
yes - adds colour.
so like art.
j with
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siblings & friends writers & readers coffee & tea moms & dads