DEEP NORTH: NEW CANADIAN WRITING
Presented by CHRIS GATCHALIAN
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VOLTAIRE DE LEON
Voltaire de Leon's short story, "Saving Tina," was recently published in the literary magazine Rice Paper. He is Artistic Director of Diwata Works, a theatre company in Toronto.
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HEART OF THE BANANA
'Can you swim that far?' I asked Lito.
'No. Can you?' Lito asked back.
'No, but Joe Balan did.'
We squatted on the shore where the Bohol Sea met the edge of the town of Dilongan. We threw flat pebbles at Pershing Island -- a shoal half an hour away by motorized kumpit -- watching them bounce off the surface of the water.
'Joe Balan is different. He wears an amulet around his wrist. If we had one of those ...' He finished his sentence with another throw of a stone. The force flushed his face a vicious red.
'He swam all the way there for no reason.'
Lito watched me repeat word for word Noy Pacio's story of Joe Balan's legendary midnight swim across Dilongan Strait. Listening to the account, he felt removed to a world when spiritual beings --diwatas and encantados -- ruled and humans proved to them the value of their lives by extraordinary feats of heroism.
Both of us knew the legend by heart but Lito let me relate it. He could listen to it forever and his eyes would brighten over the heroic event which was a prayer etched in Dilongan's memory.
'The current was swift that November and the sea full of sharks. It was night but the people could see him because the amulet glistened like a splinter from a moon, surfacing and then disappearing with his strokes.'
For the townspeople, the presence of Joe Balan warded off evil. Proof of this was that while the rest of the country was blighted by a searing drought, Dilongan and the surrounding barrios were blessed with rain. But people were afraid that their luck would soon run out. Last summer, Joe Balan killed the son of the municipal judge. It happened at Aling Marama's Carenderia. The man had been drunk and shot Balan twice at close range. Apparently unhurt, Balan took his machete and sliced the man's head clean off the shoulders. They had called the priest six times to exorcise the place for as many times the ghost of the dead man had reappeared headless. The elders suggested that obviously he couldn't find his way to the other world. Long after Balan fled with the constabulary in hot pursuit, they were still washing the blood from the four sawali walls of Aling Marama's Carenderia.
'I wonder where he is now,' Lito said.
'In the mountains,' I declared with absolute certainty.
'Oh? Who told you?'
'That's the only place to go if the soldiers are chasing you.'
'Do you think he joined the Bangsa Moro?'
'Bangsa Moro is muslim. But, yes. Maybe.'
'Or he could be with the komunistas.'
'They'll never catch him.'
'Never. As long as he has that amulet.'
'Noy Pacio knows how he got it. We can get it, too.'
'Everybody knows you get it from the heart of the banana.'
'Yes, but Noy Pacio knows how -- what to dress, the time of
night...'
'You're forgetting that the incantation is lost.'
I grabbed my friend's shoulder. 'No, Lito, Noy Pacio found it'
'Your uncle found it? Where?' he asked, incredulous.
'In Balan's hut. He discovered it inside one of the bamboo posts.'
'And he's here?'
I nodded vigorously and we laughed. We agreed to see Noy Pacio after school the next day and headed for home. We raced uphill, shedding the living darkness that was upon us as we reached the lighted area of the town square.
That night supper with Noy Pacio was strangely quiet unlike the previous evenings when he would unfold the latest stories he heard at the corner barber shop. My sister, Caridad, would ask something midsentence and he would reply so that the story ran off course while Father pretended indifference with his constant picking at his teeth. He would then look at the ceiling, at the wall, at the door, the floor, the window, then back at the ceiling all the while picking and sucking his front teeth. This would be his signal to his brother-in-law to finish his story. But this night, Father barely moved in his chair looking quietly in front of him. In deference to him, Noy Pacio also spoke very little. I felt sorry for my little sister of three years who stood on her chair gaping at Father's sudden change.
'Roding,' Father said still looking at no one.
'Yes, Papa,' I answered in a soft tone befitting the sombre mood at the table.
'After your graduation this year, you will stay with relatives in Cebu for a while.'
'But, Papa, you promised I can tend to the store.'
'No, your mother can look after that.'
'But...' I looked at Mother to intervene but she had already spoken.
'Dado, the boy wants to stay.'
'The store won't be around long, you understand?' The man had stood up suddenly angry and breathless and, for once, looked straight down at his wife with eyes filling with pain. 'Do you understand,' he said again and walked to the back door and out the house. Mother followed.
I looked at my plate vacantly. Something was amiss. Of late, I had gone to help Father with the store on Saturdays. I noticed that the farmers were cutting back on their purchases and asking for more credit. A few had not returned having sold their farms to a company that exported bananas.
'Did he hit you?' Lito asked me the next day during recess. I shook his head.
'For what?'
'For answering back like that. Did he hit you?'
'No. Of course not.'
'Mine always does. Especially when he's drunk.'
'He's the chief of police. Policemen are like that.'
'Not all. Besides, he does it all the time. He hits me. He hits my mother, hits Benito, the dog -- everybody. I hate him.' He considered his words for a while and then turned to me.
'Is it tonight for sure?'
'Yes. O, watch out. Jun Sabit.' I saw the school tough saunter towards us but the school bell rang. Jun Sabit stopped, spilled a laugh that left a dirty smear on my face and walked off to join his companions. Lito had turned pale and I saw that he was shaking slightly.
Noy Pacio had decided to cut short his visit. Father nodded briefly, went to the chicken coop and reappeared with a basket of eggs for Noy Pacio to take home with him. With his suitcase and the basket of eggs, the short, pudgy man sat on a bench under the Datiles tree and with his feet dangling a foot from the ground, he looked very much like a circus dwarf . He held the tree's tiny berry-like fruits in his left hand, squeezed the insides of the fruit with his thumb and forefinger into his mouth all the while smiling at the two of us who had run all the way from school to listen to his secret knowledge. Wiping his hand on his shirt, he lost no time divulging it.
'Most people will tell you that the time to seize the white stone is on All Soul's Day when the spirits leave their graves. Not so.'
He paused enjoying the quiet surprise of his audience. 'The truth is, you can seize the stone on any night when the moon is full. Joe Balan did it right after the harvest. I suggest you do it then. Go to the banana plants growing closest to the balete tree. The one bearing a heart which faces the balete is the one you want. Take your clothes off and stand naked under it. Recite this aloud.'
He took a piece of paper that looked like a page from a catechism book, brown with age but surprisingly even at the edges.
'Repeat it over and over until the stroke of midnight. Watch the heart open and from its tip the white stone will come out. Catch it with your mouth. At this moment, spirits of the dead will burst out of their graves and rush you. They will try to tear you to pieces. If the stone drops from your mouth or if you swallow it, your heart will explode and they'll have you for a meal. If you last the hour, the stone is yours. You will be fearless and invincible the rest of your life. But it is important that you come back to this place every two years or so to offer thanks to the spirit of the balete. That way the spell will never leave you.'
I noted how my uncle spoke in Lito's direction. Was it my imagination or was Noy Pacio giving Lito the instructions? Very naturally, Lito took the paper, whispering the words on it, and put it in his shirt pocket. He noticed I was giving him a dark look. 'I'll copy the words for you.' He said guiltily. Noy Pacio put his arm around my neck to assure me of his love.
On the way to school, we argued over the coming project even though we were, both of us, deathly afraid of spending the night in a cemetery. Harvest was a couple of months away. Yet on Sunday, a full moon was already due. We couldn't wait and decided against Noy Pacio's advice.
We hardly noticed Jun Sabit and the Escalon brothers fall in behind us. The bigger Escalon pushed Lito from behind. Lito tripped and fell. I turned in time to feel a dull thud in my skull as Jun Sabit's heavy fist hit the side of my head. I dropped to the ground. In a blind daze, I lashed out my legs hoping to hit something of Jun Sabit but caught the smaller Escalon in the stomach instead. I rolled away from the shadows above me. I tried to stand up but a kick from Jun Sabit nudged me over edge of the ditch. As I slid down, I got a glimpse of my friend fleeing towards the schoolhouse not even once looking back. I held on to a clutch of cogon grass as blows rained all over me.
I said nothing of the incident when I got to school and sat passive in the clinic where the teacher took me and tended to my cuts and bruises. Word that my three attackers were suspended made little impression as I sat through classes numb and wordless from the violence done to me. I looked once at Lito sitting next to the window. Lito stared into space. At lunch, he sat at the edge of the schoolyard looking at the school's rooftop, then away from it settling his gaze on Pershing Island.
The other schoolmates gathered around me and asked for the story. I told them. The next day the story had changed. According to witnesses, I downed the Escalon brothers. I was about to do the same to a terrified Jun Sabit when the bigger Escalon hurled a rock at my head and found the mark. All three fell upon me instantly like savage dogs. And Lito? Lito, they said, ran. Scared. They called him that most odious of labels, 'Coward.'
I glanced at Lito, watched him recede, collapsing slowly into the shell of his small shoulders. I recalled the frailty of my friend gone pale in the terrible presence of Jun Sabit. I remembered my own panic bolting out of my entrails that drove my limbs to flay wildly at my assailants.
As the days drifted in the heat towards Sunday, Lito took on an indifference that eventually wore out his tormentors. Another excitement was brewing over the presence of soldiers in the barrio. Someone had told the municipal judge of San Clemente that Joe Balan was in the area.
That Sunday, I stood under my friend's window. It was siesta and the whole town was asleep. I found my voice and called out his name. Lito slid open the wooden shutters and looked down unsmiling. I said, 'It's tonight.'
'Yes. I know.'
'Are you coming?'
'There's only one stone.'
'So who will it be?'
'It's up to you. Noy Pacio is your uncle, not mine.'
'You can do it next time.' Silence. 'Will you keep me company?'
'I don't know.'
Another silence followed as I tried to make out the meaning of this answer.
'I need the incantation.' I finally said, staring at the ground.
Lito quickly held out the paper, dropped it and turned away from the window without waiting to see me catch it. I turned to walk down the road towards home. 'It wasn't me who called you names,' I wanted to shout to Lito, but instead sealed my anger that bloomed like a sea anemone whose whip-like tongues stung and made my heart wince. Now I had to face the night alone and I felt cold all of a sudden.
At dinner I hardly ate worried that in my agitated stirrings I would arouse curiosity. Once, as we sat listening to our favourite radio program, Father caught me glancing at the wall clock and my heart stopped. I pretended to be sleepy and retreated to my room early. Hours moved like eternity. Finally, the house became still and it was time. But as I was sliding over the window sill, a truck lumbered past and I saw the outline of soldiers' caps, the points of rifles piercing an indigo a starlit sky. They travelled up the road towards the cemetery. The truck's canvas flapped irritably in the hot wind. The unusual noise woke up the house.
Father walked into my room and saw me sliding back in from the window. He grabbed my arm and half-dragged me to the sala where Mother and, sleeping on her lap, Caridad had gathered. 'What are you doing?' he whispered, his voice at once urgent and anxious, as though it would give us away to danger. Flashes of light followed by the sound of gunfire travelled across town. We crouched instinctively closer to the floor.
Someone knocked on the door. Father went to answer it. Through the half-open door, I heard the chief of police speaking rapidly, angrily, heard Lito's name and I knew instantly that my friend had gone to the cemetery to meet me.
I jumped out the open window and ran up the road and down the other side. When the house disappeared over the rise behind me, I heard my name. Blood broke on the shore of my temples and my lungs burned but I was afraid to stop and obey my mother's pleading call to turn back.
Up ahead, the truck suddenly appeared. I jumped to the side of the road and dropped to the ground in the shadows. A jeep came up from behind the truck. In it, an officer seated next to the driver raised his right hand and snapped his raised forefinger forward beckoning someone from the truck. Noy Pacio clambered down and trotted to the jeep all the while glancing furtively around in fear of his familiar surroundings. The officer asked him something and Noy Pacio nodded vigorously. He pointed at the cemetery.
I slid farther away from the road, looked in the distance and rested my sight on the balete tree that grappled with the wind as though in a dance. I made a beeline for it cutting across a wild field until I found myself under the tree. Several meters away was a clump of banana plants. The one at its very centre protruded the heart of the banana. It now wagged obscenely in the blasts of wind, a serpent's tongue slithering in and out of a dark demon mouth. 'Lito,' I called out in a terrified voice that was strangled by the thing before me. He didn't answer.
I shouted his name like a war cry and rushed blindly to the mouth of darkness. Something pulled me down by the arm. A hand clamped over my mouth. I was being pulled, suddenly paralyzed, deeper behind a cluster of plants. 'He's asleep,' a man said. He released me. 'Don't leave this place,' His voice, clear and simple, restored my vision which had all this time compressed to the narrow field directly ahead. Now trees, rocks, the crosses and angel statues, even the tremulous sea beyond the edge of the hill; and even, the cluster of banana plants, fell into their natural places in the ever-widening wake of his human presence. Shards of moonlight revealed the outline of Lito lying still among the weeds. I looked around to speak to the man but saw him briefly as he ran across graveyard slabs that lay luminous as the moon itself.
The night passed in spasms of intermittent gunfire. I felt the urge to shake Lito awake but held back. Somewhere, an exultant cry knifed through my chest. There followed a tumult of hoarse shouts of men as the guns fell silent.
Day broke into our hiding place and stirred Lito awake. He looked at me blankly and then around him, his brow creasing for answers. His senses were just beginning to come to life.
'You came to keep me company, remember?' I said.
'Yes, but I fell asleep or fainted. I don't know. The stone?' he asked, sitting up and pulling a man's jacket around him.
'There was none. Let's go.' I pulled him up. A leather bracelet with a tiny silver emblem fell out from under the jacket. I picked it up and examined the amulet. It had a figure of a saint and some inscription engraved in it that I could not read.
A few hundred meters down the slope, Joe Balan lay dead. Ribbons of blood had congealed and bound him to the road where he fell. A few soldiers stood on watch. We walked, Earth solid beneath our weights, towards the crowd now growing around Balan, growing larger by the minute until the soldiers disappeared in the thick of it.
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MATTHEW HOLMES
Matthew Holmes is Chief Inspector of the bad repoesy Mfg. Co., publishers of Modomnoc. An editor with Arc magazine, he currently lives in Toronto.
Ghazal of July Storm
The smell of greenstalk tomatoes
on my fingers
The wind pressing into windows
testing their ripeness
The dog pacing
unsure of our night movement
The bamboo I've taken from the basement
to tie my plants
Moments of love
talk that pauses into sleep
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JOHNNY FREM
Johnny Frem is a Vancouver-based writer, musician and impresario.
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IF ONLY ONCE
(excerpt from a novel)
Shane was staring down at his faded jeans and the new, steel-toed work boots from his first real job. He was hunched forward, elbows on his knees, chin wedged between his fists, hoping he looked bigger and older than eighteen. He felt the Orion Katamaran nudging the dock. He avoided the eyes of the other passengers, knew their faces though they didn't recognize his after four years away, waited while they got off, but didn't budge until, in the aisle beside his seat, he saw the last set of legs shuffle past. Then he lifted his eyelids and glanced at the doorway. The ferryman, holding onto the rope that kept the boat pulled in close to the dock, shook it and began to untie it and Shane reluctantly dragged his duffel bag across the bench, and dropped the strap onto his shoulder.
He knew there would be no one to meet the ferry, but he scanned the faces on the dock anyway.
He resented it--all those days when the other kids hopped into their parents' cars and trucks to go home while he was left to walk on down the road--usually alone. Not that every kid was met by a parent every day--there were lots of kids who sometimes walked part of the way home with him, but every kid was met by a parent once in a while. His father never came. Not once.
It had been different when he was younger--when he had a stepmother. She came to get him every day when he was very young, not because she wanted to, but because she was trying to please his father. He never got too close to her, even though she was there for six years. She gave up after he rebuffed those first few tentative attempts to get close. But at least he thought she cared for him. He thought he cared for her.
He had been there the night they split up, saw everything his father did to her. He wanted to save her, but he was too small to do anything, too afraid to stand up to him. Could only hide like a coward 'til it was all over. He ran out after her in the pouring rain, but couldn't find her, got soaked, went back and crept up to his bedroom like a wet whipped dog. The next day she came back to the house with his little half-sister to pack up, but he didn't see them, never had a chance to say goodbye.
He moved to the other part of the island with his father, back to the house he'd grown up in--one big open room with a loft for him and his father's bedroom added on at the back. She wasn't really his mother. They were gone, he was twelve and for the next two years he was alone after school. Every day.
You would think his father would show up once in a while--especially on days like today--not that his return was something special, but now it was beginning to rain. No, today would not be any different. It would pour and he would be drenched by the time he got home.
'Should've worn rain gear,' he could hear his father already. 'Should've stayed in Port Chisholm', thought Shane, and that's what he would have done if not for a letter from his father. It came at just the right moment, because it would've been folly for sure to take his first real paycheck and go out with his friends in the bar and have them spend it for him. No way! He had worked hard and now he had something to show for it. And someone to show it to, as well. And damned if he wasn't going to show him. 'See that, Dad. Count 'em. Nine big ones--for two weeks' work.'
It was nearly as much as his father could make in the same amount of time. 'Hey, man, whadya think o' them apples?' He would wave the cash in his father's face. Couldn't argue with that.
Shane had been careful not to break another hundred. He wanted to have all nine of them to wave. Maybe his father hadn't been working lately. Maybe he'd even be broke. Ha, wouldn't that be the day? 'Want to borrow some, Dad? You really should be more responsible with your money.'
He'd go drinking with him and string out the evening so that his father's money would run out and then he'd leave him behind when the bar closed. 'What's that, Dad? Can't pay for your half of the cab? Sorry, I guess you'll have to walk back to the cabin then. I know it's raining, but maybe you should've worn rain gear.'
But the only bar on Ellamin Island, the Legion, was just a short walk from home. And there were no taxi-cabs and his father had a truck anyway. And there really was no place to flaunt his money here. Just Opie's Quartermaster Store. It rained in torrents now and he ran for the protection of Opie's porch. Maybe it would let up in a few minutes. He could wait here with a bag of penny candy just like when he was a kid. When Opie saw him, Shane would make like it was only yesterday: 'I'll have the usual, Opie,' he would say as he slapped down a hundred and Opie would laugh that gravel laugh he had from too many pipes of tobacco.
Shane set his duffel bag by the bench and went inside. The store smelled like hospital disinfectant instead of the welcoming smell of cinnamon and home baking. Everything was re-arranged. Tofu. Alfalfa sprouts. Not much meat in the cooler.
Shane faltered. He stopped and stared at the place on the counter where there had always been a large tray of chocolate and vanilla fudge. It was gone. And Shane knew he would only ever find it there again in memory. He choked, gaping up into the eyes of a different, much younger man.
"Hey-hey, where you hiding Opie?"
The man's expression turned somber and he lowered his gaze to the counter-top. "I guess it's been a while since you've been on the island, eh? Opie's been gone for three years."
Shane had to get out of the store. The door slammed as it sprang closed. He yanked his duffel bag off the bench and fought for control as he trudged down the hill from the store. Opie. Anybody else, but not him. Opie would have been so happy for him. He'd have been so shocked and so proud of him.
He had been such a tough, little kid pretending that nothing could get to him, but Opie saw past all that. And he'd been so cruel to Opie. He had spat in his face one day and called him a blubbering, old fool, but Opie didn't even get mad and every day, even after that episode, Opie still gave him the fudge when he couldn't buy it. That small, daily act of kindness had meant so much to him, but he was a tough, little kid, so he had never even once said thank-you for it.
He had always meant to do something nice for Opie some day--some big, expansive gesture--and now it was too late. Shane sobbed bitterly and kicked at a chunk of mud and winced as his big toe stubbed the rock inside it. He gave it a furious boot that sent it flying across the road. That ended his sobbing.
He would have cracked that hundred gladly at Opie's and spent the whole wad on jujubes and jawbreakers for the kids. 'A round for the house!' Now what was he going to do all week, stuck with only his father for company? At least Opie would talk to him--never shut up for that matter, whereas his father never said more than ten words.
Or worse yet, nothing at all. He would just storm off in a huff. Drop everything and never explain what it was that Shane had done wrong. There was never anything else to discuss. No further advice. His father would carry on in sullen silence as though he'd solved the problem and there was nothing else to add.
Shane's own anger was scary, even to himself. He picked fights with bigger kids, wore them out because he just never gave up.
It wasn't long before he was seeing the counselors at least once a week. They started picking him apart like some kind of bug under a microscope and he started skipping school and sometimes missed the ferry back to the island. There was nothing to go home to anyway. His father never had a meal ready. Always drinking. Shane would stay in town and roam the streets with his new friends. His father didn't even seem to care, except that it was a good excuse to scream at Shane. And then Shane got busted for "Breaking and Entering".
He dropped out of school and his father set up a job for him. Shane was supposed to chop wood for everyone on the island, but when he couldn't keep up to the workload, his father let him fall flat on his face, just left him there to flail about with all the people on the island angry at him because they had no wood. When his Dad hit him he ran away. Had to. He got busted again for B. 'n' E.'s and his father didn't come to get him out.
They put Shane in a forestry camp this time. And his father never came to visit him once. Not fucking once. Not even a letter.
But no-one else's parents came either, except for that one goof, Rick. Anyway he was a rat and a snitch and a sniveling little twit. When Shane finished doing his time his father didn't come for him. His father hadn't come for him then, he didn't show up at the ferry today and nothing about any of this felt any different than the life he left behind when he ran away.
Except the letter last week. Something in the letter had made him think things could be different. His father was asking him to come home now. Better yet he said that maybe Shane could work with him. He was going off to a remote part of the forest along the coast to pick gourmet mushrooms. They would sell them to Chinese buyers. They would be leaving as soon as the weather conditions were right for the season to start.
Shane saw a hydroelectric truck parked on the shoulder of the road. Tools and materials were spread out along the ditch--4" by 4" posts every eight to ten feet and sections of generic, green, plastic, fencing screen. Hey, his father could use some of that to keep the deer out of his garden. Shane jumped over the ditch to steal a few sections of it. It would fold up neatly like blankets. He could just throw it into his pack.
It was all laid out so neatly. They must be nuts leaving it all lying here. Anyone could take it. He grabbed three sections of it. Okay, just one more piece. Oh-oh! There were people coming over the top of the hill. They must have just returned from lunch. Oh well, it was far enough away that they probably hadn't even seen him. Go back the other way then and grab one more piece. He spun round, back-tracked. Oh no! Someone else coming back from the other direction. Shane kept walking towards him. Just keep going. He had the three pieces of screen in his hand. He put them inside his coat. He walked swiftly past the worker. He jumped over the ditch to the road, nearly falling as he did a neat flip over a pile of building materials.
Now he couldn't carry on down the road to his father's cabin. That would take him past the rest of the crew. He had to get out of there quick. He'd have to duck into the woods now and cut through to the other road. What was he doing this for? Three pieces of cheap, plastic fence screen!
'If you're going to steal something, at least make it worth your while.' That's all his father had said when they caught him and gave him six months.
'Well, Dad, I got you something. I made it worth my while. Three pieces of plastic screen worth about six bucks.' Shane put the material in his duffel bag.
'Fool! How stupid can you get? My son's a moron. I don't want this stupid plastic fence. I'll build a nice wooden one.' Well, maybe Shane could use it for something in Port Chisholm. He was on a trail now and it was easier-going. He'd be on the other road in a minute and then that would join back with the first road and take him down to the Quick Cove dock.
Maybe his father would be there with the boat or maybe he'd be at his house up at the far end of the road.
His father wouldn't be pleased to see him, wouldn't have the boat ready. He would have left it so that Shane could do his share of the work. It was past Noon now. His father would be working away at something.
Maybe he would have a few beers with his father tonight. That would be cool--have a beer with the old man. Man-to-man. He was a man now with a man-sized wallet full of man-sized bills.
His father wasn't out on the dock. The boat was still on the trailer beside the pier. Well, that was no surprise. Shane began the steep climb up the road to the house. Before he got there he knew that no one was home--no smoke from the chimney.
Note on the door. Shane dropped his duffel bag.
"Got work with the Hydro crew today. If you come on one of the morning ferries, I don't know where we'll be, but you'll pass me working with a crew somewhere on the road to home. If somehow I miss you, come on back down the road and I'll introduce you to the men. Or just wait here. I'll be back at 4:30."
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ANITA DOLMAN
Anita Dolman is an Ottawa-based freelance writer and editor, and the managing editor of Poetics.ca. She was the 2003 winner of the Writers' Union of Canada Postcard Fiction Competition. Her work has recently appeared in Grain Magazine, Bywords.ca and Geist.
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SHOES
She tells stories about the war;
the man who hid in their attic that fall,
until the SS found him and the trains took him away
to the work camps, she thinks, but there was no telling
and nothing anyone could have done.
And, of course, there was her cousin, or someones cousin,
who got his balls blown off, shot clear off, right there in the front yard
and who died, just hours, just minutes or seconds or days later, bled
to death,
somewhere around the middle of the war, maybe 1943, sometime
when the schools were closed, which they were then, often.
But not, she thinks, when she fell in the road,
twisting her ankle in the crater by the bridge;
the shell of the bomb lying there, like a target, intact
and she wanting to get closer, to see it, because she was 12
and had never seen one like that, unshattered, just lying in the road.
But the scars, those are from her shoes, too small for growing,
so that now,
five decades later, she cant find shoes that fit, that dont crush
the tiny mounds that were once baby toes and now sit shoved up,
eternally raw pink and useless, on top of her feet.
But it was the war then, and who could buy shoes? she says. There was so
little
and the whole family had scurvy the one year, even the baby, who would
scream and scream and scream, in the dark, in the basement,
in the blackouts, when the bombs fell
and there was so much else to think about.
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ROB MCLENNAN
Rob Mclennan lives in Ottawa, where he writes things. his 9th trade collection, what's left, appears in spring 2004 with Talonbooks. the editor/publisher of above/ground press & STANZAS magazine, he is also editor of, among others, side/lines: a new canadian poetics (Insomniac Press) & Groundswell: best of above/ground press, 1993-2003 (Broken Jaw Press). his clever website is at www.track0.com/rob_mclennan
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OLD POEMS
he argues, beauty
is the purpose of all things
a condom wrapper
behind the travel agency
it matters, or does it,
the vagaries of words
in things that represent
instead of are
when sustained by need
or sustained by lack
we are like smoke,
changing shape
a mortal argument
that refuses to heal
a simple form emerges,
beyond the new
the bullet pushing into,
& the slow thin finger
that fires
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M. A. C. FARRANT
M.A.C. Farrant is the award-winning author of seven collections of satirical and humorous short fiction, most recently, "Darwin Alone In The Universe" (Talon, May 2003). A novel-length memoir, My Turquoise Years, is forthcoming from Greystone Books/Douglas & McIntyre in 2004. Her work has been dramatized for television and appears frequently on CBC Radio. She is the West Coast organizer and Host of the annual Canadian small press ReLit Awards and lives near Sidney, B.C.
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OLD THEORIES
They are clearing out old theories, their no-longer-fruitful theories: the theory of possible; the theory of want; the theory of restlessness; the theory of wandering; the theory of lizards; the theory of coffee mugs; the theory of figure skating lessons; the theory of clocks.
They've shoved the old theories into garbage bags and set the bags at the end of the driveway. A propped sign says: Free.
Behind the living room curtain they watch who stops by.
A boy on a bike takes the theory of lizards.
Predictable, says the son.
A woman with a dog drags off the theory of clocks.
She's old, says the mother.
A woman pushing a stroller grabs the theory of want.
Makes sense, says the father.
The daughter screams. You threw out the theory of want? While I was still using it?
We thought we thought…
How could you? It goes with the theory of desire.
We got rid of desire last summer, says the father.
You what? screams the daughter.
Oh dear, says the mother.
We've still got the theory of open, says the son.
Open? shouts the daughter. That old thing? I wouldn't be caught dead…
Dead? says the father. We threw out dead when you were born.
Oh dear, says the mother.
Now I'll never… cries the daughter.
Never? says the father.
Shut up! screams the daughter.
Didn't we give never to your cousin Shirley, says the mother.
Shut up! Shut up!
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A UNIVERSE RUNS THROUGH HIM
I gave a writing class to a group in the city. It was held one evening in the basement of a library. The idea was that I would provide writing exercises, and talk about the craft. Thirteen people were in attendance, among them an eighty-eight year old man who had just self-published his twelfth book. It was called "Travel Tales". "It's about my thirty years in the travel business," he told the group when it was his turn during introductions. "An insider's view. Things you'd never suspect that go on behind the scenes". He had copies with him, for sale.
Another student, a woman, said she had written a book on management skills and was interested in who my agent was. A shy Chinese woman said she came to the class because she was stuck in the house all day and needed something to do. A woman, who kept her coat on and her purse on her lap, said she was attending as support for her husband who wanted to write westerns. He sat next to her, tilted back in his chair, a fleshy, middle-aged man with a pencil stuck behind his ear.
While the participants worked on the first exercise-"Details From your Childhood"--the supporting wife stared grimly over her husband's shoulder at what he was writing. Beside them a lively elderly couple took turns with a pen writing on the same sheet of paper. After completing the exercise, the wife told the group that she and her husband had gone to elementary school together and so shared the same childhoods. Her husband, a thin man in an oversized blue sweatshirt that had "The Right Stuff" written in white across his chest, explained their unique writing style. "We do this all the time. The wife writes the beginning of sentences and I write the end. I'm better at ends than she is".
I told the group we would now do an exercise called "Stretching the Commonplace; Blowing off the Dust". "It's about using the imagination," I said, and explained that I would provide them with a first sentence-something provocative or startling. They would then write the next sentence, and the next, moving on to paragraphs if they felt inspired. To get them going and to give them an idea of how wonderful such writing could be, I read aloud a poem by bill bissett. It began: god or th goddess as yu like 2 say is a giant/ child leening against a giant window sill/ looking out at rolling emerald hills th shining/ turquoise watr brite yello zaneeness birds evree/ wher lifting melodeez…
When I had finished I said, "A writer like bill bissett has the doors wide open all the time. A universe runs through him. "bill bissett," I said, "is in a permanent state of wonder, perfectly attuned to the swirl of life within and beyond him."
The man with the supporting wife scoffed, and said, "What's he on?"
Several people laughed.
The three sentences I gave the class to choose from were: "My mother ate cats"; "I had charge of an insane asylum, and I was insane"; and "They have lost the baby down the sewer". They had ten minutes. Then everyone shared what they had written.
Of the thirteen people in the class, eleven, including the elderly couple, had chosen sentence number one about the mother who ate cats. The shy Chinese woman chose sentence number three about losing the baby down the sewer. "We went crazy with fear", she wrote. When it was his turn to read, the man with the watching wife smirked, folded his arms across his chest, and said, "Pass".
I then talked about dreams and the other places imaginative material might be found. "It's important not to get stuck in habitual grooves," I said, thinking fondly of bill bissett. Some of the students wrote this down.
At the end of the class, the man with the watching wife explained to everyone the proper way to sit in a chair. He said there should never be wrinkles in your wrists when you work at the computer, and that the computer screen should be blue, not white. He said you should get up every twenty minutes and walk around. "Move the blood. Otherwise it pools". He said he was an expert in ergonomics, that's what he did for a living.
For all this I was paid fifty dollars. The next day I took another trip to the city. I planned to spend the money at second hand stores. I was looking for a winter sweater. Also, I needed some brite yello zaneeness.
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JENNIFER BOIRE
Jennifer Boire has published in several Canadian magazines, and in the U.S. Her first book, Little Mother, came out in 1997 with Hochelaga Press. These poems are taken from her newest collection, "Longing and Desire". She is the Quebec rep for the League of Canadian Poets.
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GHAZAL FOR SPRING
Wind's sotto voice under leaves,
ventriloquist.
All I hear at night is loud breath,
grunts, your chest rising, falling.
All you hear at night are grinding teeth,
bones tossing and turning.
Ed's been spoiled by his waterbed.
One night on my mattress, his back is out.
Why do they call it a 'blow job'?
No wind here, only suction.
One thin book of lines, picked up
casually from the shelf - woke me!
Leaping from thought to thought makes her
hard to follow: but the poems ignite.
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SILKEN
damp curtain, glistening
orifice, your chin wet
with my salt
silt you revel in, (cunt) cupped
in your hand, the comfort
of careless weekend sleeping
in, duvet & pillows thrown about
no alarm or traffic din
only the caw caw caw
of a lazy
crow
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LISTEN TO THE BIRDS
(Earth Day)
The prodigious wind doth blow
and heartily.
Something is about to happen.
Listen, calling you…bright
within the shining …
it glistens, whispers, wet, alive.
Speak, but from the wordless place.
Wind outspeaks the loud roadways
outvoices birds, bells, the ubiquitous
chrome chimes.
Open sky echoes
dump trucks' rattle. Overhead
the high clouds line up,
booming by.
Dark clouds fast over the lake.
See the red winged black bird,
hear the willow breathe -
all that roaring wind,
punching branches up and down.
This is the week, the day it may happen,
the first leaves.
Hear the robins, cardinals, crows
all wordless.
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MICHELE WONG
Michele Wong's book of poetry, the whispering of soft shoes, will be published by The New Hogarth Press in 2005.
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Poetry Collection in PDF Format
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JON PAUL FIORENTINO
Jon Paul Fiorentino is a poet, editor and teacher. His current poetic project is a book of synaptic syntax entitled Hello Serotonin (Coach House Books, 2004). His current editorial projects are the anthologies Career Suicide! Contemporary Literary Humour (DC Books, 2003) and Post-Prairie - a collaborative effort with Robert Kroetsch (Talonbooks, 2005). He lives in Montreal where he is the Managing Editor for Matrix magazine.
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p r a i r i e LIT
Piles of hometrips.
Strips of mallkids.
Dreams of sleeptext.
Miles of phonesleet.
Steads of fencedhope.
Drips of graindrain.
Sheets of inkstrain.
Streets of wheatlash.
Sinks of draindrought.
Drafts of litwaste.
Fits of lispdraft.
Tastes of christdust.
Weeks of seedspite.
Maps of frostnode.
Wisps of glasstrips.
Trips of streetdrift.
Homes of angstsong.
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BEN KALMAN
Ben Kalman is the founder and editor of Mercutio Press. He has published two chapbooks, In the City (Mercutio Press, 2002) and Scattered Thoughts (Pooka Press, 2003). His work has appeared in various venues including the true fiction: art anthology, The Antigonish Review and a forthcoming issue of Urban Graffiti X. His latest chapbook, Writing In Violence, inspired by Eavan Boland's sequence 'Writing In A Time Of Violence', will be published by Mercutio Press in 2004.
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THAT THE SCIENCE OF VIOLENCE IS LIMITED
At six, in the summertime
we walked through makeshift graveyards
-the peace of the stones,
the colours of the daffodils.
You asked me to marry you.
And I said 'yes'.
Years later, dreams later, I still walk
on the backs of our brothers and sisters
who didn't make it-as you didn't make it;
for them, the potato blight; for you,
a blight that no harvest, no potato,
could end.
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THE DEATH OF VIOLENCE
When Christina immersed
Herself for Dante
She became Ophelia
You are my Ophelia,
Your life in flames
As I burn your photographs
Christina's pale skin
Glows in the water
Her lungs fill with fluid
Ophelia is waiting for her.
Your lips curl
-no, the paper is curling
For you can smile
No longer
The fires burn
Out of control
In Ireland's youth
The intensity
Is blinding.
And as your smile
Returns to ashes
From those ashes
Another Ireland will
Rise again.
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IN A VIOLENT LIGHT
Breathing in a
new land. I try
to remember what
Dublin looked like.
We sailed across
oceans in search of
the promise of a
new life. The arrival
of Autumn an omen
as the sun sets over
lines of coffin ships
depositing their cargo;
the living and the dead
side by side in this
Land of Freedom. We,
the workers, in
steel mills and salt mines
are new Americans.
Those that died are
nothing but names on
commemorative plaques.
The sunlight rises over
broken people, we are in
a bad light, our dreams
are beautiful, our
spirits hungry.
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VIOLENT INSCRIPTIONS
She marked a notch in her bedpost
for every member of her family killed-
There is strength in numbers.
When Peter kissed her, her gaze
fell upon these wooden scars-
like shallow, open coffins
with ghostly corpse shadows
resting in the gouges.
One morning, she woke to find
PETER carved deeply on the headboard
and an empty hollow in the mattress.
The safety of the darkened room
was no comfort to her
with only five letters left
to remind her of his kiss.
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FROM 'ALL ABOUT LOVE'
i looked inside myself and pulled out...you, you shone like a chameleon, all red and green and gold in the bath of sunset across the universe, or at least (a)cross my heart. my head is merry-go-rounding, spiraling me back to 1985: I was a plum and you were a peach, both fresh and ripe and in love - I had Molly Ringwald and you preferred Emilio (though never in public) and we held hands in the twilight and sang Falco outside discos that would only let in our elders...
can you believe we were only 17 when we made love for the first time? and you told me you couldn't stop laughing and crying afterwards and that the red light of morning was painted across your chest and that all the birds were singing a chorus in your honour, though for me it was all different because i couldn't cry and i couldn't laugh and the red was blood crossing my heart and the birds were a cacophony i couldn't break away from...
the sky is a dull grey, reflects your tomb as i caress the stones made smooth by a harsh winter, the glaze over your name a blank rime the ice dripping from my nose as i softly sing our song and i only now realize how sad i was not because you were wrong but because i couldn't admit to myself how much you meant to me. when i look in the mirror tonight, all i'll see is blood tainting my eyes, blood staining my hands but it's not your blood that glistens across my heart, it's my own...
christmas nineteen-eighty-five, the high school years coming to a close. the family was singing mambo italiano and i could sense rosemary clooney dancing the rhumba next to the piano in the den...rosemary was my favourite spice - how ironic that it was also your middle name. the first time i met you three long years before, you blushed when i said hello and you wouldn't, couldn't, tell me your name but somehow i knew it was april and you were the first robin of spring...
the first time i kissed you was under the mistletoe. it was new years day and we were both a little tired from staying up til dawn to watch the sun greet the new year. we were fourteen and the city was so big to us then. you asked me who were the top five girls i liked and i nervously put you at two. you asked me who was number one and i told you it was that girl from blade runner and you laughed and i loved the way your cheeks lit up when you laughed, like there was a switch that turned on inside you when you were happy. you asked me if i kissed you would you be number one and i said i didn't know. you smiled and pointed to the weeks old mistletoe still hanging in the doorway above our heads and i kissed you.i wish i could see that fire again but someone cut the switch and i never figured out how to splice my light into yours...
there is a clock inside of me and it counts down the minutes until i can join you again only i don't know what time it was when it started ticking away and i don't know how much time is left. but every night when i finally get a few hours of restless sleep the last thing i hear is my heartbeat slowly ticking down those minutes and i think of how you used to say you hated time because it would always be running out...
i'm stuck you would tell me stuck without a purpose and when i asked you if your purpose was to be stuck you didn't answer but looked as though you could swallow me whole. we came to a Peoples' Court agreement that we would never let each other down. in the end you left me with a cyanide kiss and a wish for a better life…
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MIRA SHENKER
Mira Shenker lives and writes in Montreal. She is a recent graduate in Creative Writing at Concordia University.
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LIKE THE EARTH
I placed a plum on the ground.
Round like the curve of my hand,
like the crabapples in the grass all around it.
Thick-skinned firm. Smooth
against cracked leaves.
I placed my hand on the ground
at the centre.
Lines like the veins of the leaves,
like the roots of their trees.
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A STATUE IN THE PARK
Serious leaves fall from serious sky
swirled with high wind.
My camera, a greedy tongue clucking -
shudder snap, mirror and catch
drama in a storm.
Slide, focus lens
Serious leaves in a swirling wind around
bronze kneeling girl.
Whirling gray quickens,
spiral leaves heighten
Rain pummels the moment
I only saw through focus shudder click
and lines of ink.
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IMPERFECTION
I found a chink in my fadedgreen teacup.
First a gap - a missing tooth - and then a crack
sprung from the gap.
I followed with my fingertip
the fissure's path down washed-out
tealeaf green, to
where it disappeared
under the base. How sad
to find a crack, fed by a gap
in such an otherwise smooth work
of art, my cup.
It's no good for tea now, I think.
No good for anything at all.
I place it far at the back
of my big kitchen cabinet. How sad,
I think, while crowding it behind the other cups,
to find a crack.
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LAST NIGHT
In the underwater thrall
of fizzy beer
(the basement brewery sending mystical sudsy
simplicity); in the lull
of an old game:
the little slips of paper
passed from hand to hand
in fevered anticipation of Creativity.
I wrote the verb, you wrote the noun,
and poured the beer, his arm around your chair.
My narrowed eyes.
For all that, we sat
elated bombarded undecided
defunct,
drinking the pale, the stringy haired,
the martyrs and the activists.
Outside, snow and
unnamed shadowy
streets lined with moonshine.
"Hey," you said
"I'll kiss the moon, the shadowy streets, the lines."
In the parking lot, the downtown wooden fenced-in rink,
the swish crunch twack of sneakers on crisp ice.
"Come on!" you shine.
Everyone follows
but me and the moon.
You stop. In the pit of a whole night (a boiled down plum, a prune!):
you give, a folded paper
- I love you - it says - for all the reasons you don't smile -
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RAPE
1.
Your wet curls on the shower floor. White tiles
of separate sizes beside my head turned sideways,
and beneath my cheek pressed cold.
2.
Sitting in a garden of climbing vines
and potted tulips
drinking red wine from Prague.
I laughed and tossed my head back,
exposing the soft pink of my neck.
You fed me stories about Prague -
the weather and the cheap cigarettes.
You peeled the grapes and fed them one by one.
One, "I am alone in Verona."
Two, "You seem like a nice girl"
and poured the drinks
and peeled more grapes
and said,
"hey, I'll show you how to box."
3.
Throwing fake punches in the courtyard
you grab me round the waist and laugh,
we both do.
4.
You poured the absinthe and struck a match,
the urgency of fire, "drink it fast!"
I did just to see what it was like.
What it was like, was like
nothing.
5.
More than drunk now no walls where
the stairs don't seem to end and we going?
a shower?
Shedding, like colored petals in a forceful wind,
my clothes.
Feels
dark then light.
Feels
open then closed;
my eyes at intervals.
6.
your wetcurlsontheshowerfloor
your hand on my leg as I pull myself up
your eyes half closed; two thick black lines
your voice all wet, pleading, "stay", in my ear
your arms weighted across my chest.
my fault.
7.
I met you at a hostel in Verona
and you said,
"let's sit in the courtyard where it's cooler."
So we did.