Episode Thirty - Guest Author Sheryda Warrener

Sheryda and her work are impossible to resist. The author of two brilliant collections, Floating is Everything (Nightwood, 2015) and Hard Feelings (Snare, 2010), Sheryda draws her reader in with piercing observations, deep reflection and, often, a wink of humour. Robert Hass, paraphrasing Du Fu, says that "A good image makes something so real, it’s like being alive twice" and Sheryda's poems are brimming over with this double life. Her work has been featured in a recent Believer art issue, and shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry, the Arc Magazine Poem of the Year, the Malahat Review Long Poem Prize, and selected as runner-up for Lemon Hound’s inaugural poetry contest. In 2016, she became the director of the inaugural Artspeak Studio for Emerging Writers, where she mentors students who use language primarily as a material in visual art.

A Temporary Relief

I pay twelve artists good money to live in the pool house for the summer, extra to not to make anything while they’re here. They paddle around the pool, make light of otherwise weighty topics. No intimate details are shared, no recipes for lentil salad or barbequed salmon swapped. Time whiles. I wake to find the back path to the pool house swept, pine needles and whirligigs assembled into the careful undulations of a desperate saga. Someone props the windows upstairs open so the sheer curtains billow out, brush my arm as I walk past. One day the granite countertop is dusted with an intricate mandala devised from cupboard spices, the next day, pool noodles twisted into devastating sculptures are stuck into the lawn. I try to catch them at it, only to find all twelve lounging in uncomplicated ways around the pool, eyes averted. When the gravy boat rains silver liquid down onto my mashed potatoes, I say aloud to no one in particular “I haven’t felt a thing since Murphy Brown sang (You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman to baby Avery, May 18, 1992, 8:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, and I’m not about to break now.” I make my way down the path. I knew I would always be alone, but not like this. The underwater vacuum shudders and cleanses in its remote universe. Without my knowing, the prickly stucco of the diving board at this moment  makes an impression on the backs of my thighs. I’ll discover this later and tear apart the house in such a rage the artists will finally flee. Until then, oblivious, I agitate the surface with my toes, and this grants me a temporary relief.

(written by Sheryda Warrener, read by Chioke I'Anson) 

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Episode Twenty Nine - Guest Author Lea Marshall

This week, we are thrilled to present work from Lea Marshall.  Lea is Associate Chair of the Department of Dance & Choreography at Virginia Commonwealth University, as well as a poet and dance writer. Her creative work has appeared in Diode Poetry Journal, Unsplendid, Hayden's Ferry Review, Linebreak, and elsewhere. Her manuscript has been a finalist for the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award and the New Issues Poetry Prize, and her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She writes for Dance Magazine, Dance Teacher magazine, and Richmond's Style Weekly. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Virginia Commonwealth University. 

This story was originally published in Life in 10 Minutes, a wonderful online writing project by Valley Haggard. 

Vine

I kept craving sunset walks, in all this pink gold light and the last of the leaves, in their heart-stopping death-colors. We went out with friends on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, to take a river walk. Four children and three adults made for an ambling, erratic pace. Stop/shuffle/throw leaves/screech/run madly ahead. But we made it to the river and the river slid under a deep indigo sky shot with gold, and didn’t care about us a bit. I listened to it shushing, rippling, as we crossed the pedestrian bridge. I joked that my favorite time over the water is when no one else is there, as we slow-motion dodged among our fellow amblers. On the far side we kept walking, knowing any minute we would turn back. The sunset silently, wildly dark purple and copper behind the trees’ black filigree kept pulling our faces round to the west. Ahead, though, a rope swing with children dangling from it. Our own children, electric, surged ahead and paused. Not a rope – a vine. A vine hung from 30 feet up, and a little line of children waited to take a couple of swings out over the path and back to the steep hillside to which the trees’ roots clung. The perfect, slow glide of that vine kept us all spellbound – the children waiting in line, the parents watching from the path as each one clung, let go, and sailed like the clapper of a huge bell but soundless. Each flight held a magic no one would interrupt. Each child helped the next with the vine. “Will it break?” Parents waited motionless. One more. The purple sky. One more. It’s almost dark. One more. Our daughters, our sons, strangers’ children, each gliding through the dusk. One more. Their faces, concentrated in the bliss of the swing. More children arrive. One more. A half-moon, and the train whistle beckons us. One more. “It hasn’t broken yet.” We turn back to the bridge.

(written by Lea Marshall, read by Chioke I'Anson) 

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Episode Twenty Eight - Some Reasons Why People Fail

Some reasons why people fail

The lower half of her body was lagging behind the top. As she jogged, she took on the hunched shoulders and curled-up hands of a T-rex.

Her torso had been content with the couch and a laptop. It resented the industry of her legs, this training towards what exactly? 5K, 10K a half marathon? You know what had been nice, it reminded her, the pool.

Earlier this summer, back when she didn’t care, she’d slipped into a neighbour’s backyard after midnight. Her apartment was above three-for-one pizza and had no AC. She was pretty sure they were at a cottage. They had a giant donut-shaped inflatable and she’d floated for almost an hour, feeling the three gradations of temperature—the chill of the water, the heat of the air, the lukewarm, unbreathable plastic. One of the first times in her life she’d been alone, in the dark, unafraid.

At the clinic, they’d made her feel like running was fearless too. You’re a champ, you’re a champ, you’re a champ, she repeated to herself with each footfall. Ignoring the unsaid—control your weight, control your anxiety, control your life. It was such a fine line between running from and running to.

(written by Claire Tacon, read by Chioke I'Anson) 

That rad music you hear at the end is by Tigerrosa. Buy their debut album here

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Episode Twenty Seven - Guest Author Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang - Part Two

Happy 2018! We're excited to welcome in the new year with guest author, Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang. Please check out her bio and previous episode here. And, while you're at it, pick up one of her fantastic books at your local independent bookseller. 

Laundry

Standing on the roof, reeling in the laundry. Each turn of the wheel sings rust. The shirts snap in the wind, come back. I hold the light fabrics in my hand as I unpin them from the line. Drop the clothespins into a plastic bag that hooks onto the wall. Let the dry clothes fall into the basket. They are stiff with the water that’s left. Rigid with wind.

(written by Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang, read by Chioke I'Anson) 

That rad music you hear at the end is by Tigerrosa. Buy their debut album here

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Episode Twenty Six - Guest Author Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang

Reading Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang’s poetry collection, Sweet Devilry, coincided with the birth of my first son and it felt like a motherhood primer written by your much smarter, cooler cousin. Since then, her picture book A Flock of Shoes has become a favourite of said son. Sarah’s second poetry collection, Status Update, was nominated for the Pat Lowther Award and her work has been anthologized in such collections as Best Canadian Poetry 2013, Poet-to-Poet (2013), and the Newborn Anthology (2014). She is also editor of two poetry collections, Desperately Seeking Susans, and Tag: Canadian Poets at Play. Her work for younger readers (A Flock of Shoes, Warriors and Wailers, The Stone Hatchlings, Breathing Fire, and Night Children) has been published and translated internationally, and she is a professor of Creative Writing at Sheridan College. Despite all these accomplishments and accolades, Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang is also charmingly honest and self-deprecating, as evidenced by her interview on Sachiko Murakami’s wonderful site www.writingsohard.com.  We’re so chuffed to have her on the blog that we’re bringing you not one but two episodes of her work.

Missing

The river is missing its clarity. It hides like a woman, caught undressing. The shame of it. The river has lost the hot afternoon sun. The wind that stroked it absently, like a lover already thinking of someone else. There is no small shiver, no pleasure, despite. There is only these men, in waders. The mud stirred and sifted through nets. The small child, who lies unmoving. The river moves on and on, away from itself. As though it could empty all it was into the ocean, and forget.

(written by Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang, read by Chioke I'Anson) 

That rad music you hear at the end is by Tigerrosa. Buy their debut album here

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Episode Twenty Five - Guest Author Jessica Westhead

Back in 2011, I had the pleasure of hearing Jessica Westhead read from And Also Sharks (Cormorant Books) at Guelph’s amazing local bookseller The Bookshelf. The stories in her collection were sharp and funny, full of striking observations about contemporary life.  To say I’ve been anticipating her second collection is an understatement. We’re thrilled that Jessica was willing to let us have a go at this excerpt from one of the stories in Things Not to Do out now with Cormorant.  

Other acclaim for her work includes being nominate or shortlisted for: the CBC Literary Awards, Journey Prize anthology, National Magazine Awards, ReLit Awards, and the Danuta Gleed Short Fiction Prize.

The Lesson (excerpt)

It’s all about wielding influence. People see the name of our company on a wedding invitation—because that’s a clause in our contract, that our name has to appear there—and they immediately think, Whoa, this is going to be a classy affair. So you better make damn sure your shoelaces are tied and you’re not wearing an inappropriate belt buckle. This one guy who used to work for us? He showed up at a reception wearing a belt buckle in the shape of a King Cobra, all coiled up to strike. It was pretty mind-blowing, but I was like, “What the fuck? This is a fucking wedding.” Put that majestic eagle or howling wolf in a drawer for another day. This is an occasion for fragrant blossoms and shit floating in big vases with rainbow-coloured rocks at the bottom.

The next weapon in your arsenal is showmanship. Do you ever have that dream, you know, where you’re supposed to give a presentation, and it’s on something really boring, like sustainable development, but you’ve somehow devised a way to make it interesting? Like maybe you’ve got Powerpoints of Herman cartoons that relate to the subject? I love Herman, he’s so fucking deadpan. But when you arrive, you realize you’ve left the cartoons at home, and all that’s left are the boring parts, like about sharing food with poor people and all that? You don’t know how you’re going to get through this thing, and there’s a huge audience, but you have to do it—it’s your turn. That’s the approach I take with DJ’ing.

Dreams are crazy things, right? Last night I dreamed that I ran into the most popular guy from my high school, and I told him what I did for a living. Do you know what that means? It means I’ve made it. There’s Shane Terpstra, just walking along, and I recognize him but he doesn’t recognize me. I had to tell him, “Dude, it’s me!” And he grabbed my lapels and pulled me in and said, “Looking good, man.” The next thing he said was, “What are you doing with yourself these days?” His eyes were these crazy red slits, like a snake’s eyes, that’s the only thing that was weird about him. I said, “I’m a wedding DJ, Shane. I play music at the best moment of other people’s lives.” And he started to cry these gushy red tears of blood out of his crazy red slit snake eyes, it was pretty freaky actually, and he was so ashamed by what he was doing with his own life that he wouldn’t even tell me. Or maybe he was a vacuum salesman, something shitty like that. Anyway, it was a good dream.

(written by Jessica Westhead, read by Chioke I'Anson) 

That rad music you hear at the end is by Tigerrosa. Buy their debut album here

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Intermission!

We're taking the week off because it's that time in the fall semester. In honour of the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize announcement on Tuesday, we wanted to bring your attention to this IFOA panel with the shortlisted authors. https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/rogers-writers-trust-fiction-prize-finalists-in-conversation/id1117031415?i=1000394111498

Check out more Writers' Trust podcasts here. 

Episode Twenty Four - Get in on the Ground Floor

Get in on the ground floor

“You’re terrific,” he tells me. “Your resume is terrific. You never know where you could end up.”

Which is all to say that the internship is unpaid.

“You make it sound like an elevator.”

“That’s the spirit.” He’s wearing a shirt that I suspect his wife picked out—a thin polo, mercerized cotton, different coloured pinstripes woven in at one-inch intervals. After four summers at Parker’s cleaners, I know what an entry-level position looks like.

“Would you consider offering an honorarium?” My friend, Bernice, likes to say If you don’t ask, the answer’s always no. Bernice hasn’t encountered a lot of no. 

“Last year’s intern is now our social media specialist.”

Six months scouring Twitter for good re-tweets, writing service articles for their newsletters, and ghost-writing blog posts for the executive team. Last week, there was a notice with my student loan statement, the government reminding me to report any garnish-able wages.

“What does it say on the label of your shirt?”

“Eddie Bauer?”

“Where do you think the person who stitched it is now? The mezzanine? The basement?”

He looks at me perplexed. He’s just offered me the position and this is not the transaction of gratitude he was expecting.

“That’s the problem with an elevator.” I stand up and collect my clippings folder. “You don’t always know if it’s going up or down.”

(written by Claire Tacon, read by Chioke I'Anson) 

That rad music you hear at the end is by Tigerrosa. Buy their debut album here

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Episode Twenty Three - The woman blocking the intersection

The woman blocking the intersection, the woman refusing to let me in, is driving a red hatchback, her passenger mid-eighties at least, hair cropped like a jellyfish. The passenger stares out the window. A few car lengths ahead, there’s the ding ding ding of the rail crossing, the twin engines shunting tank cars. We’ll be here a long time.

The driver turns up the radio and I watch the emoji pattern on her scrubs bounce along to Bruno Mars. Suddenly she reaches over towards the open window and I think she’s going to ask me what my problem is. Instead, she uses her index finger to scrape the passenger’s teeth. Is she checking to see if the woman’s died? The passenger flares her nostrils but doesn’t bat the driver’s hand away. No, the motion is more like a toothbrush. A salad leaf, perhaps.

A bike courier scrapes by on the right, going the wrong way up the street. Greasy muscles, shorts ripped right up his thigh, a chain that swings towards the car. The hatchback driver throws her hands up, scowling at how close his pedals get to the front hood. He taps her back window, just to piss her off. As if struck by a defibrillator, the passenger bolts upright. She cranes her neck to watch the cyclist pedal off. Grins as if to say, he’s terrific.

(written by Claire Tacon, read by Chioke I'Anson) 

That rad music you hear at the end is by Tigerrosa. Buy their debut album here

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Episode Twenty Two - With the Same Chipped, Coral Manicure

With the Same Chipped, Coral Manicure

The woman had her hand on a loaf of pumpernickel, giving the heel a thick squeeze. The baker, Drayton, had witnessed the ritual before. Each day the customer made two circuits through the aisles, past the thistle-stamped short bread, past the deflated gluten-free bagels, past the tubs of cream cheese. Two figure eights’ appraisal of his wares, then a feverish minute of bread groping. Always fifty/fifty as to whether or not she’d buy. He wondered if he was disappointing her with the store’s sameness. Or if she was worried she’d missed something last time. Perhaps she was just gassy and the loops through the shelves allowed her to relieve herself in slow, unobtrusive wafts. Hot air, disappointment—those had been his mother’s hallmarks too.

That night he switched the pickles with the halva, the hamentashen with the honey sponge, the seasonal napkins with the ceramics. The pumpernickel he placed in a bin by the cash, so the woman would be forced to look him in the eye. He’d made that bread himself. Couldn’t she see it was good enough?

(written by Claire Tacon, read by Chioke I'Anson) 

That rad music you hear at the end is by Tigerrosa. Buy their debut album here

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Episode Twenty One - Other Lessons Beyond Self-Righteousness

photo by Ryan McGuire

His son had asked for a balloon. A foil baseball bat with a softball lobbed onto the end. Eric felt foolish carrying it back from the store, its phallus poking against the sky. He didn’t like the waste. They had what, two weeks, before the garbage truck would tip it into its jaws? Every spring, along with coerced grad students, Eric volunteered to clean up the river. Just for fun, he’d dissected a dead, netted gull. The stomach, stuffed with cigarette filters, bloomed open like a milkweed pod. That was the natural conclusion of his son’s request. But the kid had asked, so earnest, his Earth Rangers pin stabbing his ball-cap. There were other lessons beyond self-righteousness.

(written by Claire Tacon, read by Chioke I'Anson) 

That rad music you hear at the end is by Tigerrosa. Buy their debut album here

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Episode Twenty - Get a Record of Just Laughing

Sidenote: read more about Dr. Munyon here. 

Get a record of just laughing

There are parts of my grandfather’s memory he kept shuttered, whole wings left to be demolished by neglect. The bits we know are the not-so-bads. His leather boots nailed to a board, a punishment for carelessness. His socked feet chapped by snow. The view from a hotel window in Prague, waiting to see if the Gestapo would return. His parents’ failed suicide pact. He laughed a lot in the telling, a laugh that buffered us from the words, prevented us from attaching meaning to them, from seeing him as that little boy at the table, waiting to see if his mother and father would come home.

Marginalia in his eight-volume set of The Law of Success. “Get a record of just laughing.” The author, Napoleon Hill, had not encountered any melancholic successes. Even a forced laugh was better than no laugh. Sadness was tangible, an off-putting smell that could cling to a man. Gloom was an old country problem with a new, low-price American solution—a phonograph record of a woman’s sustained merriment.

My grandfather, predicting a scarcity, had added it to his to-do list.

(written by Claire Tacon, read by Chioke I'Anson) 

That rad music you hear at the end is by Tigerrosa. Buy their debut album here

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Episode Nineteen - Guest Author Dina Del Bucchia

Photo by Shay Wilson

This week, give your ears a treat with new work by Dina Del Bucchia. This Vancouver delight is the author of three collections of poetry: Coping with Emotions and Otters (Talonbooks, 2013), Blind Items (Insomniac Press, 2014), and Rom Com (Talonbooks, 2015), written with Daniel Zomparelli. She also hosts Can’t Lit, a gregarious podcast on Canadian literature and culture, with Zomparelli. Dina’s a senior editor of Poetry Is Dead magazine, the Artistic Director of the Real Vancouver Writers' Series and an expert beach-goer. This week, you should run out to a bookstore to pick up her first collection of short stories, Don’t Tell Me What to Do, out this month with Arsenal Pulp Press. We’re so happy to share her writing with you!

This week is also extra special because we've got theme music, courtesy of Tigerrosa. Buy their debut album here--it's guitar surf-rock with a side of shoe gazer. Whatever you want to call it., it's a great listen.

Jefferson’s Ground Sloth Megalonyx jeffersonii

By Dina Del Bucchia

An American founding deadbeat dad thought, maybe, there were still ground sloths laying about, stripping leaves in the Midwest. “Hey Meriwether,” he said, “Keep your eyes peeled for a sloth, okay? I’d kill for one.” Paced the White House, arranged sloth bones along the oval carpet.  Meanwhile, you hadn’t been keeping it casual Friday everyday for nine thousand years. You disappeared a few years after humans showed up. They were entranced. You were so meaty. Some scientists believe climate change decimated populations. It seems most sensible that murder and weather join forces to ruin beautiful things. Jefferson stalked then married his name to you. Never one for assholes you wouldn’t have been interested. Lewis and Clark came back without you. Obsessives should keep their distance. Take it from you, stay chill.

(written by Dina Del Bucchia, read by Chioke I'Anson)

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Episode Eighteen - Tip his knowledge in

Almost as soon as the boy had come out of the womb, Kai had wanted to crack open his son’s head and tip all his knowledge in. Why should the child have to suffer through organic chemistry, Greek mythology, Spanish syntax? He watched his son struggle to pinch slices of banana between his thumb and forefinger, the lift up to his mouth equally precarious. Even the smallest acquisition of information seemed onerous. His wife had repeated "wave bye bye, Baby" for weeks, flapping his pudgy hand with the same optimism. The kid still stared blankly when Kai left the room.

There were species that passed along genetic memory—bird song, an aversion to the smell of cherries. Kai knew that by the time he equipped his son with whatever wisdom he’d cobbled together, the world would have changed. Kai could only prepare his son for the world right now. Not the one he’d have to live in.

And in that world, where would Kai be? His gonads no longer necessary for the biodiversity project, his ideas gathering mildew. He stared at his offspring, now happily gumming banana, and felt the sting of obsolescence with each chew.

(written by Claire Tacon, read by Chioke I'Anson)

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Episode Seventeen - Guest Author Clay Pearn

This week on The Oddments Tray, we're welcoming the talented Clay Pearn. Clay has an MFA from the University of Michigan and a few music degrees to boot. He works as an editor in Hamilton, Ontario and we think you'll be seeing more of his work soon. 

On Cleaning House

by Clay Pearn

I prefer the vacuum. Ours has a robot face with one long arm, and when I pull it behind me the wheels stick on the power cord, and I want to drive it over the edge of the stairs and let it tumble into the drywall on the landing. Yet it makes the dirt disappear with such relief. Every little nook can be touched by its wand. Just a touch here, and that’s clean. Easy touches. But they add up. All afternoon eaten up touch by touch and I find myself in a sweat, my jaw tight: I am obliterating my Sunday, my true free life where I am not who my co-workers think I am. To them I exist only to fix their mistakes and refill my bank account like a ration box. They don’t know I have land in the far North of Ontario. Four island acres and a tiny cabin overrun by mice. That I drive there alone, retrieve a fishing boat at a local marina, and speed across twenty minutes of open water. That I sleep on a cot without my wife, because neither does she know about my land and will only find out when I die. And that I can look out any window, here in our bedroom with the robot’s arm clenched in my fist, or through the steel mesh windows at work, and know the cabin is there, the land, that I have unmarked keys for the various padlocks, that if I leave out strands of shredded cheese on the cabin floor they will disappear overnight, replaced by grains of black poop that carry parasites and disease.

(written by Clay Pearn, read by Chioke I'Anson)

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Episode Sixteen - Bonsai Kittens

photo by Ryan McGuire

She couldn’t tell anyone how disappointed she was that those bonsai kittens weren’t real. It would mean admitting that she’d looked past their immediate suffering. It was terrible, of course, no animal deserved tobe shoehorned into Tupperware. She hadn’t found the pictures all that cute. But the bonsai cats offered a kind of permanence that was hard to find. Sometimes the onward process of growing was exhausting. Always stretching your arms towards the sky. Lately she found herself struggling against the current of positivity churned up by her friends and coworkers. There was too much pressure to compost all of life’s experience into something fertile. Wouldn’t it be nice, she thought, to be kept fed and petted in a thick-walled jar? Indefinitely small, enclosed. The only thing you are required to do is nothing.

(written by Claire Tacon, read by Chioke I'Anson)

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Episode Fifteen - Guest Author Pamela Mordecai

This week, we’re honoured to welcome Pamela Mordecai reading from her phenomenal performance poem “de book of Mary.” You might hear some birdsong in the background because Pamela graciously invited me into her home to record her. Pamela is a literary tour-de-force, having published five collections of poetry, an anthology of short fiction and a novel, Red Jacket, which was a finalist for the 2015 Rogers Writer’s Trust Fiction Award. As if that weren’t enough, Pamela is also well-known for her poetry and stories for children and is a recipient of the Institute of Jamaica’s Centenary and Bronze Musgrave Medals.

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Mary convinces Jesus to perform the miracle at Cana

(written and read by Pamela Mordecai)

“Listen Jesus! De people dem run

out of wine.” What a crosses!

me thinking in my mind.

“Jesus! Son! You hear what me saying?

Dis party just begin

and de people wine done!”

Me raise my voice loud-loud but Jesus can’t hear

for him on de far side of dis yard.

Me shout louder.

“Son is me! Over here! Is your Ma!”

Him still don’t hear a word!

Make me move likl closer for not even me

can hear myself talking in dis noise.

“Cry excuse! Beg you please

give me pass? Me need to get through

to dat made over yonder, him

wid de beard.” Okay, See me right here

side of him. Him must can hear me now!

“Jesus, me telling you de wine done.

Down to de last dribble. Son, you don’t

Hear what me saying to you?”

“Woman, dat don’t have nothing to do

wid neither you nor me, for my time

don’t come yet.” Well dat one

surprise me. “But my son,

how you can take up dat attitude?

Look how much stranger come

wanting dis, begging dat

and you don’t turn down one?

Look how much time me watch

you peel clothes off your back,

give to strays on de street,

feed nuff hungry belly?

How come you now decide you

not concern wid dis situation,

‘for your time don’t come yet’?”

Him just look on me. Don’t say nothing.

Him plainly in one of him moods, so

me going just do what me have to do.

“Listen, servers. A word, if you please.

Kindly do as dis rabbi instruct. Never mind

what him say, just follow him orders.”

Sometimes me think my son is crazy.

Can’t think why him asking dose fellows

to fill up de big water jar dem

dat wash hand and wash foot.

Is not water dat finish, is wine!

But see here! Is what dat pikni doing?

Now him tell de server to draw

from one of de big jug and take to

headwaiter. Headwaiter take time taste,

den him call de bridegroom.

“Master, how you come so contrary?

Everybody me know when dem throw a party

Share de best wine out first,

bring de bad when de guest dem so drunk

dem can’t tell de difference.

but you keep de good wine

for de last.” De bridegroom well mix up.

Scratch him head. Can’t make no sense of it—

just well glad dem don’t have

to feel shame. But Jah-Jah,

is now I realize why my son

never want to make a miracle dat day.

Someting change from dat hour.

Like a weight descend

and seize him down to de bone.

Oh my son! Why your Ma

couldn't leave well enough alone?

Episode Fourteen - Willing a Pen pal Into Existence

Photo by Ryan McGuire

She had sent off a balloon as a child, willing a pen pal into existence. She had been very careful with the address, her best cursive properly tucked into a plastic sheath. No reply had come back. Her classmate Horace had received an aerogramme from Texas, which seemed impossibly far away. The teacher had pinned it to the bulletin board where it stayed all year. Dear Horace. She suspected he’d faked it. In June, she stole the letter, rolled it into a bottle then tossed it in the lake. The next year, Horace was back with a taller tale. There it was, the warped original and a new card with the Cleveland Terminal Tower. She didn’t know why life was like that, why everything happened to just a few people. Why most dreams were sloughed off, balloons gumming up farmer’s fields.

(written by Claire Tacon, read by Chioke I'Anson)

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Episode THIRTEEN - Participation ribbon

Photo by Erkan Utu

Now that he could see the end result of the public school sausage machine, now that the little wurst links were sitting in his lectures, Eric decided to volunteer in his son’s class. He brought a small aquarium full of murky water and theatrically dropped in a catfish. He’d planned to outline the nutrient cycle but a hand rocketed up. “My dog eats other dogs’ poop.” Big laughs. Another hand. “Why don’t you clean the tank?” Another. “My parents don’t believe in experiments on animals.” “Do fish eat their own poop?” He left cowed, unable to shift the discussion from feces. A few days later, the aquarium had cracked during a game of unsanctioned indoor tag. His son carried the dead Pleco home in a sandwich bag. “Sorry, Dad,” he said. “You tried.”

(written by Claire Tacon, read by Chioke I'Anson)

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On vacation!

It's finally summer weather in Ontario, so it's time to bike and swim. No new episode this week, but we'll be coming back strong with a surprise guest artist. 

photo by Ryan McGuire