Issue 144

MEET ME AT THE EDGE:

where we build cities with tin cans, become adept at using chopsticks, fall in love despite different gods, and give chase to figures in unitards

FICTION Shannon Blake, Paige Cooper, Tamas Dobozy, Bill Gaston, Brett Josef Grubisic, Matthew Harris, Julie Roorda, Carla K. Stewart, Michelle Syba, Martha Wilson POETRY j tate barlow, Rhonda Batchelor, Rhonda Collis, Joanne Epp, dee Hobsbawn-Smith, Cornelia Hoogland, Fiona Tinwei Lam, Brenda Leifso, Joseph Kidney, Tanis MacDonald, Pamela Mosher, Suzanne Nussey, Anne Marie Todkill ESSAYS Michelle Kaeser, Susan Olding, Marilyn Gear Pilling

“When he was thirteen, Sam decided that he did not believe in God. He created a non-religious code of ethics and had fifty copies run off. One Sunday morning, he stood with a friend on the steps of Canada’s largest church, Oratoire Saint-Joseph du Mont-Royal, a Roman Catholic minor basilica and national shrine. He handed out leaflets to the parishioners as they climbed the steps. The first sentence read: ‘There is no God.’ Very soon, Sam felt a heavy hand on his shoulder. A priest escorted him inside, where he phoned Sam’s mother.”

– Marilyn Gear Pilling, “The Water Snakes”

“Sometimes the children said they could hear voices off the sea. They interpreted every shriek of the wind as a message bearing news of kings and Turks, the Tartar invasion, palace intrigue, wheels of fire rolling through armies – all the things Maris read to them at night. There was no reason for them to learn English. They never spoke it, mute in the company of a rare visitor trying to piece together Maris’s broken grammar.”

– Tamas Dobozy, “Spires”

“Some days were more isolated than others, no water taxis, no feed barged in, no fry barged out. Arnie called them Robinson Crusoe days, after one of his favorites. At low tide he’d walk the shore, out of hearing range of the bunkhouse, the guys yelling their video-game deaths. Away from gulls swarming the mort bins like junkies on a spilt bag. Away from the thump of the buried generator, the camp’s beating gasoline heart. He’d walk until he could see and hear nothing but what had always been here.”

– Bill Gaston, “Kiint”