Issue 147

WHEN THE PAST IS PRESENT:

in which we maneuver antlers on the bus, suffer grief through cooking, learn to write by washing dishes, and discover life by climbing mountains.

FICTION Catherine Austen, Nancy Baele, Veronica Fredericks, Evangeline Jones, Tristan Tavis Marajh, Craig Ringrose, Gail Marlene Schwartz, John Van Rys POETRY Lamees Al Ethari, Stephanie Bolster, Sandra Davies, Stephen Maude, K.D. Miller, Carolyn Nakagawa, Michael Pacey, Matt Robinson, Sue Sorensen, Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang, Patricia Young ESSAYS Paul Hamann, Anita Lahey, Gavin Tomson, John Vardon

“But part of the reason we live in Caracas is that we like its edge, we like to balance on that thin line between danger and safety, to traverse it sometimes slowly and carefully and sometimes fast and with abandon, otherwise everything is the same and nothing ever changes; otherwise we’re all just like Chàvez, always talking and talking and never saying anything.”

– Evangeline Jones, “Echoes of the Voiceless”

“My writing is inevitably described as ‘dark.’ Sometimes that gets ramped up to ‘lugubrious.’ I confess to taking pride in this, to leaving no sparkly stone unturned in my eagerness to expose the damp, squirming metropolis beneath. I’m even a bit smug about preferring autumn to spring. When I hear people lamenting the end of summer, all the pastel prettiness going brittle and brown, I want to say, Well, of course everything has to die. How else can it be reborn in your oh-so-precious spring?“

– K.D. Miller, “The Death of Me”

“Before and after this moment, if you count all the years of friendship, Lou and I must have spent hundreds of hours talking together. Phone calls, sleepovers, wanderings through Burlington or Toronto, GO trains, subways, cafés, meals. Idle chatter, gossip, study sessions, pep talks, deep thoughts, arguments, confessions. I’m struck at how few of these conversations I explicitly recall, and how many of my memories feature, instead, the two of us in shared silence: as when I sat by her hospital bed while she slept, or when we sat side-by-side in the cave. Or when we stood unmoving in the forest, listening, hoping to hear familiar voices.”

– Anita Lahey, “Late Night Snack”

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