Issue 152

TAKING YOUR CHANCES:

in which we retreat to the wilderness, become blind with jealousy, mourn losses by reminiscing about blackberries, and consult astrologers for our anxiety.

.

SHORT FICTION Paola Ferrante, Elly Graff, Jeanie Keogh, Mahak Jain, Allison LaSorda, Credence McFadzean, Andrea L. Mozarowski, Marcia Walker POETRY Frances Boyle, Beth Downey, gillian harding-russell, Laurie Koensgen, Lisa Martin, Lorin Jane Medley, Eleanor Sudak, Deb O’Rourke, Lisa Richter, Rob Taylor, Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang, Susan Vernon, Terence Young ESSAYS Sarah Ens, Eufemia Fantetti, Stephanie Harrington, Helen Humphreys, Laura Rock Gaughan

 

“We come across the smallest border crossing I’ve ever seen. Several portables are in neat rows on the side of the road and Lou says the guards live there for short periods, drawing short straws and shacking up before they can upgrade to work a more liveable spot. What if they hate each other? They’re stuck in close proximity for months. We try to imagine what they get up to: duty free parties heavy with perfume and cheap Canadian whiskey.”

-Allison LaSorda, “Satellites”

“I was hard-pressed to think of anything I did to look after myself. For years, at every medical checkup, when a doctor would press a stethoscope against my back and say “Take a deep breath,” they would have to say, “Again, and a little deeper please.” You could forget how to breathe naturally, normally when you have been ill. You might forget there was ever a time when you felt safe enough to take a deep breath. You might not know until years had passed that what every doctor noticed and you didn’t was that your shallow breathing meant you’d been afraid and holding your breath for a very long time.”

– Eufemia Fantetti, “XIX The Sun”

“Mr. Bhopal, whose business was smaller and unable to withstand the slightest shock, had sold his data to some clone of Rahul Pandetkar’s. Now Mr. Bhopal spent his time visiting countries in Europe. The All India Marriage Bureau would yield an even higher value than Bhopal’s good-for-nothing agency, but why should I sell? This online business was a temporary scheme, nothing more. Marriage was not a temporary scheme. Marriage had survived atheists, feminists, and the West. No respectable family would cut corners when arranging a marriage.”

-Mahak Jain, “The Marriage Broker”

$10 plus HST