Issue 153

TO SWAY RATHER THAN RESIST:

in which we run a marathon, get a rescue dog, retreat to Berlin, face our past at a reunion, and stage a lie-in to protest climate change.

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FICTION Jennifer Batler, Rawi Hage, Glen Huser, Chris Masterman, Silvia Pikal, JP Rodriguez, Rachel Rose, Avi Sirlin, Sivan Slapak ESSAYS Melinda Burns, Karen Connelly, Dora Dueck, Petti Fong, Anastasia McEwen, Vinh Nguyen, Kathy Page, Souvankham Thammavongsa POETRY Sue Chenette, Kenna Creer Manos, Karen Enns, Susan Glickman, Sarah Klassen, Noor Naga, Bren Simmers, John Steffler, Susan Vernon

 

“Why do we forget that a country can be undone? My country. Yours. Nothing is as solid as it appears. Not a wall. Not a government. Not a civil society. As any bricklayer will tell you, tearing the entire structure down is easier than building it. Quicker too. Just pick up a sledgehammer. Barrel-bomb it. Strafe it with bullets. Pound it with munitions until it breaks down into a pile of rubble. The children who are not yet dead underneath sometimes are able to make sounds.”

– Karen Connelly, “In Your Hands”

“When I went to university, my parents didn’t tell me to study or become anything. The fact that I was there was good enough. I knew exactly what I wanted to be. A writer. I just didn’t know how it happens. I heard about some guy named Walt Whitman who went door to door with his books. So I printed and bound my own books and sold them to whoever would buy one.”

– Souvankham Thammavongsa, “There Can’t Ever Only Be One”

“It was just past sunset on a midsummer’s night, and Jericho was packed with throngs of happy hippies grooving to the jumble of music on eleven different stages. Kids boomeranged across the grass, leaping and twisting. Grey-haired couples, the men lean and small, the women bosomy and bottomy, grooved against each other like sweethearts at a geriatric prom. Isaiah was barely three. There was no way he could have gotten out of range on his little legs. He was nearby. She was sure of it.”

– Rachel Rose, “Jericho”

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