Issue 159

$10.00

50 in stock

THE CASE FOR MIND WANDERING: in which we: discover our father by working for him, get up at dawn to watch the birds, learn hard lessons from a snow storm, and see wolverines in the park

FICTION Sasha Boczkowski, Jane Finlayson, Mehdi Kashani, Orin Krest, Canisia Lubrin, Jody Mason, Rowena McGowan, Anji Samarasekera, C. White, Wayne Yetman ESSAYS Brian Bartlett, Lorna Crozier, Kathy Friedman, Geoff Martin, Vinh Nguyen, Robyn Sarah POETRY Mia Anderson, Kieran Egan, Mark Truscott

Over the crest of a hill she saw her father’s pick-up, the silver body tricked out with a custom gunrack, Wayne behind the wheel sporting a handlebar mustache and the mirrored aviators that made him look like a creep. He always did things his way and she liked that about him, his indifference a prickly hide to fend off people who wanted something. Harp had been as good as Wayne at keeping those types away, maybe better, but then she’d let her guard slip

ANJI SAMARASEKARA “TROPHY” 

And so it was when my father died decades ago. There were no drawn out goodbyes, no time to prepare or come to terms, no chance to bargain. I was in a refugee camp and he was somewhere else, making his way towards me and our family. One day he was in this world and the next he was not. It was that easy. And the only thing I have is conjecture: his body sinking slowly in the South China Sea when the boat capsized or was shot down.. 

VINH NGUYEN, “AN ACUTE ACCENT” 

So even before turning to poetry as my settled-upon art form, I was drawing nearer and nearer. But this is a conversation not so much about writing poetry as about falling into life with it. You can imagine, I grew up with poetry books all over the place. It was never from an English teacher that I caught the bug, or the love, or the light. That was easy: it was lying around on coffee tables.

MIA ANDERSON, “FALLING INTO LIFE WITH POETRY” 

$15 plus HST