After six years of each snow-covered morning and
your grumpy greeting,
there are only two things you must have become.
And so I search, waiting for your legs to emerge
She introduces me to Ann Packer and revives my appreciation for Anne Tyler; I offer her Carol Shields and Tessa Hadley. She doesn’t share my fervor for Virginia Woolf, and I’m unimpressed with Reynolds Price, but we agree on Alice Munro. We call ourselves a book club of two and anticipate each spirited discussion and critique.
They met, they fell in love, they survived the war, and they had not a penny to their names and no relatives left alive. They did what anyone back then would do - they went to America.
I am a planet, after all, with its
own moon, gathering sands,
wondering when I discovered
that I want nothing from him.
100 WORD FILM REVIEWS / Man Push Cart
One of the only NYC movies that made me feel like I was heading to my unglamorous, low paying job in Times Square. Director Ramin Bahrani and cinematographer Michael Simmonds use their limited budget to capture the city with an honest, simple, naturalistic style. They depict our sisyphean hero's struggles with just as much honesty and care. Ahmad is a Pakistani ex-rockstar who scrapes by as a breakfast cart vendor. It’s refreshing to watch a movie about the working life that doesn’t romanticize, idealize, or pound our faces in with spoon-fed ideology. Looking for a cinematic hug? Look elsewhere.
FILM / Captain Canada's Movie Rodeo / February 2022 / Gabriel Ricard
Gabe wrangles together a documentary, the latest Wes Anderson film, two horror films, and a re-evaluated Western epic in this month’s Captain Canada’s Movie Rodeo.
FILM / Burning: Black Summer and the Politics of Climate Change / Geoff Watkinson
There are moments when the film overdramatizes. The accounts themselves are powerful, as are the images and facts. But it is, unfortunately, a narrative about the horrors of climate change and the political forces at bay that has been told before. Orner’s major struggle is battling against a jaded and desensitized viewer.
It's just simple things every day that leave impressions on my heart. It's being alive after everything I've ever experienced fought hard for me not to be. It's being here, writing this, and knowing you're reading it. It's every feature in this issue, and every issue before and every issue after.
& i still remember telling my mom randomly as a kid that even though i’m a boy i sometimes feel more like a girl, & we were in the car, stopped at a light or something, & she didn’t say anything but that was maybe better in the long run,
I mourn the present because everything remained the same, even if things didn’t. My real friends don’t shun me but I still sew my lips shut after every inconvenience. I still deprive myself from that extra scoop of buttered pecan ice-cream, even if I lost the weight. The flag is drenched with its rainbow hue yet the monochrome is still imprinted within. My yearning is still there - my wants are still invaded by my needs and my nails have not grown back yet.
He lives on in black and white
In a houndstooth jacket
Is certainly someone’s uncle
though he never had children himself
The images of my day rose up in my thoughts, the near accident, the late patient, the car with the dead battery. I pushed the accelerator all of the way to the floor of the car, and the scream came out of my mouth like something not a part of me, the sound mixing with the sound of the engine and the tires bouncing over the gravel and rocks on the road. It felt good.
She climbed in and fastened her seat belt. The jeep engine growled to life and Roman stomped on the clutch and levered the stick shift. Nobody drove manual anymore. Karen glanced back at the backseat. Empty. Only the red-checked Pendleton blanket.
Is it better to have seen it?
The moment the plate fell and the toast burned.
Shattered and cracked. Severed and dismembered.
Go back. Go back to eating in bed.
he sight of the water fills me with life. It moves rhythmically, caresses the sand with its arms, the sand knows that it’ll return just as it retracts, and it comes back, comes back, comes back. How a comfort it must be, to know that the feeling of pleasure and love is just a second away, forever. How soothing.
My legs are all marigold sun winking with my pink shoed-stride. People wave, and like our hands were drawn up by invisible strings, by magnets pulling us together, I wave too. I like your stockings, baby, they say—the old woman and the man on the stoop, have I ever said stockings?
I imagine Θἐο Jim in his doctor’s garb, greeting expectant mothers, the rose in their cheeks, the fathers calling him Dr. Geanon, asking about the health of the baby, and him putting a hand on a shoulder assuring the couple it would be all right. The mother pushes, and the father squeezes her hand, and Θἐο puts his hands inside the mother’s canal and cuts the cord. The baby cries, all wet and innocent, a lamb searching for its shepherds, reaching for its mother’s arms. Love rushes out.