Outside, there’s a scene. A truck has hit a bicyclist and now the cops are trying to mop it all up. A single white sheet rests in the middle of the street, but no one can get anywhere close to it and so it rests out of reach.
It’s always this way—
not exactly always—
it’s been only three years
since he died. These crocus men with
ten-dollar haircuts
The young man does not get up, but his eyes do. They catapult
into the ceiling, stones thrown & clanking down from the paint
chipped interior—inside the father is a horrible blankness. There is
a mechanicalness about him. Bionic even.
Last month was pop culture month, and what a month it was! We were so lucky to showcase many, many talented and wonderful people, and we were glad to do it. It is truly a privilege to run this journal, especially the pop culture issue. Thank you again for another successful year!
My fingers gritty with glitter,
I read the instructions given
by the monster's last lover.
Hit him with a wrench,
she told me, Break his toes.
I had read about the car progressively learning more about its owner’s personal life, speech patterns, likes, and dislikes. At the same time, its AI was constantly updated via its internet connection and learning from other cars. Not just about driving but about other drivers, and their personalities. The net effect is behavior that is incredibly human-like. By now I was wondering, what would happen if I gave it a shower cap?
FILM / Captain Canada's Movie Rodeo / May 2022 / Gabriel Ricard
This month’s Captain Canada’s Movie Rodeo is going to be a little different. We’re going to cover five movies I’ve either seen because Cara wanted to see, or simply something I love in a way that is extremely specific to why I love her.
I wonder how many of us are just an accidental-swallowed-piece-of-gum away from a total freak out. An utter and complete melt down. Eyeliner dripping down your cheeks, in the bathroom panic attack, running the water so no one hears you sobbing kind of melt down.
Which is not to say that I saw this coming no one ever sees it coming trans folks are really good at keeping secrets which in my eyes is because we're agents of truth which may sound like the name of some AMC Supernatural knock-off series but is probably an earnest belief and only probably because some people exclusively eat bleeding hearts and I've always had a couple swords at least that call my chambered muscle beating ceaselessly a sheath.
In the glaring and anemic spring sunlight the twisted ribs of a rusted
walkway float half-submerged in the calm canal—something unseen
still moors them to the mill wall. Further on baseballs circumscribe
arcs of spring—a bluegrey squad of Riverhawks warm up
on their bright pitch
Andy understands that there is a younger part of me that is locked into this character, something naïve and almost smart enough to understand how big the world is, but not quite aware yet of how much of it I’ll never fully comprehend. He doesn’t watch it with me: he allows me to enjoy the world that doesn’t exist, even if it also throws a weird, true shadow in our universe.
18. Three plastic Christmas trees we used before we switched to live ones. The smell of pine new, the task of feeding it water a hassle, the tiny leaves remaining in our apartment weeks after it was thrown on the curb. Sometimes I miss the ease of that former plastic.
19. A recorder the size of a brick I threw away in secret because I accidentally recorded myself saying bullshit when I was ten.
One day in June of 2019, during Darriss’ fourth year of being in jail, his mother Minda and I drove two-hours from Lowell, where we both lived, to Norfolk to visit Darriss. I left all the stuff I had in my pockets inside Minda’s car, everything except my ID and a paperback I’d brought to read in the waiting room. My clothes were soaked with sweat from my anxiety and they felt tighter than usual.
He leaned the small of his back against the side of her ship and looked out towards the unusually calm waves. Those brief calms were becoming more frequent, never mind the storms that followed. Shuddering, she hoped to make it to the center ring before a Rime touched her at sea.
They reach FYE and there’s a circle. Voices chiming high and low, a couple of security guards are on the ground. A boy, too, with his hands behind his back. Expensive action figures are strewn about, still in their boxes. He’s grunting and cursing as a guard has a knee in his back. Another is ringing the police, fumbling for handcuffs. Jordy sees it all over the crowd while Iris stands on tiptoes.
Some things get lost,
and others are impossible
to keep, constrain, hold
—leaving a damp spot
or watery eyes, cold fingers,
empty earlobes, many icy toes.
His house smelled like home. I imagined myself pregnant with Ron’s baby, taking the baby to my purple house, feeling like I would always be there for her now. Would it really be so bad? A job at Safeway, shacked up with Ron, not asking too much.
i stormed off too,
all thunder and wind and so loaded on
resentment that i slipped on the rocks
near horsetail falls; i broke my frigging
ankle, lost my phone.
FILM / Spielberg/ Joe Szalinski
I found myself downstairs, watching Saving Private Ryan with a room half full of strangers. The scene where the terrified American soldier stands trembling on the staircase as his buddy is killed upstairs, played on screen.
Even if it had
multiple names, it would never amount to the smell
lingering on all of your clothes that I wear
on days when you must leave me.