I missed school for a couple days. It got to the point where I could no longer ignore the vine’s presence. It swirled around my vase of flowers. It coiled around the chair legs, coated my room in blanket of green, and swallowed my walls in its shadows. It even made its way to the ceiling. it covered my collection of books, CDs, and movies, posters, and photos. Almost all my belongings were obstructed from my view, hidden layers beneath these vines.
The red dirt is the worst. It tastes just like you would think, bitter and salty. The golden dirt just tastes like dust. You know what I mean. The sandy dirt crunches between my teeth, tasting of salt and minerals. Brown dirt is overly metallic. It reminds me of biting into aluminum. Oh, but the black soil. The black soil is the very best.
No, actually, what I mean is this: You're only as safe as every other bastard on the road decides you are, and there's mercy in that. No, sorry, I mean this: You're going faster than they can lay pavement, a roadrunner out where there's no more road. There's nothing wrong with a joyride but I want your headlights in the drive by nine, you hear me?
scent, flamed layers, shades,
each petal heavy ruse,
my pollen’s bold excuse:
all this is just my reach for you,
Doakes is what you’d want your personal trainer to look like or your local bar’s bouncer assigned to remove an unruly patron. I imagine he’d make a great boyfriend. He’d kick any guy's ass that looked at me the wrong way. No offense to my wife, I’m sure she would try her best, but you know - she’s just not Doakes. So, when Doakes walked into a crime scene and damn near shit his pants, it was clear season 1, episode 10 of Dexter was only beginning.
I will call you a sunfish
golden flash
deep in the blue lake of my heart
There is a closet in Illinois where a sweater hangs
full of holes. Mother moth picked it special
for her kids. Navy, cashmere, a luxury
home for her eggs that wink open
larvae like white stars
healing reaches the limit of hope, that’s when
a life takes off, when meaning comes back, its hand
outstretched to meet yours, curled edge to its smile
less a blade and more the promise
of a mojito along some fairy-lit canal
FILM / Captain Canada's Movie Rodeo / September 2022 / Gabriel Ricard
This month’s Captain Canada’s Movie Rodeo finds Gabe reflecting on films from 1993, in addition to reviewing a slew of interesting movies.
Of course I know Beau Brummell is a brand of ties. The box gave it away as soon as Michael handed it over. That made it all the worse. Not the tie, exactly. Just the fact that they somehow thought this tie was the winner. Like some fancy label would do the trick. Don’t they know me better than that? I can’t blame the children. But Carol? Why did she have to bring the children into all of this?
We give and get our statuses in person—relationship updates
Relayed over mayo-mixed ketchup puddles, news and hopes discussed
Under the comforting buzz of a hundred other cafeteria conversations.
I would kill to smell formaldehyde,
to be in the science lab, to see
the dripping sclera from the eye
of the butchered cow
sterilized for dissection
But, yesterday, Daffodil was floating at the bottom of her bowl, on her side. She looked bloated, orange and white and puffy, like her kidneys weren’t working. Do fish have kidneys? Her eyes were open wide. Her mouth was still, no longer opening and closing like it had been doing for ten years.
Icebergs fascinated me. The shimmering green stripes magically appearing in the deep blue. I always wanted eyes that colour. I was stuck with sullen gray eyes. Lester and Minnie went to Hawaii to see the volcano. Minnie couldn’t stop talking about them. She even had one as her screen saver. Volcanoes didn’t interest me.
I sat in my deluxe room on the cruise ship untwisting the towel shaped swans that appeared every single damn day on the king-sized bed. I couldn’t get the maids to stop leaving them.
As usual, opposites had attracted, and a sweet gesture of kindness, “I’ll bring you a chair,” opened a doorway that couldn’t shut. A solid hour of close talking, an intimate interchange at a dreary dinner party. Swayed by olive eyes, you couldn’t resist honing in, playing along, quick quips, clever swipes. You set the stage, you wrote the rising action, and there was no real way to decelerate.
It is one thing to share sorrows
with someone. The young woman
at CVS has scars on her upper arm
that mirror mine. We are bonded
by these pink knolls of admission:
sometimes, this life isn’t enough.
Out of all of us, Blair was the only one with a boyfriend. I mean, you know, as much as any ten-year-old can have a boyfriend. His name was Jacob, and I thought he looked like an alien, a big dumb alien. I had no proof that he was dumb. I don’t think I’d ever even spoken to him. He just had one of those faces that told you long before he opened his mouth that he was dumb.
I truly am sorry for that and I wish I’d done things differently. He didn’t deserve that. I have issues, for sure, and I’ve always been lacking skills in the social niceties. Confrontation is like torture for me. But I should have put on big-girl panties and done it face-to-face like any decent person would have. There’s no excuse for me.
You must know the nurses stole the masks, such selfish heathens, and that’s why there aren’t enough. But you shouldn’t wear one anyways—aren’t you an American? Fight for your rights, your freedom to spread contagion.