Monday, February 23, 2009

Anna Lives in Theory

An entirely first draft, as yet un-critiqued story about getting fucked over and then dying. I must be in a good mood.

Anna Lives in Theory


Anna lives in theory. I am inventing her as I go. She is living inside the walls of our house, in the fabric of her old dresses that I have used to stuff the cracks lining the floorboards. Anna lives inside the ways I wash my face, my arms, my hair. Anna lives inside my armchair. Anna lives in theory. I am rewriting her as I go. Anna is a breath of air and coming through the window. Anna scares the neighbours when she screams through my mouth at night. I am channelling Anna, because Anna only lives in theory. Anna lives in pieces of her skin on the carpet I refuse to vacuum. Anna lives inside an urn on the mantlepiece. That one is not a metaphor. Anna saying Anna and marveling at the strangeness of her own name. I still remember how she used to do that. That part is real. Anna puts her shoes in rows inside the closet. Anna leaves them there for years. Anna bought so many pairs, and now I don’t know what to do with them. Anna is a spirit, a ghost, something silly like that, Anna is a memory. Anna lives in theory. Anna lives on paper. Anna lived here.


Kate came over today. Mourning Anna. Kate came over carrying casserole and a card, not meaning to be alliterative. Kate is in my living room, in Anna’s chair - Anna must have turned it into her chair after I left, because it smells more like her than it ever did like me. Kate is getting cheap perfume all over the way Anna used to smell, the way Anna lingers in my nostrils and in the air. Kate is crying, Kate is always crying, god I fucking hate Kate, I’ve always hated Kate. Kate’s name seems to rhyme with everything, and I think she likes it that way. Kate is wriggling around in my ears, telling me things about Anna, things that aren’t even true. Kate is talking about her generous spirit, and all I can think of is Anna refusing to leave old clothes out for the Heart and Stroke Foundation, because she wanted to sell them to the thrift store. Kate, Kate, fuck you Kate, and your casserole. I wish I could say I hate tuna, but I don’t. I actually really like it. Kate.


I am sleeping in the living room, on cushions on the floor. New cushions, bought today, half price and hard. Anna is in the sheets on the bed, even though I broke down and washed them today. Anna is in the pillows and the mattress. Anna’s scent is in the couch. Her farts are in the cushions, her drool is on the armrests. Anna’s hair rubbing against the back of the couch, her dirty hair, I smell it. I am sleeping on the living room floor, but only after I tried to sleep in the garage and almost froze.


Now it’s Peter and Peter isn’t crying, which is a relief, and... now he is. For fuck’s sake. Everyone is crying all the time, and I am just trying to spend the rest of my life quietly wasting away on the living room floor and not eating tuna casserole, but no, Kate has sent Peter over with more. Peter is running a hand over his bald spot, seeming to remember in the midst of his remorse that it is there, and rationing a tiny bit of his grief for his poor lost hair. Peter is telling me how he wouldn’t know what to do if he lost Kate, as if Kate is in a cage like a bird and always trying to escape, like she is a suicidal cat always trying to slip out the front door in search of coyotes and raccoons. As if I wore Anna to the pool and dropped her instead of putting her into my locker, and had to come home wearing only one sock. As if Anna were something I could fucking lose, and I remember how Peter would lecture me on colloquialisms that one semester he took a linguistics course, and I can appreciate the irony, so I must not be entirely catatonic. Peter making apologies for the casserole, but they are the wrong kind of apologies, apologies for it’s nature, not for the fact that it’s here at all. Peter is someone I don’t know at all, in the end. Peter, sitting all over Anna’s scent, just like Kate did, mingling his smell with hers so Anna’s favourite armchair that used to be my favourite armchair smells like what Peter and Kate’s bed must smell like and I want to yell at him, but I just roll over on the floor and stick my finger right through the cheddar cheese crust on the tuna casserole.


Anna laughing. Anna. Laughing. Anna’s whole face tilting forward, no thrusting, Anna’s chin sticking out at the bottom of her head, improbably propped on her neck almost at ninety degrees from her shoulders as she laughs. Anna laughing. Anna had the strangest laugh.


Anna touching my knee. Anna’s hand moving in vague circles almost forgetting she was touching me, Anna afraid of sincerity when were first together, ending every caress with a poke or a jab or a tickle. Anna winking at me across the dinner table. Anna crying. Anna sighing. Anna rhyming by accident. Anna, alive.


Oh, Kate again, lovely. Lovely Kate, lovely to see you. Kate fucking wearing the pendant that Anna left her, showing it to me and mentioning again Anna’s generous spirit, as if I want to see a piece of Anna resting between the age spots and freckles at the very top of Kate’s leathery cleavage. Fuck you, Kate, and your stupid breasts, wobbling around my house. Kate telling me I should get off the couch, to which I can’t help but point out that I am not on the fucking couch, nor have I been since Anna died, I am on the floor, and you can’t tell me to get off the floor, since even if I stood up I would still be on the floor, really, if you think about it, my feet would anyway, so why don’t you just leave me the fuck alone and go home and talk to Peter about how badly I’m doing. Kate making an offended Kate-face and me apologizing, but really I’m not sorry. I just don’t want the tuna casseroles to stop coming. I’m sort of getting used to them. Maybe they could have them couriered over. Kate is leaving. Kate.


Anna lived in Burnaby, when we first met. On a pull-out couch in an apartment building in Burnaby, and I took the bus from Kits to the the Skytrain, and the Skytrain to her house, and never remembered to pick up a piece of pizza for the guy who called me chief and always stood at the exit of the 29th Avenue station begging for change. Not once, and then she moved to East Van and I rode my bike to her house because it was close enough, and who can carry pizza while riding a bike anyway. Anna lived in Burnaby, Anna lived on 12th, Anna lived in Surrey for a summer when her bank account got hacked by that debit card scam that was going around like a common cold, Anna lived with me, and now Anna lives in theory.


I am going through Anna’s underwear drawer and thinking what a waste of perfectly good panties. Look, this pair is almost new. But who wants to wear panties that have been rubbing around on someone else’s crotch, even if only a few times. I would sell them to the thrift store, but it feels like a violation somehow, like I’m selling Anna’s vagina on the black market to people who can’t even afford new underwear. Anna had chronic yeast infections. I don’t know anything about yeast infections. Can you get a yeast infection from second-hand underwear? Anna’s panties are filling up drawers, crying out for her crotch like me, feeling dry and chafing like everything does since Anna died, hanging useless and limp between my legs since Anna died, Anna’s panties resigned to my hand instead of Anna from now on.


Anna sobbing, Anna crying, Anna nearly retching from the grief on the bathroom floor, Anna mourning herself and saying cancer cancer over and over again, marveling at the word as if it was her own name.


Anna right before she went, lying in a hospital bed, when I finally got up the courage to go and see her. Anna, nearly gone, four years after she first said softly “cancer” then again and again crescendoing to a scream on the bathroom floor, four years after I threw three pairs of underwear into a bag and left saying “cancer” in the car on the highway for 90,000 miles. Anna lying on her stomach glaring up at me when I finally came back. Anna’s body racked with spasms, they came every fifteen minutes almost exactly on the nose - really, it was uncanny - at the very end. Anna saying fuck you, Anna hating me, none of this forgiveness business you see so often in the movies when things have come to the crux of everything and people realize that despite it all the universal truth is that they love each other, no, Anna saying, “I am almost gone, you have nothing to lose, take some fucking initiative” and collapsing into spasms. Anna racked with pain, Anna, Anna, Anna, Anna, Anna, Anna, Anna squeezing my hand so hard and running it over her back and across her hips and between her legs, pressing so hard my nails scratched her skin, Anna wanting nothing except something to feel good at the very end, Anna hating me but hating pain more, Anna dying quickly, it seemed, with my fingers inside her, after four long years. Anna still biting the pillow in rigor mortis. Anna lives in theory.

Monday, December 1, 2008

Paperweight

A short story I submitted for fiction, and then re-wrote very slightly, ignoring all critiques of "I dooon't geeeet iiiit." So, like, get it. Or not. Just read. Or not. No, do.


Paperweight


As they lie on the bed, Leah is thinking several things. The first is more a background noise, pot-induced, a constant shrilly buzzing paranoia that she is the only one who wants to be here. Other thoughts catapult across her consciousness, rapid-fire and short-lived, but mostly she is nervous. She thinks about how she’s nervous. She sabotages other, more important nerves, for the sake of nervousness. Nervous nervous nervous. Adam shifts slightly, and his chin touches the top of her hair. Nerves shoot out of her brain and down her spine and around and around the pit of her stomach, until they land in puddle in her crotch.

“I don’t know what to do,” Adam says finally.

At first Leah is confused, thinks he means literally, that he doesn’t know how this works, the mechanics of it, what goes where, and she almost giggles (nervously). But, catching his real meaning, she shifts as well, so that her eyes are stubble-level, and peering up over the arch of her brow bone she meets him eye to eye.

“I don’t think anything needs to be done,” she says. But of course this doesn’t make sense, and they only stare at each other, until eventually her eyes begin to trip between his mouth and eyes, mostly unintentionally, and he follows her lead, falling forward (mostly unintentionally), and she runs a hand through his hair, and they are kissing, lips sliding around on top of one another, and he has rolled on top of her, pinning her to the bed, and time has passed so quickly that he is already running one hand across the curve of her hip, and she writhes beneath him, pushing upward, spreading out underneath him like something long frozen is melting into patterns all over the bed sheets.

Snap.

“Adam? Adam are you coming?” says a voice outside the door. And they haven’t kissed yet, as it turns out. Neither one has got up the courage in time, and Leah begins immediately to think that she is the only one who would have.

“Yeah. Yeah, coming.”

He looks back down at Leah for a measured second, then scrambles off the bed and out into the hall. Her eyes follow him until she loses him in the back of her head, and she scrunches her face as the door clicks shut.

*

Adam: “We were walking I think, by a river maybe? No, in a park, it was winter – December – and there was frost, like there is now, and I slipped on a stone maybe, or a leaf – it was something broad because it was covered in frost which made it slippery, not something that was sticking out for me to trip on – and, and I didn’t know you well at that point – you know that thing you have? – the laugh and the crinkle, or the quizzical look. It seems harsh to people who don’t know you and I still didn’t know you – and I didn’t think to laugh it off, I just sort of – sort of… I don’t know, but you laughed, and I was so worried about what the crinkles by your eyes meant right then and I remember I panicked because I didn’t know and I thought if I didn’t know then that meant there was some sort of secret key I didn’t have and I would never have and you would just continue laughing and I would continue slipping on leaves. It was – I’m serious! – it was terrible. Was, I mean, then, now it’s funny.”

“I don’t remember you slipping on any leaves. And I wouldn’t laugh at you!”

“Well, then it was a rock, maybe.”

“With y--”

“You’re laughing right now!”

“With you! Always laughing with you. You were telling a funny story!”

“That’s a talent.”

“What is? I am a talent for sure.”

“To laugh with me when I’m not laughing.”

“I’ll make you laugh, just wait.”

*

Leah had watched the vodka drain steadily from the bottle all evening. First on the table, and then beneath it, by the boots and maps and backpacks at the rear of the tent, in the entrance under the folds and zippers of the front door. She had stopped trying to hide it when he found it stashed in the outhouse with the shit and piss and lolling flies, and drank it anyway. Now she watches Adam from her perch at the picnic table, wary and poised to pull him off some ill-advised adventure. She imagines her hands at his face, palms at the jaw bone where she can force those dimmed eyes to look into hers, bore into him and change him back, make him suddenly vibrant, saying, “look at me. Be calm and look at me.” She is alert, her face set. And yet, rousing herself, she finds she had drifted again, allowing her concentration to falter from his actions or his company, to the curve of each leg beneath the thin clothing; his arm as he raises the bottle and lets it linger at his lips, as though in prolonging that moment he has reached some sort of peak; his jaw, rough with overgrowth and a constant grind and clench; his hair, so ludicrously close to his shoulders, his perfect shoulders… And he is speaking to the friend of Dave’s. No, not speaking. There is no formality in the way his face nearly touches the other. They are circling one another like dogs, the bottle at his side and spilling onto his pants and shoes and the ground around them. She is on her feet like a reflex, instinctual like the wolves in the woods behind them, but Dave is already leading him away, nearly carrying him as though he is a tired child in the dark night far from home.

“What are you doing?” she asks, in the door of the tent. She is wary of his wet lips and the empty bottle in the dirt in the dark.

“What are you doing?” she says again, more to herself, and cupping her hands around his face in the way she had planned. His eyes are out of focus but he finds the light fabric of her dress with his hands as well.

“Eh,” he says, and he is grinning a grin worse than the angry stare he had given the stranger. “You’re here to fuck me, eh? You’re here to suck my cock? Suck it all better, eh! Suck it all away!”

And the front and back of her hand stinging to match each side of his face, she leaves him half laughing half crying and calling for more booze and more whores.

*

Leah arrives at the house one afternoon in mid-November, flakes of early snow on her shoulders and hair, a patch of colour on the skin of each cheek taut in a white smile with red lips. A sort of awe follows her through the dark house as she pulls cold into it from outside still clinging to her clothes, and walks through the halls as if indifferent to the contrast she makes against them. When he catches her in the upstairs hall he is halted, stunned as though literally, and he looks only at her, noticing not the difference she makes in the green-grey halls, noticing only the hair in wisps escaping an elastic, the tendrils pulled back from her face, tight white skin and the redness of each cheek, snow on her shoes. A glow, or perhaps just the outdoor cold hovering around her and away from her, and he can only stare, and still she smiles so wide and laughs a small laugh bigger than anything else in the house or the city or the sky outside reaching up indefinitely to the clouds and the birds and past those stars and planets and a million asteroids in a belt circling an alien moon.

“Hi,” she says. “I’m Leah.”

*

“It would appear,” Leah says, “that I am having a relapse.”

Silence.

“Which is funny,” she continues, “because I’ve been feeling so good lately. I was doing really well. I was excited. I stopped drinking. As much. I haven’t had this stinking shame sitting in the pit of my stomach in months.”

Everything is quiet in the relative lull of seven P.M. A few shouts from the baseball park, the clink of a pot or a pan upstairs, the dull swish of laundry in a machine in the hall.

“I guess it all came down to the fact that I want to hurt you, and I just couldn’t manage to keep quiet about it. I just love that feeling, you know? Of doing everything together? Killing two birds with one stone, that’s what they call it. I love that. I do it at every possible turn. Getting my exercise in transit. Conserving energy wherever possible. Fucking your best friend to get back at you. I wonder if you’re mad at him or mad at me. Transferred embarrassment is probably closer to it. Huh.”

*

When Leah is twelve, the paperweight is beautiful. She finds it in a junk shop, which is lucky, because it is a valuable antique. It is a golden-coloured ship with sails in full bloom, resting on a golden-coloured wave, all carved in porcelain and glazed a golden-coloured glaze. A birthday present, because, though Leah has no papers needing weight, she is in love with it.

*

Leah freezes, and instantly there is an icy anger in her gaze, muscles clenching across her face as though from the point of impact of a slap; they stare, eyes dark, hard, and glittering with malice, suspended at their opposite ends of the room. Then she turns, a sharp corner navigated briskly, and throwing words over her shoulder, shakes off room and occupant.

“Fine. That’s fine.”

Then turning at the top of the stairs thinks better of her benignity.

“Don’t let me make you miserable. I didn’t know. I don’t know. You find something to make you happy, I’m not here with you anymore.” Then slamming the door; and down the hall come cries of surprise from innocent bystanders, and in the kitchen he kicks the stove on a pivot yelling FUCK and sloshing liquid over his hand from the mug in it.

*

When it finally happens they lie for hours afterward, side by side, staring up at the ceiling. Vaguely tracing patterns on each other’s skin, they drift in and out of consciousness and bliss. Leah keeps forgetting that it is real, and waking she momentarily wishes the hand lying heavily on her thigh was his and not her own. She imagines saying silly things to him, and he will reply equally sheepish, but mostly they lie in silence, breathing, stroking, tentative. No one comes to the door.

*

Adam has followed Leah upstairs, his hand still wet and clutching the empty mug.   Mid-fight, words no longer suffice, and he picks up the antique golden paperweight from the desk and hurls it at Leah, fury and sheer exertion shouldering a shriek out of the the depths of his chest where they have taken root, and when the pointed tip is one half-inch away from her forehead, so that she can see perfectly the bubble in the glaze of the bow sail, Leah is suddenly twelve again, seeing the golden-coloured glaze and all it’s imperfections for the first time, and, standing amongst the bugs-in-boxes and fake antique cola bottles on dusty floorboards in late spring sunlight, she falls in love.

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

You Had A Choice

For songwriting class we had to take an already existing song and use it as a template for entirely new lyrics, matching perfectly the rhythm, rhyme scheme, syllable count, etc. It was hella hard. This is my attempt. I used John K. Samson's "Left and Leaving". Original is here (with bonus pictures of adorable wolves!): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgJ6soX18R8&feature=related


You brought me to meet them to further the plot

for lack of a better idea.

You figured with luck they would like me a lot

give you a reason to.

If you could find a way

to want to fight to stay

this might feel less like lying through your teeth.


My smile is convincing or harmless at least.

You’d thought it might catch in your chest.

It counts as a lie but you’re passing it off.

It’s only a small cough.

Bring flowers to my door,

we’re getting by dirt poor,

and other vague attempts at fantasy


I’ve seen things, distant whisperings.

Lips brush skin and make the ground rumble


Family will tell you to stick this one out.

It’s all good on paper.

The timing, my income, I’m not known to shout.

It’s solid as vapour.

Memories of butterflies

will fade as time goes by.

We’ll think of other things to make us tick.


You’ll look for something new,

half-assed, no follow-through,

eventually forget you had a choice

eventually forget you had a choice

eventually forget you had a choice.

Monday, November 24, 2008

Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, California

As if the feeling

of her thighs against mine

wasn’t enough to convince me

I know in any case

that I am sick of a generation

that jerks itself off on the notion

that it is any kind of peak

in the evolution of compassion

as if “tolerance” wasn’t a dirty word

and all of us seething in the fringes

weren’t demanding change


And if the leap my heart makes

over the curve of her hip

as she rolls towards me

doesn’t end all questions

I know that, regardless

everyone who understands

is running not walking toward a time

when these amendments rest

alongside slavery and witch-burning

in the outhouses of history

when the sanctity of a legal construct

means nothing in the face of love

Because the heat between

her mouth and mine

as they slip and slide

and tongues collide

throws iodine on the salty wound

of your festering definition of “marriage”


And I am ready for a change

I am ready to sink my teeth into truth

Because just like your blind faith

as you press faces into mud

and use our heads as stepping stones

in a graceless, stumbling,

do-or-die, kill-to-fly, head-over-heels

struggle towards eternal salvation

I know unconditionally that her hips

grinding a wetness through her jeans

and onto mine is real

and I can see the stains clearer

than you can hear anything

your “God” says about virtue

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Bad Luck, or The Countless Thousands

This is very, very old. I found it on my computer while rummaging through my word files attempting to piece together some sort of patchwork short story to submit for class tomorrow. I got rid of the last two verses though, 'cause they were siiiilly. Enjoy. Comment.

There was the man in his suit

With his paper cut-out bride

(That’s me)

Eyes to the skies

Choreographed, but never dancing


There were the Countless Thousands

And the wall inside my head is getting weaker

I am snapping, now,

Hands clapping, head shaking, teeth baring

At random moments

Trying to keep them at bay


There was the unexpected avalanche

About whom we shall say nothing more

It’s all been said before

(But never done)


There was the obvious joke

(It wasn’t very funny)

You’re slipping, Lady Luck

Cards to your necklace of mirrors

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Kids Book Teaser

I'm probably not going to post much of this here, since I hear it's bad for business to post your novel in its entirety online before you try and sell it. But I thought I'd give whoever reads this (you? Yay!) a taste of my biggest project right now, since I'm pretty stoked about it. It's a young adult novel of the fantasy/sci-fi persuasion, involving alternate universes, socialist revolutions, lesbians, and deicide. Basically, I'm aiming to get banned. Enjoy.

EDIT: sorry about the hella awkward formatting. I am too lazy to fix it. Fucking deal.

PROLOGUE


The machine is in the cracks.

In the rivets and fissures of the world, where you wouldn’t think to look, there are many things. In the back alleys and abandoned factories, the holes in the wall where the mice don’t go. The answers to questions, all of them, are tucked away in there. The proof for things that have no proof, like philosophy, faith and theory. Secrets fester in the cracks. Interesting secrets. Secrets I bet you would like to know. Everything is in the cracks. Or, everything that matters.

And one of those things is broken.


CHAPTER ONE: DEJA VU


Evelyn spent the afternoon watching birds with her cats, but with less of an instinct to kill. Her companions, Mandy and Pat, had murder on their minds, but Evelyn had little or nothing. She followed the birds with glazed eyes, a delicate trail of spittle tracing the contours of her chin and ending in a little pool on the sofa cushion against which she was resting. Mandy thought the best way would be to attack from the side, by going through the sliding door onto the porch, climbing from the railing to the cherry tree, jumping from there to the hedge, and subsequently to the side-yard fence, from which she could easily pick the sparrows off one by one as they tried to fly from the poplars to the telephone wire that ran parallel to the house. Pat thought it would be better to simply scratch through the screen on the window in front of her, and make a daring, but almost definitely possible leap straight into the nearest poplar, snatching as many birds as she could in the panic of flight that would ensue. Evelyn, being a vegetarian, had no ideas.

It had been nearly two months since the sluggish move west in the van without air-conditioning, and still she knew no one in her new town. Kara had called once, near the end of August, and they spoke awkwardly for a while until Evelyn invented a soccer practice and said goodbye. Others from home were more communicative, inundating her with emails and instant messages and invitations to join a seething mass of social networking sites. Even Mr. Bastille is on there! enthused Joan. You can see his pictures! Corky had sent a postcard from the tourism bureau featuring the low grey block of municipal buildings and a note that read “HOW CAN YOU HAVE LEFT THIS BEHIND??” Evelyn had laughed, and then cried a little, and then felt silly about it, and pinned the postcard to her wall.

It wasn’t the new town that bothered her. Per se. It was quaint. Boring. The ladies on their way to church functions eyed her funnily. But she would be leaving for university in a year. Less than a year. She would survive.

No, it was more than that. There was something about the town; something besides the typical complaints of a displaced teenager. Something bizarre.

It had started with the movers. In their matching stripy hats and overalls, they trotted around outside the new house carrying boxes and lamps, assembling furniture, juggling valuables, checking checklists, and looking for all the world like she knew them from somewhere. She had sat on the porch steps for a while, scrutinizing them, but to no avail. They were strangers.

“What?” her mother had said. “No. No, I don’t see what you mean. We just found them in the Yellow Pages.”

Then, weeks later, there was the woman in the grocery store. An older woman, methodically and obsessively squeezing limes in the produce section. Evelyn, humouring her mother, was out “to buy milk”. It was a ploy to get her out of the house, loosely disguised at best, but by this point even Evelyn was bored with her own sulking. She was lurking in the grey area between produce and dairy, trying to calculate whether the ten her mother had given her would cover bulk candy as well (she didn’t work for free) when Evelyn saw her. She was seventy, maybe, wearing a faded purple overcoat on top of copious layers, with ripped nylons and cheap sandals, and a luridly patterned scarf around her elaborately coifed hair. Evelyn paused by the apples.

I know her.

Which was impossible. Evelyn knew exactly two elderly ladies, both of whom were her grandmothers, maternal and paternal respectively, and both of whom were tucked safely away in nursing homes halfway across the continent. Besides, Grandma Pam was decidedly shorter than this woman, and Nanny Annie couldn’t handle citrus, not with the state of her lower intestine.

And yet...

Evelyn crouched slightly and crept along the side of the apple display.

It wasn’t even necessarily the fact that this lady was old. It had more to do with... her aura? No, that was stupid. It was... it was almost as if Evelyn knew someone remarkably like her. Yes, that was exactly it. Not as if she had ever known her, but as if this woman belonged to some sort of of group of people who were all alarmingly similar, and Evelyn had been accidentally invited to one of the meetings once, many years ago. It was the way she looked, but it was also the way she moved. The way she picked up each lime with a kind of plodding delicacy, turned it once or twice over in her hand before squeezing it, then shook her head “no” with an expression of subtlest disappointment, before moving on to the next. Evelyn felt as if she could guess exactly which sort of books this woman might read, or predict exactly what she would say in any given situation. She was even sure of just how she would pronounce each word.

How strange.

And then nothing. Nothing, for over a month. Everyone was a stranger, as they should be, and Evelyn felt just as awkward and alone as anyone could expect.

But it had happened again this morning. And then some.


*


Evelyn had left gym class early, sneaking out the door by the basketball hoop as Ms. Castor searched for a softer dodgeball and two of the girls carried an unconscious Amelia Piccoli to the infirmary. It was close to October now, and the wind made a balloon of Evelyn’s standard issue stop-sign-red gym shorts, and pulled the hair on her legs taut. She hugged her grey sweatshirt closer.

She was hungry. She could not play dodgeball on an empty stomach, as evidenced by her aim. Amelia would be fine. She was scrappy, if absurdly small. Evelyn needed food. 

The town was essentially a downward sprawl from a small rise in the centre: winding streets of houses and yards dotted with churches and stolen shopping carts. The shops and restaurants were in the centre, and so Evelyn headed uphill.

Presently, a sandwich board exclaimed to her, “PIZZA two 4 $1 students special!” Peering in the windows of the shop, Evelyn saw a number of students she recognized from the halls at school hunched, sprawled, perched, and propped around a circular table, munching pizza. This was disconcerting. And yet: pizza.

“Hey, Evelyn!” exclaimed a blonde girl in leggings and boots as Evelyn walked in. “It’s Evelyn, right?”

“Yes,” replied Evelyn. She had her eye on a slice of tomato and feta under the heating lamp.

“You’re in my Geography. Block Geeeee,” the girl continued.

There was no one at the counter. Evelyn tapped the little bell, and made a show of looking around for help.

“I’m Erin,” said the girl.

“Oh, hey. Nice to meet you.” Evelyn proffered her hand.

Erin’s hand flew to her mouth in amazement. “Oh my god, that’s hilarious! You are so funny!”

“I-- what?” said Evelyn.

“Ha ha... no, it’s just, that was, like, so formal.”

“Oh,” said Evelyn. This was fun.

“Are you the same Evelyn who just moved from Orangeville?” said a boy beside Erin with his arm around a diminutive brunette.

“Yeah.”

“Oh. Cool. My cousin lives in Orangeville.”

“No way.”

“Yeah.” The boy squinted at Evelyn suspiciously.

“Um--”

“May I help you, miss?”

Relieved, Evelyn turned toward the counter and--

I KNOW HIM.

A flash of colour: a small, mustachioed man coming toward her, hands in the air. He is brightly dressed, and waving a tambourine. Something is reeling in the background, and then--

“Miss?”

Evelyn stared at the man behind the counter. A small, mustachioed man in a bright blue shirt, garish orange apron, and multi-coloured cap emblazoned with “TWO 4 $1!” No tambourine.

“I-- are you--? I’m sorry,” Evelyn stammered. The man looked nervously between Evelyn and the group of teenagers around the table, as if anticipating some sort of joke.

“Miss... would you like pizza?” he said nervously.

I know him. Evelyn stumbled backward, tripping over her own feet. I know him. And she couldn’t have said why, but she was definitely not happy to see him. She ran.

“That was weird,” she heard Erin say before the door swung shut behind her.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Sunday Charge

This poem is old-ish -- a few months. Spring '08 I guess.


We are marching bedraggled

across the city

Her dirty boots

My messy hair


This is Sunday

for the ragged

The unprepared


We are storming scattered

out of alleys

Stealth bomb cell phones

on their floors


To the boats!
We cry, and stagger home

to prop the lid

and bolt the door


We are fearless

in the morning

clogging transit

stopping cars


We’ve naught to lose

We’ve lost it all

in couch cushions

and bars


We are making swift manoeuvres

undercover

on the sly


This is Sunday,

weary operatives,

you fabulous untied