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| Blueberry Pickers by Oryst Sawchuk |
JULIE CAMERON GRAY
Julie Cameron Gray is a contributing editor for Misunderstandings Magazine, and splits her time between Sudbury, Toronto, La Minerve (QC) and Bristol (UK).
ALL THAT CAN BE FOUND
Wait. Watch the small fox kit
wait, a vase casting
its shadow over the rough
border of parking lot, watching
its mother materialize
from the old dumpster, mouthfuls
of margins and near-rot.
The small symphony of two
foxes savouring sour mouthfuls
in the permission of pre-dawn
light, the bone-white quiet
of a work day not yet begun.
BEES AT PRAYER
After the black flies
have passed, summer
is endurable. The high
heat of the afternoon
and a bowl of cool blue
berries swimming
in a bowl of milk
is enough if you are
sitting under a lacework
of fir trees and light
and the garden is a blizzard
of bees, murmuring
in a cathedral of flowers
hymns for a summer
filled with long sun-
drenched drives; chipping
a few at the driving range,
and raspberry bushes
that proliferate endlessly
among their small thorns.
HIGHWAY DRIVING
Silver with lakes, forest on all sides.
Sky fills my windshield, and insects tap out
their lives against the glass.
Everything might be just the way I want it
with the stereo loud and my foot heavy on the gas,
but the coffee goes cold in the cup holder,
and highway time is still not there yet.
I don't outdrive the night coming down
on the horizon. The street lamps brighten as I near,
fade as I pass. I might be dimming them,
from one to the next, just by wishing for darkness.
A deer rips a sleeve of birch off a low branch.
She doesn't concern herself with the highway—
it's got nothing to do with her.
Why should she care if I wish the road
to be nothing but black,
to see the sky freckled with stars,
and know my car's headlamps
are the only two lanterns in the dark.
She walks back into the woods.
I watch her in my rear view mirror.
Dissolves into forest, night.
PLENTY
Long weekends on Greyhound buses, trains,
rental cars that leave us focused on nothing
but the three feet in front of our headlights
and the world as white as a starched cloth napkin.
In winter the journey is Christmas card scenery –
doe, cardinal, fox – everywhere evergreen
laden like beaters covered in buttercream.
Arriving home to celebrate everything with a plate.
Open the door to a house with bright windows
and hockey on TV, the desserts my aunt
has made for years – chocolates, cheesecakes,
shortbreads. They threaten our resolve
at every turn. Cheese balls and rye bread,
veggies and dip, wine and beer-filled voices
of uncles and cousins getting louder, laughter
voluptuous as the pink ham and fragrant turkey.
Tables sing a single chorus of plenty.
Bowls of peas, glazed carrots, mashed potatoes
and boat after boat of gravy sailing across
the dining room from one hand to the next.
Napkins thrown down, belts
loosened, glasses raised.
A refrigerator crammed
with leftovers for days.
* * * *
RYAN LANGLOIS
Ryan Langlois began writing poetry at an early age and his interest in writing grew as he began to study literature formally. In his early twenties, he began to write fiction, beginning with short stories, and then novellas and novels. He is currently attempting to hybridize two novels into one cohesive story in the "high fantasy" genre.
LOT LINES
These pictures clothe the walls
with memories: brothers at play,
sisters gazing back with silenced eyes,
men without names puffing proudly behind clotheslines
sagging heavy with fish...
Pictures like fish scales in the slanted light;
postcards of the stringers of remembrance
that frame the place.
From the porch, soft voices and easy laughter
lilt over the railing,
down to the water,
and outward to the ridge of trees.
There’s banging from the next lot.
Newcomers are building.
The ceaseless hammerfalls cough out
the progress of their industry.
What glossy scales will splash their walls?
What weekend guests, what sacred talks?
But only stillness lies between –
a shield against intrusion.
Their lot, our lot,
a wedge of silence driven between,
diffusing language.
From both sides words work outwards,
are paddled off by leaves
and frayed by needles,
till they twirl dumbly to the ground and are lost
amid the nameless moss.
SUDBURY
Was anything to be ever built to last
upon this rock-bald ground?
It seems absurd to me:
town squares, highways,
parking lots and malls
and summer-rancid fast-food joints in strips
along the rock-enfolded roads.
There’s more in the force
that cracks these roads and heaves them up
in broken plates!
To section off a space of this for...
a station for police
or a U-haul drop off lot
is to deny it.
Something deep and ancient growls below these rocky bones,
There’s pity at our flattery reflected in its stones;
All these running concepts paved across a neutral face,
While, through our clutching hopefulness, it chews us at the base.
A meteor and welling metal,
cool under eons past,
are chipped at, chipped at,
up the chimney into smoke,
while it heaves on under the streets,
and throws up arms of thistles through the cracks.
And this is home.
IT
If it’s the wine, fine!
I get that...the tingly mellow dream
that arises from the velvet stream
which I seemingly can’t sleep without –
but that’s really not what I’m talking about.
I have in mind a deeper trance,
not from more potent liquor
but from too much clarity;
of colours and edges that blind and pierce
with needed pain, especially at night,
when I’m already half insane.
Why paperweights and coasters dance jigs
in my periphery I’ve not a clue,
nor do I guess at the lacquered look my walls take
when they breathe...
And I know about deep breathing too –
I know the easy downward glide
of breath-harnessed nerves,
the gentle paddle through inner constellations
twirling to the rhythm of the Tao –
but that shit’s not it.
This is the kind that scares me –
a vague and nameless faith
with no precepts save raw observation,
which overwrites the self.
When slate-grey fingers flatten up against
a sprawling sky,
and hold the day in a frightening clutch
of purple omnipresence,
and I forget what my wife was saying...
When someone’s front yard pine tree
in a not-too-special part of town
scolds me like a cruel sergeant,
crackling within with quiet fire
and pushing into me with presence so rich and ringing
I’d swear I hear it...
When marbled voices moan beneath the rock
on which this town is built –
timeless, awful things in a tongue
as mine as theirs –
then I worry for myself.
Why does it make everything so loud?
ECOSYSTEMS IN WOODPILES
People are like stacks of brush
forgotten in the bush:
send a dog to dig through them,
or trample them yourself,
and wasps will come alive and sting,
birds will panic and take wing.
People are like heaps of soil
covered by a tarp:
take a spade and dig through them
to fill your wheelbarrow,
and toads and beetles come alive
that had been sleeping in the dark.
People are like mossy logs
that lay across a swamp:
let your kids go dig through them,
or get a saw and clear them out,
and snakes spill out onto the grass,
and hide from footfalls as they pass.
But snakes will find another log not far,
to slither in;
wasps will build their paper nest not far,
to flitter in;
and though they’ve been unearthed and dumped
in a shallow garden patch,
lacquered beetles slowly drill
back into the soil
to sleep.
* * * *
REBECCA SALAZAR
Rebecca Salazar was born in Sudbury to Colombian parents. Her first language is Spanish. She writes fiction and poetry in English and writes for a local francophone youth newspaper, Tapage, in French. She is currently studying literature and philosophy at Laurentian University, and is finishing a novel.
SEEN FROM PUBLIC TRANSIT: CHANGING SEASONS OF SUDBURY
I. IN JANUARY
At one-seventeen-p-m-Sunday
a Brazilian and a Colombian
boarded a bus in alphabetical order.
Overcast middays, the city unfolds itself
airs out its wrinkles and creases
lets the wind blow city lint
and grime and spit
and cigarette butts
from the cracks
while its soul hides from the vacuum
leaves the odours of its body
and breathes safe
above the clouds.
What manner of beast is
an ambulance painted with black stripes?
I saw one parked deep
in the sad dusts of the suburb
soaked in mediocrity and loss
by a house whose neighbour
had a chipped-paint white-paint
red-bowed Christmas wreath
upon his door.
The next house down,
never to be outdone,
a plastic black Hallowe’en bag-witch
grinned grey from the lawn.
This is no country;
I’ve no past;
this is my city.
Someone smells like fresh bread.
Someone else like stale sweat
and bitter-cried smoke from cigarettes.
Whose is the bread?
And who would name the streets of Gatchell?
This is no country;
I’ve no past;
this is my city.
II. FEBRUARY THAW
The temperature drops low, midafternoon,
and all that was molten in morning
crystallizes,
thin and sere:
the fragile greasy spires of discontent.
The curbs and sidewalks, overgrown,
now boast impotent spikes,
fragile armies where the thin slush
turned sharp,
but no stronger.
Coral reefs are made pale and sterile
by intrusion.
The streets and the snow-banks,
Jerusalem-walls to my city,
are made likewise by the reminder
of the cold –
for February thaws are brief,
their morning suns capricious,
their noons’ warmths ephemeral.
Swimming suspended in the sunset,
fading quick below telephone wires,
my city’s stricken coral reefs
tone grey through brown
through the forgotten winter-white
they once dreamed of,
upon a time.
All is silent, sighing only sounds of traffic,
and the cry beneath my feet
of cracking spires,
shattering corals.
Is it enough, this cry, to fell the city walls?
Can February grease and ice be roused
to wail a battle-cry,
and like Jerusalem,
fall down?
III. THE MARKS THEY WEAR
March thaws
are scarce as trustworthy
as February ones.
The California turquoise on the skyline is deceiving.
All observers, down below it,
in the slush and broken ice,
know the winter’s never over
‘til past April.
And who to scorn it?
Winter patches sidewalks with smooth ice
and makes them level once again.
Summers, though, reveal their pits and cracks:
the marks they wear,
the marks of wear.
Thaws March-round are reminders
of these scars, the city’s scars.
Downtown there is a pit,
a microcosm of this basin,
where the bus-tires and their impact
have created a new crater.
There's congealed mud in this crater –
not full ice, because the turquoise
of the sky impedes solidity.
It is thick and cold, and yet
somehow, it stirs.
It couldn’t be the wind that stirs it.
Wind can never blow in basins,
but it blows hollow notes on their lips,
playing their orifices,
and blows their tower-smokes
away.
The mud stirs of its own,
self-animated
by the memory of the impact
in each cavity
of sidewalk, road or stair.
My city is this motion,
in the marks and cracks it wears.
IV. APRIL INHUMATION
The embossing on the foilscrap,
part of the dust in the gap
caught between the seat and the window,
says “bury,”
and I wonder what’s to bury?
Is it the shoe,
the lonely oxford men’s size twelve,
gathering dust and traffic sorrow
in the turning lane back east?
Or does the foil allude to corpses,
those of worms half baked
by rain that fell and promised
and then ceased.
They lie strange spirals
and, waxen, form spirals,
like the gamma wave spirals above,
twisted like question marks.
Surely it’s them we’re meant to bury.
There’s a woman, old like black rock,
and maybe made of it, sitting some seats
towards the front.
I see the back of her head,
hair black as rock defying age,
and a small puff of spring,
a spidery poplar pollen puff,
clings stubbornly to her hair,
stubborn like snow upon the rock;
because it wants her to remember,
realize she’s not as young
as she pretends to herself,
though she uses her age to play God.
“That’s Sudbury for you.” My conscience
realizes what was torn off the foilscrap,
and remembers what’s to bury.
* * * *
HEATHER DAWN GUSE
BLUEBERRY DREAMS
Your siren call lured me
From my comfy couch
with promises of Walden pleasure,
To be greedily savoured
While the warm, bright sun
And soft land breezes
Caressed my blushing cheek,
Rifling kindly through
Heat-soaked hair, and my
Burgeoning basket filled
With "sapphire gold"!
Oh! You are fickle,
Sweet blue berry of my dreams!
You forgot to say that
I would bear the scars
Of your pursuit, in slogging
Through muddy bogs,
And scaling rocky crags!
You didn't warn me of
The ravenous insects
That would swarm to taste
the efforts that I exude
In my attempt to capture
Your elusive charms!
So, here am I in Sudbury's wilderness, lost;
Feeling helpless and weary
As I wait for my strength
And determination
To return, allowing me
To resume my quest to
Find the largest and most
Enticing berries that surely
Wait, just over the very next hill!
TAMARACK
Courageous tree and brave!
When winds are fair,
And time is kind;
When sunshine days
Are brought to mind;
You stand among
All other trees –
Just one of many
Blending,
Indistinguishable
And lost
Among the pine.
Tamarack!
But when kindly days
Change for the worst;
When cold wind howls
Shrieks ‘round your berth;
When sunshine pales
To watery light
And snowflakes fall
Through dreary nights;
You dare to stand out
From the rest.
Your golden hue
A bright flag of light
That beckons,
Calling forth
My inner sight!
I wish to
Bravely stand like you
‘Mid whirling winds
Of change;
Daring differences
That set me apart
With strength and courage
From the heart!
To take up my life
After cold hard times,
Resilient, renewed,
And take my place
Among the rest.
Stronger, braver,
Me.
WINTER ROSES
My window pane dressed up today,
It looks so strange and new.
I see a wonderful array:
Ice flowers peeking through.
The frosty cold of winter’s breath
Created precious blooms.
They scatter beauty, not like death,
And dance to lovely tunes.
Though winter has a sad report,
I know far different truths.
These flowers of a different sort
Speak of the joys of youth.
They whisper words of glowing hope.
They cry for love and peace.
They reach to comfort those who need
Their solitude’s release.
So in the winter of my life,
May I dress my sombre heart,
And let the chill of winter’s strife
Breathe in me a brand new start.
And may I always be a friend,
Someone who’s heart is true,
Offering a grand bouquet
That blooms my whole life through.
Kindness, love and happy times,
To dress our own hearts too.
And like my brave new window pane,
Life blossoms in winter’s dew.
* * * *
Vera Constantineau is past president of the Sudbury Writers Guild and a charter member of the Manitoulin Writers Circle. Vera enjoys writing humour, short fiction and poetry. Her work has appeared in magazines, newspapers and anthologies, and has been heard on the CBC.
DEAR SUDBURY
Why can’t I just say
that I’ve loved you
since birth?
That on the day I was taken from you,
to live in a place others call idyllic,
I never fitted
the way I do with you.
That place gave me
shelter, family and friends. And yet
I spent years of summer evenings
staring down Highway Six,
planning my return.
At eighteen when I again
walked down Elm Street
not one person recognized my face.
You gave me the freedom,
the anonymity, to grow into who I am.
Time to mature,
To mine my own mettle.
Today I know in my bones
that leaving you would
create a hole in my core
equalling any cavern
shaped in your basin.
I was born of rock dust,
sulphur fumes and tears.
The hot slag that pours through me
has hardened into words
I can say with love.
I am stardust
in your summer night
and I belong to you.
THE NO-TELL HOTEL
I know the lounge had a name,
but damned if I can remember it now.
And though the building still stands,
these days it’s just bricks,
plywood covered windows
and selective memories.
Oh man, the fun we had there.
Friday nights spent making
life-altering decisions
over the rims of too many
Molson Ex.
Labels stripped
and strewn like confetti
over our table.
Snuggling close
on the dark-enough dance floor
cheating one country cover
at a time.
Guys lined up
like one long clothes rack
backlit by the fluorescents
over the spirits shelf.
Cigarette smoke so thick
it penetrated jeans and shirts
to lie on our skin
so we peeled to nothing at the door
when we got home.
That one week
we all met guys named Dave
that didn’t last.
I still see some of the crowd
at the mall, the used book store
and most often, the clinic.
We nod and walk on,
remembering youth wasted, but
oh man, we had fun.
You can see it in our smirks.
* * * *
John Newlands is a Sudbury artist who blends poetry with musical composition. The themes of his work include social consciousness and the natural beauty of his Northern Ontario home.
LAKE
Cast your mind to the breeze
That hums in the snow-bound evergreen trees
See the children with dirty knees
And the false gods who were pleased
And know this
Something’s moving in my place
With a slow and heavy grace
Across the dew-soaked forest floor
Do you see the green root cellar door?
Under fifty feet of shade
In a platonic daydream that we made
We were aching and afraid
To be loved and not betrayed
But here now
In snow as deep as you
I’ve got to push on through
To the groaning black ice lake
Which we know gives up but also takes
* * * *
j. ocean dennie
Born and raised in Hanmer, j ocean dennie has been writing poems for almost fifteen years. Adopting the life of a beat wanderer from the age of thirty, his poetry is increasingly influenced by where his poems are written, whether in Europe, Asia, South America or Mexico. His poems have appeared in a number of publications.
RIVIERE VEUVE
while careening on a cycle downhill into town, golden evening chaffs of roadside grains flew past, their stems bending over backwards in brisk breezes, no one in sight save for the woman walking her horse down the road, no sound save for the wild west farmstead windmill animating the hamlet, even a derelict stingray rusting in the grasses remained silent, its mechanical innards exposed to the elements and the dictates of decay
in the junkyard, i found a cemetery for tires, the radial rubber corpses splayed in piles of disarray, studless wranglers and roughriders, hercules and powerguards exposed with cracking skins
and off to the side, a blue trans am sat beside a firefly with purple shag seat covers, growing old together, deteriorating according to exquisite laws
on my way out, i kicked over a license plate, its upturned face exhorting me to keep it beautiful
REVISION QUEST: YELLOW BONNET ISLE, BOTHA TOWNSHIP (NORTH OF SUDBURY)
o ceaseless providence of divine mystery
time doesn't actually exist, does it?
ok and so prophecy is now rendered meaningless too, right?
yes, yes i do feel the breezes strengthening into gusts,
heralding timelessness which totally makes sense
since it seems like we were drowning ourselves
in hopeless hours and decades of nonsense anyway,
and it seems like the only question that remains is:
how far do you wish to take this expansion into nothingness?
this would require some kind of hyperspaced capability
to continue to reinvent oneself with the manifold costumes of eternity
and its endless parade of circumstances,
and i understand how necessary it is to give up the act and be nameless
like the momentary distinctions exhibited by clouds in stretches of blue canvas,
appreciated and forgotten like the seconds ticking onward
in the march toward murky tomorrows of unsubstantiated desires
and fantasies purely of our own design,
and thank you for reminding me
that we are essentially miniature creators and hollow bones
disseminating this glory out into the densest of dimensions,
and thank you again for bestowing this zealous drive of warriorship
that seeks to fulfill your mandate of manifestation
in an undeniable fashion spoken of throughout the ages
LASALLE
a life-size rubber duckie wearing sunglasses waves at drivers
with a sign slung round its neck reading "lucky duck tickets"
at one point its head pops back to reveal a burly bearded human
who starts yelling at a fat hairy man on a harley turning left "yo jim"
down the street, a similarly-sized slice of pizza peppered with pepperonis dances
on the sidewalk chatting on a cellphone as an ambulance passes
with its driver devouring a helpless calzone
not to be outdone, a cocky rooster pushes tacos and burritos on another corner and playfully takes the imaginary drive-by bullet i shot from my hand-cum-pistol as i pass in a blazing sunfire
TALK TO ME TREES: BELL PARK, SUDBURY
talk to me trees
tell me everything, including your opinions from examining the seasons
and also feelings inspired from the tenderness of evening sun as it passes through your foliage
please speak of the hours of unbroken silence you have partaken in
and your ancient jealousies of winged creatures soaring in circles above your kin
share with me your skyward desires intent upon caressing blue heavens
in addition to your romances with selfish winds always leaving you behind
and by all means feel free to decry the injustices meted out by my invasive species
reminding us how we are squandering the inheritance
and perhaps it would be possible to discuss the tenets of your religion
that embrace an entire existence experienced in a single location
testifying to your salvation at the hands of mysterious forces
feeding your branches, your children of the elements
JOHNNY HAD A CABIN: NEAR LITTLE CURRENT
bug buzzes in irritation across a window screen revealing
waves of wind rustling cedar trees after a retreating storm dumped
water on the journey to the east retrieved off wet patio furniture
and now resting quite comfortably upon the poems of rumi
cluttering a coffee table next to newspapers clucking on about the weather
as we sit beating the heat with bottles of beer standing in as centrepieces de resistance
books on shelves including steal this book and we are everywhere
and the communist manifesto buried between lenny bruce and camille paglia
perched above texts of civil practice and criminal litigation
across from a red milk crate of vinyl records hugging the stereo
trying to play cheech and chong or the beatles but something is wrong with the needle
cutting out with nothing left to hear but the ticking clock
and chirping robins lost in song while bobbing on a lawn
reminding one of revenge of the lawn where mr brautigan kindly wrote
the man opened the bag and took out the shadow of an immense bird
he unfolded the shadow as if it were a pair of pants
piled up in a mess against the bookshelf where standing guard
are cords and fatigues and jeans worn just to be seen in the scene
from some romantic flick where lovers read witchcraft almanacs
as mysterious as the queen of spades lying face up eyeing the hash on the table
tipping over a glass of water dripping onto the rug smelling like shaggy dog
food found in plastic bags stored in the microwave for safekeeping
from the moths who feed on other things
like the damp underwear hanging from the shower curtain rod
and reel placed quite delicately atop the bookshelf
sharing space with a globe looking down upon
a photograph of johnny in a marathon running
away seemingly from the contents of his cabin with
its egg shell blue toilet and chipped teacups and particle board walls
and other such items contrary to extravagant tastes
