Reflections on Fred’s Funeral
At this time of year, mid October, I always start to think about my great-uncle Fred who served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force during WWI. Yesterday, I sent out an email (my first in a long time) in which I…
Category Scribblings & Writings
Brushing Teeth
Reflected in the mirror was me and Janie. She was bigger. Brushing our teeth, shoulder-to-shoulder, I watched as the white foam bubbled and frothed from our lips, watching her watching herself, wondering if this would be a night when she…
Big Love
Jasmine crawled into my lap. She was wearing the pink flannel nightie I’d made for her. You couldn’t buy them anymore because they combusted children, apparently. Jasmine was her usual little furnace of heat and felt like a sack of…
Chattering II
Born with this big bundle, bursting and chattering, scattering love like dropped petals from wildflowers, carelessly and carefully. “Look what I picked for you, Mommy!” From my hot and sweaty hand she takes them, but later I find them withered…
Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin, A Review
Are you looking for something to read this summer? This book is not brand new but maybe you haven’t heard of it yet. I learned about, Something Borrowed on the Don’t Keep Your Day Job Podcast. (I highly recommend this…
More like the Worm
Today we raked. The fallen maple leaves from last autumn, and the previous year underneath like a slick black shingle. I raked right through a fat earthworm the girth of my baby-finger. Cut it in two with the grill of…
Sibling Day
In April, some sadist invents a new holiday called Sibling Day. Friends on Facebook post photographs of their brothers and sisters lined up in rows, Polaroids and black and whites, the old days, affection and attention. My sisters remain silent,…
My Teacher
In grade two, Miss Lennie handed out slips of paper. On each was written a few words. She instructed the class to write a story about the words on the slips of paper. My slip said, “My Teacher”. Of all…
A Jolly Family Photo
In this one, you are holding your knees. You’re an old man, or you look old. But you’re not sitting in a chair like the rest of the grownups. You’re sitting on the floor, hard leather shoes, socks, trousers, your…
Small Talk by Theresa Sopko, A Review
Recently I came across a charming book of poetry by a young writer named Theresa Sopko. Small Talk is her second collection of poetry. The book is quirky, and compelling – titles are often included at the foot of poems, striking…
Spinning
I have been spinning my poor-me’s into gold for all the days I can recall. And using that gold to buy everything that I can hold. But there is more to spin each night Rumplestiltskin. I am standing in the…
Safe Word
Hands bound, spread eagle America murmurs a safe word, Liberty but the rape (consent now withdrawn) commences. America struggles gagged her eyes pleading as lawlessness spreads and permissions fall slapping her faster than vanishing web pages With each angry thrust…
Words
I’m haunted by words I said yesterday they won’t let me go. Promises, vows, intentions, blowing the curtains on a windless night, but they’re just the soul of a dead decision. I’m afraid nothing is so simple. To fall in…
Business
I am going to take fear out back and shoot him. Stand him up against the shed and blow his fucken head off. I want to see his brains scatter gritty and grey like a cremated body. I am so…
Silence
The long cold silent winter stretches out like a thin blanket on a loveless bed. I trust that there is life there – a barely beating heart in hidden leaves and sunken acorns frigid bulbs. It’s the silence that deafens…
Resolution
My lips shall not speak a resolution this year. Instead they will whisper a prayer kiss a hand press it to my cheek. Bereft and longing but I cannot resolve a path – Will not resolve a path. I pick…
Baby Zombie
I am trapped can’t escape banished to the cellar steps examining my shoes through my tears. Living in this house moving room to room unnoticed singing behind the curtains floating in the bath. I am…
Clementine
I peel a clementine and contemplate the world. My world. Soft little peel spongy, barely clinging to the fruit gives way easily like a thin chemise. He handed me this orange so perfect and round…
Yes
I say yes to this gift on my knees fumbling for words yes yes yes You want me this way, this madly? Then I am yours. And I say yes to this gift I didn’t…
The Apple Tree
Gnarled old thing with twisted limbs and thick grey bark. I lean on the fence watching as birds fly in disappear into the leaves reappear flustered, flutter off drunkenly. The fruit glows dark and shining like eyes across a room.…
Hello Winter
The winter is coming the colour falls from the trees. Soon the boughs will be barren outside the window. The light goes faster, the day is gone before I know it, and the candles want lighting. I carve a pumpkin,…
Thesaurus
On the way to writing workshop I pass a book sitting out on a planter as though waiting for someone to take it. People do that these days; instead of keeping things forever as in olden times, they throw things…
Last Whisker
How can it be? I strain to see and pluck and pull – futility – and feel the prickly little wire poke through again each week, each hour, growing like a menopausal weed upon my witch’s chin. And then the…
Old Love New Love
When I called her in the year before she died, really I just wanted confirmation that my amorous meanderings were valid. Were something she would have done. But she didn’t give me that. She said, You know, at my age,…
A Mouse Tale
Kindergarten. We sit in a big circle on the floor. The teacher passes around a mouse. It is a very small mouse. It fits in the palm of thirty-one five-year-olds. Until it gets to me. I don’t know that I…
The Riding Lesson
As the car drove onto the gravelled parking area I was suddenly reminded of the Freiderich’s farm, the crunch of the driveway, the slam of car doors. My sister would strap on a velvet hard hat and hop onto a…
I’m a Writer
“And what do you do?” “I’m a writer.” Silence. The slight frown. Then the question. “What do you write?” I hate this question. I write words goddammit. And sometimes sentences! “Oh, lately I’ve been writing fiction, a novel actually. Well,…
Green Stone
I am hopeful. It comes in waves. Hopeful you will discover you love me. My despair keeps crashing battering at the break wall says you won’t. But I am as hopeful as the large…
Filling the Empty Nest
Last January, a sudden bout of empty-nest syndrome collided with my daughter’s desire to get a puppy. At first, she wanted me to get a puppy that she would “visit and help take care of”. Fat chance! I outlined for…
Why Christmas turns my Crank
As an atheist I would never have wished Christmas away, entirely. Granted, I bristled at the Christian takeover of a pagan solstice celebration; but I had nothing against a saintly old man who poured gold pieces into the stockings (hanging…