There was a knock on the door. Mum didn’t answer it. Maybe she didn’t hear it. I heard it. But I’m not allowed to do more than look through the screen. I was only left alone twice or three times. One of those times someone knocked on the door and it was a big man. […] More »

After Shanghai, I caught a cheap flight to Bangkok. In the sky, I met a group of Australians who joked about North Korea and Kim Jong-il the whole time and who said “g’day mate” for my pleasure. We parted ways at the airport then I travelled to Ko Phangan, where I think I was roofied at […] More »

I too am redacted, unsuitable reptilian, shell of speech I have forgotten, unless ravines can drown each sound they cup from my throat. Exposed against this anemone August is a way of unlearning the untaken graft of leeching questions, a mischief starved in whys. Why-because too much is the way of knowing the chrysalis before […] More »

That morning     on a hostile beach, eyes fixed on glimmering edges    of the old world, you were already forgetting     your real name. Not the one borne from parents’ careful     knowledge of glamor ous silver screens & all-     american sweethearts, each syllable leashing your neck     […] More »

A life-hack I read on the internet told me to avoid landlords who are late for the first meeting. If I had followed the life-hack, I wouldn’t be living where I live now, which is in the sewer. So that’s another lesson I had to learn the hard way. I was waiting for a potential […] More »

I’ve made a note and stuck it to my desk: Don’t be less of a flower but, could you be more of a stone at the same time? —Mary Ruefle  The first philosopher rubbed fur against amber, which then drew feathers and hair to it like a magnet. This was evidence of the stone’s soul […] More »

A sex addict meets another sex addict and falls in love. Sex Addict 1 needs sex all the time, but it can be with the same person as long as 1. It’s interesting 2. The person smells good 3. They both come at least once almost every time 4. It is done in many new ways […] More »

Barrelling Forward By Eva Crocker House of Anansi, $19.95 Barrelling Forward, a debut short story collection by emerging Newfoundland writer Eva Crocker, presents compelling tales of the so-called “ordinary” within Canada. Through 14 pieces, readers are acquainted with intensely realistic descriptions of both personhood and setting. The chafing, itching skin of a man is delineated […] More »

One way to examine a marriage is to look at the pattern of jokes. Fourteen years ago, when Heidi started her daily running practice, when Marley was two, terribly two, Heidi used to joke that she ran because she could pretend she’d keep running and never come back. Sometimes she ran for an hour, for […] More »

Am I Overreacting, or Are You Over Me Reacting? I make myself a moon calendar, the lunar cycle no more or less important to me than checking David Levithan’s Lover’s Dictionary Twitter feed to use as a horoscope. I write myself a moon calendar and it goes: bullshit moon, stupid stupid ugh moon, kill me […] More »

RAM Forehead smooth as bone china, you are the witness, clinging to opinion as though it were fact, convinced of your own divinity. Your voice reverberates against empty streets. Streetlights pick up the tune, turning like tuning forks, the hum barreling along telephone wires and out the open mouths at the end of each line. […] More »