Kathryn Mockler's Blog, page 27
June 29, 2024
Hollay Ghadery | Issue 38
He said he’d be back in a minute but he’s been gone for hours. Now baby’s blue eyes are pooling black and when she opens her mouth to laugh, I see her bottom two teeth have multiplied, lining the back of her throat like pebbled coral. She sits in her diaper on her playmat, blocks and board books scattered. She watches when I push myself into the back of the couch, watches me huddle, knees pulled to chest. She’s the sponge in my brain, swelling. A clock on the wall flickers and sticky handprints scuttle across the window, a sheet of muted light—an oceanview, if you’re sinking to the bottom of an ocean. Her belly button ripples open, inhales, then closes. She could crawl to me if she wanted to. She could pull herself up on the couch and wiggle over, but she rocks back and forth, dark eyes on my face, drooling.
Jesus, SaraThe Slip ‘n Slide stretches out before her, yawning down a modest incline to the playground. Sara yanks up her baggy gym shorts. Trixie, who is still milling around her feet, has tugged them down around her hips, wanting to be picked up.
“Uppy,” she whines.
Sara feels her lip curl and forces it back down. She stands at the top of the hill, at the head of the slide. The other day camp counsellors are having a water balloon fight with the older kids. Because her mom was out late again last night and couldn’t find her car keys this morning—Sara got dropped off late. And so, last to arrive has to take care of the babies.
Staff rule.
And not babies, really. Preschoolers. Perpetually runny- nosed and barely toilet-trained.
Sara looks down at Trixie, whose heat-flushed face is lifted, expectant, mouth open like a scrawny pink baby bird.
She was around Trixie’s age the first time she remembers her mom coming home days late from wherever she’d disappeared to. And she’d run to her in the kitchen, wrapping her arms around her mother’s legs, burying her face in the crotch of her jeans. And Sara registered a heavy, sweet odour under the more familiar smell of cigarettes before her mom peeled her off her body, pushed her back and away.
Jesus, Sara. She lit a cigarette and blew the smoke out the side of her mouth. You’re so fucking needy. She said this, and one side of her lip lifted, as if being raised by an invisible hook.
Sara’s grandmother handed Sara a plate of Oreos and guided her back to the worn spot on the burgundy rug in front of the TV. Blue’s Clues. In the kitchen, the hiss of a can opening.
Trixie places her pudgy hand on Sara’s thigh. Sara sucks in her breath, resists the urge to swat it off.
“Uppy,” Trixie continues to whine, now clawing at Sara’s bare skin.
Sara grinds her teeth and feigns concentrating on the other little kids sucking on juice boxes and slithering down the long yellow rectangle of wet plastic. Trixie tugs her shorts again.
“Uppy!”
Sara drops down so fast Trixie startles. When she pushes Trixie back and watches her slide away, every cell in her body chitters. As the child grabs at the space between them, as the child opens her mouth to scream.
“Post-Pardum Ocean View” and “Jesus, Sara” from Widow Fantasies © 2024 by Hollay Ghadery (Gordon Hill Press, 2024) is reprinted with permission of the author and the publisher.Hollay Ghadery is a multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, is scheduled for release with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, is due out with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is a co-host of Angela’s Bookclub on 105.5 FM, as well as HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist and the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedWidow Fantasiesby Hollay GhaderyGordon Hill Press, 2024Fantasies are places we briefly visit; we can’t live there. The stories in Widow Fantasies deftly explore the subjugation of women through the often subversive act of fantasizing. From a variety of perspectives, through a symphony of voices, Widow Fantasies immerses the reader in the domestic rural gothic, offering up unforgettable stories from the shadowed lives of girls and women.
Praise for Widow Fantasies“If Rumi and Alice Munro sat down to a meal, it just might be served by Hollay Ghadery. Her piquant glimpses into the vibrant interior lives of characters (from wives to grandfathers to girls and husbands) yield a jewel-tone richness. Ontario barns, Iranian food, steamy bathrooms, children, sex, loneliness and too-much togetherness, all syncopate into Ghadery’s absorbing worlds. The sassy-voiced stories in Widow Fantasies seem to melt in your mouth like fruit gelees—yet the taste of their observation lasts. I savoured them all.” — Molly Peacock, author of The Widow’s Crayon Box
"Widow Fantasies is an astounding collection of short stories from poet, Hollay Ghadery. With unflinching fierce and tender honesty, Ghadery captures private, intimate moments in the lives of her characters. The wit, range and cheeky defiance in these stories will leave you breathless. Her writing does that rare thing we want art to do for us: sparkle, astound and pack a punch. This is a collection to sit with and savour." — Salma Hussain, author of The Secret Diary of Mona Hasan
Upcoming Events in 2024"At turns shocking, funny, and heartbreaking, the stories in Hollay Ghadery’s, Widow Fantasies serve up densely packed miniatures embracing the gothic dysfunctions of the nuclear family. Ghadery’s stories take an unflinching look at family life and explode the myths of a bucolic domestica. These sure-footed stories make for compelling reading." — Nancy Jo Cullen, author of The Western Alienation Merit Badge and winner of the 2010 Dayne Ogilvie Prize
July 26th, 7 p.m. - 9 p.m.: Reading with Jade Wallace at Take Cover Books in Peterborough.
September 8th: Eden Mills Writers Festival. Panel and time TBD.
September 10th, 6 p.m.: Toronto launch of Widow Fantasies with Nicola Winstanley and Danila Botha at Queen Books.
September 19th, 7 p.m.: Sessions in the Studio at Blue Heron Books, in conversation with Molly Peacock.
September 21st: Culture Days in Port Perry, Ontario. Time and event TBD.
October 5th: Ampersand Festival. Panel and time TBD.
November 2nd to 3rd: Wordstock Sudbury. Panel and time TBD.
See Hollay’s website for more details.
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June 9, 2024
June 18th! Me and Kirby in Conversation
Kirby and I will be reading and chatting at Another Story Bookstore in Toronto.
It’s our first ever reading together, and we’re celebrating the publication of Kirby’s book, She, and Anecdotes being a finalist in the Trillium Book Award!
Come and join us while we chat and read from our books!
From the author of
Poetry is Queer
and This is Where I Get Off, their highly-anticipated new full-length collection. Out Now. Distributed US/INTL orders: Asterism Books.
"Oh dear, you're pretty sad."—My momSupport Send My Love to Anyone
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June 6, 2024
Aaron Kreuter | Issue 38
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedDear Chelsea: This is great news! I’m thrilled to have my story appear in the magazine. I’ve been tweaking and submitting this particular story for a long time now. After all the rejections, all the doubt, having it accepted in a journal like Moose and Seal really means a lot to me. I look forward to the edits. Please let me know if there’s anything else you need from me in the meantime. Excitedly, Stephanie
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedDear Chelsea: Hi. It’s Stephanie again. I’ve been walking around in a state of nerve-tingling excitement ever since I got your email. This will be, by far, the biggest publication I’ve ever had. But then I realized that I never submitted “Tel Aviv-Toronto Red Eye” to your magazine. I double-checked in my submissions notebook, and it’s true; I never submitted it. Needless to say, I’m pretty confused. Did you hear about the story from somewhere else (though where that somewhere else could be I have no idea)? If you could fill me in, I’d greatly appreciate it. Best, Stephanie
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedDear Stephanie: Milton Green here, senior fiction editor. I’m looking forward to working with you on this story. Does it really matter where we first encountered it? The fact is that we love it, and can’t wait to publish it! Can’t beat that. Before we embark on the dark and perilous journey that is known as the editing process, I do have one small niggling question about the story that we should get out of the way first. Why, on page 3 of the story, does your narrator—who we assume, of course, is a thinly veiled version of yourself—say that she feels “more Jewish when on a plane flying home to Toronto from South Florida than when she’s flying home from Tel Aviv?” I can’t quite grasp what you’re getting at here. Please advise. Cheers, Milton
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedHi Milton: Thanks for writing. I’m not really sure I understand your question, but I’ll try to answer. For starters, it’s meant to be a joke, commenting on the complicated network of movement between Jewish communities worldwide. But, on a deeper level, I suppose, it’s about the deeply diasporic, deeply American, nature of Jewish South Florida, which is quite different than the national, macho Israeli culture. The whole story is meant to interrogate this tension between Israel and the Diaspora, which is one reason it takes place on an overnight flight between Tel Aviv and Toronto. Hope this helps! Stephanie
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedThanks for your quick response. I’m sorry to say that we’re still not understanding the “joke” as you put it. Are you saying that South Florida is more Jewish than Israel? Why would you have a character say such an obviously false thing? It basically implies that the narrator of the story, and therefore you yourself, don’t think Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state. Is that true, Stephanie? And another thing. Why, in the climax of the story, does your Palestinian-American character have sex with your Jewish character in the washroom—both of them women, might I add—while everybody waiting in line calls them derogatory names? Why have a Palestinian character in a story about Israel at all? And one that takes place on a plane, nonetheless? Isn’t that extremely triggering for your story’s potential Jewish readers? I found it triggering. Quite triggering.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedPardon my language, but what the fuck is going on here? The whole story is about how false the borders are between Palestinian and Jew, Israel and Canada, settler-colonialism here and settler-colonialism there. And in answer to your last question, no, I do not think having a Palestinian—who is a human being just like any other human being—on an airplane in a story is triggering, and frankly, I’m surprised you would say such a thing.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedNo need to get testy. We just don’t like, nor understand, this scene at all. In fact, we’re recommending that you alter it/remove it entirely. There are things that a Jewish writer should not write about. You know this, Stephanie. You should know this. We gave you the benefit of the doubt, but it seems that the antisemitic tendencies we located in the story are more than just a writerly flourish.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedMilton, I’m sorry for swearing in my last message, it’s just that I’m pretty frustrated. This has turned from an excellent week into an exceedingly strange week; never before have I felt like my fiction has come alive, tripped me as I walked down the street. Does writing about the complexities of the Jewish experience, does acknowledging the existence of Palestinians, really make one an antisemite? Not to me they don’t. As a Jewish writer who happens to live in Canada, I deeply believe that my fiction should go to these uncomfortable places, should say what has for the most part remained unsaid, should expose in order to move towards something better. I’ve always loved the fiction in Moose and Seal for this very reason.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedSo you admit that you’re a self-hater? We had our suspicions. What do you know about Israel, anyways? What, you think because you’ve read a couple of Tom Segev books you’re an expert now? Well, I’m afraid if you are not willing to remove the following items from your story, we’re going to have to retract our offer of publication, and the *very handsome* payment that would have gone along with it. Not to mention the Canada-wide exposure. Please excise from the story: The aforementioned scene in the bathroom.
The Palestinian character.
The discussion of Israel’s nuclear arsenal.
The argument between the Orthodox man and the secular woman about messianic time that ends with them giving each other handjobs.
The contention that living in diaspora could possibly be better than living in a utopic country such as Israel.
The daydream about the ethical potential of intermarriage.
The entire ending—and most of the beginning—will have to be rewritten as well.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedWe actually recommend that you change the entire plot. Why not have it be about a young Jewish man afraid of commitment falling in love with a tough-around the edges Israeli sabra? And have the pilot a raging Israel-hating antisemite? Now there’s a recipe for comedy and romance! Or, instead of it taking place on a plane, why not at a Bedouin tent during a birthright trip? Now that would be a story!
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedWhat? What are you talking about? Why would I change the whole story?
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedBecause you are a good Jewish writer and you want to write good Jewish stories.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedWait a minute. You accepted the story for publication. Why did you do so if you don’t even like the story? I’ve been speaking to some of my writer friends (and non-writer friends, not to mention my therapist), and you are behaving very unprofessionally. Normally, I would probably just go along with it, but “Tel Aviv-Toronto Red Eye” is very important to me. I’m seriously thinking of pulling the story.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedNow Stephanie, don’t get excited. You think you know how you feel about Israel, but do you really? Remember the nights awake, full of doubt? Remember your own time in Israel, thinking, maybe it’s not as bad as all that? Remember how you felt when you saw that Palestinian man at the Nakba Day rally wearing a shirt that said “The Zionists Did 9/11”? Think of that man whenever you want to write a story that extols the virtues of intermarriage.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedWhat does that one sad, crazy man have to do with anything? And no, I will not make those changes. I refuse to soften my writerly vision for your fear of upsetting your Zionist readers, or whatever the hell is going on here.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedWell then, Stephanie. Sorry to say. You will never publish at Moose and Seal, or any other major Canadian magazine again. I’ll see to that, believe you me. Enjoy being on the wrong side of history.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedFine. That’s just fine. No big deal. No big deal at all. … Wait. Wait a minute! I’ve changed my mind. Okay? I’ll do it. I’ll make the changes! You’re right, setting it at a Bedouin tent makes much more sense. I’ll do it all! Just please, please, please, publish my story. Hello? Milton? Hello? Hello? Hello? Thank you for reading Send My Love to Anyone. This post is public so feel free to share it.
Excerpted with permission from Rubble Children: Seven and a Half Stories by Aaron Kreuter (University of Alberta Press, 2024).
Aaron Kreuter is the author of four books, including the 2022 Governor General's Literary Award shortlisted poetry collection Shifting Baseline Syndrome. He lives in Toronto and teaches at Trent University.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published
Rubble Children: Seven and a Half Stories
by Aaron KrueterUniversity of Alberta PressIn seven and a half interlinked stories, Aaron Kreuter’s Rubble Children tackles Jewish belonging, settler colonialism, Zionism and anti-Zionism, love requited and unrequited, and cannabis culture, all drenched in suburban wonder and dread. Sometimes realist, sometimes not, the book revolves around Kol B'Seder, a fictional Reform synagogue in the Toronto suburb of Thornhill. In these stories, the locked basement room in the home of the synagogue’s de facto patriarch opens onto a life-altering windfall; visions of an omnipotent third temple terrify; rhythms of the Jewish and scholastic year collide in bong rips and hash hits; alternate versions of Israel/Palestine play out against domestic drama. In the title story, a group of Jewish girls obsessed with the Holocaust discover that they are far from the only people who live in the rubble of history. Engaging, funny, dark, surprising, Rubble Children is a scream of Jewish rage, a smoky exhalation of Jewish joy, a vivid dream of better worlds.
Praise for Rubble ChildrenSupport Send My Love to Anyone
"What if the worldview you were raised in turns out to be monstrous? In the stories that form Rubble Children, Aaron Kreuter examines a Jewish community in flux, caught between its historical fealty to Israel and a growing awakening and resistance to it. Rubble Children is a book of great range: at once political, communitarian, empathetic, funny, revolutionary, touching, and hopeful. This is a work that is essential for our moment." Saeed Teebi, author of Her First Palestinian
“The stories simultaneously ground themselves in the immediate, lived experience of the Jewish community in Toronto and leap beyond it into possible futures, following flights of imagination that curl back on the present, revealing its hidden dimensions. Rubble Children breaks what is essentially new ground for the Canadian short story. Urgent, topical, and contemporary, it makes for genuinely exhilarating reading.” Aaron Schneider, author of The Supply Chain
"A solid and provocative collection that needles all the contradictions in one Jewish community north of Toronto. The story ‘Rubble Children’ is jam-packed with scrappiness, turmoil, and revelation." Tamara Faith Berger, author of Yara
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June 2, 2024
Send My Love to Anyone | Issue 37
Hello friends,
In Issue 37, Send My Love to Anyone presents ”Writer Therapy” by , a poem from Ellen Chang-Richardson’s new collection, Blood Belies, an excerpt from Gina Leola Woolsey’s book Fifteen Thousand Pieces: A Medical Examiner's Journey Through Disaster, and “Hello stranger” from ’s column, The First Time.
Send My Love to Anyone is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support this project, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Kirby and I are doing our first ever reading together on June 18, 2024 at Another Story Bookstore. Come join us for a chat and reading!
I’m also doing a book giveaway to help Palestinian families in Gaza.
Hope you enjoy this issue of Send My Love to Anyone!
Kathryn
June 18, 2024 - Kirby and I will be reading at Another Story Bookshop
Kirby and I will be reading and chatting at Another Story Bookstore in Toronto.
It’s our first ever reading together and we’re celebrating the publication of Kirby’s book, She, and Anecdotes being a finalist in the Trillium Book Award!
Come and join us while we chat and read from our books!
Support Send My Love to AnyoneSupport Send My Love to Anyone by signing up for a monthly or yearly subscription, liking this post, or sharing it!
Big heartfelt thanks to all of the subscribers and contributors who make this project possible!
ConnectBluesky | Instagram | Archive | Contributors | Subscribe | About SMLTA
Send My Love to Anyone is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support this project, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Book Giveaway to help Palestinian Families in Gaza
This month I'm hosting a book giveaway for two Go Fund Me campaigns.
Campaign #1
Abdalaziz Abuaskar is organizing this fundraiser on behalf of his cousin, Azza.
Azza is a school teacher and Mohammad is a pharmacist. Both Azza’s school and Mohammad’s pharmacy were destroyed. They have four children and Azza is 6 months pregnant and has asthma. Join me in donating to Azza and Mohammad’s campaign.
Campaign #2
Yasmeen Ouda moved to London, Ontario from Gaza City four years ago with her husband. She is running this campaign on behalf of her brother who is expecting his first baby and her sister, a 4th year medical student. She hopes to bring them to Canada through a program initiated by the Canadian Government. Join me in donating to Yasmeen Ouda’s campagin.
If you donate at least 10 dollars to either of these fundraisers by June 15, 2024 and email me your donation receipt, you’ll be entered in a draw for a signed first edition copy of my book, Anecdotes, which was just shortlisted for the Duanta Gleed Prize and the Trillium Book Award.
This giveaway is available to Canada and US residents.
I found out about these campaigns from Gaza Funds and Operation Olive Branch where you can organize your own fundraiser.
Sign Petition e-4940: Economic SanctionsEconomic Sanctions - Sign Petition e-4940 by June 7, 2024
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June 1, 2024
Sonal Champsee | Issue 37
Growing up, no one ever told me I should be a writer. It’s not the kind of thing desi parents tell their children, and nothing they’d ever want to admit to their friends—unless you were a successful writer, in which case they will tell everyone. There is no pressure like desi parent pressure; either I had to succeed, or I had to deal with constant dismissal and questioning about why I would want to waste my time with writing in the hopes I would quit and do something more socially acceptable. When this didn’t work and I began an MFA in my mid-30s, this evolved into writing advice from my mother, the assumption being that I couldn’t possibly be any good or succeed at this without her help, despite her never having written in her life.
I’m much better than I used to be at ignoring my mother, but anyone who writes can probably already see the problem this kind of internalized pressure puts on a newer writer. All first drafts are terrible and all first drafts by newer writers are usually extra-terrible, and so between never feeling like my work was good enough and my then-undiagnosed ADHD, I was the writer who never wrote.
I could pretend this was okay until Sarah Selecky asked me to teach for her, and I had to talk to a class about writing while practicing so little of it and having no street cred as a writer beyond being in my first year of an MFA program. At best, I could bask in Sarah’s street cred as the author of highly lauded stories and books, who had taught for years and more importantly, wrote regularly. She had a whole daily routine and ritual around writing, whereas I had frenzied attempts to get something on paper when I had MFA assignments due, and long stretches of nothing but good intentions and reality TV in between.
In my first class, one of my students was the partner of a person in my MFA program. I didn’t know him, since he was a few years ahead of me, but I was absolutely terrified that she would see right through me and tell her partner, who would of course tell everyone in the program, including the professors. Who the heck does she think she is, teaching writing when she’s barely a writer herself? I would become the laughingstock of the program, a story so ludicrous that it would be shared for years as an MFA urban legend and would be whispered around CanLit anytime I attempted to do anything.
In short, I had a massive case of imposter syndrome.
My hope was that I could quickly overcome this by learning everything I possibly could so that I could churn out perfect stories in a single draft, get a lot of things published, fast, win awards, sign a book deal, and ultimately have a long CV of things that would convince my students, my classmates, Canlit, my parents and myself that I was legitimately a writer. This didn’t work out very well, since not only was this an impossible task for any writer but also required me to actually write.
So I leaned heavily into the one thing I knew I was good at—critique. I critiqued the hell out of every MFA classmate. Sarah’s school emphasized positive feedback, but for the final assignment, the doors were open to critical review, and I went above and beyond. I made line notes, asked detailed questions, did character assessments, broke down stories structurally, going deep and explaining everything carefully with many notes and comments about things I liked, so it would be clear I was trying to improve the story and not rip the writer apart. Newer writers are thirsty sponges for good feedback. Most people were grateful for my efforts, but I have a hunch I overwhelmed them.
To prove I was legitimately a writer and writing teacher, I critiqued like a motherfucker in my roles as an instructor, MFA student, reader for the PRISM international editorial board, participant in a novel class, and among writer friends. But eventually my massively detailed feedback coupled with my undiagnosed ADHD meant that I not only struggled to write but also to critique. Surely, owning my own legitimacy as a writer and writing teacher had to be less work.
By my third year of teaching, I was fed up. The MFA was nearly over; only my thesis was left, which I was mostly not writing, and I could no longer dodge questions about my writing routine by saying I was too busy with coursework. Plus, I was becoming deeply uncomfortable that I was not presenting myself honestly. What was the point of spending years in therapy successfully banishing from my head every desi parent’s favourite refrain "What will people think?” only to maintain a façade in the classroom?
Teaching and writing arise from the same source for me. Since my writing is better when I am true to myself on the page. I knew I now had to be true to myself in class to be a better teacher.
Being true to myself meant telling my students that I struggled to sit down and write.
Being true to myself meant telling my students that I struggled to sit down and write. My classes were taught online, and for a brief moment before I pressed ‘post’ it felt a little risky. Would the students see this and immediately demand to be taught by a real writer instead?
But I knew I was a writer.
Nearly every writer has felt at times that they could not legitimately call themselves a writer. Nearly every writer has struggled to write. There is no magic switch that gets set to ‘legitimate writer’ that makes any of the challenges with actually writing vanish.
Once my hesitation passed, I told the students everything. I told them that I’d tried and failed to maintain a writing routine dozens of times. I told them that I was an unabashedly lazy writer who avoided revision because it seemed like too much work. I told them that I desperately wanted to succeed, and while I was more confident now, I was very familiar with feeling like an imposter.
And then a wonderful thing happened. Once I stopped trying to prove myself to them, they stopped trying to prove themselves to me. We collectively relaxed and came into class as our real selves. They started admitting to all their writerly fears and bad habits—the perfectionism, the worry that nobody wants to hear their stories, the feeling that they’re not good enough, the belief that they did not deserve to be writers. We still talked about craft, but the more interesting conversations were about everything that got in the way of being a writer. After our discussions wrapped up, the conversations continued in my head, forming and re-forming into different ways to explain things and encourage them, experiences of mine they could relate to, different metaphors I could use, or ways I could help them laugh their fears into something smaller. Often, the thoughts I had could be so compelling that I’d go back to our online discussion and write out long posts or long emails to the student directly. I still struggled to find motivation for my own creative work but unasked for writing advice? This was worth putting everything else aside to do.
A few years later, it occurred to me that other people might benefit from this advice, and the idea for my newsletter Writer Therapy was born where I write about writing problems and invite readers looking for writing advice to submit their questions. It’s like Dear Abby for writers but supportive and judgement free, and also I swear a lot.
In encouraging other writers to trust themselves and be honest on the page, I discovered the most useful thing I could do as a writing teacher was not teaching craft but legitimizing every student as a real writer. It was the antithesis of everything I had been raised with, to see everyone who wanted to write as a writer, regardless of their CV or the number of times they passed over writing in favour of reality TV. So much of how I teach and write has become a reflection of what I’ve learned as an adult, to trust my instincts and stand in my own truth, and not squash everything down over fears about what people might think.
And in doing this with my writing students, their writing got better.
The craft of writing isn’t hard, in the sense that it doesn’t take a lot of craft knowledge to write a competent story. Getting deep and nerdy about craft and looking at all the ways it can be stretched and pulled in service of the story can be fun, but it’s not always necessary for newer writers to know until they hit upon a particular craft issue in their writing.
Creative writers work in the realm of uncertainty. Most of us aren’t really taught to be comfortable with uncertainty. Sometimes that can be fun, to experiment, to play, to see what comes next, to not know what’s going to happen when we commit words to a blank page. Even if we’ve preplanned the story to death, the story may still pull us in unknown directions, or weird surprises may pop up that we don’t understand except that the story wants it there. More experienced writers learn to trust in their instincts, that feeling you get when you’ve tapped into something interesting even if you don’t quite know what to do with it yet—at least most of the time. But newer writers are so full of self-doubt about whether they are writing correctly, whether they’ve succeeded enough, or whether or not they are even writers—that they push away from their own creative instincts. What if I follow this idea and it leads nowhere? What if the story gets irreparably mucked up? What if it’s stupid and I become the laughingstock of every writer in this class? What will people think? And so they squash their own voices and write things they think will be acceptable to everyone around them, and then wonder why their stories don’t quite sing.
These days, there is so much writing advice out there that dictates how a writer is supposed to be, and how they ought to work, and what it should look like. It’s hard to dive into this uncertain thing and not know if it will work, especially when the world doesn’t make it easy for us to write and questions our lack of conventional success—even though conventional success in writing is an incredibly uncertain thing itself. And while at least some of this advice comes from people with more street cred than my mother, the fact that it’s so often prescriptive is problematic.
There’s no one way to write. And the only thing you need to be a writer is the desire to do it. One day, maybe even desi parents will think so.
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May 22, 2024
Gatherings | Issue 37
Kirby and I will be reading and chatting at Another Story Bookstore in Toronto. It’s our first ever reading together and we’re celebrating the publication of Kirby’s book She and Anecdotes being a finalist in the Trillium Book Award!
Come and join us while we chat and read from our books!
Anecdotes is a Trillium Finalist!I’m honoured to be in the company of so many wonderful writers! I’m rooting for everyone!
Anecdotes GiveawayThis month I'm hosting a book giveaway for two Go Fund Me campaigns. The first will help Azza, Mohammad, and their children in Gaza and the second will help Yasmeen Ouda bring her family to Canada.
If you donate at least 6 dollars to either of these fundraisers by May 31, 2024 and email me your donation receipt, you’ll be entered in a draw for a signed first edition copy of my book, Anecdotes, which was just shortlisted for the Duanta Gleed Prize and the Trillium Book Award.
This giveaway is available to Canada and US residents.
I found out about these campaigns from Gaza Funds and Operation Olive Branch.
Tanis MacDonald includes my first poetry book, Onion Man, in her round up of Reading Working-Class on the Wolsak and Wynn blog.
Mockler’s first book takes place in and around a corn-canning factory in 1980s southwestern Ontario, what the publisher calls “a time in Canada when the recession lay like a lead weight on the shoulders of young people, leaving the future bleak.” I remember working in a terrible job in my no-money 1980s and when I read Onion Man, I could feel the stickiness of an unairconditioned summer workplace, the smells, the listlessness of the workers, especially the young people, the no reason-to-do-anything dead-end of it all. Technically, Onion Man is a story told in poetry, but it reads like a novel – you know, stuff happens, and people speak like they speak.
PS if you are a paying subscriber, you can get a free e-book of Onion Man.
Kirby’s NewsKirby: Nestle In Words Like An Animal: The Poetic G/Rasp of Tongue, Throat, and Mouth in G. Review of G by Klara du Plessis & Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi, The Fiddlehead
Check out Kirby’s tour schedule for their new poetry book, She!
SMLTA Recommends“What we’re seeing is very troubling,” said author Thea Lim who was shortlisted for the Giller Prize in 2018. Literary spaces that are meant to be bastions of free speech and discourse are going against the mandate that they were created for, she said. They’re creating a situation for artists where “you either have to be quiet about slaughter, atrocity, genocide. Or you risk your career.”
Read Kagiso Molope’s challenge at Ottawa gala spotlights artists fighting institutional silence on Gaza in the Toronto Star by Shree Paradkar
And that’s the horror of all this: in a room full of some of the most influential people in the country, at a time when we’re witnessing a genocide, many in attendance were worried about how we’re speaking about the atrocities in Gaza and not about how we’re going to end it.
I am terrified of what this means for the people in the middle of this war — which is also to say that I’m terrified of what it means for all of us.
Read Palestine and the Pen by Kagiso Lesego Molope in The Grind
The Miramichi Review is doing a Fundraiser for Palestine and is inviting submissions from Palestinian authors as well as reviews of Palestinian books.
Crooked, Iffy: Tom Prime’s Male Pregnancy In Reverse by Benjamin C. Dugdale in Ex-Puritan
I first read Sadi Muktadir’s work when I was the Canada Editor of Joyland (2013-2020) and selected his story “Quadruple Bypass” which was published in 2019.
His debut novel is out this week and the launch is in Toronto on May 23, 2024! Details below!
Room Magazine is hiring a publisher.
D.A. Lockhart is a past SMLTA contributor, and his poetry book North of Middle Island has been shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award. I’m delighted and honoured to have my book on the same shortlist as D.A. Lockhart and the other finalists!
Here’s a visual poem from his collection!
Very sad to learn of the passing of Alice Munro.
Read 20 Short Stories From Nobel Prize-Winning Writer Alice Munro (RIP) Free Online, Open Culture
The Influence of Alice Munro with Heather O’Neil, CBC
The Art of Flash Fiction Alice Munro 1931-2024“I want my stories to be something about life that causes people to say, not, oh, isn't that the truth, but to feel some kind of reward from the writing, and that doesn't mean that it has to be a hap…Read more8 days ago · 27 likes · 13 comments · Kathy FishA Life in Quotes, The Guardian
Canadian authors remember Alice Munro and her literary legacy - Heather O'Neill, Kevin Chong, Dionne Irving, Andrew Pyper among the authors who admired the CanLit legend, CBC
Five of the best Alice Munro short stories, The Guardian
Clare Sestanovich joins Deborah Treisman to read and discuss “The Moons of Jupiter,” by Alice Munro, which was published in The New Yorker in 1978.
Sneak Peek from Issue 37Recommended Substacks
Sally’s Salon Des RefusesTranslating Misuzu Misuzu Kaneko was a Japanese children’s poet who lived from 1903-1930. If you do the math, you’ll see that she died young, and if you do a bit of internet research, you’ll discover her death was by suicide at the tender age of 26. I’ve read and written about Misuzu’s…Read more8 days ago · 2 likes · Sally Ito
Memoir LandHow's the Writing Going, R.O. Kwon?R. O. KWON’s nationally best-selling first novel, The Incendiaries, is published by Riverhead, and it is being translated into seven languages. Named a best book of the year by over forty publications, The Incendiaries was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize and the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award. Kwon has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Yaddo, and MacDowell. Kwon and Garth Greenwell coedited the best-selling anthology…Read morea year ago · 2 likes · Memoir Land
Sitting in Silence #13 - On EstrangementSitting in Silence is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber… Listen now3 days ago · 3 likes · 2 comments · Sitting in Silence
Pickle Me This Episode 11: Deepa RajagopalanDeepa Rajagopalan is the author of the short story collection PEACOCKS OF INSTAGRAM, a book that’s so great it’s got me accosting strangers in the street, and she came to our conversation with a very cool twist on the Bookspo format. Her Bookspo pick is Alice Munro’s short story “Corrie” (which was included in her 2012 DEAR LIFE), which she used as insp… Listen now10 days ago · 1 like · Kerry Clare
CRAFT TALKHow to Prep for #1000wordsofsummerHi friends. We are only twelve days away from this year’s #1000wordsofsummer! A few reminders: Here is the FAQ. There is a slack. There is also a companion book you can either buy or take out of the library or borrow from your bestie. This is a fundraiser, if you can…Read more2 days ago · 142 likes · 9 comments · Jami Attenberg
Hmm That's Interestinghas everyone gone a bit insane?Ok, sorry. I am moving at the end of the month. So I've been packing boxes and rummaging around my apartment, the one I've lived in for over five years, running into mementos and hidden notebooks and ugly clothes and lost postcards and mysterious furniture stains and wondering what exactly I've been doing for the last half decade of my life…Read more3 days ago · 170 likes · 25 comments · Clara
Sam WiebeFadeoutOn a night of rain and darkness, Fox Olson’s white Thunderbird might have hit the top of that slope too fast. It had certainly hit the bottom too fast. More than plot, character, setting or theme, the PI novel is about voice. Style. From Raymond Chandler to Samantha Jayne Allen, what draws me in more than anything is a writer’s language, tone, dialogue, …Read more16 hours ago · 3 likes · Sam Wiebe and Naben Ruthnum / Nathan RipleyFrom the ArchivesSupport Send My Love to AnyoneSupport Send My Love to Anyone by signing up for a monthly or yearly subscription, liking this post, or sharing it!
Big heartfelt thanks to all of the subscribers and contributors who make this project possible!
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May 15, 2024
Ellen Chang-Richardson | Issue 37
“Hornet in a Bell Jar” from Blood Belies © 2024 by Ellen Chang-Richardson (Wolsak and Wynn, 2024) is reprinted with permission of the author and the publisher.Ellen Chang-Richardson is an award-winning poet of Taiwanese and Chinese Cambodian descent whose multi-genre writing has appeared in Augur, The Ex-Puritan, The Fiddlehead, Grain, third coast magazine, Vallum Contemporary, Watch Your Head and more.Born in Toronto, Ontario, they were raised in Oakville, Ontario and São Paulo, Brazil, and spent their most formative years growing up in Shanghai, China. A third culture kid at heart, Ellen's writing is informed by their love of contemporary art, their concern with the climate crisis, and their experience moving through the world as they are.The co-founder of Riverbed Reading Series, an editor for Room and long con magazine, and a member of the poetry collective VII, Ellen is currently based in Ottawa, Canada, on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Nation. You can usually find them baking sourdough bread from their starter, Bubbles, or biking the riverside trails on their single-speed.Send My Love to Anyone is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support this project, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
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Blood Belies
by Ellen Chang-RichardsonWolsak and Wynn, 2024In this arresting debut collection Ellen Chang-Richardson writes of race, of injury and of belonging in stunning poems that fade in and out of the page. History swirls through this collection like a summer storm, as they bring their father’s, and their own, stories to light, writing against the background of the institutional racism of Canada, the Chinese Exclusion Act, the head tax and more. From Taiwan in the early 1990s to Oakville in the late 1990s, Toronto in the 2010s, Cambodia in the mid-1970s and Ottawa in the 2020s, Blood Belies takes the reader through time, asking them what it means to look the way we do? To carry scars? To persevere? To hope?
Support Send My Love to AnyoneSupport Send My Love to Anyone by signing up for a monthly or yearly subscription, liking this post, or sharing it!
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May 8, 2024
Gina Leola Woolsey | Issue 37
September 2nd, 1998
The phone on the bedside table rings minutes before 11:00 p.m. on a rainy Wednesday night.
“I’ve just had a call from the Halifax Rescue Coordination Centre. A plane's gone down somewhere off the Aspotogan Peninsula.” It’s a woman from his office.
John and the dogs are ready for bed. Deputy and Ben, golden retrievers, flank their master, ready for the night’s watch.
“What is it?” He knows what she's going to say. She’ll say it's a small craft, or a local carrier flight.
“It’s an international flight. It’s Swissair.”
The information doesn’t go straight to the action center in his brain. His plausibility muscle bats away the news so his mind has a minute to rev the mental engines.
“I think there’s some room for double checking on this.”
Dr. Butt, a forensic pathologist with over thirty years of experience, lives across the bay from the peninsula, about half an hour’s drive from his office in Halifax where he leads Nova Scotia's death investigations as the Chief Medical Examiner.
He'd only returned home a short time ago, after a long day at a courthouse two hours away in New Glasgow. His testimony had been postponed and the impatient doctor was forced to wait on the sidelines for his turn to give evidence of murder. The victim, a cab driver, had been strangled with a ligature placed from behind, and asphyxiated. It was an upsetting case; a deadly robbery that netted the two young assailants a handful of loose change. The Chief ME was determined to have his moment on the stand for the murdered man, despite the waiting game.
As he drove home, a dark sky had overtaken the milky twilight. On grey fall days in Nova Scotia, the clouds crouch low over the rocky coastline, as if conspiring with the sea to swallow houses and towns. It's a different feeling than the expansive semi-circle sky of John’s hometown in Alberta, where the air is dry and the land gently dips and rises toward the far-flung horizon. The people here, they’re different too.
His office calls back. It's confirmed. A Swissair commercial plane has gone down off the Aspotogan Peninsula.
His internal alarm sounds, igniting the flow of the adrenaline rushing through limbs and vital organs. The buzzing won’t be far behind. At sixty-two, and after three decades of work in his field, John is no stranger to large-scale disasters. An international flight carrying possibly hundreds of people is proving difficult to imagine. How? Where? Why? The panic in his belly threatens, spreading its searing fingers, pushing blood from vital organs to the extremities, flushing his face and scattering his thoughts.
John drags a suitcase out of the walk-in closet and throws it open on the bed. He moves back and forth between his clothes and the bag, a repetitive motion to occupy the alarming thoughts while his brain works to find the logical next steps. I should be back in a day or three, he thinks, trying to compile a mental list of what one needs when heading off to deal with an international disaster.
Jan and Geoff, John’s best friends in Nova Scotia, live across the road. In a few days, when John runs out of clean clothes, he’ll ask Jan to bring him more. John, always dapper in his dress, gives her a list — the grey suit, the blue shirt with French cuffs, the soft yellow tie. But Jan is colour blind and her choices are mismatched attempts to follow his instructions. In the years to come, they will laugh at her fumbles, laugh at how John struggled to put together a somber but stylish outfit to address the families or the television cameras. The laughter will help them remember, and forget.
It takes him half an hour to gather his thoughts and finally zip the suitcase closed. By this time, the horrific news has travelled a circuitous route through his defense mechanisms and become true. He must keep his thoughts orderly and make the adrenaline work in his favour to stay ahead of the emotions. He never wants to hear that dreaded buzzing sound in his head again.
The dogs need minding. He calls his other neighbours, Frank and Shirley, a friendly couple right down the road. Shirley answers the phone, even though it’s after 11p.m. by now. Of course they’ll take the dogs, she tells him, don’t worry about it one bit. She soothes his jagged nerves with her reassuring voice.
Shirley is an angel. This isn’t the first time she’s come to his aid. When he moved across the country, from Calgary to Halifax, Shirley greeted him with neighbourly warmth. In Alberta, it’s customary to invite newcomers into your home for a meal or a cup of cheer. John finds the people on this coast friendly and earnest, but somehow not welcoming. He has trouble feeling connected to new people who don’t extend dinner invitations or host parties. Shirley seemed different, and she invited him and his dogs into her life right away. It didn’t take long for them to discover their shared friends. As it turns out, Shirley and her husband, Frank, lived in Alberta too, and they have common acquaintances back in Calgary.
With Jan and Geoff across the road, plus Frank and Shirley close by, John feels reasonably content in his seaside saltbox. Their three houses sit atop a small spit of land across the bay from the Aspotogan Peninsula. John's picture window overlooks St. Margaret's Bay and the arm of land that hugs the shoreline opposite. Had the neighbours been scrutinizing the dark sky that night in the minutes before impact, they might have seen the doomed aircraft on its final trajectory into the ocean.
After the call to Shirley, John checks the dogs off his mental list. Time to pass on the news. He needs to rally the troops and call the commander. His staff consists of one highly competent administrative assistant named Linda, two Nurse Investigators, and one part-time file clerk. He starts with Linda.
***
A loud noise rips through the still air above the house. Trinkets and framed family photos shake on wooden shelves around the perimeter of the living room. Linda, a stout, middle-aged, working mom, and her giant-sized husband are spending a few minutes with the TV and their teenage daughter before heading up to bed.
“Oh my heavens! Do you hear that plane? Next they’ll be landing in our living room,” Linda says. She has to be up early the next morning to attend a workshop in Liverpool with her boss and several RCMP members. It’s her job to keep things going, to smooth out the rough edges of Dr. Butt’s communication style, and to keep him cooperating, especially when the RCMP are involved. She needs her rest.
The parents leave their daughter with the TV and head up to bed, both fast asleep within minutes, the sound of the too-close plane quickly forgotten. Sometime after 11pm, the ringing phone wakes her.
“There's a plane down somewhere off the Aspotogan Peninsula,” says Dr. Butt.
“What do you mean? Like, in the water?” Linda is groggy.
“I don't know exactly, but I believe so.”
“What kind of plane?” Linda enters her short period of denial. Surely, if it’s true, it must be a small plane. It must be a manageable tragedy. How can it be anything else?
“A big passenger plane. A Swissair plane.” John stabs at her disbelief.
“Oh my heavens!”
“You have to meet me at the office right away. You’ll have to get up and come in right now. I need to call Emergency Measures. You’ll need to call the RCMP and coordinate with them. We’ll have to gather up…”
“Ok, listen,” she says, interrupting his flurry of instructions, “I’m hanging up the phone and I’m coming to meet you at the office.”
“Or, I should call the RCMP. You call Emergency Measures. We’ll need to coordinate with everyone.” John continues his rapid fire.
“Listen,” she interrupts him again. “Now, listen. I’m going to hang up so I can get dressed and I’ll be on my way.”
Linda knows how to deal with her boss. She respects him for his intelligence and everything he’s done to bring the Nova Scotia Medical Examiner’s office to its current state of efficiency. Before Dr. Butt, there were so many problems. Now everything is done the same — all the investigations, all the paperwork, all the files throughout the province are part of one, unified system. The Medical Examiner relies on rural family doctors and hospital pathologists to visit distant crime scenes and do lab work. Before Dr. Butt, the ME office often waited over a year for pathology results. Government funding was minimal and Linda worked alone with the previous Chief ME. Dr. Butt changed all that.
Other aspects of her boss aren’t so admirable, in Linda’s opinion. He’s a micro manager who worries over everything. He needs to be in control and it causes a great deal of friction between the Medical Examiner’s Office and some of the RCMP. He's often fighting with one colleague or another, and Linda is called on to make things OK. The toughest test of her skill is about to start.
Linda’s daughter bounds up the stairs to her parents' room. “Mom, mom! It’s on TV. A passenger plane went down off Peggy’s Cove!”
Within minutes, clear in her mission and direction, Linda is dressed and heading toward Halifax.
*
Robert Conrad wakes to the sound of the nightly news on his living room television. He must have fallen asleep. The regular broadcast has been interrupted and a voice cuts through his semiconscious haze. A commercial airliner is down in the St. Margaret’s Bay area, somewhere near his home.
Bob Conrad has raised his family on the backs of tuna he's fished from the waters of St. Margaret's Bay. It is his extended yard, his home, and his workplace. The house that shelters him from the wild seasonal shifts of coastal atmosphere rests next to the shore of the bay. Waves lapping on the rocks can be heard from his kitchen table.
People must be out there right now, lost in the dark water, clinging to life. The need to find the crash site, to find survivors and pull them from the sea, takes Bob hostage. Within minutes, he is kneeling at the bedside, telling his wife that a plane has crashed into water nearby and he needs to take the boat out and help however possible.
“But, Bob, what about our rule?”
“No, no. It'll take you too long to be ready. I can’t wait. Listen on the VHF and you’ll know what’s happening. You’ll know I’m OK.”
Bob rushes out the door and down the road to North West Cove, a thumbprint notch of shelter on the jagged edge of the peninsula where his boat is moored. At the dock, journalists hover, pecking at the other fishermen who've felt the same pull to help. The reporters with their camera crews want rides out to the crash site. Bob sets off without passengers, despite the rule he never go out by himself, and despite requests from the boat-less reporters on the dock. For some reason, he needs to do this alone.
*
David Wilkins, an ophthalmologist from California, and his wife, fly from their home in Loma Linda to Seattle for a visit with friends. They’ve already said goodbye to their youngest child, nineteen-year-old Monte, at the airport when he left to attend university in France. He’s flying to New York, then transferring to a flight bound for Geneva where he’ll spend a little time on his way to school. It's bittersweet. The kids have all left the nest and the parents accept their new freedom with equal measures of nostalgic longing and entitled excitement. They’re a happy and devout family ready for the next stage of independent togetherness.
*
John loads the car with his carefully packed bags. The sky is overcast and a thin rain blackens the pavement. The air smells of moldering leaves and wet stone. At the end of the driveway, he turns left onto Norvista Lane, away from his friends and beloved dogs. The drive to the main road leading to the city is hilly and narrow with twists and turns that trace the shape of the landscape. Scrubby underbrush and thin trees cling to the shoulders of the pavement. At the intersection of the coastal country road and the highway, he wonders which way to go. The instinct to head toward the crash site, where he imagines soon-to-be heroes are charging to the rescue, pulls at John. But what help could he give there? And where? I don't even know where the bloody thing went down! Better to be sensible, he decides, and turns the car toward town, his office, and the disaster manual he wrote years ago.
CBC Award-winning author Gina Leola Woolsey writes about people striving to find love, self-acceptance, and belonging in an ever-changing world. She left her corporate career mid-life to pursue an education in creative writing, earning a BFA from the University of British Columbia and an MFA from the University of King’s College. Currently, her time is split between her home in downtown Montréal, her birthplace in small-town Alberta, and her previous hometown, Vancouver.
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Fifteen Thousand Pieces: A Medical Examiner's journey through disaster
by Gina Leola WoolseyGuernica Editions, 2023On Wednesday, September 2nd, 1998, an international flight carrying 229 souls crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Nova Scotia. There were no survivors. By Friday, Sept 4th, thousands of dismembered body parts had come through Dr. John Butt's makeshift morgue in Hangar B at the Shearwater military base. The Chief Medical Examiner faced the most challenging and grisly task of his career. Five years prior to the plane crash, John had lost his prestigious job as Alberta’s Chief Medical Examiner. After 14 years of marriage, John began to think of himself as gay, but remained closeted professionally. Then, after serving a handful of years as Nova Scotia's Chief Medical Examiner, the devastating crash in Nova Scotia cracked his carefully constructed façade. Fifteen Thousand Pieces explores one man's journey to accept his true nature and find his place in the world. Chapters alternate between the fast-paced story of the crash, and the history of the man in the making. It is both fast-paced and introspective; gruesome and touching. Ultimately, it is the story of how death teaches us to live.
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May 7, 2024
Hello stranger
“How are you?” and/or, “Are you okay?”
(For real?!) “Where are the washrooms?”
Of course it matters who’s asking, too often by someone who imagines a relationship closer than the one we share, to which my silent response is, “none of your fucking business.” It’s actually offensive, anti-social, and begs what are they asking, for who and why (do they even care?). How many times have you shared something only to have someone you barely know return with a version unrecognizable: “Kirby, I heard…” “I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”
My mom, Suzanne would ask about things. My reply, “Are you sure you want to know the answer?” (“Maybe not.” “I’d tell you mom.” “No. You wouldn’t.” Laughter.)
I can tell you. I’m not doing well. (“And how are you this evening?”)
And, I can tell you exactly why I’m not doing well:
Because like you, the world is less & less recognizable to me, beginning with the streets where I live. Not only do I not feel safe, I’m not (especially on the TTC, which is unforgivable). It’s hard enough to get around, I muster and manage as called upon. It’s a courageous act (not a gift) to continue. She repeats herself. I know.
“I’m not happy.”
Suzanne would say, “So what?”
I don’t like where this is going and I’m tired (Reason #3, “She’s tired.”) of being a complainer on shuffle (“walk from pelvis, lift your knees”). Add to the growing chorus of groaners who may in fact have reason, I’d rather not.
I have food on my table and a roof over my head. Loving friends who invite/care. She’s surrounded by beauty. A stunning new collection out. Why do I feel destitute?
Well, for one thing, I am.
Still getting out from under debt just shy of swallowing me whole. Reaganomics killed my father (well, that and a carton of smokes a week). Thirty-plus years in sheet metal suddenly gone belly-up bankrupt. He couldn’t see his way out of it either. He was so lost he told me standing in the garage he’d sooner be dying from AIDS. While I knew that was some serious stinking thinking, I got he hit bottom seeking an exit. It’s not always the actual virus that kills.
I am now six years older than my dad.
Reason 4: She’s heartbroken. So much loss. Too much. The burning world. This bitter earth.
Because I cannot live the life I long for, and while I’m doing my best to continue, it’s not my first impulse or what I want. Life has finally (yet, again) knocked me on my ass.
I’ve made a practice of practising ease (“How might this be easier?”) for decades, only because my early years I romanticized “the struggle.” “Life is not easy” (for the homosexual). “This is going to be hard,” when in fact it may simply be different. Now, there’s actual struggle. Or have I circled back to that default approach in search of a familiar?
Suzanne, “You don’t ever want to grow old.”
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedAnd he drags himself to the cafés all day long, drags the weariness consuming his beauty. -@cavafybotCavafy detested aging, a vanity (understandable) accompanied by what is rarely discussed that of one’s sustenance being found midst the temples of men. A life of chosen servitude, devotion. I know, lived it well. My adoring eyes haven’t changed one iota, that high-beam remains on full, a willing satellite (but that’s alright). Only (in my instance) the drive. Fin. She’s fine with that. She still works their adorable Heinz 57 mutt look. Affections/tenderness suffice. I’ll meet you there.
I know I can do things differently. And I know not to wait around to “feel like it.” Decisions to be made (like it or not). Easier to take the walk than ponder it over to death. No, she doesn’t want to. (“I can’t go on. I go on.”) She can be a stubborn pretty Taurus.
Then, there’s that last line of Cavafy’s:
“life is not a tiresome stranger.”
And a tiresome stranger seems to have visited upon me. Taken up residence somehow. Pandemic leftovers? It may be death (I’m not afraid, my wish/want has never been longevity). I may in fact have one more round left in me. I can even barely begin to make out the leap involved. A stirring. (Or just gas! Laughter. There she is. Her belly.)
The will to do something completely different. May we all find it.
Meanwhile, salvation is at hand. The new Pet Shop Boys, “nonetheless” (their fifteenth studio album) is nothing less than brilliant. Sublime and just in time. Dance stars, dance.
Here’s the full poem by Cavafy (translated by Evan P. Jones):
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedAS BEST YOU CANIf you cannot live the life you long for, do your bestnot to lessen the one you havewith mundane distractionswith posturing and gossip.Do not lessen it by taking hold,turning around and exposing itto relationships that wallowin everyday nonsense:life is not a tiresome stranger. October 1913Send My Love to Anyone is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Kirby’s work includes she (KFB, 2024) Last Licks (Anstruther Press, 2024) Behold (2023), a stage adaption of Poetry is Queer (Palimpsest Press, 2021), What Do You Want to Be Called? (Anstruther Press, 2020), and This Is Where I Get Off (Permanent Sleep Press, 2019). Their column, The First Time is a regular feature at Send My Love To Anyone. They are the publisher at knife|fork|book. kirbyshe.comSupport Send My Love to AnyoneSupport Send My Love to Anyone by signing up for a monthly or yearly subscription, liking this post, or sharing it!
Big heartfelt thanks to all of the subscribers and contributors who make this project possible!
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