Poetry Contributor
Frances Boyle is a Canadian writer, raised on the prairies and living in Ottawa. She is the author of three books of poetry, most recently Openwork and Limestone (fall 2022), as well as Tower, a novella (2018) and Seeking Shade, a short story collection (2020). Frances’s poems and short stories have appeared in print and online magazines throughout North America and internationally. Twitter @francesboyle19.
Hannah Skewes
I haven’t watched a Robin Williams movie in five years.
Never mind wondering if I was the only one in my high school English class who
really loved What Dreams May Come when our teacher made us watch it
or growing up singing songs from Aladdin, screaming songs
because you ain’t never had a friend like me!
How many years has it been since watching the world scratch its head
over what exactly it was rattling around in that head of his?
How do you grieve someone you don’t know?
Anthony Bourdain has only ever been a vaguely familiar name to me,
and through all the Instagram eulogies and clamoring headlines,
I still don’t know that I know him, could or should have felt like I did.
But I can hear his words about privilege and getting the fuck over yourself
still chasing my questions about what he meant, and why he’s gone,
and it’s odd that I can only relate to him in this one way
when everyone else tells me he is worthy of all our anguish.
But again, how do you grieve someone you don’t know?
And then again, how do explain what you do know?
The recognition that the same fire that fuels the glint in his eyes,
the gleam of his smile, the burning speed of his wit
and his cadence and his energy and his everything,
can also be wild. Consuming. Violent. Lawless.
The same fire ripped from my belly and focused in the form
of a cold ring of steel on my scalp, scraping at the temple door,
a moment that ricochets around the shell of my skull
until I can’t even hope to find the origin point anymore,
or remember how many times I shook out the bullets
from the chamber of a revolver safer in the closet
than it could have ever been in my hand.
The proximity of a bullet to my brain feels like something,
something like proximity to famous dead men in the worst way,
something similar to what it must have felt like
right before it all ends for someone else you know
or want to know, or think you know, or thought you knew.
And the therapist tells me, you have to grieve for yourself too, the person
you thought you were before you can empty your precious head
of all these damning, haunting, intractable things.
But please, how do you grieve for someone you don’t know?
Colette Tennant
My best friend Cindy, with silky blonde hair,
and I, with softball dust under my fingernails,
left our mothers in the room
and strutted our first two-piece bathing suits
past the Cabana Motel pool. Before we
reached Daytona’s white sand, we both
noticed the lifeguard, silver whistle
tapping his heroic chest,
his bare brown shoulders
shining in all of their glory.
We let the warm Atlantic pick up our newly-teenaged
hips, tilt them toward the summer solstice,
quick smiles, sand between our teeth,
surprise gulps of salt.
Everything was thrumming—the red biplane
leashed to its Coppertone banner, the beach scooters,
Beatles all young and flirty and hand-holding sweet,
transistor radio surfer girl devotions, the shhh, shhh, shhh
as the lip of waves thinned out on shore.
We were all surprised when our motel lifeguard asked me
(not Cindy with her blonde hair and dancer’s legs)
to a movie with a bunch of friends.
In the car, I noticed the sun-bleached hairs
shimmering on his tanned legs, and I thought of
Lester Duncan, my third-grade boyfriend,
who came over to my house one day,
and I just kicked him in the shins all afternoon.
My first-date-lifeguard-boyfriend drove us to a
round house on a remote part of the beach,
no friends, no movie theater, no pay phone.
The useless quarter my mother insisted I take
rubbed against the bare sole in my sneaker.
When he opened the door,
I could see two things in the lonely room—
a mussed-up mattress and a surf board.
I asked if we go for a walk on the beach.
It was all like taking a gulp of water when I expected 7-Up.
I talked him into taking me back to the motel.
I can’t remember what we said on the return trip.
That time of night, out on the beach, tiny albino crabs
dive for cover in the early sunsets on that Eastern edge of land.
He said he’d see me up to the room and shoved into the elevator.
I watched the white numbers tick off brighter and brighter,
then everything jerked black as nightshade
and his chest pinned me to the back wall.
I wriggled loose, hit any button I could find on the panel,
ran until I got inside our room.
Decades later I found out escalators kill more people
than great white sharks. The two year old
who grabs ahold of the moving handrail on the wrong side,
and it dangles his feet higher and higher
until he thinks he’s flying.
The hem of a skirt three inches too long
caught in the teeth of one greedy step.
Kyla Houbolt
1. Fruit Parade
Once a man courted me by bringing me round fruits. He started with a single grape and
worked up to a watermelon.
The next day I left town.
I wonder if the size of the fruits would have started to diminish then, there being no fruit
bigger than a watermelon. Or perhaps he would have started bringing me some other set
of gifts. Or he might have escalated, made some proposal. Had I been the kind of person to stay, I would have said yes, and that would have made us both miserable. So I did him a favor by disappearing at the end of the fruit parade.
But I’ll never know now what he would have done next.
And the sad thing is, he wasn’t even the reason I left. My story was going west, and he was just a forgotten footnote.
2. Cowards
There was the time the FBI came to visit. We were on the unshaded porch of a DC rowhouse on a sticky summer noon, talking about how to make bombs. Learning about bombs was what we thought we needed to do to be the change, like the man said.
The FBI were three men in three-piece suits who wanted to talk to us and be our friends. They showed us badges. They had a picture of Bernadine Dorn and kept looking from it, to me, to it, to me, asking each other “is it her?”
My roommate kept saying “go away, we don’t want to talk to you.” I just stared at them, noticing they did not sweat. Vests. Ties. Jackets. No sweat. It was maybe 98 degrees out there.
They finally left after about ten minutes of this. We went inside and burned our bomb-making notes over the toilet.
3. One Way to Go
Driving past a trailer park that had a marquee. RIP. Somebody’d died there, they were going to miss him, it said.
Right down the way, a Dollar Tree, and a little bit further a Circle K advertised “Good Pizza Made Here”.
I turned to my sister and said, “Person could live in that trailer park, walk to the Dollar Tree for the groceries, to the Circle K for a treat once in a while, and when you die they put your name on the marquee, say RIP, they’ll miss you. What more could I need? Take me back,” laughing, “Okay”, then we passed a big cemetery and I said “And when you die they can just…” and we both cracked up and she said “Yeah and buy your plastic flowers at Dollar Tree, keep them on the kitchen table until…”
Driving past the cemetery, tears running, laughing about this, home in the hot afternoon.
RIP William Bryant, thanks for the laugh. Hope it was
a good life.
Kunjana Parashar
Giant ceiling-fans whirr on mechanically, barely staving off the sweat
that begins to collect at our pits like bodies of saltwater. Think
of all the mangoes, I tell myself. Coolies pass by—their necks
shining with the cruelty of heat, while new mothers behind them,
hold their babies like uncomfortable packages, dupatta falling.
I try to remember the good of summer still: two ruddy shelducks
with their loud honking in the sky. Rosemallows with their green hips
swinging in the breeze. Endless glasses of thandai and sherbets on my
forehead like rain. But the wheels of old trains turn so loud I want to
grease them myself.
Ivy Monte
We are in love with one another—
The sun and myself,
Rare are occasions
For us to meet;
By nature`s folly though
We are to walk our separate roads;
Like harsh guards
Tolerating no fuss
Clouds stand between us.
The sun and myself—
Like two secret lovers
Stealing precious moments,
Never knowing when
Our chance comes again.
Sometimes cautious sunrays
Hide behind the clouds,
Waiting for the moment
Right for edging out.
Suddenly they part the clouds,
Dazzling light sweeps all around,
I feel rays upon my skin—
Like a thousand passionate kisses
They embrace me,
Fulfilling all wishes.
Dani Putney
I knew he was dangerous: horn-rimmed glasses, PBR in hand, dirty-blond hair ascending his forearms. It was like a film negative of the day I met Cody.
“Let me pay for your coffee,” Cody said, grabbing my tiny wrist. I counted the dandelions on his hands and tried to follow them toward his chest. Did he catch my gaze?
Kyler knew I was looking. I can never hide when I’m drunk. I also can’t help but melt in front of an unruly beard and pair of metallic spectacles. I felt the radiating flush of my half-Asian cheeks.
“I’m Kyler,” he said, as if I hadn’t eavesdropped on his conversations all night. “What are you drinking? Let me guess … you’re a Bud Light guy. You look like you have some country in you.”
“Spot on,” I sputtered. I was obvious. He was obvious. We both knew where we had to go next.
*
Inside his car, he cupped my crotch with his rough palm. “Just tell me when to stop, and I will.”
“Cody and I are done,” I replied.
“Still, I don’t want you to regret anything.”
I lunged, hoping he would shut up. My tongue had never failed me before. I bit his lower lip—not my first rodeo—men love it when I make them bleed a little.
The windows started to fog. The familiar symphony of panting, shuffling bodies, and inadvertent groans overtook us. This was my coda.
He reached to remove his glasses, but I clutched his hand. “Leave them on.”
A simper. I thought I’d let that smile do anything to me. Let me be your bottom. Stick your fingers in my mouth.
*
Ever the egalitarian, I proposed 69. We shared salt on his bed. I was surprised at how hairy he was: chest, legs, penis. If Cody was an otter, Kyler was a bear. I wasn’t sure I liked it.
He exploded. I followed. Our semen decorated his bedsheets like queer postmodern performance art—Carolee Schneemann’s “Meat Joy” paled in comparison.
“Want to shower?” he asked.
“Sure, let me wipe off all this cum first.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of you.”
*
I entered his small bathroom. When I turned on the showerhead, he placed a cold hand on my waist. Lightning bolted throughout me.
“Can I wash you?” he asked.
“No, I prefer to clean myself, thanks.”
We began our shower in silence. I remembered scrubbing Cody’s back, his tan, sunscreen-laden neck repelling water. Something had always seemed off. I didn’t like to do it, but he wanted me to.
“Hey, I’ve changed my mind,” I said. “Can you clean me up?”
He simpered and navigated his loofah across my body. This was his second exploration—above the waist. I didn’t have to look behind me to sense his erection.
Even with the water steaming, my lungs felt frigid.
