The New Quarterly Issue 171: Who's to Blame? - Summer 2024

WHEN OUR DAUGHTER WAS SEVEN, SHE CAME INTO THE KITCHEN, WHERE I was waiting to take her to school, and slapped a piece of paper on the counter. She told me I needed to sign it before disappearing to get her coat on. The paper was from the school, an official document from the office with words that indicated she was in trouble. When I turned it over, I saw a series of drawings in boxes that was clearly her work: first image a stick girl and stick boy; next image the boy’s hand on the girl’s head; next image another stick girl appears with her hands on the boy’s shoulder. I was struggling to follow the narrative. When I asked her about it, she said that the boy had…

I’VE BEEN A CLOSET POET FOR DECADES. Writing poetry feels to me like a dangerous, delicious pleasure, an indulgent but necessary form of creative expression, a dirty little secret, and one I would’ve happily kept to myself, were it not for the big cardboard box sitting under my desk, haunting me. That box contains the only evidence of the thirty years my aunt spent living in a notorious residential hospital. In the 1960s Canadian writer, journalist and broadcaster, Pierre Berton, opened a national conversation about the mistreatment of disabled adults through his exposure of an institution known as, The Asylum for Idiots, (later, Huronia “home” for the developmentally delayed.) Despite Berton’s CBC documentary coverage, Huronia and its “overflow” sister institutions, Cedar Springs near Blenheim, and the Oxford Regional Centre (ORC)…

I swing at thickets of poison ivy with this garden toolthat’s not really a sickle but good enough to clear a pathbehind the swimming pool where the neighbour’s kid got a rash on his legs worse than anything his mother’sseen in all her years of nursing. So now I must domesticatethis overgrowth nobody goes near except that boy who caused an awkward tension in our neighborhood.I swing through ivy, ferns and something calledstinging nettle and then I hear a ping, feel it in my wrists, that thwack of rock and metal. Among the thornsas thick as witches’ fingernails; a polished blockof granite etched in Gothic Font. A woman who lived just twenty years lies beneath my feet, her body on a bedof satin, or, more likely, wrapped in shower curtain.We…

Creatures of the Field A scent of wild roses, yet I seeno roses, nor rosebushes, nor hipshanging red. A small garter snakeat first just a glimpse of movementin the grass, then its striped lengthcorkscrews away from my foot. The greens, the greens. And tomatoand sunflower with their primaryjolts, small pastel daisies. The windruffling the willow. Revelationspoke through my memories, a slimshape sidewinding through stems. Have I ever held my own shed skin,wondered at the length of it, how itcurls and coils in drying, becomes apale rustling husk I might preservein a linen press? Fine woolen ghostscarry a waft of roses in their folds. Can I make tea or jelly from the rosehips,bottle that phantom waft of fragrance?Denial is a folding, hospital-corneredso small traumas will lie flat, slideinto drawers, tuck neatly…

FOLLOWING A COLOUR-CODED BARRAGE, THE DAY’S SQUARE IN AMI’S CALENDAR held a single word. SABBATICAL, pencilled in her teacher-quality capital letters. An unfamiliar anxiety slithered up her back. Even as an adult, the academic year had persisted in governing her time. When she was being honest with herself, she knew that it was as much a comfort as a frustration. The iron-clad structure began to soften with the warmth of the steeping coastal sun and in the diminishing expectations of those around her. Sitting alone in her dusty bedroom, Ami found herself in a season out of time. Unlike all the days before, packed full of grant applications and seminars and field hours, she didn’t have any responsibility. The confines that held her seemed to warp. In anticipation of this…

SARAH HAS BEEN DEAD FOR A WHILE BY THE TIME I ARRIVE AND SAM SITS IN A crumpled heap on the floor. I was hoping she’d call me for this. The second the phone rang I grabbed my shoes. “I’m so sorry,” I say, putting my hand on Sam’s shoulder. “You gave her a really good life.” Sam looks up at me, scowls, and swats my hand away. “Fuck you, Gwen. Sarah was a guy.” “He, then,” I say, correcting myself. “You gave him a really good life.” I lean over to inspect the goldfish floating upside down in the water like a bloated cigarette butt and pick up a chopstick. I poke at him gently, turning him over in the bowl in search of a tiny little orange penis…