Indholdsfortegnelse for Issue 172: Bad Behaviour - Fall 2024 i The New Quarterly

“DEAR ISABEL HUGGAN,” I FINALLY WROTE IN AN EMAIL IN MARCH 2020, back when we feared we might lose all our elders in one fell swoop of the virus. I’d wanted to write for a while. I explained that we’d grown up in the same small town, exactly forty years apart, which was where I first encountered The Elizabeth Stories, her award-winning 1984 book of short fiction. My English teacher had sent us home with the book and instructions to read only the first story. Even in the late 1990s, a faint whiff of scandal still surrounded the book, which followed the coming-of-age of Elizabeth Kessler in the fictive town of Garten, a place akin to Elmira, Ontario, our hometown. That suggestion of controversy—which could only mean sex—had perked my…

THOSE TASKED WITH THE RESPONSIBILITY FOR JUDGING LITERARY AWARDS AND prizes often preface their eventual decision by implying that it goes without saying how difficult the process was, only to then spend several paragraphs or pages explaining just that. I will avoid that temptation and mention one way in which it was made easy—blind judging. Not knowing who wrote a poem means that you are not intimidated by extensive publication lists, the sometimes formidable reputation of the writer, or the accusations of nepotism should you publish someone you know among the allegedly insular Can-lit community. The occasions featured in the almost 500 poems submitted this year ranged as usual between celebration and sorrow, lamentation and love, but many, like those of the winner and runners up, seemed more like incidental…

In 1942, the Government of Canada allowed Japanese-Canadian adults to bring 150 pounds of luggage when they were taken by train to live in internment camps for the next three years. Ask an elder. Ask someone old.Learn to fold clothes you can wear for morethan one season, for more than one life. Same for shoes,shirts. Whatever you choose must last for a week, months, yearsperhaps. It appears even hope mustfit in a suitcase. Don’t trust where you’re taken, whereyou’ll be sent. Enemy Alien, don’t dare ask. Take 150 poundsin total. And, yes, it sounds heavy, the weight of one person dividedby law. Just keep children provided with toys, games, a gentle lieso they won’t see panic packed in your eye when they look up and askwhere are we going? It’s…

Boats and cars and televisionsdrills and dolls and dryers.Vegetable slicers that sliveredonions and radishesso thin we could almostsee through them. Sample cupsof spring green peasand a new breakfast cereala rainbow of sweet puffy Os. People snatched up booklets and brochures.I held the glossy paper to my faceinhaled the fresh-ink smellof possibility.A skinny doll in a zebra-striped bathing suitI might one day play with. A high up bedwith a desk underneath where I might one daysleep and do homework. A silver-streakedred car I might one day driveits taillights like cat’s eyes. A sea of gawking humanityjostling bumping knocking togetherlike molecules heating up. Suddenlymy forearmthe soft partstung. A bee? Beside memy motherraised her cigaretteto her lips. No smokecurled from its end.Where my skin had metthe once red-hottipa blisterwas already forming. Sorry, I…

i Yes, I purchased a space beside your fatherin the columbarium. But, I no longer wishto spend eternity stored in a slot,cut into cold marble. ii Don’t confine my ashes to an urnor claim portions for memorial lockets. Churn every charred remanent into friable soil,beneath a youthful tree. One in a ManitobaMaple grove of intertwined roots nourishedby rotting leaves. iii Mark the spot with three feathers (from myscrapbook on the third shelf of the den bookcase,squeezed between family albums and poetry books). Forego a memorial plaque. iv Let winds lift and soar those feathers away. v In lieu of a visit to my burial site,take a moment to marvelat maple keys pirouettingto earth to birth saplingsand feed beetles.…

SITTING AROUND THE DINING ROOM TABLE, TAYLOR GRAHAM, PAMELA MULLOY, Scout Ruppe, and I made our way through a box of scones, a plate of grapes, and a tall stack of short stories. It was my first time following the adjudication process from beginning to end, and the process challenged my conception of what makes a story work. I had to look at the writing in a different way, with a closer lens and language distinct from what I would normally use. It is hard to say what makes a short story good even when limiting your focus to what is happening on the page; harder still is articulating how some stories have the power to speak to us with greater depth, to reach into us, to challenge or examine…

“DO YOU KNOW WHERE SONIA IS?” THE BILLBOARD THAT TOWERED OVER the farmer’s field outside of town read in big bold letters. “You” was underlined, as if anyone who saw it wouldn’t be aware that the message was aimed towards them. In the many years since it had been placed there, the surrounding trees had overtaken it, so that people driving in and out of town on the highway could now only see her dark eyes peering out from behind the foliage. Sonia herself was a pretty teenage girl. She had deep brown eyes that appeared almost black and long brown hair, which was plastered across the billboard. If the weathered surface wasn’t enough of an indication that Sonia had been missing for quite some time, her outdated jewelry, outfit…

If a man never contradicts himself, the reason must be that he virtually never says anything at all.—Erwin Schrödinger The front room was quiet, lit by a small wood-panelled box. Everything seemed larger in the glow of the television—the high-ceilinged rooms, Frankenstein’s watchtower laboratory, the stolen brain from a nearby medical school—all pressing in until I couldn’t feel the brick mantle where I sat in front of my parents’ fireplace. On screen, Colin Clive’s scientist-doctor manically paced around a set filled with everything from test tubes to Erlenmeyer flasks to surgical instruments, and soon he reached out to tame the lightning surging overhead as if it sponsored life itself. A fateful bolt reanimated his creature. After the strike, it was Clive’s shout—‘It’s alive!’—that resonated in me, its bellow echoing like…

FOREVER And on his next-to-last day ever—(though Tom did not know it—as none of us do—)standing before the tapestry in the Musée de Cluny,the one they hung, in replica, on their wall, at the foot of their stairs—seeing again its red and blue threads,its Lady stopped, looking out, protected by the circlinggarden wall, and the tender gaze of the unicorn unknown hands in Flanders had woven—there, on his last evening ever—finding,perhaps, in this forever medieval figure, his dead wife…And at that moment the following morning when suddenly he tripped at the top of the stairsin his hotel while coming down to breakfastand fell twelve battering steps to the bottom,breaking his brain— never waking again—I hope, at that instant of taking off,he, too, found comfort—knowing, thoughhe was going, that something stayed.…

“ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT PAIN PORN?” MY STUDENT IS INQUISITIVE, HER hand up in the air, alert and engaged. It is 2017 and I am mid-lecture, pontificating on the concept of the tortured artist as it applies to writers—an image the world often seems intent on recreating and I hope to reframe. We are meant to suffer, writhe through career abysses dank with anxiety over withering markets, competition for agents, publication deals. Ebooks will be the end of us. The Internet is a dearth to intelligence. And say goodbye to those precious indie bookstores…they will soon be no longer. I blink back at her, the stark lights of the lecture hall focused on my face. “Pain porn?” “You know, as a society, it’s about how we crave reading about and…

TNQ (SAY IT THREE TIMES QUICKLY...) The New Quarterly is grateful to the institutions and individuals who support our work: to St. Jerome’s University which houses us; to the University of Waterloo in conjunction with the Ontario Student Assistance Program for paying our student interns; to St. Jacob’s Printery for services various; to our Board of Directors and our many volunteers extraordinaire, both in the editorial ranks and in the office; to Carolyn & Bill Pegg for countless hours spent organizing and running charity bingo sessions on our behalf; to the funders of our contest prizes—the late Edna Staebler, the family of Nick Blatchford, and the English Department at St. Jerome’s University; to our funders at the national, provincial, and municipal level (listed on our masthead); and to the many…

THERE IS BAD BEHAVIOUR THAT IS TRULY, OBJECTIVELY BAD, AND THERE IS BAD behaviour that appears bad, to some at least, but otherwise might be a form of truth-telling. The truly bad—racist spewing, unrepentant violence—that populate our screens is so relentless that we’ve almost become immune to it. We live in a world where the good/bad dichotomy is almost the norm, so that it’s hard to get to some form of truth, to peel back the layers and see a more considered perspective. Where has all the nuance gone? I wonder. This is the role, and dare I say, the balm of literature. When we can read stellar essays like the Edna Staebler Personal essay contest winner “The Isabel Letters” from Geoff Martin where through email correspondence, he developed a…

I TAKE THE LEFT TURN COMING OUT OF THE PARK TOO FAST. MY BIKE TRAILER TIPS, I sail over my handlebars and land on the right-hand side of my forehead just above the hairline, then flip over onto my back. There is hardly a scratch on my bike helmet, though this spot will become the epicentre of the headaches that will plague me for years to come. Shock and super-mom adrenalin carry me through. I leap up to make sure my four-year old is okay (he is). I comfort him and, being Martha, I get back on the bike. My kiddo to daycare, me to my meeting. The second accident happens on my ride home: a passing cyclist t-bones me as I go to make a left turn. The fall…

Dear lover, you’re upon the five-metre springboarda slender man with the chestof an athlete, water streamingdown thighs and fingers. You step back, spring forward,fling your body airborne, armsoutspread, each muscleroped and shining. Suspended, you hangat the apex, a strange amalgamof instant and everlasting. Revelations come to me.Isn’t this how angelshang, aerialand sculpted? You tear the water’s surface– things are always tearingand coming together – stroke to the side and hoistyourself out, the waterin blushing rills downcalves and shoulders, pooledat wrists and elbows. The water in this pool is warm.You walk unshiveringto jump again. I swim on my back, watchingyour silhouette climband descend.…

There is no better time to see the starsthan garbage eve. The trucks will trundlein the morning, to sweep away bottlesand bundles of paper in their weekly way,but now is hermetic, a moment of magic,just me and the silent sky. Sharp chills tightenmy old body, there’ll be snow before dawn, but now,clear skies, reliable Orion winking down, alwaysthere, crossing the sky from morning to night,providing confluence of all my selvesand their steppings-out, away from life, TV,into the quiet of garbage eve.There’s a few deep thrums, cars goingsomewhere and a streetcar shudders, butotherwise, just me, in my grubby gardeningcoat, and memories merge to a fuller flowof ordinary love, first you, then babies sleepinginside, then grown, then people lost. I talkto them, there’s always the chance they canhear me here, outside, just…

She is a soothsayer coaxingimages to screen, translatingthe codex of black and white smudges: darkmuscle, bright bone, inky fluid wavering like aurora borealis in the pitch.Cool sapphire gelatin spreadacross the expanse—her sterilewand plumbs the fathoms, digs at humus, subsoil, bedrock unearthingstrange objects in the shape of lucky clover,an Adonis Blue Butterfly at rest.Her words come like a balm, a salve slathered upon us, the clinicalspace fills up with the odourof bursting buds, clean clouds,black awakened soil in new spring: Oh, look at the beautiful four-chamberedheart and the well inserted cord.…

at the end of the eighth feedingshe drifts offto sleep and I placeher beside meon her spot on our bedwhich is alwaysoutlined by her blanket.she curls into herselfcomma-like.her backa slow, arched bowthe curve of a questionposed to me. I force my armsto relax, force fingersto unclenchgrab my journalbreathingair that’s as heavy aswater tonight. through my half-open eyesthe page is a glareis a slice of sharp throbbinggravity’s collapsingmy rusted hinges; she whimpersasleep, ripples then settles. I wantto feed the blankpaper, to writebut her feet restagainst meshe’s on her sideshe’s not supposedto be on her side emptied drawnmy grip waverson the cold pen thathoversabovepageunable to conjurewhat’s second-nature hesitant letters don’tremember their(they are) words.…

Love is like Life—merely longer— Emily Dickinson WE HAD A DEAD MOTHER AND A GOOD FATHER. HE MADE OUR MEALS AND snacks, brushed our teeth, gathered our hair into ponytails, took us to school and tucked us in at bedtime. He read us stories, every book in the house, twice, three times—the Little Golden Books, Shel Silverstein, Beatrix Potter and the Narnia series. After that, our good father said, “Again?” but we begged him for new stories; we begged him to tell us stories of our dead mother. My little sister Elizabeth and I pleaded and pouted until he said, “Okay, but this is not a happy story. It goes like this.” Delighted, we clutched each other beneath the blankets, twisted our nightgowns between our toes, closed our eyes, and…

In Another’s Country Exploring the world, you’dconduct “the civilizationtest”—arrive at a foreignhotel, open the phone book,check for our surname. Mother’s rush to breakfast,attempting not to sit nearanyone brown, triggeryour loud tirade about“visual pollution.” Ashamed, I’d sit alone.You’d later call me worsethan stupid slut, slursthat still writhe beneathmy skin. Father, I’m movedto pity. Travelledso far, saw nothing,learned nothing—only trespassed. Blitz All night in your child’s bed you prayedto keep the bombs that rattled the windowsfrom falling nearer, prayed as fires hurled redwaves at the panes, voice a quiver belowthe eerie thrum thrum thrum of enemy planes,explosions that deafened with a great rendingsound like tearing silk. Come morning,silence. No one ever spoke of the twistedmetal trams, of the bowl with no dog, of the girl,long hair swishing in a burst water main.From…

EARLY MORNING. TWO MEN, ONE IN PAJAMAS THE OTHER WITH HIS COAT STILL on as though he has just arrived, sit in the dining area of a small apartment. The whole place has the false-front insubstantiality of a stage set. In the bedroom, the top drawer of the dresser hangs open, bulging with papers. A stove, refrigerator and some cupboards make up the kitchen; a flimsy, maple table and four chairs, to the right of the kitchen, the dining room. A complicated mess of paper mache, fine wire gauze and toothpicks that looks like a garden, covers most of the balcony. The man in the coat reads silently from several sheaves of paper and has to peel each one away from his sticky fingers as he finishes it. “She left…

SATURDAY AFTERNOON, DARRYL FOUND PATSY ON THE BED, NAKED, WATCHING the vast, blue-veined expanse of her belly ripple and twist. He stayed in the doorway, half hard at the sight of her. The outline of a tiny foot was suddenly visible, pushing out of her side, then gone. Like something out of fucking Alien, he wanted to say. Would she find that funny? He couldn’t be sure these days. God, she was a whale. That he knew not to say. He didn’t mean it in a bad way, just he was amazed at the size of her. She went on about how fat she was but it wasn’t fat. He’d gone out with this bigger girl once. She’d been soft. Pats wasn’t soft. Her gut was hard. She didn’t hardly…

Mary so fricking full of grace coming outof the Pizzaville, red envelopes of longing, and the bald dude with the ponytail,emitting his wreaths of smoke. Blessed be the burgersflying out the window, the salted, muddy lot,the fluorescence, flags flapping from each shit-kicker truck.Pray for us in this hour of our scraping by, in this hour of ourice-cream cone together in the car. Hail this, this all-I-can-do,in the slow hour of her going.…

WHEN I MET DAN, I CALLED MY BEST FRIEND AND DESCRIBED HIM AS A RARE celestial event, Halley’s Comet, the Big Bang. I told her how we bought artisanal ice cream and promenaded our way through City Park, the only green in Kelowna’s desert heat. How an old guy on a scooter had tried to sell us cheap weed and how Dan had offered to buy me some. The air blowing hot against my skin, his hand on my back. A month later, in July, I told her we were still seeing each other and hooking up on weekends, occasionally during the week. Nothing long-term. In September I would move up to Quesnel for my first teaching job, and Dan would conclude his stint in the satellite office, drive back…

WHAT MAKES A STRONG PERSONAL ESSAY? WHAT EXPERIENCES DO WE PUT TO pen and reconstruct creatively in essay form? These two questions guided my own reading and evaluation for the 2024 Edna Staebler Personal Essay. The first, a critical question, and the other, one that arose out of fascination with the variety of personal stories shared, expanding the confines of the essay genre. These two questions also guided the adjudication meeting. I’ve been lucky enough to engage more with non-fiction in the last couple of years professionally as an editor and critical reader, and I was joined with established and esteemed authors and readers Pamela Mulloy, Alister Thomas, and Tasneem Jamal. The four of us engaged in a dynamic conversation about personal essays guided by the longlist we had accumulated.…

WHEN I MENTION I’M TAKING A TOUR TO THE CAUCASUS, THE FIRST QUESTION I generally get is “Where’s that?” Between the Black and Caspian Seas, I say, hands rising and separating. Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia. The next question is usually “Why?” Then I rush on to explain, as briefly as I can, that my grandfather served there in the First World War, when the Caucasus were part of the Russian Empire fighting the Ottoman Empire, which was allied with Germany. He was a medic, I say, he worked on the trains carrying wounded men away from the front, the Caucasus front, that is, today’s Turkey, and all that time he was writing letters to my grandmother, his fiancée, 141 letters that we still have, translated by an aunt, and there are…

Moist earth walls stave off the dryingand darkness the sprouting. Wood shelves keep the food pure;a north-facing wall shunts off the sun’s heat. The cellars are like earthen forts dug into the rocky ground,one hundred and thirty-five in all. Inside, it’s hard to stop the bivvering—it’s so cold and damp, even at the height of summer. Row upon row,potatoes, carrots, cabbages— the root vegetables that survive here,take their rest on the rough shelves. They’re kept apart from the mushrooms, the tomatoes, andthose blueberries gathered in our dippers each fall— clear of the gas those grander crops leak outin the close earthen chambers. And I dream about my body,preserved here at that perfect temperature,never less than zero, never more than four point five. Perfect for harvest at the end of our…

“Love is like that. It knocks on doors and urges you to vote.”—Sue Goyette, Ocean We used to gather at polling stationsas if at hockey games. We heckled the opposition when they checked usfrom behind, and jeered their fans who overburdened our coliseum’s general seating.We cheered the underdog. But elbows began to fly from benches far beyond our reach.As passivists we never punched back. We collected up our gear and left it,unclean, in our hockey bags. It held the stench of our factory’s sweat, souredlike tuna on rye left in a lunchbox over a May long weekend. We were provokedand pessimistic. Unwilling to be mayhem and incapable of being merriment,we elected to be malaise. In coffeehouses we chewed over maple-glazed complaints and caffeinated our apathy. We spent summers on the…

The song-gatherer and I passharp-shaped hills, greensheep-shorn to velvet,cross a burnto a stone croft anda smoky rooma hobgoblin Pictsharply hospitablejudges with flinty eyes he will not sing for usuntil the gathererlines out an old balladWe walked down by the cloudy lochthen, reedy and quaveringhe singshis creaking voice findingancient melody and rhymethe slaughtered babesthe bloodthe banished love I sink to a three-legged stoolknees to chestthe satin intimacy of curvesworn by all the buttocksof the long-decayed dead all the silent walk backred sun behind uswe burn in his furyand still breathethe heather-scented air…

To Emily on her 25th birthday. I type Em andam corrected to Elm. I grinbecause Em is like a tree, and the elm is wind-pollinated. Planted by a breath.She makes a home of any soil, nomatter the pH, the floodwater, the scoffof the sun, the smoke clouds, the saltedocean front. See her interlocking grain, herresistance to splitting. See her becomea wagon wheel hub, become a drumfor she bends well. Become the keelof a ship, gifting strength and balance. Bendinto the curve of a bow, bendinto a rope swing, liltingin a willow. A plow, tilling the soilin thanksgiving. The elm resists decay, hollowedto draw water from the groundswell,becoming a river runningover. The Romans planted elms beside grapes,rested the vines on her branches.Ulmus amat item, vitis non dessert ulmim.The elm loves the…

MY BROTHER IS PREGNANT. IT STARTED WITH SEASICKNESS WITHOUT THE SEA, then a hunger for pickled guava followed by a wistfulness for bunting and booties. “I told you not to drink the water here.” “I didn’t! All I’ve had is Coca-Cola.” “Coke all day—that explains it.” When his tummy grew, he ached with a blend of pain and pleasure. Finally, I took him and my Thai phrase book to the E.R. After two hours of bad translation, we were taken to the ultrasound room. The radiologist looked at my brother, his big bump and then my bloodshot eyes (from Johnny Walker and no sleep). “You sure no eat bad thing? My cousin big tummy after eating food with maggots.” I didn’t think she was helping as my brother cringed and…

Untethered O to be standing at the edgeof City Park in the rampantgreen of summer again, the breezeunremarkable, the traffichectic yet unnoticed,the regular appointmentat the medical centre in the future(if only by a few minutes)while a stillnessdescended around us,along with the driftingsound of distant bells,and I lifted my headin a momentary ecstasyof pure wonder and askedDo you hear those bells?before the dull edge of memorynudged me to recallit was just my new cell phoneand I scrabbled in my baglaughing, hopingI might answer it beforethat lovely ringing ceased,tying me once againto the rush and the worryand the everythingI still carry. Unbecoming My son swore off wateringtrees last summerafter the skeletal faceof a grimacing mousesurged to the openingof the black plastic pipewe’d planted with the treeto better reach its roots.I shivered when…

NEXT TO A PHOTO OF TWO GRIZZLIES IN COITUS, THE BROCHURE’S HEADING was bold. “Accredited sex shaman and wildlife photography guide,” Camille read. I eyed it with hesitation. The brochure was thin, cheaply laminated, and littered with photos of fighting bears and scenic campsites. Its taglines promised wild sexual awakenings and bearly-legal fun. A photo of the guidemaster took up the entire back page. He stood shirtless next to a bonfire. Three nude campers danced around it. “The guy at the travel agency sent six couples there just last year.” “And it worked for them?” “He thought so.” Camille took back the brochure and flipped through the pages again. “We can get in touch with nature.” “Nature?” I questioned “A void of humanity,” she explained. I looked out our apartment…

O NE GREY AFTERNOON AS SHE STOOD READING IN THE NONFICTION NEW releases section of the public library, Ruth experienced an epiphany. The cause of this unexpected revelation was a book which extolled the benefits of döstädning—Swedish Death Cleaning. From what Ruth could gather, this involved downsizing your home and your life so loved ones won’t have to dispose of your clutter when you die. The more she read, the more excited she became. She checked out the book and walked home in the April rain, twirling her umbrella and brimming with purpose. She read all afternoon and into the evening. It had been ages since she had felt so invested in an idea. This would be more than routine spring cleaning—it would be freeing. Transformational. Life-changing. It’s time, she…

I AM UNDECIDED ABOUT MY FEELINGS FOR GUILLAUME. THE WORD ‘FEELINGS’ IS an overstatement. ‘Intrigue’ might be closer to the truth. The little I know about Guillaume intrigues me. For example, what does a Frenchman like him do in Budapest? Why is he single, and more importantly, never married? How old is he? If I were to guess, I’d say that he is in his early fifties. But perhaps I’m being unkind. There is a fair chance that he is in his late forties, or the same age as me. Does it even matter? But how come a man of his age has no children? Does he want children? Does he like children? What’s his story? What’s his problem? And why do I suddenly seem to care, when these questions…

Elise Arsenault is a poet, musician, and creative nonfiction writer in Hamilton, Ontario. Renée D. Bondy’s short story “The Explosion” appeared in the Spring 2022 issue of The Humber Literary Review Spotlight. Her début novel, [non]disclosure, was recently released by Second Story Press. Richard Brait is a corporate lawyer living in Toronto. He won the 2021 Gwendolyn MacEwen Poetry Competition and placed 2nd in the 2023 Dr. William Henry Drummond Poetry Competition. Lilian Brussé lives in Toronto and is currently a student at Etobicoke School of the Arts. She has had work featured in the Flash Forward Incubator, as well as the Arts Etobicoke gallery. Dora Dueck is the award-winning author of three novels, a short fiction collection, and most recently, a book of nonfiction, Return Stroke: essays & memoir.…