Indholdsfortegnelse for Issue 173: On Ceremony - Winter 2025 i The New Quarterly

IT’S BEEN SIX YEARS AND 359 DAYS SINCE SARAH AND MY BEST FRIEND JUNE Courtoreille died falling from a tree at a high school party. It’s been six years and 171 days since Sarah kissed me after she found me sobbing under a tree on New Year’s Eve and our friendship became something more. It’s been 6 days and 15 hours since that relationship was torn from my hands and ripped apart like a week-old newspaper you use as kindling. The fire born from it will warm her while it disintegrates me. “Lucy, are you listening?” My mother’s voice breaks the silent hum of the vehicle as we speed down the highway. I press my forehead harder into the glass of the passenger window, watching the green fields and forests…

You might look back with longing/To the Weightlessness, the elemental,/Of the early years—Rebecca Elson, “The Red Balloon” I can only see her feetfrom the gym cornerwhere I sit, a conduitwired to earbudsplaying “Roygbiv” through wavesof analogue synthconnecting neurons,feelingthe shape of spacein oscillationsof trampolinesand with each springlighttrails from her feet,beats the taut drumof gravityinto a lensthat translates heavyinto levityand as she bouncesthrough the circuit, I am a balance beamof prideand ache that one dayshe’ll stop checkingto see if I’m watchingbefore she sprintsto the straddle jump,yet on this Tuesdaywe breathethe same sound-lightas she runswholehearted,hair flying,sparking energythat buoys the airshe leaps…

THE HOUSE WITH THE CROSS IS JUST DOWN THE ROAD, A STANDARD OLD yellow-brick farmhouse with a lumpy clapboard addition. From Mara and Tennessee’s back porch, it’s an easy sightline across the north field to the yard where the wooden cross appeared almost overnight. One Friday they drew their curtains and went to bed, and the next morning it was there, simple and stark. “Just some religious nuts,” says Tennessee when Mara looks out the window, trying to spy. “Every town needs some.” Finally someone else worth gossiping about has arrived to take the heat off of two unmarried academics with a fifteen-year age gap. Mara once thought their sojourn in this small town would be temporary, but after five years, it’s become a good life. The town has most…

The Landing of Mars Perseverance As you descend through an atmospherespiked with argon and molecular nitrogenat 20,000 kilometres an hour,setting off hypersonic booms and seismic waves, I boil an egg.Yes, just one. I lower it into the wateron a sterling silver spoon,gently, gently,until it bobs, intact. At NASA they count down the nanoseconds, and I count, too, as water roils and sputters,as windows steam,as albumen and membrane solidify,and a bright, yellow heart blooms,in the safety of its chamber. When the news comes you’ve landedwithout incident,blasting through an ancient lakebedwhere you hope to find signsof alien life, I turn off the burner,crack open the shell. Soon, you will beam photosacross 209-million kilometres of space,and the world, to be frank,will be disappointed.They’d been expecting a vividMartian red, not plain old beige. And…

THE PLAN WAS SET. THEY CALLED IT “TEACHING HEMMATI A LESSON.” THE FINAL plan was that—since tomorrow’s classes at the high school would end earlier than at the elementary school—some of the boys would run to the elementary school and stalk Hemmati as soon as he appeared. The rest of the boys would wait in one of the empty streets near his house, and when Hemmati got there, they would ambush him from both sides and attack him, to take revenge for what he did to Mahmoud’s brother. Despite being an adult, he would be too much of a coward to fight back. During the last hour of the last school day of the first week of 5th grade, Mr. Hemmati entered our classroom as our theology teacher. I watched…

Tow Hill On the northern beach of Graham Islandthere is no sand, only rocks rolled smooth,clattering with every wave that punches the shore.The sea gathers great armfuls of stonesto throw down again and againand they sing hollow pitches to us from the waves. The rawness here threatens to shake me apart-I have never seen the ocean so unforgiving.The beach is altered on each high tide-heavy driftwood immersed in pebblescould launch out to sea the next day. You walk ahead, looking backwatching my reaction to the immense distance-a horizon of water disappearing into sky.You are wondering if I’ll fall in lovelike you did, if I’ll want to stay. But you can’t ask- our ears, our bodies fill with sound -water unbridled and grinding the ground beneath it.A wind that never stops,…

FIVE SENIOR DIRECTORS FROM THE HEALTH MINISTRY SIT AROUND A TABLE WITH flip-chart paper and coloured markers and watch me draw a sailboat. We’re one of eight groups, each at a circular table, who have gathered in the conference room for a day-long leadership retreat. The sailboat is my idea. Everything is my idea. From how the sailboat has come out of stormy waters to how it’s currently navigating choppy waters to how it’s heading toward calm waters where the sun is shining. I scan the table for a bold-coloured marker, something to offset the boat’s hull from the blue water. “Can you pass the orange marker?” I ask Sanderson, pointing at the orange marker in front of him. He rolls the purple marker to me. How does Sanderson have…

Bloom Women hand outsunflower seeds to trespassing soldiersso that when they die on landthat is not their own flowers will bloomfrom their bodies. At Play A mother showsher child how to throwthe red leaves in the air so she can capturethe image. Years later the manualfor mental illness lists staring at trees, chasing clouds, skippingpebbles over ponds, and stargazingwith dawn or dusk or midnight as subcategories. Childhoodillnesses encompass playingwith leaves or pinecones or mud. Photos are included.…

Petawawa army base, Ontario. 1909. THIS WAS WHAT HE LOVED: THE COUGH OF SMOKE, THE ENGINE BURSTING TO life, the sensation—still a shock, even now—of being buffeted upward, the way a leaf rises. As a child he had lived constantly around kites. Kites the size of sheds, kites like diving birds, kites that launched from the water. And everywhere was that dream, contagious, of flight. He had lain in the grass and watched the red fabric through the gaps in his fingers, and wondered again and again how it felt. Now he knew that it was closest to the sensation of being caught out in the water in a craft too small. But instead of the helplessness there was the small, determined sense of control—the movements of his shoulders against…

IN MANY OF MY LIBERAL STUDIES COURSES IN UNIVERSITY, WE HAD ESSAYS AS FINAL exams. I’d be given a series of questions to answer about a text, or two passages to compare, and have to come up with an essay in a few hours. I’d slowly fill up the exam booklet and at the end, I’d write the best part of my essay condensed into one powerful sentence – this was what I’d been trying to say all along. One professor always called me out on this, circling my thesis in red and writing beside it: “This should have been at the beginning of your essay!” I was frustrated by her comment because I wasn’t able to write that sentence any sooner; I didn’t understand my main point until I’d…

SPIRIT INK WAS BORN OUT OF CONVERSATIONS I’D HAD WITH PAM DILLON, A long-time supporter of our Wild Writers Literary Festival. Over the years we’ve met over lunch and talked about writing, creativity, our families, and we also shared some of the hard stories in our lives and I can say that I learned much about courage and gratitude from her. It was a relationship that blossomed into friendship so we could talk about things that mattered to us. When she told me that she had a personal interest in Indigenous writing it was an inadvertent seed planted. Over time we talked about Indigenous Voices Awards that she supported and how important, and sometimes challenging it was to reach those emerging voices. As we talked about what it might take…

ELIZABETH’S HAND RESTED ON THE KNOB OF THE DOOR, THE COOL METAL pressed into her palm. She took a deep breath to prepare for whatever lay on the other side of the threshold. As she exhaled, she turned the knob and stepped inside the small two-bedroom home where she grew up. Her nose was immediately hit with the familiar smells of coffee brewing and cigarette smoke. From the door Elizabeth saw her mom sitting at the sturdy wooden kitchen table, a plume of smoke rising from her. Even though the noise of the door opening and closing spoke of Elizabeth’s arrival, her mom did not turn to greet her. For a split second, Elizabeth saw the younger, livelier version of her mom that had existed two decades before. Back then,…

IT IS MONTREAL; THE KITCHEN WINDOW IS PROPPED UP BY A PLANK OF WOOD, THE rush-hour traffic echoes off the shelves, an exposed bulb drapes my father in warm light, and yet he looks so cold. I haven’t seen him in over ten years and now we are drinking bottles of beer in my kitchen. He draws the fabric of his coat across his chest and crosses his legs. A knitted woolen sock slides down his shin. The skin beneath is pale, the ashen of a diminishing cigarette. The wood creaks beneath him. He looks like an extension of his chair. “Would you close that thing?” He extends a frail arm, points at the window. “Can I see it first?” I ask. “For Christ’s sake, close that thing.” A cloud…

YOU NEED AMERICA, ON THE SIDE. YOU’LL ONLY HAVE THAT IF YOU’RE NOT American, and even then, America is everywhere. What is America anyway? A country confusing itself for a continent, named after an Italian who never even lived there? Many questions, but, of course, more answers than questions. That’s what Aunt Hélène would say. When I ask what America is, people ought to know I’m asking as an actor from Montreal. Not an American, not even a Canadian, but a Québécoise. And not just any Québécoise. I have a forked tongue: English and French. I have an accent in both languages. Everyone asks me where I’m from. My snakelike sense of belonging crawls in the garden of nations. When they find out, people think I put the accent on,…

ROBERT DOESN’T HEAR ME WHEN I WHISPER TO HIM ACROSS THE GALLERY, BUT two other husbands look up, alarmed. My small annoyance pacified, I smile like a wry librarian. Then whisper “Robert!” again, without the hiss. The Getty Gallery is our last outing before we will drive up the coast of sunny California. For almost two weeks, on our first couples vacation in seventeen years, we’ve been model spouses. A parody of those cartoon chipmunks, falling over each other to be agreeable. Holding a truce-flag is exhausting. Robert’s snail’s pace through the exhibit—reverent attention he would argue, if we were arguing—will make us miss the last garden tour. Finally, he lifts his sweet bald head, spies me hovering by the exit and smiles lazily. I smile too, and gently tap…

MY KIDS CALLED ME SQUISHY WHICH IS HILARIOUS BECAUSE I’M HARD AS NAILS. Not on the outside. Not then, anyway. I shouldn’t say ‘my kids.’That’s misleading. They were only my kids for half an hour on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. Less if they were slow getting into the pool. And for no time at all if the weather was bad which it was. Often. Squishy! They’d squeeze my arms and laugh and laugh. The memory pops up sharp when I’m out walking now. They didn’t know very much. Like that one day if they squeezed someone else’s arm and called it squishy it probably wouldn’t be funny. Like that even though I was their swim instructor I didn’t know how to swim. Not that it mattered. The pool was mostly…

Waiting After, there’s no sign of you.Gone: your shoes, your white dresses andsilk scarves, the tiny hats you perchedon your head. Your childhood pony drawings, yourcomic books, novels and piano music.Your mother’s beaded purse,the emerald bracelet made(your father claimed)by prisoners on Death Row.And a clutter of silver medals:Jesus on his cross, Joan before she burnt,and, with one hand on her heart,The Queen of Heaven. How did you manage such timely erasure?Did you haul the bags out in the night,one by one, so no one would notice?Did you think that without evidence you’d lived,there’d be nosorrow at your passing? I remember watching your lips moveas you prayed to a god you no longerbelieved in,and how you cried when you knewit was nearly time to leave. And I rememberthe morning you were…

WHEN YOU ARE TEN AND YOU’VE BEEN SLOW TO DEVELOP—YOU KNOW, SEXU-ally—some strange things can happen. It certainly was not a tryst, beside the sarcophagus display case. But there was a kind of enchantment suspended in the dusty air, a glimmer more felt than seen. We were so alone, Jeremy and I, you could have heard a pin drop. Alone, that is, apart from her in the display case, long dead, an undeniable presence. A uniformed guard wandered in from nowhere and exited. As he passed us he paused, a forbidding expression his only weapon, and said nothing. We continued to draw in our little sketchbooks. We were copying the hieroglyphs from the coffin and tomb walls. The rows of coiffeured, almost naked people walking stiffly towards each other, or…

Tell me about the war bridewho smuggled a clutch of iris bulbsaboard the ship in her brassiere. It was October and the tuberswere supposed to be kept cool. They kindled in her cleavagethrough layers of paper skin.In transatlantic turbulenceshe worried them — brown beadsin her fraught palms. Sent across, ahead of her man—uprooted and alone. Tell me about the welcoming—the husband’s formal family,her rushing to their garden,fists green with swollen shootsand roots like mandrakes.How mad she must have looked. When she and her soldier courtedthey stole secluded momentsbehind the air raid shelterin her parents’ flowerbed.He touched her longingly,sought her urgent heat.After he’d rub his fingersin the dirt to mask her scent;in distraction at dinnerhe inhaled her lingeringessence on his skin. It was held within the bulbs —the tenderness witnessed.How could…

A MONTH AND A HALF AFTER I STARTED MY PHD PROGRAM AT WATERLOO. I suddenly found myself split, physically in Waterloo, mentally, emotionally in Beirut. The Lebanese people revolted magnificently and gloriously in October 2019, only to feel the whiplash of the rise and crash into the slow and sometimes viciously active violence of economic collapse and social decay. Videos of friends rioting, protesting, getting beat up and teargassed filled my days, while I was meant to learn about Eurocentric ethics in poetry and the implications of smart cities and technological and surveillance advancements. Still, this was nothing compared to what I felt ten months later. On August 4th, 2020, the city of my young adulthood, of my most cherished memories and attachments, Beirut, literally exploded, with little to no…

I STEP OUT OF A JEEP AND CEDAR FILLS MY NOSTRILS WITH STICKY SWEETNESS. I AM fourteen years old and there is one hour before the opening ceremony. My sisters and I wander into the corner of Nohkom’s acreage, tracing the paths in the forest like the lines on our palms. We crawl into a clearing filled with old wicker chairs riddled with pine needles and weathered from the rain. I search for long abandoned thumbtacks in evergreen trunks—ones I used to place at my highest climbs. I admire the ferocity of the evergreens: the one snapped in half, struck by lightning years ago, falling the other direction, instead of on top of our trailer. The trees are somehow smaller than the last time I stared up at them. Slightly…

THE SEA DRAGS IN AND OUT OF NASS BAY RELENTLESSLY. ANDREW STANDS AT the helm of the boat eyeing the young Chinese sailors who are scattered across the deck. Some are resting with their knees to their heads outside of the cabin, but Andrew remembers that they came to the Valley on boats, and that they would leave the Valley on boats, and that they would have to learn, sooner or later, how to be steady on boats. He would not be watching them any longer. Boxiang stands beside Andrew holding a lit pipe of tobacco. The smoke slowly drifts past Andrew’s face. He takes in deep breaths as the fumes slowly crawls out the window. Boxiang removes his hat and sets it down on the fabric seat to his…

THE MORNING I LEFT HOME TO PURSUE A LAW DEGREE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF British Columbia, my mother told me that growing up is what happens when you learn that excitement and purpose are not the same thing. I told her I knew that already and, after placing a bottle of whiskey into my hands, she cried with Dad when I left. Growing up on the Canadian Prairies had turned me into a sentimental but deeply sedated kid. I loved my home, the flatness of our land. My friends had souls that hadn’t become dry and yellow like mine, and I envied them for it. Nathan Weir, my closest childhood friend, had a green soul. He believed, for instance, that spitting wads of phlegm over the hockey rink every night…

Coquina Heart Southern Manitoba is sedimentary;clay loam coatings andmuddled moraines shapetributaries of meltedAgassizwhose remnants linger,exposedin Stonewall Quarry Parkwhere my first-grade class fills brownpaper bags with fossiliferous rocks,hands chalky and dry. Three lime draw-kilns watch us wander, stark against bleak spring clouds. Nicholas takes a pictureof me and my baggieusing his disposable,promisingwith averted eyesto relinquish the developed product. We go back to skimming depositfor imprints of shells and snailsas the kilns blur in the pitterpatter of rain—cuttingour field trip short as we clamberinto muggy buses bound towardfluorescent classrooms. Nicholas returns the photo five years later, shrugging. Squinting at the flimsy image,I see a girl subtracted.Someone who hasn’t witnessedthe erosion of the elderlyor embedded bony fingers intoslate and graniteengravingsof her family name. My sturdy, first-grade facegrins,ignorantof love’s unconformity;the stratification of secrets;and the…

THERE’S A SPECIFIC SMELL OF SUMMER THAT INSTANTLY SENDS ME HOME to quiet eastern Chennai. It’s the smell of freshly washed linen, dried and starched in the baking heat of tropical midday. It is the scent of my dreams dreamt under thin sheets, on a straw mattress, on the cool marble floor of our home. When I return to Canada, I often leave clothes untouched in my suitcase for weeks. I take them out, one at a time, sometimes running my fingers across the hard line where clothes pegs have etched themselves into the fabric, and I inhale deeply, burying my nose in cotton washed in too hard water. I never want to let go. Another smell that tugs at the valleys in my chest, the very mention of which…

we toured the altar dust caught in stained glass lightlight-hit on unlocked tabernacle that gold and shiny thing sacreddoor flung open I touched the crystal vessel that held the holy waterthat washed the hands of the priest who turned bread into bodybody we were to hold on our tongue until soft enough to swallowdon’t bite down we don’t chew Jesus my mother was my teacherthat year I remember asking and her answer just believe I never didbelieve but I memorized words that would sell me to a bloody handed manconsecrate me to the crucified take their flesh on my tongue and never bite down.…

SEVEN MONTHS BEFORE SHE DISAPPEARED, BETTE AND I DROPPED OUT OF SENIOR high. On Tuesday we showed up for geography at eight a.m. and Wednesday we were done forever. It was Bette’s idea. Kind of a dream she’d had. “I saw us as thirty-year-olds in Japan. We lived in a houseboat for a while. We scorned academia.” People liked to say we were identical but that was only because they were noticing the wrong things. Yes, we had lampshade blonde hair with baby bangs and birth marks on the left side of our necks. Yes, we had uneven bottom teeth, straight upper teeth. Yes, we had eyes, brown like deer tracks in mud. What they didn’t notice: her crooked index finger, my posture incrementally worse with each night I read…

Four Seasons on Lake Huron Spring rain. New grass flows. Daisy buds in tearsseek their dreams. Geese fly across the lakeand vanish. Silence reigns. Small boats appearspreading their light wing-sails. Butterflies wake. Seeking their dreams, geese fly across the lake,across bright rays of sunshine, chasing clouds.Spreading their light wing-sails, butterflies wake,glide past daisies along the lakeshore. Across bright rays of sunshine, chasing clouds,cold wind rushes. Maple leaves leave the sky,glide past daisies along the lakeshore,dissolving into the lake’s limpid eye. Cold wind rushes. Maple leaves leave the skycovering the lakeshore. Snow dancesdissolving into the lake’s limpid eye.The shoreline, the lake, the sky in haze. Covering the lakeshore, snow dances.Small boats appear and vanish. Silence reigns.The shoreline, the lake, the sky in haze.Daisy buds in tears. New grass flows. Spring rain.…

LARRY MITCHELL PRESSES HIS TONGUE ALONG A CURVING SCAR THAT TRACES the edge of his upper lip. With the stitches dissolved, he is drawn to what used to be flaps of skin violently ripped open but have been rejoined—not seamlessly, yet sewn together to resemble how they appeared before the assault. Barbara sits next to him and grips his hand while Larry waits to give his victim impact statement. Her fingers are icy. Well, they would be, wouldn’t they? Larry Mitchell feels as if he is caught in a time loop where memories of his last thirty years replay themselves. The attack knocked specific events loose and, like a dropped jar of marbles, they are scattering everywhere. He is frantically trying to scoop them all back into the jar, but…

If the purpose of our meetingis not entirely certain. If we infer our purposeis to pull a new worldout of our current world the way a glove is pulled inside out. If the materials providedwere issued by the current world. If it is in other words impliedwe will reclaim the world in slicesof seventy-five minutes and also rehearse, together, our animalness by presuming an activeshooter in the hallway and then break for lunch. If we have been stationed here,in this room,inside our physical bodies— if we are not going anywherefor the time being— what would be the best first thing to do?…

Daniel Bay is a short fiction writer based out of Toronto, Ontario. He obtained his M.A. in Critical and Creative Writing from the University of Gloucestershire in Cheltenham, England. His previous publications include short fiction in Blank Spaces Magazine, The Copperfield Review, Floyd County Moonshine, and others. A love of geography, spirituality, and the relationship between Person, Place, and Space, is what fuels his commitment to writing fiction that seeks to better understand how individuals are changed when navigating these dynamic elements. Courtney Bill is currently pursuing her BA in creative writing. Her work has appeared in The Adroit Journal, PRISM International, The New Quarterly, Canthius, The /tEmz/ Review, Literary Heist, and elsewhere. James Dunnigan is a writer, scholar and editor from Montreal and author of five poetry chapbooks. He…

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