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“Somebody to Love”

Written by Sandee Gertz. Posted in Featured, Poetry. 

I bought this car to prove I could
and now, as I wait to turn left
a man exits the Quik-Stop,

black sweats sagging, pantlegs
shirred halfway up his narrow calves.
He’s probably my age, maybe even

a one-time middle-school messiah.
He slouches down the sidewalk,
knees hinging like a marionette

as if in time to Grace Slick,
who’s up so loud the ragtop throbs.
He gestures toward traffic with a tall-boy

then folds to the curb. How I envy him.
My tongue swells as the cold slides
down his throat, jaw slackening,

the world easing up a little.
My sister drank the same brand
when her check ran thin.

The last time I saw her
she drove up to the house, window down.
Come on, she said. It hadn’t been long

since I couldn’t say no, veins drawn tight
brain to toes—so I went inside.
I wish she was here. She’d settle down

on the curb beside him, light a cigarette,
put her hand out for his beer.
And he would give it to her,

the joke passing between their eyes—
me still in my lane
mouthing the words to the song,

you better find somebody to love.

Undertow

Written by Sandee Gertz. Posted in Featured, Poetry. 


Newspaper crumpling, my sister
sops up vinegar from a bowl,
the window squeaking as she scrubs
at its watery promise.

She’s taller than me, even on her knees,
hair back, jaw set as her hand
circles then dips, circles then dips,
stops. Even I can see she’s distracted

from the messy house by sunlight
sliding through glass in long angular plates
as if life is about to bloom.
The ice in our mother’s glass shifts

and my sister’s braid sways,
her slender arm returns
to circling. I have no idea
who I will be without her.

Raise Every Voice, Except Not You, Fat Boy, You Stink

Written by Shelby Rogers. Posted in Featured, Poetry.

Start in G, she said
standing before us on a plywood pedestal
no, that was a lectern, us on plywood
steps, no those are called risers &
choir practice has begun.
How do I stand?
May I jam my hands into my hungry pockets
of worry, of embarrassment, of yet
another class to kill the time from
seven-thirty to eighteen years of age?
Deep breath, she says. Deep.
All boys here, unlucky you &
wait for someone else to lead
because I don’t know the song &
I don’t know how to diaphragm
breathe, how to rise to my pre-
pubescent range only boys have &
no, I don’t know, have no idea
where G is.

The Dandelion:

Written by Cristian Dunn. Posted in Featured, Nonfiction.

The sky was bruised, and purple marks littered it. The sun had retreated behind a large cloud
of smoke that reached out to it; the smoke was desperate to hide the sun from those below.
Ginnie crouched behind a mound of rubble; the rubble had once been her home. She traced
her fingers across a small pile of dust, she drew pictures of her home in the grey ashes. A
dandelion had survived the attack, it was stood at an angle, its roots were buried deep
between the cracks in the pavement. Ginnie wondered how the small flower had survived
when her brother, Leo, had not. She didn’t understand how the world had cruelly taken her
brother away but had left a dandelion unharmed.

Ginnie’s world had been fractured overnight, cracked like a mirror that had been
knocked from the wall. The city was alive, just about. Last night, the streets had been filled
with the laughter of children, the chatter of women going to town, and the cries from market
stall owners as they advertised their goods. Then suddenly, the roar of jets pierced the air, and
trails of fire flattened the neighbourhoods and the lives of those she knew. Ginnie had heard
the hushed whispers from her parents and her next-door neighbours.

“Sovereignty,” they had mumbled. “Resources.”


The words were just empty syllables that fell off the tongue easily, they were as brittle
as the bones and infrastructures that were buried under the rubble.


Off in the distance, a convoy raced through the ruins; soldiers moved like shadows
across the derelict walls. They seemed faceless; they hid behind their clunky helmets, and
their weapons were slung carelessly across their bodies. To them, the power to kill was as
casual as carrying a bag of groceries home from the market on a Tuesday morning. Ginnie no
longer feared them: she had learned that fear required energy, energy that she no longer had.

She focused instead on small rebellious acts, such as keeping the dandelion alive against the
odds of the war. She could keep the dandelion safe, but not her brother.

A soldier stopped close to her, his boots crunched on the debris below his feet. He
looked at the dandelion, and then at Ginnie. There was a flicker of something in his eye,
regret maybe, but it flickered out as quickly as Ginnie’s house had been destroyed. He turned
his back to her, his radio crackled with faint orders from his higher-ups. Ginnie realised that
to the soldier, she was nothing more than a piece of the landscape.


Once night fell again, Ginnie picked the dandelion from its snug home in the
pavement cracks. She gently placed it in her pocket. Tomorrow, she would take it with her to
the bombed-out infrastructure that had once been her school. Children still gathered there,
they traded lessons in survival rather than in maths of history. Ginnie hoped that the flower
would remind her friends that life will always find a way to carry on, even when the shadow
of violence threatens them.


Ginnie stared out at the horizon of the now flat city, fires burned and army machines
crawled like a colony of ants. Ginnie wondered how long life could persist in this world
where it seemed like everyone wanted to erase her city.


The dandelion, which she now cradled in her palm, seemed to glow softly against the
darkness. Something small could bloom even in the ashes and rubble.

Clear Sky Rain

Written by Sandee Gertz. Posted in Featured, Fiction.

Paul looked at Kate with her hands on her hips as she glared at him. Her face was framed in her shoulder length brunette hair with bangs set just above her eyebrows. Paul was eight years old, and Kate was thirteen. She was wearing jeans and a green T-shirt. “You know why we hate you?” she said. “It’s because you are so different.” Paul nodded, David and Jonas were called willows by the other boys on the street and at school. Paul was sporty, fast and too smart for his own good. “You don’t even have any heart problems,” continued Kate. The rest had heart murmurs and other issues. “You know why you’re like that?” asked Kate. “It’s because you’re adopted. I think Mom just took you from somewhere.” Paul nodded again, as he had heard the story from their mother. “Mom and Dad just left and were away for a week and then they brought you back. Mom didn’t even get big before you came. She can’t ever say you were hers,” said Kate. She shook her head and walked away. Paul had heard the story about how they brought him home, but never heard how their mother wasn’t big, pregnant before.

Spring always comes late when you live at high altitude, like Paul’s childhood town, Hinton. Paul never liked the changing of seasons after the long winters. The warm west winds had come and gone during the long winter as Chinooks that made the snow wet and heavy. Building forts and sledding never grew boring for him. Paul hated the melting excrement that had to be avoided as he walked to the playground that was half a block from their house. There was mud everywhere, and the trip to playground was always a disappointment. The seesaws, the slide and swings were in the middle of icy ponds of muddy water edged by rotting snow. Just beyond the play area was the sledding hill that was half covered in mud and the same crystallized rotting snow that was everywhere.

As Paul watched, his older brother, David, walk up to the swings in the middle of the deepest pond in the playground and climbed on. He was fifteen years old. Paul knew better than to say anything as David splashed through the water, drenching his winter coat, and filling his boots with the muddy water. David gazed at the sky vacantly.

Paul knew better than to say, you shouldn’t do that, or you’re going to get in trouble when you go home wet. At best David would repeat, as he did constantly, I’m your elder, you’re not even one of us, you’re adopted. Paul would watch, like he always did until David broke the rhythm of what he was doing, because he was too cold, or he forgot why he was doing it, or he would become aware of what he was doing it didn’t like it.

Drenched, turning white from the cold David slipped off the swing and stared at Paul.

“Why didn’t you come and swing?” David asked.

“I didn’t feel like it,” Paul replied, not wanting to provoke a more vigorous response.

David stared vacantly at Paul, shrugged, and stared at the pond, as if he just noticed it was there. David trudges to where Paul was standing.

“Let’s go to the sledding hill,” David said. Paul nodded and followed with relief as he chose to walk up the alley to the top of the hill, instead of straight through the pond at the base of the hill.

“They say I have Artism,” David said. “I have special needs.”

“What’s that?” Paul asked, unsure of what David may do or say next.

“It’s like being an artist,” he said in his expressionless tone.

“But you don’t do anything artistic,” replied Paul.

“It’s not that kind of art,” David continued, as he attempted to speak with a self-righteousness, as he had heard his mother used. “It’s like the crazy artist types-like poets. They write what no one reads, and if you read them, you can’t figure it out; it’s just crazy art. They do crazy art. Crazy art, crazy art.”

“How did they figure out you’re a poet?” Paul asked.

“They did this weird test,” replied David.

“What kind of test?”

“They made you look at strange faces, these strange faces and you tell them what’s going on.”

“So how did you pass that test?” Paul asked. David straightened his posture but continued with the same distant look.

“I couldn’t say what those people were doing, I wasn’t there when they took the picture, so how was I supposed to know?” asked David.

“Do you have to write poems now?” asked Paul.

“As long as I don’t write any poems, I’ll be all right” replied David.

“Did they tell you that?”

“I told some other guys in class, and they told me about the crazy artists, and Artism,” replied David.

The word Artism was like the word they used to describe the middle brother, Jonas as well. There was a story he told about being a poet, but they had threatened to take him away if he continued to write poems. Paul had heard Edna his adoptive mother telling him he must be careful about what he did, especially at school. Paul must never use the word they said to him, Autism, and if he was ever asked, he must tell others that he had a learning disability, but Paul was different than his brothers he wasn’t related to. There was confusion in everything they knew as the oldest, Julie was in high school, but she had a temper that would explode without warning. She had that same vacant look, which was only replaced at times with laughter or anger. There was, like her two brothers, no warning of what would happen next. Everything was literal and factual in her world.

When the two arrived at the top of the sledding hill, they could see all the lost mitts, scarves, and toques that were freed from the winter hiding places by the melting snow. David sat at the top of the hill as he would have sat on his toboggan in winter. Would he attempt to slide down the hill, through the mud and ice that remained?

“The hill’s too messy to sled,” he said.

“It’s getting a bit too dark to sled right now,” Paul said.

David stood up and stared down at his wet pants and coat. “It’s getting cold out again,” he said and turned toward home. Paul watched as Edna appeared at the door and looked at David with disgust and resignation.

*  *  *  *

Edna was absent, first with trips to the town hospital, and later to Edmonton. She would have a series of surgeries over the years due to her arthritis. Edna had always complained about her arthritis, her hips, knees and back were always in pain, and she used 222, an effective pain killer that often left her looking tired and more distant. She had been using the pain killer for years and because they were harmless, she thought, she used them through all her pregnancies. With her pain killers Edna would not notice arguments between Julie, Kate, David and Jonas and they would last long enough to erupt into scuffles. She would finally intervene, sending them in different directions.

In summer there would be rain falling from the clear sky; caused by a heat inversion warm wet air was caught above cold air from the mountain slopes. With out clouds or warning rain fell. Paul was taught about why this happened at school. He thought the way the icy cold rain fell from the clear was like what happened in the family: unexpected, sudden, and cruel.

Chores were to be carried out by the oldest, Julie, David with help from Kate. For their extra work, they would receive allowances. But it took little time before Julie and David were directing Kate, Jonas, and Paul to complete the housework, it was their job to make sure that things were done, not necessarily do it themselves, as this would be against the natural order of things. Kate worked quickly and without complaint, as she knew that there was always a time, when the task she was directed to do was done, and she could slip out the door and avoid hours of work dictated as soon as one set of work was done.

Jonas, under threat of punishment from the older ones would work continuously as well at times complaining bitterly, and at times fighting with David who would be supervising his work and doing little else. Paul followed Kate’s example and volunteered to do work that would not be where Jonas was to complete his chores. Paul would be assigned clean up of the backyard, carrying pails of trash to a burning barrel, moving rocks away from the side of the garden to the back alley. Once the task was done, Paul was gone.

Of course, when the allowance was paid out to Julie and David, that was the way it was to be. It was utterly unacceptable to have Kate, Jonas, or Paul receive the money, as the work was to be done by Julie and David, and when the chores were clearly complete, it was in fact those two who must have done it.