scribblings

december 17

the writing

“Do you recall the last time you saw the sun?” the owl-faced woman asks the pile of bones.
The skull clicked and clacked: Long before you were a chick, cracking out of your egg. Do you remember what you were holding, then?
“An ink-brush,” she replies. “Do you remember your name?”
The skull: Do you?

~

the chimes at dawn (call 
to prayer) i lay a little 
longer in your arms

~

Mira followed the two-tailed fox along a path of pine trees, trimmed with silver and gold decorations. The glittering silence might have been peaceful, but she only felt a cold foreboding as she approached the stone doors at the end of the hall, carved with seven stars.

~

snow drifts, high as her head 
but she was light as air—
Christmas angel

the reading

Poem: “Sci-Fi” by Tracy K. Smith

“There will be no edges, but curves.

Clean lines pointing only forward.
History, with its hard spine & dog-eared

Corners, will be replaced with nuance,
Just like the dinosaurs gave way

To mounds and mounds of ice.
Women will still be women, but

The distinction will be empty.”

Short Story: “Arnhem” by Elise Levine (from Best Canadian Stories 2021)

“I keep thinking: two girls on a hill. I forget where. Heidelberg, or Conwy in North Wales where there’s also a castle. Two girls making fast along a wet street. Oxford or Bruges. Us, they’re thinking, telepathic as ants. One girl’s freezing in her white summer dress. The other girl’s wearing army surplus pants and a baggy turtleneck sweater. They’re seventeen, smug as cats. They’ve blown off the archeological dig on Guernsey for which they’d secured positions six month earlier by mail. Mud labour, fuck that shit! On the appointed start date they simple hadn’t shown. Instead they’re hitchhiking around, doing all the things.”