019. MORTIFY.
the ghosts are us.
Welcome to ISSUE 019: MORTIFY 🦢
Lately, I’ve been feeling like a ghost. Or maybe like a poltergeist, as if my rage at the world is somehow responsible for the changing of the seasons, the changing of the faces around me. I’m stomping my feet into the pavement each morning, the snow crushing underneath is a catharsis of sorts. I catch a glimpse of myself in a puddle of freshly melted snow, who is that? My face has become unrecognizable to me, perhaps due to age or stress or global warming–some sort of calamity that’s been pressing my skin into new shapes. I’m collecting crystals again, but recently I’ve been too busy brooding to properly worship. I think I’ll pay more attention to the stars. There's something about Saturn returning to the place it lived when I was born–that’s the reason for this unrest. Today, I’m wearing moldavite around my neck, it’s supposed to bring me into better communication with my higher self. I wonder who my higher self is? Does she feel grounded? Does she understand her connection with the world? Can she figure out how to feed herself, brush her hair, take her medicine on time? The other day, I bought a spell from an Etsy witch. I’m not entirely sure what it does, but she promised me love and other ridiculous wants. This little jar of perfumes and feathers and honey, on its way to me in the mail with the promise of something better. My worries aren’t only earthbound, they are expansive–there’s much to worry about. I’m shrill when I yell at the universe. Sorry, I have too many questions. I long for the creature comforts of the warm sun, a lover's lips on the back of my neck, sand at the bottom of my bed. I want a plate of hot pancakes, I want to drown in the sweet syrup, or the ocean. I want to practice superstition to supersede my uncertainty, I’ll avoid cracks in the sidewalks and my own grief. Lately, I’ve been questioning everything. Can you tell me how to feel?
You can reprimand me if I’m rambling, I think I just need an outlet for the vastness of my musings. Will you listen for just a minute more? In this issue of , we reckon with smoke and mirrors; we search for answers in our uncertainty and meaning in our transformations. James Dunnigan questions the dichotomy between the beautiful and the mundane in his piece “Noon, Relatively.” loses her metro card and asks us to consider, “have you ever witnessed a crime so beautiful?” Well, have you? Vice Sullivan feels the frenzy of boots on the sidewalk in their piece “Walkman // the other day,” while ’s 35mm collage, “Island Time No. 11,” is a portal to something beyond. Maybe, if we follow her, we can find a secret paradise together. “In this world, it is the poetry / That signifies the horrific” writes Ali as he ponders the bizarre fruits of death in “Stained Sorrows,” and begs for cool jelly to soothe his dry lips. Spring is sucking the life out of everyone, but Cam MacDonald reminds us that “still light must go on.” Always poignant and precise, Vasundhara Singh writes of the finality of loss and the transition from then to now. Can we ever go back? Or will it always be like this?
Don’t let me tell you how to feel, throw open your curtains, dust off your joy, you tell me how to be.
| editor
Transposition of a Balthasar* by Cam MacDonald [Poetry]
Noon, Relatively by James Dunnigan [Poetry]
Love poems from dreams by Hannah Walti [Poetry]
Pancakes with Butter by Vasundhara Singh [Fiction]
Island Time No. 11 by Shannon Strong [Visual Art]
Walkman // the other day by Vice Sullivan [Poetry]
Stained sorrows by Furqan Ali [Poetry]
Transposition of a Balthasar* by Cam MacDonald | Instagram
Noon, Relatively by James Dunnigan | Instagram
by the mossy pier slicked with swan shit the daylit waves come in from France and the ferry bound for Yvoire slips out as the rain begins and the tattoo artist leaves with her friends and the student busy with volumes and smokes shuffles in under the parasols scatters the waterflies earlier today I sat by the vineyard divining the signs of pedalboats and jets over the lead splendour of the lake and a kid and his sister ran by “je cours comme une casserole!” he said and over the unlit streetlamps shook three crows in a murder of trees people live here—I thought how different are they / they are from us only grammatically separate in the syntax of our latitudes six hours further than usual that backslash of half a day shelters me from the fires back home and even at home I’d only have felt the smoke I am the smoke of smoke
Love poems from dreams by Hannah Walti | Substack
Pancakes with Butter by Vasundhara Singh
He has her for seven hours. By eight in the evening, he will return her to the hostel. They will meet again after three months when she will come home for the summer holidays. The bougainvilleas in the courtyard flutter every time a waiter walks past it, balancing a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice or a plate of glistening poached eggs on a silver tray. She looks down at the bowl of cornflakes with disinterest. He takes a bite of his French toast. He does not know what to say to her. The last time they met was at her mother’s funeral and then there were only tears. He asks her, “do you want to order something else?”
She says nothing but fishes for soggy bits of cornflakes in the bowl of cold milk.
“Do you want bread-butter?” he asks in a more assertive tone.
She raises her shoulders for a few seconds and lets them drop. If his wife were alive, she would have told her to finish the bowl of cornflakes but can’t do that. He isn’t scared of her. He does not believe they share that level of intimacy.
He notices her gaze to the side at a blonde-haired couple sharing a plate of food.
“What is that?” she asks in a squeaky voice. He sits upright. He does not know what that is either. He has seen
these jiggly round cakes in hotels but can’t remember what they are called. He gestures to the waiter.
“What is the couple next to us eating?”
The waiter clears his throat. “Pancakes with butter, sir.”
“We would like a plate.”
“Sir, forgive me but the breakfast time is over.”
He chuckles. “So what? We just want pancakes with butter. Just bring it.”
The waiter repeats himself. The girl looks at her father nervously. He says, “We want—”
The waiter interrupts him. “Sir, sorry—”
“Call your manager, now!”
Hearing the strength of her father’s voice, the girl starts to sob. He takes her by the arm and rushes out of the boutique hotel.
Pushkar, a bohemian suburb on the outskirts of Ajmer, teems with foreigners in tie dye shirts and harem pants. They buzz about the box shaped shops that sell musical instruments, cheap clothes, cigarettes, and deep-fried snacks. His breath is still heavy from the mild confrontation in the courtyard. She is no longer sobbing but he knows that he has lost his one chance at having a complete conversation with her. When his wife accompanied him to these day-long outings, she was in-charge of making conversations with their daughter. All he did was pay for the items they bought. A pang of sadness stiffens his throat, will it always be like this? His parents are already searching for a wife for him even though he has refused to marry again. His mother sends him photos of women in their thirties and says, “you may not need a wife, but your daughter needs a mother.” He wants to ask, can a mother be replaced? When you lose someone, you lose them for an eternity. There is no replacement for people. His daughter has lost her mother for the rest of her life and he can do nothing about it.
She walks up to a stall selling wooden bangles and points to a pack of multicoloured ones. The shopkeeper laughs, “these are not for little girls. They are for women.” She looks back at her father. He asks the man to give them a pack of six. The therapist at the boarding school advised him not to scold his daughter over insignificant matters. She said, “She has lost her primary source of love and care. You must go the extra mile to make her happy.” For how long must he go the extra mile? He often asks himself. Can he ever go back to being the shadowy figure he was? The one who spoke when spoken to. Perhaps not. She gives the packet of bangles to him.
“Don’t you want to wear them?” he asks.
“The man said it is for women. You can give them to mumma.”
He sighs.
They pass by a man wearing hoop earrings the size of the wooden bangles he holds, selling stones that apparently restore the balance in one’s soul. She speaks without looking at him.
“Shreya’s father died of mouth cancer and Kinjal’s mother died of a heart attack and a senior in our hostel, Prachi, both her parents are dead.”
He does not know what to say. “How do you know all this?”
“We talk about our dead parents.”
“How does that make you feel?”
“Shreya told me that children with dead parents have a better chance at being successful in life.”
“Why is that?”
“Because people feel sorry for them.”
He shakes his head. “If you know mumma is dead, then why did you buy these bangles?”
“This is for new mumma. The one you will marry. Nani told me.”
He looks down in defeat.
She continues. “Fathers can marry again but mothers cannot. That is what Shreya said.”
“Won’t you feel bad replacing mumma?”
“Find one who is just like mumma. She should have the same voice, the same hair, the same laugh.”
At half past nine in the evening, he returns to the boutique hotel. An hour ago, he dropped her off at the hostel, exchanging forced smiles with the warden. The warden asked her to wish him good night and she obeyed. There were no tears or giggles that accompanied the partings when his wife was alive. The waiter comes to him with folded hands. “Sir, I would like to apologise to you for my behaviour. You will be served pancakes with butter in the morning.” He nods and proceeds to his room.
He turns back and offers the bangles, “Take these.”
Island Time No. 11 by Shannon Strong | Substack | Instagram | Website
Walkman // the other day by Vice Sullivan | Instagram
Old boots on sidewalks bash through beats blasting out of earbuds strung round the neck like a rosary, speakers bleeding // bionic stigmata // old songs for old wounds that don’t run dry. Eyes dart from crosswalk signs to jaywalkers to crows and back to traffic, tires match feathers match the color of movement as people flock and swarm. The street becomes a murder of black raincoats and umbrellas // squawking countdown cry from the angel that lives in the light post. Radios fizz in cars, interference, running engines, running interference, fearing, thank god nobody can hear their own thoughts, god-fearing and fleeing, water runs down gutters like a runaway tire. The little white led light-man is a messiah, shining above the heads of the city goers to say “follow me this way and you will be saved” from the engines gorged on oil like fat ticks picking through the hairs of the city’s blocks. Boots crash down in steady time as the choir cries out tinny and shrill and earbuds are slid into place like sealing a tomb // downtrodden // downtown.
Stained sorrows by Furqan Ali | Substack | Instagram
In the garden of Eden, The fruits were death. In this world, it is the poetry That signifies the horrific, Decompression of an arrow While an apple manifests upon my head. And the underlings of the city Cannot buy it. What good it would then be to miss me? The pond of the beloved sanctuary, lack fruition of ablution, Perhaps missing your drool, And your madman is filthy & greasy. I asked the genie, after wishing, For jelly for my dry lips And pine nuts for my stray cold body, But he refused the third wish, Of adding divine madness in my creativity.
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"Pancakes with Butter" was especially poignant. Wow. I loved how it ended with nowhere really to go. Great issue 👍🏽