It’s 1995 and your first job. You spend so much time in these shoes your feet have sweated through the leather. It leaves white rings on the shoes, sweat or dried soda and popcorn dust. You stand at a podium in a black vest and bowtie and tear tickets. Enjoy the show. You direct people
My Human Identity I am a social construct. Word upon word like blood. Image upon image like flesh. A technicolour film Of places and stories I have lived through. I am walking, breathing memory. Frame by frame repository Of history’s collective thoughts In my seemingly separate cranium. I walk this Earth for a slice of
The year is 1977. That’s when I recall a certain WIT (writers-in-transition) meeting at one of our members’ homes. As we settled comfortably into our host’s living room waiting for the ‘official’ start to our evening of reading, Norma — a usually calm voice in the midst of writers’ babble — held up her arm
I first met Norma West Linder at Lambton College in Sarnia when I attended her evening Creative Writing class. I had never taken a writing class—I hadn’t even told anyone I wanted to be a writer. Just the thought of meeting someone who was a writer made me nervous. I had written a long poem
Norma and my late Mom, Peggy Fletcher, were best friends. I can remember many writers meetings hearing their voices carefully dissecting and critiquing with wisdom and grace. Their adventures, first starting in the seventies with her first partner, John Henry, were epic. From her kitchen wall, painted with a personalized Peanuts cartoon to the photos
shorts and sandals on a hot October day 30.1 degrees Celsius this is a riff on changing times on changing ways on changing days salmon are jumping and people are oohing the weir too high, they spawn and die the water runs swift like the beat of a riff cormorants soar while cascades roar susurrant,
Dan couldn’t see the curves of the bay through the driving rain. The storm was getting worse, and Jenni was out there. He hoped she would circle round and wait. She was experienced; she’d know what to do. The rocks at the end of the bay disappeared into the waves. Dan caught sight of a
Weather Report While the meteorologists stood there pointing at their forecasts on the local news stations, people were making dinner, tossing treats to their cats, filling dog bowls, reminding kids to do their homework, & stretching their heads to get a glimpse of the mundane weather report: one more cloudless day, no rain in sight,
The twelve-year-old boys and girls sat on the ground in a semi-circle with their fathers sitting behind them, facing the king. The king was seated on the royal throne in full regalia — leopard-skin cape, lion-tooth necklace, golden bracelets encrusted with jewels on both his wrists and ankles, his scepter was made of zebra wood