Me and my Faults
      by Douglasin Reimer

And the following incidents acquaint you with me. With what was devious and dangerous about me and what was not. I may have sounded critical and self-righteous in my description of Harvey and Jake but I include myself in their group, in their attitudes. My faults may not be identical with theirs but they are and they are real. We’re all human, in other words, even adolescent males. A great statement about human nature that startled me with its accuracy the moment I read it goes as follows: “Treat every man as he deserves and who shall escape whipping.” I deserve whipping. Okay, I didn’t pull the wings off of flies, far as I can recall (though I remember burning a fly/flies with a magnifying glass). Nor did I blow frogs into balloons (I saw it happen, but never blew into the straw). I failed to plot apple-stealing scenarios for anyone, including Harv and Jake. I simply couldn’t hit a bird with a slingshot no matter how hard I tried. Bicycle spokes survived my plans and presence, and my female peers were in no danger ever of my hands invading their personal space (whether encouraged to or not) because as I remember it they seldom allowed themselves to be found near enough to me to find out (though I would never have harmed what I loved most, more by far than I loved myself). I was timid and self-reproachful in all of my dealings with people except close friends. I always felt sick with guilt whenever I thought the word “should.” So, when it  came to people-hurting, I posed no great danger except accidentally. So, to all intents and purposes, I wore a sort of halo. Not. My greatest “sins” were all fathered by deception. In case you are beginning to think that this smacks of confession—“O geez, here he goes, whimpering about himself, scared of everything and hoping for easy absolution and God’s forgiveness!”—you are bound for a minor disappointment. We boys were all biologically human with all the appetites and mischief that is in boys and has been since time began. It is always said with such certainty by most backward-looking non adolescents that adolescent males’ brains reside way too low down in their persons to be of any use whatsoever. I say, however, that we young fellows did have brains, only they were unafraid things, not easily convinced of the divide between what we did and what we were taught we should do. We saw, we looked, we wanted, we did. At least wanted to do. Now, however, older, in our early seventies, having fully succeeded in leaving the feelings of human biology behind, we are each one of us instead fully the products merely of culture and teaching, of Western fear. We no longer understand the impetuous, spontaneous joys of Eden.
      No, I list my early weaknesses happily and willingly stand shoulder to shoulder with Harv and Jake as an equal. Some of my weaknesses: I secretly loathed my parents’ version of Christianity; though I wouldn’t have admitted it at the time, I took no pride in my sister’s accomplishments as a star athlete, and was in fact hardly aware of it or her existence (all my time and thinking devoted almost exclusively to Dougie, “Big Doug,” Big special Dougie; I pinned my brother Rudy down whenever I felt like it and let my spit stretch down toward his face, though he hated it and tried desperately to turn his face away because half the time I couldn’t pull the spit back up (he begged me and I’d care less, it being so much fun); I would play ping pong with Rudy and win every game, five or ten games in a row, and laugh at him until he’d be so frustrated he’d fling the heavy plywood paddle whizzing across the table as hard as he could, me ducking just in time, and then he’d chase me to try to catch me and hurt me; I’d be laughing the entire time; I stole quarters from my older brother who had won a roll of them in Vegas, and he found out eventually, even though I tried to disguise the theft by taking only one quarter a week; at fifteen I stole jars of cherry, crabapple and raspberry preserves to brew wine, being careful to arrange the jars in the pantry to make it look like they were all still there; i stole a carton or three of cigarettes from a local store, I stole LPs and suede jackets in Winnipeg, I made jokes to my friend about two unfortunate girls in my grade who it was popular to ridicule for their plainness and poor clothes (poverty); and so much more. Treat me as I deserve and, yes, I wouldn’t escape whipping, not by a long shot.

Professional Loss of Hearing

Professional Loss of Hearing
       by Will-o-the-Wisp Douglasingh

Floor sanding is a prohibitive job and it causes the loss of hearing in those who do it. My theory is that many professionals have lost a degree of hearing because of sanding their own floors. Most university professors of whatever rank suffer from an affliction called auditory incephalitis. Werner does. So does Welling down the hall from me. Wiebe most of all hears poorly. Warkentin, Weber, Wieselfaért, Weckenheiser and Wol all suffer from this infirmity. All of them, I would venture to guess, received their loss from floor sanding. None of them know the cause. Many of them do not know that they cannot hear well, or at all.

       “What?” they will say each and every time someone addresses them. Inaudibility they call it in those who speak to them. Miserable quietness they confess to their closest friends, especially themselves before the morning mirror. The world has gone silent, they assert in sometimes quite loud tones as they wait at the bus stop. People need to start feeling proud and good about themselves, they begin, peering down the street to the corner hoping for the square of black and orange far off. People should start speaking up, for goodness sakes, they expand, waiting, briefcases in their hands.

       All of them have sustained their deafness from floor sanding. They teach and research September to April. With the coming of May they feel a desire to refresh themselves. Spiritual renewal comes through physical activity, they vociferate, and think about what they might do to engage in it. They all hit on floor sanding. Why? Because of a strange set of circumstances. Each of them has purchased a house within walking distance of the university, or near a bus stop. The areas of the city they purchase in are not the lowly areas, obviously, but always they individually buy in a neighbourhood with a hundred year-old homes. These are not too expensive but once were considered elite. They are all run down. That they are run down is the very reason they appeal to these economists, historians, literature types, for obvious reasons. Economists do not like to spend money. Historians do not like to purchase anything new, and they do not like to spend money. Literarians appreciate the story in an older home and do not like to spend money. So these various disciplines purchase houses in similar states of dilapitation, with the same promise of a return on  rehabilitation and high station. Not willing to spend a kopeck on professional help, each of these men or women determines early on that he will himself be the repairman. He will make his home his hobby, and get thereby both much needed diversion and exercise. As well as profit.

       Each of this drove of professors of various levels of advancement (including the lowly sessional and lecturer, not to name the instructor) rents floor-sanding equipment. He rents a large sander machine with replaceable sanding circles. He rents an edger with replaceable blade in case of damage from a nail. He purchases a bucket of floor varnish such as Varetane or Urethane. Mostly, now, he makes the mistake of purchasing water-based varnish, not knowing that it is not durable despite the claims of the paint outlets. Then he begins to sand, using the large machine, which is especially designed to cover quickly large areas of hardwood. He finishes these big places and then notices that he must begin the edges not accessible to the big machine. He kneels, takes hold of the edger, and begins to edge the edges. It runs at a gazillion rpm and makes the highest pitched noise imaginable. He sands his way along the perimeters of the living room, the bedrooms, the hallway, and then finds himself in the front entrance, narrow, echoy, and the very location of his, and all his colleagues,' hearing loss. He sands away without covering his ears or inserting in them plugs or paper. An hour later he feels dizzy and goes for a lie-down. He feels odd next day and the next, but when he gradually begins to feel less odd he assumes that he has recovered and decides that he is glad that project is over with. He resumes teaching in the fall but cannot hear well. He does not know he does not hear well. He assumes that everyone around him has taken to becoming more silent and less audible.

canaan’s blessed shores

[circa 2003]

canaan’s blessed shore
    by chug-a-Lug doug (alias dougy the dirk)

i met doran in canaan
in 19 and 10
she said, “son, if you come to me,
and share my lonely bed,
you’ll ease my dread,
that we’ll soon be dead.“
a baker’s wife in fresno
i’d known for many years,
said, “doug, i heard you were in town,
i’ll be at henry’s bar,
why don’t you come around,
when the sun goes down?
now, don’t fret and frown. 
and don’t wait too long.”
eileen kowalski-burchuck,
demurely filed her nails,
in franky’s joint by brooklyn bridge,
and crossed her sleepy legs,
“come tuck me in.”
said, “ it ain’t no sin. “
that’s what i did.
and little older than a kid.
marina singh of montreal,
was very good to me.
when i was broke and had no roof,
she put me in her house,
her husband gone.
he seldom came,
home where she stayed 
we slept then prayed.
i’ve known several women,
i’ve doved them everyone.
each leman was a prize to me, 
and even when they said
“goodbye!” i still,
their thoughtful hills,
i like the milk.
i miss the silk.

By Rail

By Rail

     by D.O.U. Railmer 

Jordan walked along the railway tracks

marvelling at the loud blackbirds and frogs in the stillness of Wednesday morning, 7 AM. His wife had left the car at home because she was commuting with another member of her carpool and he could have driven if he’d wanted. Recently he had been walking instead of taking the bus or the car. It felt so good to go for miles by foot and feel tired, he said to himself as he began to feel that exhaustion. And that this too would change and soon he would be in good shape. 

     He passed a number of obstacles peculiar to the railway. He wouldn’t have seen them had he gone his usual route. First he’d crossed the railway bridge 100 yards along the way. He’d been surprised at its narrowness, about the way the two steel rails carried themselves down it’s centre, and that beside these there was only 2 feet of space before the drop into the dry riverbed. He was surprised too at the depth of the drop. It left him feeling silly, feeling it’s vertigo. He felt surprised by the length of the bridge once he was on it. From a little distance it had seemed like a one or two minute crossing. Once on it he knew that if the train appeared at the bend behind him he would have a hard time making it across in time. He’d have to run and even then likely it would be too late. Next he noticed the houses with their variety of backyard configurations against the tracks. A few sections had alleys that came down from the street and ended up right next to the railway ditch for maybe 10 houses. The next 10 or 20 houses had a high fence separating them from the track and its dynamics. 

     “If hobos come along there they will be deterred by this fence ,” he could hear the planners of that block thinking. Next came wire fencing for 10 or so houses, then no fences as if a certain group of families wanted to be able to see the trains pass. Then there was a group of houses with trees at the back, and one group with a roll of 12 foot caragana. After that came the perimeter and it’s tunnel of concrete through which the train barrelled. He felt some apprehension in case hobos might be still sleeping there under the trestle but there were none. Only paint-can graffiti met his eyes. The Dancer in glaring silver paint. Holmi and the Jesuits. Fuck Mia. Metal Stomach. Bush Spaz.

     But then he was through that section and into the next field of uncertainties: a Pool grain elevator, a Traza Tex gyprock factory with a huge parking lot cum loading area. Stacks of gyprock sheets, some almost tumbling as if they’d been there a long time waiting for delivery, then maybe getting rained on through their deteriorating plastic coverings.  Blue and white gyprock bundles, red and white ones, green and white. A 3 ton truck with one of its front wheels off pushed against the fencing as if it had once been worked on there, as if it once was still a possibility as a delivery unit until something happened—maybe an upturn in the company’s fortunes—made it unnecessary to fix it and it was left where it was, an obstacle for the yard maintenance guys to mow around and under. After that he came to a long row of high fencing made of planks, 2 x 10, 10 feet high with old fashioned trees behind them of a kind that no one had planted on the prairies for the last 50 years. The fence went on for a quarter-mile or so. Behind it he saw a structure rising quite high, maybe 15 feet, blue brick of a recent fashion, the sort used by contractors on newer buildings instead of the old-fashioned bricks of brown and beige. Trees hid most of this building’s back wall, which seemed to go on too long for his sense of proportion. It was a too-long building. Maybe it was a factory of some sort, he thought. Or a set of offices or a mini mall. But he knew the front of that street and he knew there was no mini mall there. 

     Then he remembered. It was a storage shed where people could drop off their belongings and leave them there as long as they wanted and pay only a small holding fee each month. Sentinel Self Storage he saw then almost immediately in a space where they’d left off planting trees on purpose so that the sign would show up well. But planting trees to show up well to the train going by? They just miscalculated, he thought, in the early stages of the design when they couldn’t imagine all the problems or effects of the blueprint plans. Weird, he thought too, how expensive the façade here at the back. They put out a lot of money to make this weird area of such rich materials. The front, he remembered now was of ordinary stucco with each dozen feet or so another garage door. He’d been inside there once picking up a load of belongings for some friends. The sheds were about 20 x 10 inside, dark, unlit, dozens of them. He’d marveled at the sheer number of stalls stretching out way past the one they were at. What if people deposited their belongings and then died and their children were too wealthy to bother to come for them, or their children were not their children, or some other oddity kept anyone from finding these possessions? What if the stalls were mainly empty and the proprietor was barely making enough to keep the mortgage alive? These thoughts had come to him then and he had liked the Kafka sense of the storage sheds’ improbability as a functional business. As a place where the predictable happened.

Hot Today

Hot Today
       by Blind Jetstream George

If the wind is strong enough

For us to fly our kites 

Go ahead and do that now

An’ if such flying bites

A string is that which ties us to

The world up in the sky

A bog is where we put our feet

And draw them out again

When mother was a little one

She tried to make her peace

But pastor larry thought it bad

And asked that she surcease

She did to please the hoary kind

But feels the sting of it

Now when a man of high degree

Gets her to do something she nees

But let me be as clear as clear

The sky is full of hate

And man and history are both

Getting a little late

They’re getting just a tad too late.

The weather is what it will be

Cold now and late for sun

And in the next two months you’ll see

The sun get up and run

And if the sky is not too bright

And hearts are filled with woe

Go buy a condominum

And to that dwelling go

Go live in it and be of cheer

Our days are numbered few

We all will meet again we say

In that bright world below

The world below is bright and warm

The one above is not

There cold and pain are much sent out

To all the ones who through the gate

But down below ah what a place

The flames give up much light 

And even men with poor eyesight 

Can read and read and read

And when they’ve done with reading tomes

They to the grave may go 

To see whose buried in the earth

And who is not there yet.

This is a poem for meteors

And meterologists

If any one of them should cross

My path I wish him bliss

And this, I wish he has the fun to say

How hot it will most likely be today.

Behind

Behind

       by Douglas Fairbunks the Fifth

In Brownsville, The February temperature was really nice. Jamaica and her brother had left Winnipeg on February 12 and arrived by bus in their Texas city three days later. When they disembarked, neither of them believed what they felt and saw. The scenery was a bummer, but the temperature was balmy. Jamaica took her bathing suit out of her suitcase, told her brother to stand there and wait, and she went into the bus washrooms to change. She never came out again. Jordan waited till he could no longer wait and went to the door and knocked. No one answered. He did that twice more and then opened the door a crack and called in softly, “Jamaica?” No one answered. He did this twice more. Then he shouted suddenly, frightened and worried that she might have had something bad happen to her in a new place. No answer. He was terrified!

     When he went outside the terminal to see if he could find a policeman, he saw her sitting on a bench, reading. He ran up to her and hit her and then when she hit him too, he said, “Where were you! I waited and waited and then went into the girls’ can and you weren’t there. I shouted and then came out here! Where were you?”

      Jamaica waited, Looking at him with revulsion. She put her arm to her nose as if hiding from the smell.

     “You went into the girls’?” She pursed her lips and smerled at him, making him feel the insult of her laughter. She smerled and then she hugged him and laughed and laughed. She had forgotten about him, she confessed. “I’m sorry Jordan,” she said. “ I was so happy to be where it was hot that I just decided to wait out here and read. I knew you would come sooner or later and I thought you had gone to play the one-armed bandit or something. Or were in the magazines.” She hugged him again and already was looking for something else to do. He sniffed and felt his 12 years intensely.

     “I’m not going to look for you again!” he said, meaning that if she got lost, so be it. But he was wrong. The siding on the bus depot could have told him that, and the way the air lay still and heavy next to his chest and throat was attempting to warn him, but he did not recognize the signs. He was too young. Nature only successfully warns the mature and the older. Even Jamaica did not recognize these attempts to save them grief, and being so young herself though she was almost 16 and commended herself on that fact daily, she would have to experience the pain of her younger years without listening to a Nature that she had yet no way of hearing, no ears to intercept. 

     “Let’s go to the beach,” she said, snerping her mouth in an attractive way, and laying her arm across an imaginary chaise lounge, the long way, so it’s length and slimness showed to advantage. “Let’s go see if those boys there have an idea where it is best to put our blanket down.”  She knew who she meant, but Jordan had not seen these males till now, and when he did so he shook his head, knowing somehow that he had no interest in having his bathing-suited sister asking them directions. .

     He whiffled. He snelled. He resisted and snorkelled along the road with a slowness that should have informed his sister of his reluctance. But she led the way firmly, and smartly waltzed along the boulevard till she came adjacent to the six young men. They turned toward her before she even spoke, and when she did they answered her immediately with, “Here! Here is the best spot.”  And they pointed at the ground by their feet. She smiled, shook her head and said that she preferred the company of women. They feigned shock and surprise, but she insisted, saying quite loudly that since she was a lesbian she wished to be directed to that part of the beach where others of her kind might be sunning themselves.

     The six all pointed toward a remote corner of the shore around a point, a half mile away and, laughing, left the two there. They made their way with some effort to the far off spot where they found women of all sorts and ages in states of terrible undress, so that one could see, if one looked, the whole of their beings, laid out with exactness on the happy sand. The sand felt like minnows under Jordan’s feet. The reefs beyond, in the currents and waves, laughed and sang in a merry way. Above him the chickasees and the nippersands dove and sailed for insects. Nearby a rotten fish gave out it’s seaside odeur. A girl next to Jordan, in a small bikini which hid little, spoke to him and asked him if he too was queer. He nodded, saying that he had felt queer ever since they arrived in Brownsville. She asked him where he was born. He told her. She grinned because she had never heard of it, and when he informed her that it was 30 below zero there, she stared uncomprehendingly at him and when she spoke, she was imperious.

     “Take off your trunks,” she said firmly, and already helping him. He put his hand out to stop her, but she had them about his ankles before he could do that, and he stepped out of them rather than make a scene. When they had finished kissing under the blanket 15 minutes later, he looked and found that Jamaica was gone. This time she was really gone. When he finally did find her, a month later, in the same spot, he was almost famished from not having had much to eat. He’d had enough water, but not food. When he saw her, he cried and hugged her, and asked, “Where have you been!” But she didn’t answer him, and he never could discover what she had been up to, or what she had been through. He knew it was hard times, though, from the new look of sadness behind her blue young eyes. Behind her pretty blue young eyes.

The First and the Last

The First and the Last

     by I Have Mostly Acquaintances

"Piss off," Jake said to the teacher the first day of grade nine, and that was the last day he spent in a classroom.