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.

Ode or Verse to Spendthrift Grannies

Ode or Verse to Spendthrift Grannies

     by The Same

some people are careful

don't spend a thing

hand over more than they take

sowhen a beggar comes round

withis sweet humble sounds

theywill pass to him money

theyreally don't have

youknow

they'llgive whattheydont really have

whoknows but that these'llget all liquoredanddown

or fill up their veins and hope somedaytodrown

undersomebridge they'll sleep nights ontheground

with norunningwater nostove and nofridge

that'show beggars live 

and howtheymakedo

don't you know

nonconsumers they liveandmakedo

if some people care

put their money in the bank

though they spend lots of it foolishly

there are others who consume it

like it's water from a well

on nearly all the whole world's merchants sell

don't you know

purchase two of everything that they sell

they'd be far better off

somnolent liquored down

or filling up their brittle veins 

and getting drowned

just go live under a bridge

don't bother buying that new fridge

it's not the worst thing that a foolish man might do

don't you know

it's not the worst thing for a profligate like you

then there's a gentleman like me

almost blind can barely see

and I spend whatever I get it's not a lot

if a tramp should come around

I wouldn't smile nor would I frown

but I'd go with him to see how that one lived

don't you know

and then I'd either hold it back or I would give

I might be better off

druggéd up or liquored down

filling up my little veins and getting drowned

or underneath a bridge

with no water stove or fridge

t'wouldn't be the very worst thing I could do

don't you know

can think of lots of worse things I might do

 

Spendthrift Grannies

Spendthrift Grannies

     by Douglas Moneybags Banker Guy

Many people spend too much now and then? I myself have fallen in that regard? Once I purchased a snowmobile for upwards of seven thousand dollars? It included several extras: hitch; polystyrene dust cover; boots good to sixty below; snowmobile suit for two hundred dollars; over-the-wrist leather snow mitts; a spare drive belt? I did not have a place to store it and it occupied three quarters of the garden shed during the summer? I have spent too little on an item now and then but not often enough to be of consequence, or mentionable in the grand scheme of things? I occasionally think that I have spent too little on my unmentionables when I notice them gaping and sagging at their leg openings?

        A grandmother I once knew fell into the first of these categorie?. Grandmothers of my acquaintance typically horde and save? With a government pension amounting to a pittance a month they make do, and with surprisingly felicitous consequences on the palettes and senses of their visitors? My mother was not a cook of that latter ilk? She darkened light gravy, served chicken pink at the bones, boiled carrots half away, got her brown bread dry and crispy, and fried eggs the same? All good? I ate her food and didn't die, or ever get sick from it, or ever crave more of it? She taught me moderation of appetite? I taught myself nothing, ever? I have learned very little in a lifetime? My lifetime is nearly done? I will never know anything? This is not pleasing to me? My mother knew a great deal till she got her stroke? 

        This other older woman to whom I referred had cash and spent it? She was prodigal of it? She would give away one set of dishes, complete with a dozen services of plates, bowls, and tea and coffee cups, as well as creamer, sugar bowl and salt and pepper shakers, because she had just found and purchased another and her kitchen could only accommodate three sets? She bought an expensive sports car that languished in her garage undriven? She took taxis to stores and occasions? She gave luxuriously to the church and sundry charities, sometimes filling United Way boxes with ten and twenty dollar bills? Once, shopping with her granddaughter, she bought for her own use a half dozen pairs of teenager jeans and as many teenager blouses? She kept a servant who watched television most of the day? She ate out at expensive restaurants morning and night, keeping no food at home in pantry or fridge? Concerned with her own welfare, she consumed more than would two families with five children each?

Oedipus Square Near the Palace

Oedipus Square Near the Palace
      by Dougler Reima

"My adoptive parents changed my name when they found that the authorities were after them and now I am forced to live with this false identity in order to protect them. I've told you some of this before. Why do I protect those who attempt to force on me what I do not wish? Simply, I love them. When I discovered that these were not my parents, Maryanne being not my mother but my nurse, and Philip not my father but my trustee, I disbelieved my ears and decided to go to some office, some officials, to determine the truth of the rumours. Let me tell you, since we are fellow travellers on this awkward road and so you will understand its import, my story as I recollect it. Could you reach me my cup? I forget where I set it down. Thank you! You are so good to me! May God grant you comfort and joy and long life!
        I adored my parents. I was eighteen at the time my troubles began. We--myself along with my parents, brothers and sisters, as well as the extended family, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and godparents--gathered in Oedipus Square for Mayday celebrations, nineteen seventy-three, to give our thanks to God, of course, but simultaneously to send Antonia on her way. The wedding had brought many together. When the revels had got well underway, and during supper hour when most had gathered in the hall there around the board, a drunk called out suddenly in a loud voice for everyone to hear his toast. He slurred out a speech I've spent my life trying to forget. 
        'You, Eddy, you think that you're so fine! Living in comfort and wealth, with parents dotting on you their a handsome prince. But . . . these are not your mother and father!'
        The room hushed. I said nothing. I leapt up to challenge him but instead hurried from the hall. Later I confronted my parents. Ivory, thank you. Yes, I, am comfortable. Are you weary of this tale? No? Well, they assured me that the man was speaking foolishness and had no sense of things, that he was witless and that I must not give the slightest credence to the matter. I experienced great relief and believed them. I did, at least, believe them in word. My heart smarted with doubt and eventually I sent a servant to discover the truth at the Vroix. There my fate was sealed. He returned. I listened. I fell ill. I left home. The rest is a long, long story so fell and deep that you will hardly credit it. I had to remain apparently well and sane in order to survive. But really, inside I burned with fear for my future. You know of that yourself, Ivory, I have long gathered from the stories you tell me of your own wild upbringing. Your understanding of the ways of insanity makes my confession possible. 
        How does one live with the sort of prediction my servant brought back? How can one ever again trust oneself in the company of woman or man when it has been told to one by the gods that one will kill the very people one lives most, one by an act of physical violence, the other by one of infamy?
        I fled! Maryanne was not going to become my wife! Of that I felt certain. Though I loved her, I did so with utter purity of heart and mind! She was my mother! And as for Philip, nothing could have induced me to take up arms against that reverent head! So, I did what I had to do. O the cleverness of the gods, Ivory! O the depths of my horror! O the tyranny of youthful hope! I began a life on the road, as I am--irony of ironies--living on the road again all these many year hence. And do you know that I could not die? I think you have already guessed that, Ivory, have you not? That I wished to die then, many years ago? You knew because you have seen it in my eyes, seen that I have visited death and returned with a surfeit of it on my being. Death written on me.
        I had hardly left home when I encountered a group of soldiers on a narrow way. I stood to one side to let them pass. They ignored me and strode by. But one of them, an old, white-haired man, as he passed, turned and pushed me aside, raising his oaken cudgel to strike me. Enraged, suddenly, I wrested away his stave and swung it in an instant at his own head. I hit him harder than I intended, I think, though I have had second thoughts about that since.
        Nevertheless, he fell to the ground and eight soldiers rushed at me with swords in their hands. I still had the dead man's staff and with it I flailed about me. Before one could have said "Robinson Crusoe" all of them but one lay lifeless, the byway littered with their bodies. I had never felt fear, don't get me wrong. I wanted to die! I fervently wished that I had then been killed! But fate had other things in store for pitiful me. As you will hear, death was not my youthful destiny. Thirty years later I am still alive and well and, my blindness excepted, as capable as ever. I believe that I could still inflict similar devastation if need required. My strength remains undiminished over the years. Is that not remarkable, Ivory?
        The rest of my story will have to wait for another occasion. Tomorrow night maybe I will continue it. Do you know where I should relieve myself? Help me to a spot and then I will try to sleep, I think. I am the author of my own destruction, and I know it all. I congratulate myself not on my history but on my knowing. My knowing what I endured and what I must still endure before my long flight is done. You are not my mother are you, Ivory?