from If | Spring 2005

If I Lived In Alberta
by Jeanette Lynes

I’d keep a magpie. Show it largesse, let it
hop along my quilt, peck ticks from the nape of my neck.
I’d sew it small bird bandannas, toss crumbs for it to fetch. It would
appreciate me in the way only dark
birds can. I’d admire its hues—
writer’s-block white, graduation-robe black,
stunning teal sateen of a nineteen-forties’ dinner dress.
Over time, it might even
acquire speech.We’d discuss the fragility of the power grid.
We’d stockpile
sunflower seeds, candles. (I understood quickly enough its fetish
for the small, solitary flame.) We’d be happy.This would be
no dog and pony show, you understand.The magpie will want all
the things I want. Call it reciprocity—
when it wriggles its funky knife-blade tail
I’ll follow it anywhere. In the park, we’ll rent a paddle boat,
Pie at the helm
singing lake shanties. In spring,
when the mountains moult and their white
sides slide away, my magpie, now convinced beyond all doubt
I’m too fine for this world, will waddle to a butte’s edge
to teach me to fly.
“You can talk the talk,” it will squawk—“can you wing the walk?”

.FULL DETAILS

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Back issues

Volume28, No 3 Winter 2001

from the first motion of love (page 22)
by Kevin Armstrong

For me, an Albertan from the wide expanse of the praries, New Zealand is a small place. Tell me, Mr. Stead, can a town with a few pleasant acres be considered picturesque? Yes, Keri Keri has that pretty little valley with the river, marin, and "New Zealand's oldest stone building," but what else? One-level shopping plazas. A store-lined main street. It was a strange point of pride for me that in the week spent there with Mary, I never once set foot in the Old Stone Store. After all, I'm a traveller, not a tourist. FULL DETAILS

Volume 26, No 4 Spring 1999

from Sheep Dub (page 68)
by Lee Henderson

Whose baby hands were soft and instinctive, clenching indiscriminately around fingers lain in her palm, whose legs shot into the air like sensitive feelers, probing and tasting the air of her crib; whose stomach was as soft as kneaded dough and bare for a mouth to press against and make loud raspberries; whose baby cry she never lost even when she was six, crying when I forced her out of my room and pinched her toe when slamming the door, crying when I told her she was stupid, crying when I strangled her, and crying when I told her I didnt like her; whose memory was idiot savantish, or photographic at least, remembering things from when she was less than a year old: the colour of the shirt I wore the first time she had a fever and was taken to the doctor, the name of the dead barber that used to cut my hair, before he died-who she had met once when she was two; whose hair, as a baby, began to grow in leafy tufts from behind her ears and turned long and flowing and the colour of bittersweet chocolate, whose name for fear was "the Sheep"; whose nightmares accosted us both because she insisted on sleeping in my bedroom; whose first word at five months(!) was "Ben," my own name; whose favourite food was bananas; whose smell was always slightly of bananas; whose constant reminder was that Ii didn't like her, that i was as close to hating her as a brother could be, that she was not wanted around me; whose own name was Christine, is now long dead. FULL DETAILS

Volume 16, No 4 Winter 1988

from The Book of M (page 24)
by John Gould

If I was a savage man I'd make this dream come true, lure some unsuspecting Meg or Mimi up here and force her to play along. Not that that would to any good, of course - she has to want it. Anyhow, I'm far from savage. Obsessed maybe, even perverted, but not savage. I'd say I'm about as gentle as any man who handles a monkey wrench all day and himself all night could possibly be. FULL DETAILS

Volume 7, No 3 Winter 1979