Canadian Fiction Magazine articles from January 1 1999

Canadian Fiction Magazine archives from January 1 1999

Vinyl.
January 1, 1999... HER NAME IS VINYL. Smooth as raincoats, bright as a beachball, she picked me up; I've never looked back. We have a dog now and two cats. We have an apartment that we decorated ourselves: plastic fruit hanging from plastic trees, plastic flowers...

Love is all around us.
January 1, 1999... Once, the snow was so deep you almost couldn't hear Margaret Atwood -- David McGimpsey MY CLOSE PERSONAL FRIEND KURT WALDHEIM phones me up -- lonely, everyone's ostracizing Kurt in his bunker aerie in Alberta's foothills, not as many...

Elbow.
January 1, 1999... HE'D PLAYED HOCKEY AS A KID and could still recall the sensation of receiving an elbow to the head. But then it was with a helmet. When he comes to, the first thing he does is try to remember his own name. It arrives instantly: Rick Belle....

Nostalgia.
January 1, 1999... FRIDAY NIGHT THE TELEPHONE RINGS ABOUT 9:30. I'm unwinding over cold pizza and cold beer, watching Friday Night Football on TSN. I am mildly interested in the Blue Bombers versus the Alouettes. Three rings and I answer. "Richard?" ...

Allen Ginsberg died and I didn't feel a thing.
January 1, 1999... THE POSTER IS BEIGE with an inner frame of green-lime-and-banana cock-and-balls. Allen Ginsberg: Bard of the Skeletons: Friday November 15, 8:00 p.m. The audience is an odd mix: an older man reading The Globe & Mail, beautiful blonde, brush-cut...

Rat king (king rat).
January 1, 1999... "THERE ARE TWO KINDS," Elsberg says to the doctor. "There's the Rat King, that's a giant rat who lives in the warren and emerges only to defend the brood. That kind of rat doesn't really exist, I mean they don't think that kind really exists....

Speed culture.
January 1, 1999... IT'S TWO DAYS BEFORE THE CONCLUDING EPISODE of the moron cartoon Beavis and Butthead. I'm sitting in a This Morning radio studio waving around my Beavis and Butthead pseudo-remote control with sound effects (a present from my brother) and...

Walking papers.
January 1, 1999... I LOOK AROUND AND WONDER, how would I do it? They make it so hard for you in airports, with crowds of people everywhere, leering against arcade games and feeding at snack counters, lining up right out of the restrooms. There is no privacy...

Donahue show.
January 1, 1999... TRENT AND I SMOKED UP before going to The Donahue Show -- a few steps down a convenient alleyway off 24th Avenue, five quick puffs on the magic dragon -- and the stone hit me, that slo-mo warp blossomed in my brain, unfolding itself, unfurling,...

Hunting for something.
January 1, 1999... TOM HUNT HAS JUST OPENED a religious supply store on Main Street in the city. The sign out front says, Hunting for Something? Religious Paraphernalia and Supplies Tom took the money he received from his mother's will and quit his...

That great mouth correctly hurt.
January 1, 1999... Augustus and Emily Carr Black are standing on the Gerrard Street bridge which crosses the Don River. From the sidewalk, they can see the older section of the Don Jail and the river of cars heading north and south on the Parkway. A cool...

Diary of a cultural exile.
January 1, 1999... LA Airport, Nov. 1 AS I LEAVE NORTH AMERICA for the jungles of southeast asia, I wonder about the nature of the culture I am leaving: the culture that has captured the imagination of the planet, with its magical melange of assault weapons,...

Still.
January 1, 1999... "CNN," MY MOTHER SAID when I answered the phone. "Quick." "I'm a little busy," I said. "I can't believe it," she said. CNN was in mid-broadcast of a live car chase. Helicopter shot from above. A cluster of black-and-white cruisers...

Bad magic for beginners.
January 1, 1999... IT TURNS OUT THE RUBBER PLANT Richard bought for his wife is infested with bugs. Tiny bugs who fly lazy circles around the big spatula arms. He slaps at an assembly of them and a few fall to the floor. Afraid they might spread to other living...

Rearing of likeable bees.
January 1, 1999... "THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING?" "No. The Rearing Of Likeable... I mean Likeable Bees." From this hollow bed of water that I made and now lie on, propped against the wall, I'm reading Vanity Fair -- an article on the strange math...

Inanimate world.
January 1, 1999... TO GET AN IDEA of this room's maturity, examine the mouldings and trim. The edges are blunt from untold coats of paint, various layers of white, gray, yellow, and blue, exposed where I rammed it with the speaker cabinet I carried in yesterday....

Women who run with buffalo.
January 1, 1999... "TINA! TINA!" That's the name on my name tag, the one that was given to me when I started here. My real name is Katherine, but my boss, Karl, won't give me a new name tag until my probation period is over. So, Tina it is, and I wince every...

St. Stephen's.
January 1, 1999... LET ME TELL YOU about my favorite teachers. And it seems to me that they were my favorite teachers because they revealed something personal -- something about their feelings, or their bodies, or both. The first best teacher I remember was...

Spider in his head.
January 1, 1999... HE AWAKES IN THE MORNING LIGHT with a killer headache, skull an overripe watermelon about to burst. He is aware that this is something he experiences most mornings, but for the life of him, he can't remember who or where he is. He doesn't...

Wintering.
January 1, 1999... "DID YOU CARVE THE PUMPKIN YET?" Dominique asks, in the kitchen, unloading groceries. Groceries that she bought with her money, which she'll no doubt remind me about before this Halloween day is done. "Just getting to it," I call from my...

Doing lunch.
January 1, 1999... "WINE?" THE WAITER ASKS. "Although I deserve to," answers a man dressed in a three-piece suit, "I'll have a scotch and soda... while I'm waiting." He consults his Rolex before he settles back to watch the business brokers and ladies who...

Stone temple.
January 1, 1999... AS DAY BREAKS A MAN APPEARS holding the hand of a small boy, leading him across the frozen waste of an empty field. The two figures are backlit by the rising sun. The horizon is streaked pink and mauve. Behind the stand of pine they've just...

So like candy.
January 1, 1999... 1 GLASS OF COKE, cheez doodles, Sex Pistols causing anarchy in the background... I'm set for the 10:00 show. She's undressing slowly tonight. She's a heavy girl, so much to see, so much to touch and rub and love. That's it. She's...

State of the nation.
January 1, 1999... DOUGLAS GLOVER'S most recent novel is The Life And Times Of Captain N. (McClelland and Stewart). He is currently editor of Best Canadian Stories and hosts The Book Show, a weekly literary interview program syndicated on the National Public...

Backtrack to innocence.
January 1, 1999... TESS FRAGOULIS is a Toronto writer. IT IS 3:00 A.M. AND THE INDIGO SKY drapes the small white house by the sea with its darkness. The moon is shining full, and a ray of its smiling light falls into the window of the small white house and...

Triangle man.
January 1, 1999... PAUL GLENNON is trying to avoid writing a novel. His stories have appeared in Descant, Matrix, and The Blue Penny Quarterly. I DON'T UNDERSTAND the condition of the triangle man, which is why I have suspended my dislike. The triangle...

Dreaming in turtle.
January 1, 1999... BROOKE CLARK is a Toronto writer. THEY WANT TO SWIM WITH THE TURTLES. They are a link, some kind of clue, there is no doubt about that. They have been coming almost as long as there have been turtles, as long as I have been coming. I...

Let's go.
January 1, 1999... JAMES BOOTHROYD grew up in West Vancouver and studied history at Simon Fraser University, Spanish at the University of Seville, and Latin American history at St. Edmund's College, Cambridge. His work has appeared in numerous forums in Canada....

Photograph.
January 1, 1999... MICHAEL GELFAND was born in 1967. His work appeared in The Fiddlehead, The Quarterly, and sub TERRAIN. He lives in Toronto. 1. American Cars IN THE PHOTOGRAPH there are two cars. The first car is parked in a vacant lot by the side of...

Bone garden.
January 1, 1999... BIANNE WARREN is a Regina fiction writer and playwright. Her collection, Bad Luck Dog, won the Saskatchewan Book of the Year Award in 1993. IT'S LATE IN THE DAY, a fall day, October. Mary Jo Carmichael drives her almost-new white Acura...

Amnesty.
January 1, 1999... LORI WEBER is native Montrealer who teaches English at Vanier College. She has published fiction and poetry in various anthologies, including The Lyric Paragraph (DC Books) and Celebrating Canadian Women (Fitzhenry & Whiteside). ISOBEL HAS...

Choruses from an opera.
January 1, 1999... MICHELLE ALFANO is a Toronto writer and the fiction editor of Blood and Aphorisms. "Choruses From An Opera" is an excerpt from a novel in progress about the adventures of Lilla, a young Italo-Canadian girl, weaned on melodrama by her...

Ride of my life.
January 1, 1999... JOHN WEBSTER lives in Fredricton, New Brunswick. He last appeared in Canadian Fiction Magazine No. 85. The 6th Dalai Lama was almost lost to our people. The death of the 5th Dalai Lama was kept secret by the Regent for much too long. Before...

Passage to India.
January 1, 1999... DON MCNEIL's first published stories appeared in Coming Attractions: 1994 (Oberon Press). A Passage to India is part of a larger collection of stories set in Newfoundland, his original homeland. WHEN HER DOCTORS kept telling kevin's mother...

Silence of the heart.
January 1, 1999... JAMES GOHO lives in Winnipeg. He has stuided at the University of Buffalo, the University of Manitoba, and University of Western Ontario. His work has appeared in Grain, The Antigonish Review, and previously in Canadian Fictin Magazine. ...

Philipe of Harare.
January 1, 1999... BARBARA PARKIN is a Vancouver writer. Her work has appeared in numerous forums, including Descant, Capilano Review, and Coming Attractions `93. SHE HAD NAMED HER DAUGHTER PHILIPA with the hope that such a name would bring the girl riches....

Do you really love me?
January 1, 1999... BARBARA LAMBERT is a Vancouver writer. "DO YOU LOVE ME?" she says. "Yes," he says. "But really?" she says. "Shawn, really? Are you sure?" The woman conducting the interrogation is Margareta. She is standing in the kitchen of...

Silent sister.
January 1, 1999... NADINE MCINNIS has appeared in The Malahat Review, Quarry Magazine, and Grain. Her book, The Litmus Body, won the 1993 Ottawa-Carleton Book Award. She took first prize in the 1992 National Poetry Contest and second prize in the 1993 CBC...

Section: erotica.
January 1, 1999... BRUCE EASON has appeared in such forums as The Fiddlehead, Prism International, Prairie Fire, and Grain. Black Tulips, a collection of short fiction, was published by Turnstone Press in 1991. "WE CALL IT SECTION EROTICA." Robert...

Malgre tout.
January 1, 1999... TESSA MCWATT is a writer of poetry, fiction, and secreenplays She lives in Montreal. HER NEIGHBOR, NAT, IS A PILOT -- Julia knows this much about him, but she's not sure where he flies, just seems him coming home late, at very odd hours,...