Love Sanguine: A Sick Fairytale

embroideries by Lia Pas, poem by Jennifer Sparrowhawk.

Body Map embroidery by Lia Pas — *Body Map* embroidery by Lia Pas

Madeleine suffers

from a disease of the blood,

a malady which mocks

the symptoms of love.

Shallow breath, a glassy stare,

weary gait, unkempt hair,

all suggest an occupied mind,

filled with thoughts of the romantic kind.

However, if one looked closer

or paid more attention

they'd see it wasn't love

but a physical affliction.

Cell embroidery by Lia Pas — *Cell* embroidery by Lia Pas

And refusing to comply

with her mother's tricks

of rubbing raw beets

on her cheeks and lips,

Pale as a spectre

Madeleine remains

with translucent skin

to reveal every vein.

Paresthesia Hand (1) by Lia Pas — *Paresthesia Hand (1)* by Lia Pas

It is her ghostly beauty

which appealed to Maurice

who plays unbeknownst victim

to this deplorable disease.

For he is made a fool

thinking his love requited

then realizes

it is only one-sided.

It wasn't his charm

which inspired her fainting,

but rather an illness

her blood, it's tainting.

The look in her eyes

was not for him,

but rather a sign

her health is dim.

Eye Poem embroidery by Lia Pas — *Eye Poem* embroidery by Lia Pas

And it wasn't his poem

about the moon,

but rather, fatigue

which made her swoon.

With this knowledge

Maurice made up his mind

to leave the town,

and his heart, behind.

Heart Vortices embroidery by Lia Pas — *Heart Vortices* embroidery by Lia Pas

Never did he love again

tragic, but it's true.

And Madeleine died, grasping

a poem about the moon.

Paresthesia Hand (3) embroidery by Lia Pas — *Paresthesia Hand (3)* embroidery by Lia Pas

Lia Pas is a Saskatoon-based multidisciplinary artist who works in image, text, and sound exploring body and states of being. She focused on performance-based work until 2015 when she became disabled with a chronic illness and now her main practice is in fibre arts.

The Boy Who Hissed at Geese

Nic Olson

Like I said officer, the arm and leg bones I found by the water were from that boy who always hissed at geese and whistled at dogs and hollered at cats. I’m tellin’ you, that’s what I seen.
Nah, I don’t know his name. No idea where he lived.
Really? I just told your partner the whole story. It’ll be the same thing, but alright.
The bones I found by the water were from that boy who always hissed at geese and whistled at dogs and hollered at cats. He probably lived nearby; he was always in here, making a racket as he passed through on his bike, just to see some defenseless animal jump or yelp or stare. He would whistle invitingly to dogs tied up to trees and they’d bark and cry and run in circles on their leashes until they were coiled around the tree, all confused.
Sometimes there’s cats strolling through the park, and he’d holler at them until they skittered under cars or behind gates. Then they’d peer out and stare through his soul, the way only cats do.
Me? I live up on Lincoln Street, near the 7-11. Yep. Oh, I’ve been working for the city for about four years now.
I’d say every Saturday I’ve ever been here, making my rounds mowin’ lawns and mulchin’ trees, the boy’s been here. He’d ride his bike to the park alone, only thing with him was his damn cameraphone. He’d walk around like his phone was leading him to some buried treasure. Sometimes he’d jog towards trees or park benches then stop suddenly and stare at his phone some more. Sometimes he’d pump his fist in celebration of something. Surprised he didn’t walk right into the pond and keep on goin’. I didn’t know what to make of it.
Anyway, I was pruning hedges from the bike path to keep branches from hitting kids in the face. Then I threw the branches into the nearby mulcher. He was wearing a red canvas backpack and a denim ball cap. He pedalled up to the edge of the water by the bench over there and approached the gaggle of twelve or so sitting at the edge of the creek nipping at pieces of trash pounded into the dirt.
Now this was odd because he would usually just hiss at the geese and bike on by, to go play on his phone, y’know. This time he didn’t seem to have his phone at all.
The geese stopped digging through the plastic wrappers. They looked at him like they could smell the bread on him. Their beady eyes hid in the soft down of their black heads, and they cocked their heads like they were accusing him of something.
Now the geese were generally too stupid to even notice the boy unless he was eatin’ a sandwich or somethin’. Come to think of it, when he first started coming to the park, pretty sure it was him anyway, he was attacked. Some bird’s sloppy, edged bill and stiff, black tongue snatched a sandwich right outta his hand when he was staring at his phone. He biked away in a sweat. Was kinda funny, actually. Ahem, that is, until this all happened.
But you ever heard of Angel Wing? You heard of gluten, right? Yeah, you hear about it quite a bit these days. Angel Wing is celiacs disease for winged creatures. My uncle is celiac. Real celiac, not one of those new diet-celiacs, but like a he’ll-go-blind-if-he-eats-a-soda-cracker kinda celiacs. Another canary in the coal mine for us, the baffled human species of experimentation. Something in the composition of the bread we throw at ‘em——in all likelihood the bleached, white-as-snow flour——destroys the bird’s genetic make-up or some such thing and their wing mutates into a featherless image of its former self, disabling flight and making a regularly mangy pigeon seem majestic in comparison. Yet, somehow bakers still make white bread, and people still eat it. Hell, I’m partial to the stuff.
So, I put up signs for people. Do not feed the birds. But I don’t go around enforcing it. That’d be a goddamn full-time job. I seen this kid feeding the birds but I didn’t say anything. I’m not the kid’s parents.
Now, for the record, I don’t think the boy would’ve ever purposefully poisoned the birds with white bread. He didn’t seem like the death-metal animal-sacrifice kinda kid, y’know? I’ve seen those kids in the park on a Sunday morning swinging gophers around by the tail, intestines spilling out the mouth. But him, normally he’d just come to the park, drop his bike under a tree, and walk in crazy patterns while bleeping and blurping on his phone. If y’ask me, the boy’s old man probably confiscated his phone for getting an F on some math test. He was probably driving his mom nuts at home, so she sent him to the park with a week-old loaf of white bread.
So anyway, the boy dropped his bike on its side, turned his cap backwards, and stepped towards the dozen birds, their goslings bumping and tripping on rocks around their mothers’ ankles. The boy hissed. It was loud. Loud enough that I heard it from across the way when the mulcher was idle. He stuck his tongue out like the geese do, and hissed at them for a while. The birds didn’t do much. He stepped closer, now close enough to loft a bread crumb if he so chose. He hissed again, this time in short bursts and more quiet. The birds looked around at each other, when one from the back of the group hobbled forward and turned to show the boy a flat, featherless bony form protruding from where his wing was. The Angel Wing. The boy hissed again, expecting the hardened, experienced alpha-goose in front to respond, but it stood with its eye fixed on the boy’s extended tongue.
It’s almost like he didn’t see them as anything different than the flower planters, statues, fountains, park benches, lamp posts, fire hydrants, street signs, garbage cans, y’know? I mean, he probably didn’t grow up with a pet, ‘cept for maybe a goldfish named Clowny he flushed after a week. He’s probably from the city and his father never took him huntin'. He’s used to catching those digital critters with his phone. He couldn’t tell if these damn geese were real. I guess they showed him how real they were.
In the meantime, I’m mulching trees with my safety goggles on from across the pond. So, the boy took off his red canvas backpack and set it on the dirt, on top of years of dried, crumbled, goose shit. He unzipped his bag with his eyes on the group of birds. He pushed his sweater aside in his backpack, bent the bread clip back, and stuck his hand in the clear, polka dot bag of sliced bread. As his hand fingered through the slices like a deck of cards, he looked away from the birds and at his handful of bread. When he looked up again, the dozen birds had surrounded him.
See now, I understand you may be having a hard time with what I’m telling you, officer. I know. I mean, historically, geese were never the greatest example of defensive instinct. Trust me, I see them here every day. They’re seemingly blind and don’t have ears. They take a while to start flying and their goslings are slow and can be crushed by the foot of a toddler. But you’ve heard the news lately. This ain’t the first time. And remember they can fly 1500 miles in a day. When it comes time to escape for the winter, their instincts kick in without any interference and the natural, pointed flying formation takes shape. They’re damn smart.
Anyways, it almost looked as if the bird with the decrepit wing nodded, and the other eleven swarmed the boy, beating him down with their extended wings, wingspan the size of the boy himself. They pummelled him to the shit-covered earth and pecked at his bare arms and legs with their ridged bills. The geese gnawed and gummed his skin raw and red. One of them used its talon to slice into his belly button and they all started slurping down his organs. There was the loudest honking y’ever heard, some of them with their heads stretched to the sky. Black purple pieces of meat flew around and velvet blood ran into the pond. I just stood and watched with the mulcher grumbling in the background. I couldn’t move. I was in shock! The birds held him down with such weight that the boy was picked clean in a matter of minutes, God rest his soul. The geese waddled back to their goslings, curled their necks around to groom their backsides with their bills, plopped in the water, and started paddling across the water towards me; the boy nothin’ but a pile of shimmering bones and hair and organs next to an untouched, open bag half-full of white bread.
I ran to the work truck, got my phone, and called you.

The police sergeant took the groundskeeper’s name and information and stepped to his car to use the computer. The groundskeeper continued talking with the attending officer, the sergeant listened through the lowered cruiser window.
When I was a bit older than him I was going huntin’ with my Uncle Merle. We’d go out to this slough next to some reserve with a duck-call my great-grandpa carved himself, and we’d bring the dog, named Bear. We’d sit on packable stools, drinking beer and watch Bear run into the tall grass to scare out the geese. They’d fly up all graceful, almost straight up, like in that old video game, their wings out full and powerful. Then we’d shoot them, they’d flutter to the ground and Bear would go fetch the goose and bring it back to us with a broken neck. We’d take the biggest, least mutilated one home and mount it on the wall of the garage and leave the rest for coyotes. We could never eat the things. The meat was no good back then. They were all scrawny and stringy, they probably got into the pig feed, whatever the hell that was made of.
Then one time Bear took off into the bush barking louder than usual. No birds flew out and then Bear wasn’t barking at all. Uncle Merle sent me into the brush to see what happened while he sat on his ass. I left my rifle and came over this bluff of chokecherries and, right hand to God, there was Bear cowering under the shrubs, and from me to where the boy was, that far away, was this Sasquatch bastard, each fist around a duck’s neck, walking into the brush. Three steps and he disappeared. Yeah, most people don’t believe me neither, but that Bigfoot thing, he was as real as that there bag of open white bread across the way, and ain’t nobody allowed to call me a liar.
Yeah sure I’ll say all this on record. You want the Sasquatch part too?

The sergeant stepped out of his cruiser and walked to the bloody patch of dirt next to the creek’s edge and looked across the pond at the tree mulcher. Bread clips were scattered around in the dirt at his feet, and the half empty bag of bread still sat open to the sky, crinkling in the wind. He didn’t know how he’d tell the boy’s family that he was the fourth victim this month of animal-related deaths. He sighed, took a slice of white bread, tore it up into small squares, and threw them onto the water where the geese waded peacefully.

Nic Olson is from Treaty 4 Territory (Regina, Saskatchewan). He has worked mostly as an outreach worker and tour manager, and currently resides on Treaty 6 Territory to study law. A series of short audiobooks of his stories with accompanying music from Canadian and international musicians can be found at *ballsofrice.bandcamp.com*.

Autumn Goddess

photo Triptych by Jennifer Sparrowhawk

*Jennifer Sparrowhawk is an artist and writer from Saskatchewan. She is a good witch, but not the greatest at cutting her own bangs.*

The Zombie Apocalypse Will Arrive At Your Earliest Convenience

Aidan Morgan

On Tuesday afternoon the zombie apocalypse started. We all got the same text on our phone.

Ding! and Ding! and so on. Homes and hallways pinged like digital popcorn.

The text also advertised 10% off the first month of disposable anti-zombie halberds. Delivered straight to your door! Our fleet of couriers is 100% zombie-free.

Everyone looked out their windows. No zombies yet, even around the graveyards, the news reported.My daughter Trephina pulled at my sleeve. When are the zombies coming? she keened. Her giant brown eyes blinked up at me, pleading for sense.

She kept pulling and keening and blinking until I picked her up and put her on the top shelf in the hallway closet.The news was showing zombie sightings now, but they were small and far away. They could have been anybody.

Tik Tok feeds filled up with zombie sightings. Within hours the sightings were replaced with teens doing zombie makeup tutorials and herky-jerky zombie dances. I thumbed through them, hitting like reflexively.

Someone on Twitter posted a thread of what famous figures in history would be like as zombies. Shakespeare images circulated. NORMALIZE TENTED DEAD GIBBERING AND SQUEAKING, one meme went.

The sun was moving in the right direction, but there was a sense we were all being pulled into the past.

Later that evening the air became tinged with rot. I checked the fridge and threw out a bag of bell peppers. The rot persisted. Trephina knocked politely on the closet door.

Next door a family of zombies was shuffling their possessions in. One of them waved, herky-jerky. Loose cerements dangled from his wasted frame. It was hard to tell if they were actual zombies or just cool.

Hello neighbours! I said.

Kindred Cities Halloween 2021