[Dis]Connected Read online

  PRAISE FOR THE POETS IN THIS BOOK

  AMANDA LOVELACE

  “The perfect poetry opener for any fairytale lover and feminist…”

  —Bustle

  “Full of powerful feminist rage and wisdom, The Witch Doesn’t Burn In This One made me want to set fire to the world and dance in its ashes.”

  —Sandhya Menon, NYT bestselling author of When Dimple Met Rishi

  Winner of the 2016 Goodreads Choice Award in Poetry

  TRISTA MATEER

  Winner of the 2015 Goodreads Choice Award in Poetry

  “With gut truths and gin-clear imagery, Trista Mateer reminds us of all those places left unexplored by language. The wonders and especially the heartbreaks of love occupy much of her attention, and also best demonstrate her uncanny ability to chart new ground.” (Honeybee)

  —Foreword Reviews

  NIKITA GILL

  “Wild Embers…will evoke love, loss, doubt, sorrow, and, ultimately, make you question the meaning of life.”

  —HelloGiggles

  “From tales of heroines of lore, goddesses of wisdom, and larger than life figures, the core of most stories deals with our oneness in the universe.”

  —BuzzFeed

  “Gill is especially interested in exploring emotions, and the beautiful but sometimes painful marks that important people leave on your life.”

  —Refinery29

  IAIN S. THOMAS

  “I Wrote This For You is…the essence of what it means to be human.”

  —Ethar El-Katatney, CNN African Journalist Of The Year

  “The magnificent beauty of I Wrote This For You is quite simply this: the book is elegantly incomplete without you. No one else in the world can read it the way you do. No one.”

  —Matthew E. May, author, The Elegant Solution, In Pursuit of Elegance, The Shibumi Strategy

  CANISIA LUBRIN

  “Canisia Lubrin has quickly established herself as one of Canada’s brightest emerging poets.”

  —CBC Books

  “Lubrin’s poems are dense with ideas and striking turns of phrase…”

  —Toronto Star

  CYRUS PARKER

  “In a world of toxic masculinity, DROPKICKromance brings a sensitive, male perspective of love and loss which carries both painful insights and much-needed hope. Highly recommended.”

  —Danika Stone, author of All the Feels; Internet Famous

  “DROPKICKromance plays with form on the page to tell a story that will linger…”

  —Nicole Brinkley, bookseller—Oblong Books & Music

  YENA SHARMA PURMASIR

  Nominated for Best of Net 2017 (Nonfiction, On Being the Support Beam in My Family’s House: Holding the World Throughout Loss)

  Honorable Mention—2017 Queens Library Summer Poetry Contest (Even in Utopia, Even Here)

  LIAM RYAN

  “Liam is one of those writers who reminds you of your favorites while standing completely whole on his own. Magic.”

  —Leah Stone, Poet @leahjstone

  “Liam Ryan is elegance in the squall of literature. Each word in his debut book has etched its existence in my mind…”

  —Mitchell Burke, author of The Corner Of The Room

  SARA BOND

  “Sara Bond’s stories were both sad and hopeful and illustrated the impact that the carelessness and callousness of hit and runs against cyclists has had on real people.”

  —Damien Newton, Co-Editor, Streetsblog California

  R.H. SWANEY

  “R.H. Swaney is a wonderful poetry account to follow as the handle promises great quality every time…incredibly thoughtful, mature and well written.”

  —Untwine.me

  “…one of my favorite poems of 2017.”

  —KIKN Radio

  “Coming across an Instagram poet isn’t hard, but finding a poet who can make an impression on a reader simply by weaving words into something unique is a talent.”

  —YourTango

  Copyright © 2018 Central Avenue Marketing

  Cover and internal design © 2018 Central Avenue Marketing Ltd.

  Cover Design: Michelle Halket

  Full credits are found in the Notes at the end of the book.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Published by Central Avenue Publishing, an imprint of Central Avenue Marketing Ltd.

  www.centralavenuepublishing.com

  [Dis]Connected: Poems & Stories of Connection and Otherwise

  978-1-77168-145-2 (pbk)

  978-1-77168-146-9 (epub)

  978-1-77168-147-6 (mobi)

  Published in Canada

  Printed in United States of America

  1. FICTION / Short Stories - Multiple Authors 2. POETRY / General

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For anyone who’s ever felt disconnected.

  Introduction

  The idea for this book came to me when someone said they heard poetry was the next adult colouring book, referring to the craze of the early/mid 2010s. Like other fads, the market for these books exploded, and then promptly tanked.

  Is poetry the next fad? For anyone in the know, it isn’t. While poetry has seen a surge in sales in recent years, its popularity has been building slowly and sustainably over several years. After all, I successfully published I Wrote This For You by Iain S. Thomas in 2011 and there were several poets who achieved more widespread popularity around that time. Many young contemporary poets are gaining voices via social media and while increases may not continue at the same rate, there is enough organic momentum to sustain a new normal of higher sales in this bigger category.

  Social-media poetry is simply an evolution of the art form. The sharing and acceptance of online poetry is not much different than what happened with the Impressionists and the Beat Generation, who were initially eschewed by their critics. Poetry is bringing together people from all over the world, of different races, religions, identities. Well-known and new poets are having their voices heard via social media and indie- and self-publishing. These people are changing the status quo and creating a form of art that is accessible, loud, beautiful, and soft—all at the same time.

  This book brings together some of the most popular talents in many forms of poetry and uses their voices to raise those of not-yet-known poets. It is an exercise for all the poets to use their counterparts’ work to create fiction in the form of short stories. And it’s a chance for poetry fans to read longer work and see their favorite poets’ talents all in one book.

  What you’re about to read is the product of ten diverse and interesting people coming together. The concept and theme of the book are about connection. We seem to live in a hyper-connected world, yet we increasingly hear stories of loneliness and isolation. This book is about connecting poets with each other, connecting poetry with short fiction, and publishing stories about connection and/or a lack thereof.

  The premise was this: Each of the fully participating authors was to submit three poems adhering to this theme. These three poems would be assigned to a randomly chosen counterpart. That counterpart would select one of the poems and write a short story based on it.

  The assignments were made by pulling names out of a hat (okay, it was a Starbucks mug).

  This is the order that I pulled, so Amanda Lovelace would write a story based on one of Iain T
homas’s poems, R. H. Swaney would write based on Amanda’s, and so on. Poets were encouraged to incorporate a line or two from their assigned poem into their story. Pierre Alex Jeanty appears in the middle as he consulted on and contributed to the book.

  Once everyone knew their assignments, they got writing. And it was up to me to come up with a title: Connected. Then, on contemplating about how we don’t always feel that way, it was Disconnected. Then, just to make things more diffi cult for bookstores and people who manage databases, I inserted square brackets: [Dis]Connected. Square brackets are used to enclose words added by someone other than the original writer or speaker, typically in order to clarify the situation. For me, they perfectly capture the climate of today’s hyper-connected world. Never in history has humanity been so connected, yet so many of us feel the exact opposite. Those square brackets remind me of some ominscient being looking down on us and saying, “Nuh-uh, you’re not as connected as you think you are…”

  Once the work started coming in, it was like these stories were glimpses into the writing souls of these ten individuals. Poetry might be a window but these stories seemed like wide-open doors. I pretended that the characters and plots these poets came up with were aspects of themselves. Whether they were or not will never be known to me, but the depth and breadth of talent, style, characters, and plots surprised and delighted me. There are stories of the young, the old, the grieving, and those who are celebrating. There is everything from everyday life to magical realism to post-apocalypse to full-on fairy tales. You will, like me, be surprised and delighted. It does, however, behoove me to warn readers that some of these stories contain sensitive material on a wide variety of subjects. These stories are meant to entertain, to reflect and to engage, and if any reader feels uncomfortable with stories of abuse, death, trauma or violence, all the authors and I encourage you to put this book down and come back to it when and if you may be ready.

  By the way, I kept the unused poems and put them at the back of this book—they’re there, waiting for a story to be written about them. In addition, the work of three additional poets is included at the end of the book—perhaps a hint of what’s to come in future volumes?

  Poetry is a constant evolution of work that resonates and connects. The poets in this book are a small part of the generation that is heightening it and making it accessible and desirable for so many more people.

  What started out as a writing exercise on connection has truly resulted in that: twelve people from across the globe working together to humbly present their work to readers. May you find as much joy in it as I did.

  — Michelle Halket, Publisher—Central Avenue

  The Blessing and the Curse

  PIERRE ALEX JEANTY

  “It’s Just the Internet.”

  PIERRE ALEX JEANTY

  THE EXERCISE

  That Instrument of Laughter

  CANISIA LUBRIN

  Parietal Eye

  NIKITA GILL

  Gods and Mortals

  NIKITA GILL

  Where the Sea Meets the Sky

  CYRUS PARKER

  No Turning Back

  CYRUS PARKER

  Terra Firma

  SARA BOND

  Impermanence

  SARA BOND

  Ultra

  YENA SHARMA PURMASIR

  Things That Aren’t True

  YENA SHARMA PURMASIR

  Driving With Strangers

  IAIN S. THOMAS

  The Way It Works

  IAIN S. THOMAS

  Small Yellow Cottage on the Shore

  AMANDA LOVELACE

  Astral Travel

  AMANDA LOVELACE

  A Way to Leave

  R. H. SWANEY

  Doe

  R.H. SWANEY

  The Unholy Wild

  TRISTA MATEER

  Knee to Knee

  TRISTA MATEER

  The Train

  LIAM RYAN

  The 7th Day

  LIAM RYAN

  The Shooting Squad

  CANISIA LUBRIN

  WAITING FOR A STORY

  I Love You

  SARA BOND

  Crowded

  SARA BOND

  The Body in the Water

  NIKITA GILL

  Erratics

  NIKITA GILL

  Sisters: A Blessing

  AMANDA LOVELACE

  A Book and Its Girl

  AMANDA LOVELACE

  Our Mapless Season

  CANISIA LUBRIN

  Ghettobird

  CANISIA LUBRIN

  Cohabitation in the American South

  TRISTA MATEER

  The Knife

  TRISTA MATEER

  Stained Glass Mirror

  CYRUS PARKER

  Start→Power→Shut Down

  CYRUS PARKER

  If My Aunt Was on Twitter @lovelydurbangirl

  YENA SHARMA PURMASIR

  Waiting on a Skype Call

  YENA SHARMA PURMASIR

  23-Year Epiphany

  LIAM RYAN

  Blue

  LIAM RYAN

  Food Stamps

  R.H. SWANEY

  Beauty in the Bones

  R.H. SWANEY

  The Smell of Memories

  IAIN S. THOMAS

  The Light at the End of All Things

  IAIN S. THOMAS

  NOTES

  BEFORE WE GO

  The Blessing and the Curse

  PIERRE ALEX JEANTY

  I’ve grown to see this world as a home, the internet as our electricity, and us as appliances connected in different areas, achieving different things. There is a purpose buried in us that comes alive when we are connected, making this world into a complete home.

  However, there is also the backyard, the integral piece that we often leave unattended and let grow dirty.

  We only go there to let our eyes stare at our neighbors, allowing complaints to flow through our veins because we choose to see how much greener the grass is in the lot beside us. This is where many of us are swallowed up by comparison, calling this home worthless.

  We lose sense of our reality and begin to make judgements, despite the fact that we’ve never seen the inside of the home we compare ourselves to.

  There is a blessing in us being connected but there is also a curse that can eat us alive.

  “It’s Just the Internet.”

  PIERRE ALEX JEANTY

  How true these words are, and how equally false they can be. We sometimes forget that we are all real people sitting behind a screen. But we must always remember, the agenda of those who troll is as real and powerful as we allow it to be. We must attempt not to take people’s online actions towards us seriously, but we must never grow deaf to the fact that there is weight to those actions. Every word out of a human’s mouth is a brick, comfortably lying in a sack for us to pick up and carry on our shoulders. Those bricks can either drag us down, or be used to help us build. We must learn to pick and choose our own battles, and we must learn when to sip their words as criticism, or treat them as vomit out of the mouth of misery.

  The Exercise

  [POEMS THAT WERE CHOSEN]

  That Instrument of Laughter

  CANISIA LUBRIN

  Nowadays I like to say cool

  cool cool thrashing my tongue like iguana

  Before even a lil wind ruffle my branch

  Because that was the dark, that was the dark

  between my lips, saying nothing beyond the resolute

  So I forlorn, cool?

  Wherever you happen to be

  Remember the gaped moon, tilt its forehead on the bay

  And permits the sun, erasure

  Here is where the chronicle of a small life

  turned upside down, toward a heavy murmur

  lets me make the place of my birth a fiction

  Kanata when I really mean Roseau

  Or calm, when the heavy hand really rests

  there, casting its fig
ure into flesh and heart

  I learned to be like the mute, but how to unlearn

  contentment with silence, within or without

  that sorrow, never the same as the night

  though together they share the same start

  Here is where to picture the years

  of seven and eleven

  means unlearning the multiplication tables

  that I could only use in a black suit

  they were many, they were few

  So I traded my calculator for a pencil, cool?

  drew icing all over the sky

  filled black gutters on white sheets

  with fathers like lime losing seed all over de yard

  & wished for a rope to pull myself out of the spaces

  between sentences

  nowadays I can never be cool,

  glad to lie on my back

  and summon no rain

  Parietal Eye

  NIKITA GILL

  NOWADAYS I SAY ‘COOL COOL COOL’ whenever someone asks me how I am doing,” I remember telling the doctor. She told me to stop, because clearly, I was lying. Sometimes, meaningless sentences get stuck in your head like the only words you can remember to a song you once liked. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell what is real and what is not.

  The iguana stares at me as I stumble out of the bathroom. I stare back at its bright green scales, its narrowed eyes, and realise I haven’t fed it yet. I’m not nearly as good as James with timing its meals, but then it’s not my iguana; it belongs to James. I walk to the kitchen to chop some bell peppers and carrots for it.

  I lost my husband three months ago, and the sense of loss has followed me like a terrible wound on my heel. A painful, festering thing that has coloured everything I’ve done in darkness.

  When I lost him, the world faded to an old black-and-white movie that replayed every single day. It started with waking up in a daze. It continued with me drinking coffee, black and sour, and forcing down toast to prep my stomach for the handful of antidepressants. Avoiding the mirror. Chopping bell peppers and carrots. Depositing them in the iguana’s cage. Walking to the tube. Working. It ended with me coming home, drinking cheap wine till almost-butnot-quite drunk, then ordering cartons of Chinese food for two and watching Netflix. Another handful of pills, this time for sleeping, and falling asleep on the couch.