Fall. For Grain, fall means more than long comfy sweaters, autumnal colour palettes, and pumpkin-spice lattes. It means the start of a new volume year. And a new volume year means we can share with you the winners of the 36th Annual Short Grain Contest, selected by judges Cassidy McFadzean and Danny Ramadan.
Volume 52.1 not only features the winning poems and stories, but it also features new work by 19 poets and writers from across Turtle Island, including Glen Sorestad, from whose poem, “Crow Meditation,” inspired this issue’s title.
All is well. A statement I think most of us would interpret as affirmative. Yes, all is well. But add a question mark: “all is well?” Now I find myself in doubt. Questioning. Is all well? A timely question, too, after a summer of record-breaking temperatures, seismic movement splitting Iceland in two, ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza, Olympic debacles in Paris, and the beginning of another intense election campaign. Then there’s the more familiar battles, those that wage closest to home. In our bodies. The body we live in. The mind that inhabits it. So how do we know if all is well? Many of us turn outside ourselves for answers, trusting not in our gut feelings or memory, but in object, belief, and sign.
In the works that follow, the speakers and narrators observe in the presence, or absence, of avian harbingers for answers; others find portents in pennies and cicada songs, in constellations and scars, or hope to bring good fortune with kisses and lip injections. Yet still, I return to that question mark. How reliable are these feathered omens, these copper talismans? What if I misinterpret the signs? What if it’s just luck? Do I even have a say—or is life pre-determined by kismet?
If anything, this volume suggests that in whichever way we seek an answer to the titular question, it’ll be about as reliable as a Magic 8 Ball.
- Elena Bentley, Editor
CROW MEDITATION [excerpt] | Glen Sorestad
1.
After an absence of over five months,
the Crows are back, the flying bullies
have returned. They always do.
An April morning, you glance out your
window, expecting the same snowy
boredom you’ve witnessed daily.
But today there is a difference,
an unexpected one—Crow has flown
from the other side of the busy avenue,
lands on a lamp post and caws. Its beak
opens and closes, but inside your condo
you are left to imagine its harsh voice.
Your first Crow this spring and though
you would argue that Crows can be both
fascinating and entertaining, most people
do not rate them as elite subjects
among birds-to-watch. Crows tend
to languish in avian popularity polls.
Why then does spotting the year’s first
of the coal-feathered outcasts bring a surge,
if not of joy, then at least satisfaction?
Is it confirmation of an expectation?
Or the assurance, here and now, Nature
has proclaimed again that all is well?
YIELDED TO DREAM [excerpt] | Alanna Marie Scott
When Ash makes it to the corner, she stops again and lowers herself all the way to the curb. She’s out of breath.
She tips her head back, opening her airway and looking at the sky. There’s too much light pollution for proper stargazing. She can count the stars in Orion’s Belt, but that’s about it. Last year she went to a dark sky preserve in the French Pyrenees, and she and Habiba inked constellations onto their arms and legs with a fine tip pen. Ash drew Aquila on her thigh, with a starburst for Altair, one of the brightest stars in the sky.
That same part of her thigh—along the outside—doesn’t feel things anymore. A band of flesh that isn’t hers, embedded in her own skin.
There’s a car coming up the quiet road and Ash watches it roll to the corner. It’s a grey convertible with the top down and it stops in front of Ash. She recognizes the driver. Black hair cut bluntly short, sunglasses on top of her head like she’s been driving all day, Daisy Stutter looks curiously across the passenger seat to where Ash sits on the curb. They went to high school together, sort of. Daisy is a couple years older. She lives in the neighbourhood with her aunt. She never left.
Hey, Daisy says.
Ash clears her throat. Hey.
The thing about Daisy Stutter is she died, or so the stories go. She got sick and died and was buried, and then a week later she broke open her coffin and walked home, dripping in dirt. She’s a local legend, the neighbourhood ghost. Whether or not it’s true—and it can’t be—has ceased to matter. But there are webbed scars on the base of her palms. Like a long piece of wood buckled and splintered, skewering her. And the whites of her eyes are often red with burst blood vessels.
ON FAITH | Y S Lee
I have smoked
the soul of God, psalm burning
between fingers on an African afternoon
– Chris Abani, “White Egret”
I’ve never smoked god’s soul, or even mine.
Maybe it’s around, wandering my dumb flesh
like a Renaissance uterus, but to extract it
is beyond my powers. As the internet says,
simple doesn’t mean easy. I’d love the loft
of certainty, the umbilical connection
to something bestial and miraculous.
I could excavate—chop and sieve each part
in search of the ineffable, though suspect
I’d end up a pile of wet pulp and still
no soul, no psalm, no fingers. Yet despite
this suspicious lump of a self, I know
the subtle swerve of that egret’s neck,
its brief leap, the thrash of incipient flight.
BETRAYAL [excerpt] | Carmelinda Scian
I remain seated the way I did when my mother called me in—play taking place out of doors. Except for sleep and meals, living was done outside all year round—the early morning washing of one’s face and neck, men shaving, the peeling of potatoes, the cleaning of fish, the washing of laundry, Portugal’s winters being mild. My mother would order me to sit while she stood, looming over me, as she spelled out the details of the upcoming punishment. For your ... own ... good; I’m your mother; I know what’s best for you.
I’ve been meaning to do this for a long time, Rosa says.
Do what?
Have this conversation.
About what?
You.
Me? What about me? What have I done?
The waiter approaches. Smiles some more. I order the grilled fish.
Put it all on my bill, Rosa says. Tonight is my treat.
As the waiter walks away, I panic. I can’t remember if the fish comes with vegetables—I must have vegetables. My heart is beating so fast it feels as though it’s going to exit my body. I madly wave to the waiter; he walks over. I need him to stand by me.
Please don’t leave ... .
Rosa’s brown eyes scour my face; they pin me to the chair, the way, I imagine, they do to her students or rogue teachers standing in front of her desk, waiting for her judgement, her verdict. She stares as though I hold the answer to the riddle keeping happiness away from her—the failed marriage, the never-ending divorce, the sole raising of her son, the unfulfilling relationship with Jakob and all the other men that came and left without sending flowers or saying goodbye.
It’s time someone spoke to you, Milita. I took it upon myself to be the one because I care for you. We’ve been friends for so long. You need to be careful, you know, the way you’re acting lately, things you say to people, you’ll end up losing all your friends.
