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text magazine is a Canadian bimonthly publication of poetry, poetic social media epigrams, flash fiction, photographs, artwork, and other interesting culture. It is not-for-profit, free to read, and published six times a year.

EMAIL // textlitmag@gmail.com WEBSITE // www.textlitmag.com

Contents Copyright © 2015 text magazine for the authors

COVER ART // Coby McDougall title // Open Mind website // cobymcdougalldesign.com

FIND IT HERE // Bocca Café, Iron Oxide Art Supplies, Java Expressions LTD, Javawocky Coffee House, Jumpin Java Cafe, Literacy Nanaimo, Mad Rona’s Coffee Bar, Mon Petit Choux, Nanaimo Arts Council Gallery, Nanaimo Art Gallery, Perkins Coffee Company, Serious Coffee at Beaufort Centre, Smitty’s Nanaimo, The Buzz Coffee House, The Old Crow, The Vault, Vancouver Island University, Woodgrove Centre SUBSCRIPTION // If you wish to begin subscription, please email us at textlitmag@gmail.com. A postage fee may apply.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES // Submit interesting writing and works of art, such as poems, flash fiction, poetic social media epigrams under 200 characters, instagrams, or other photography or art, to textlitmag@gmail.com. We will respond as soon as possible. As a new, free, not-for-profit publication there is no reimbursement for publication. We ask that you please supply a biography under 200 characters with your submission. If you are accepted, your piece will be available on our website. Please note if your submission has been published elsewhere or is a simultaneous submission, it is suggested you read an issue to decide if your work fits our magazine. We reserve the right to not publish submissions we deem not fitting to our mandate.

If you wish to advertise with us, or distribute our magazine at your business, please email our managing editor Shaleeta Harper // shaleetaharper@gmail.com

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ADVERTISERS & DONORSCascadia Poetry FestivalDeb ClayFunk your FashionGarden Gnome YardworksGordon Halkett, Century 21 RealtyGrace MatthamsNY LA Fresh Threads Pro-Print ExpressRosemary Sidle Susan HarperTina’s Yorkie Treasures WordStorm Society of the Arts

SHALEETA HARPER // editor in chief & publisher

PHILIP GORDON // editor

ANTONY STEVENS // online content manager

COBY MCDOUGALL // graphic designer

JOY GUGELER // publishing advisor

BIG THANKS to the friends of text magazine

DISTRIBUTORSBocca Café Iron Oxide Art Supplies Java Expressions LTD Javawocky Coffee HouseJumpin Java CafeLiteracy Nanaimo Mad Rona’s Coffee Bar Mon Petit Choux Nanaimo Arts Council Gallery Nanaimo Art Gallery Perkins Coffee CompanySerious Coffee at Beaufort CentreSmitty’s, NanaimoThe Buzz Coffee House The Old CrowThe VaultVancouver Island UniversityWoodgrove Centre

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Dear Readers,

What is value?

It was suggested to us recently that the public would see a free magazine as value-less, that they would think nothing of throwing it away. The idea that free items are valueless is common, but ultimately it is untrue. I believe the people of Nanaimo are smarter than that, and that they know that a gift has value, especially if it’s freely given.

Value is what something is worth, not simply what it costs. I hope this magazine is valuable to you, reader. I don’t expect that you can keep this and sell it later, but that you could keep it, and find meaning in its pages in the future. Or that you could find value by giving it to your child, and having them realize that they want to write poetry, or even better, realize that they already do.

You have in your hands 23 writers, poets, and artists great accomplishments. You have the hard work of many people in your community, and you have the knowledge that we do this not to make a profit, but to reach out and show our community the art and culture that is all around us.

This is a gift, one that I am so proud to help give to you. Freely.

Thank you,

Shaleeta Harper Editor in Chief text Magazine

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I like to dine in establishmentswith racks of free magazines advertising pre owned vehicles,

appliances, and weaponsnear gumball, temporary tattoo, and religious icon machines.

Places where plates are paper food came wrapped in and air smells good: salt, frying fat, onions.

Billionaire, I’d order in compound hot dog stand where they treat merudely to keep me humble.

Maybe I’ll earn the moneywith daredevil stage anticsor canvases I paint and scrape,

creating expansive masterpiecesof presence and absencethen spend my free time broadcasting

from birthing centers descriptionsof newest humans with effusivediscernment of wine reviews:

This yowling infant, classicallywrinkly, exudes outrage, whiffof bewilderment, notes of piss.

Class StruggleAARON ANSTETT

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“ … un-dine with me,” she said.In afterglow (To be this misty-eyednight flicker one can only speculate visions, sensuous that drugsmovements are involved, possiblywhisper sonnets, MDMA. For she thoughts with finger is the spider, (and she loves yer, tip translations yeah yeah yeah), and he, cruise the outline of the poor victim, playscaresses. “Undress me the role of the fly who enters with your come-to-bed eyes,” her boudoir, where she, she wordlessly said the eight-legged freak,with feigned coy glances lies on her back … melontronic mood sways …to bedroom not thinking of England,laced senses but mentallyand embroidered experimentingsilken pastures with recipeslandscaped folds and makingin flower beds. a shopping listOn the after with headachetaste of kisses when her pills and dvd’s, tissueswishes have been spun, and ice-cream dreamily she un-said; blue-bottles and “let us fall together fruit flies.)become well and truly;un (in her web of deceitdone.” with her eight feet)

P.A. LEVY

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letter to phoenixunsolicited response to aaron simm's “howdy from phoenix”

hello from home,

second semester will be overbecause i'm catholic and a worrier iwonder about youhow you take exams and hatch from ashall at once but isuppose they're the same thingwhen you get down to the thick yolk of it

second semester will be overbecause i'm catholic and a worrier iwonder about asheshow they feel about cold after heatyou don't ask how i amso i'll tell you the swollen yolk i curlin smells like ashes and i did light my own damn fire

love,your mother

LEAF KOTASEK

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Rebel Romance, p. 701Cut up Vogue, Sept. 2012

It’s much prettier thanthe full story – the brave lip; a blackberrymouth brings to mindwhat’s not on theface isn’t just burgundystain.

HEATHER J. MACPHERSON

On the fly, p. 736Cut up Vogue, Sept. 2012

a rare birdraised in Franceurged me forthirty years asumptuous life;a quiet glimpsefor the first time.

The New American StyleCut up, Vogue, Sept. 2012

Granny’s hairy behemothis a weary smug. Herpetite frame is anything butcasual; a groan of rarefied skins and beloved, unshaven legs.

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the estate lays sleeplessthe streetlights lit in homeless streetsa blue car sits shivering in the guttersurrounded by tall grass like reedsan animal crouches hidden beneatha rigid metal tower with armsstraight out from shouldernor curves or sexand all cowering from its darkstrong mad outline against the street-lit sky

Power PolesJOE MCLAREN

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The Winter tree, resigned to the factthat, in its branches,nothing roosts, takes quiet satisfaction insimply holding up the sky.

PurposeSALLY HOUTMAN

That funny queue of birds, a call up, a convention

how they pause to—(insert human notion here)

zipped up dense on the roof ridge, then scatter in diffraction

burst apart for a few wild beats—a strew of ashes against the pale—

choreograph back to a silvery shoal flowing,

organized as minnows—

and repeat.

The Pigeons of Red Mill MIRANDA PEARSON

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The first time Beth saw Butch she didn’t really see

him. She’d just gotten out of the shower. Beads of water hit

the linoleum as she ran through the kitchen. She couldn’t

really call it a shower. It was a bathtub with a showerhead

nozzle that screwed to the faucet. Their first place, she

and her roommate joked when they were dead ass broke

(which was all of the time) that they should make gin in it or

grow pot in their wild, unmown backyard.

She heard her brother pounding on the door, call-

ing her name, but she’d dead bolted it because the neigh-

borhood wasn’t the best and just a week before someone

had taken a baseball bat to her driver’s side window. She

couldn’t fault the vandal for seeking the short-lived sat-

isfaction of shattering glass. It had been nine months

since she’d seen her brother, and she left her glasses on

the bathroom sink because putting them on was seconds

wasted. He was going to stay with her on this 72 hour leave,

and he was bringing a friend.

Beth screamed when she saw her brother through

the glass, and screamed some more when the door was

open and then, Bo hugged her hard enough to lift her off

the ground, and she cried because while, without her glass-

es, he was blurry, like a watercolor seeping out of its lines,

in her arms he was solid muscle, and he smelled like coffee,

Marlboro Reds, brother skin, and lilacs. While he and Butch

had waited he had cut an armload from the front tree.

72 Hours: Part OneBARBARA C. HARROUN

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They were scattered on the floor now. It was only

when Bo bent down to pick them up, when she was wiping

her face that she made out Butch. His shape. Leaning in

the doorway, uncomfortable his posture screamed. Bo said

he was going to Kelly’s, his girlfriend’s, who he had met in

a bar two leaves ago, but Butch would stay and keep her

company. And Beth said warmly, “Yes, yes. Come in. Are

you hungry? There’s not much, but I can make you a grilled

cheese. Come in. Please. And wait,

She ran back to the bathroom, put on her glasses,

huge lenses and wire frames. The world snapped into

place. She grabbed the sink, took a deep, shaky breath.

She brushed out her long hair, then gathered it and twisted,

wringing it out in the sink. She chose

a dry shirt that was scoop necked

and showed her collarbones. Then

she fished in her sock drawer for

the $30 she had saved, for her

brother, for beer.

Her brother was gone. Butch stood in the middle

of the living room, turning, taking in what two liberal arts

college girls had pieced together. Later, even years later,

she would tell herself she

didn’t love him right away. It

was five minutes in, unknown

he was being watched, when

he bent down, and ran his

thumb over the spine of

her books, reverently.

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Billy, the leaves are wetthe stars are getting laidunder sheets of cloudthe tree is breathing smokeclimbing lonely from the pipeBy the same tree 10 years agoa boy sits on a cracked concrete water tanksurrounded by leaveshe lifts his hand to his mouthand my name cuts the air.

JOE MCLAREN

whiteveins divide the river’sdarkmuscles.

untitledLEAF KOTASEK

SPENSER SMITH // Rubber Roots

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The pulsationof liquid-flowing syllablesappear and disappearin the soundless darklike an undated anaesthetic.

Ether(A remixed poem)

SHLOKA SHANKAR

Samuel S. Samuelsson 22 May 2014

float like a birdfloat like a bee toonamasting

Samuel S. Samuelsson 4 June 2014

telegram for mr. circle“ur a fuckin square lol”

Sources ‘In Cabin’d Ships at Sea’ by Walt Whitman‘After Apple-Picking’ by Robert Frost‘Aubade’ by Philip Larkin‘An Arundel Tomb’ by Philip Larkin

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First silence makes love to the nightAnd the lullaby of wind playing the trees strings like violins,Until it swells into a crescendo over our heads and our drum-rolls of breath Slow down enough to blend in with the soft hums And create musicA symphony of distraction And if we can’t find the beat of the wind waltzing through our veins as it playsOur hearts to sleep Then we aren’t listening close enough

Soon nothing is left but for the noise to run to us Like an avalanche tumbling down our spines, The walking wind breaking into a sprint full of Shots and fireworks that don’t sound like the Fourth of July

Vibrations running like balls in pinball machines around our rib cages and And then catapulting themselves into our eardrums To tear them open with its heavy metal fists

Then silence makes love to the night again

Streets mixed with fallen stars and empty bullet shellsWe see ourselves in both

Look over towards the curb To the boy who lost his mother to a different battle last weekHis hands acting like band-aids Stuck to his chestTrying to block the blood leaving his chest in thin linesAs if Van Gough is painting the red strokes out of him as they comeYou don’t have to be a painter to make out the bigger picture He lifts his eyes to meet yours and says, “Momma called. She wants me to come home now.”

Warning: This May Cause Heart FailureELIZABETH MUSCARI

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i said im visiting are you avail-she said no but Weds is good enough for 200 and 15 minutes worth of travel budget all:even even ight her on ight wo ix our inebecause she dont always got internet, still walks in to get lap checkt bi-weekly by-LifeLabs, that blood in herworks hard

UntitledKYNAN JAMES

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My love has cometo deliver me to her room and bed.

I've been walking the shore,the ocean's rolla palliative for my wrath,while she's been looking for mewith a heart like a calumet.

The waves make me calmer.My footprints are so gentleI'm surprised I made them.

No more vision of misery and loveliness,my love feels almost revived by anger

That's her car parked on the beach road.She has stopped right thereas if knowing where I'd be.

This is not a place.It's a given.

BACK TOGETHERJOHN GREY

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I could not be God – all that

smiting and forgiving, so much time

spent peering down between my feet and

tripping on my ample robes. And I do not feel

particularly qualified to make judgements

on eternal damnation or salvation based solely

upon what could be gleaned about a person

from the state of their roof, the top

of their head, or their choice of hat.

The Study of HatsSALLY HOUTMAN

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The wind blows wild all morning,then the eye hits town around middayand the whole place is still as a tombstonebefore that wind picks up againand the afternoon is like a crazy man -we've all known one or two of themin our time -they go into a rage,you figure you've got them calmedand then, all of a sudden,you lose them completely,and they're crazier than before -this hurricane's named Dan -now, I don't know the manbut I guarantee you somebody out there does.

HURRICANE DANJOHN GREY

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KYLE HEMMINGS // Bikes Post

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SHLOKA SHANKAR // Asemic Writing

the city's been bombedback to the stone ageso they saybut there's been no reportof the nascent genus homoemerging from caveswith crude axes -maybe the metaphorswere given the wrong orders

GUERNICAJOHN GREY

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don’t look so shocked; keep your rainfrizzed

beard on. people’ve been tailing the back

of me into wrong bathrooms since i was

as high as the x-ploding elbows of your wet

plaid jacket. men’s women’s whichever,

there’s always a hapless tailer who’s shocked

to smell urinal cakes or to hear a tampon

rolling to the scratched lip of a tampon

dispenser. you’re # 97,652 and folks are

queuing up behind you to tail me into wrong

bathrooms, so take your chaff-laced boots

and split.

to the man who followed me into the women’s bathroom yesterdayLEAF KOTASEK

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VALENTINA CARDINALLI // Black and White Art

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Evan wrote short stories obsessively. “I write because I have to,” he explained. “It feeds my soul.” Maybe, but he never appeared to be enjoying the meal. From across the room Pamela watched him at it. Mostly he grimaced, eyes raised to the left, teeth grinding as if he were chewing squid. Now and again he’d cry, “Ah!” followed by a flurry of keystrokes. Her timing was off and she never witnessed the moment itself. Did his face take on a beatific glow, signalling the flash of inspiration? Now she’d never know. Evan didn’t call them short stories. He smiled sadly when she did but stopped short of correcting her. He and his writer friends labelled his output short fiction. They spoke of a meaningful difference without articulating to Pamela what it was. She tried to adopt their term but stumbled over it. She came to believe it flowed naturally from the mouths of English majors and not from someone like her who was studying—horror of horrors!—science.

It’s not that Evan or his friends disparaged her research. Not directly. Their at-titude was best summed up by a pony-tailed poet who called himself Dax and evidently feared that bathing would dilute his genius. He once said, “Thank God people like you are willing to do that work so we don’t have to!” Everyone laughed, including Pamela. She never argued when they insisted that science was soulless or that art and its creators alone were responsible for lifting man from savagery. She didn’t take offence when they nicknamed her Pathogen Pam or asked ironic questions about her “ghoulish experiments.” It was all in fun. One had to be sporting about it.

Then came the day in the lab Pamela found herself calling the mice by Evan’s friends’ names as she snapped their necks one-by-one. “Goodbye, Liam,” she said aloud. “So long, Stephan.” She thought she heard a certain poetry—or was it music?—in the sharp crack of bone punctuating the words. “I like it, but is it art?” she wondered.

She caught herself after mouse number three. (“Adios, Dax.”) She vowed never to repeat the behaviour but understood there was no going back.

Short FictionCAROL M. GORE

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KATE SALVI // Flower 02

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Praying to the bathtub in a house with no upstairs:Before you wrote, you were the only person in the world who knew you were pregnant.

When you wrote, there was little airleft in your lungs and you had yet to pick a name. You lay there, silent breathing, concealing the truth beneath the membrane of a sterile orange slice.

I couldn’t reply. You wrotewhile I was surviving on cold cutsC’est Très Beau’s lines on the quick of my tip-toes, holes drilled in metatarsalsafter solo dance parties.

Four and forty weeks from now, sun blinding your eyes, blepharospasm, we’ll explode firecrackers on the side-walk engraved with four-hand pianoscores you wrote last Election Day.

Inbox (zero). Rh encounter on alancet, misused paper knifeYour mother is angry with you,but you wrote.

ConfrontationNATALIE TINNEY

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Aaron Anstett

Barbara C. Harroun

Elizabeth Muscari

Heather Macpherson

Ian Martin

Joe McLaren

John Grey

Kate Salvi

Kyle Hemmings

Kynan James

Leaf Kotasek

Miranda Pearson

Natalie Tinney

P.A. Levy

Sally Houtman

Samuel Joseph

Shloka Shankar

Spenser Smith

Valentina Cardinalli

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getpublished in

email textlitmag@gmail.comwith your poetry, art, flash fiction, photography,

or other interesting tidbits of culture

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