#Circe: I feel like an ethical failure at all times

[theyautjaarchivist]

Being a yautja fanfic writer is having one fanfic being so character driven and just about two people wanting to love each other through the bs that the world (aka me) keeps throwing at them

and then the other is a critique on corporate greed combined with my behavoiral psych twist on xenos and angst.

[larksinging]

okay an obligatory one: anyone you’re potentially thinking of trying out from lost girl and any ideas for what they’d do on denny?

just kidding im answering this one because im too lazy to fix this: actually while we’re talking lost girl, maybe come up with some fae aus for some of your characters?

okay. im not necessarily going to pick an exact fae species because i cant pour through the wiki for hours but

winter is from one of the noble families. his family is light fae and always has been, but they’re still very dismissive of humans. im sure theres some kind of ice or snow fae they can be based on, maybe sometihng like… russian. anyway. his family is trying to push his sister for the ash/whatever the local leader is when/if the current one dies. winter is a bit of a black sheep because he is really curious about humans and even… gasps…. talks to them willingly sometimes.

maive COULD be a wolf shifter, but i imagine theres also some other kinds of wolf-based fae that we might not see. one way or another shes something wolfy. her family is a big powerful dark fae family (though maybe not one of the noble families), though she… was both not fond of that and always considered a bit of a failure. they tried to kill her in some kind of coming of age ritual, and she let them think she was dead and escape. actually now that i think about it, she could be unaligned? she could have run away when she had to pick her alignment. yeah. shes chill with both sides. i know thats bo’s ~special~ thing but maive can be special too 

maria is basically fae already, so. cmon. im sure theres something thats pretty similar to what she is. actually i supposed she could be… not a succubus, but something that feeds off that same energy. maybe she specifically feeds off of men feeling guilty about their wives. i think i said before she was light fae?? idk sh stuff has a dark vibe but i think she probably likes humans enough to not want to kill them… 

ivypool comes from a bit light fae family. maybe of um… scuffock? thats the warrior fae that ciara was part, right? that seems appropriate for warrior cats. buut her sister was super powerful in some way and part of some prophecy and ivypool resented being ignored, so with some manipulation from some nasty dark fae she… went dark when it was her time to pick. it didnt take long for her to kind of regret it. she works now as kind of a liason between light and dark, and tries to keep other dark fae a bit in line. i imagine theres a lot of fae who impulsively pick sides when they’re kids to spite their family, so 

mothwhisper is some kind of healing fae, obviously. like a… what was it… a serket? yeah. except she actually heals. shes very light fae. she probably works as a doctor for the local government. maybe she even went to human med school first! 

nyssa… is some kind of death fae? or possibly a valkyrie, but that doesnt seem quite right. the league of assassins is just a group of her species that occasionally train other fae. definitely dark fae. actually this is the one universe where the league of assassins seems the easiest to translate, so! 

you know what? i was gonna say that laurel is a siren, because c’mon, but i feel like she could be a kitsune or some other kind of form-changing fae. honestly not to steal inari’s whole bit but losing her ability to change forms because she went to the norn for something would… honestly kind of make sense for her, especially right after all her tragedies. she just took the form of (e-1) laurel and got stuck in it. oh my god she’s charlie from lot. anyway. she’s dark fae, though she joined up because her family was all dying and falling apart and idk maybe the dark seemed more supportive in some way at the time. 

margot is dark fae because her family is dark fae. shes probably from a long line of some really nasty fae, like flesh-eaters or something. maybe something like circe, where they turn humans (and sometimes enemies) into animals, except then they eat them. everything else follows pretty neatly though… instead of drowning mason later, she turns him into an eel and lets him suffocate. seems fair. shes still pretty dark fae-y but is not nearly as brutal as the rest of her family. like they probably throw huge banquets and margot just eats when she needs to. someday she takes over the family business and starts developing more methods for ethical feeding off of humans for dark fae

violetpaw… actually this works out. she and her sister were found abandoned when they were young, but maybe there was some kind of prophecy that the two sides were bickering over, so one side took each. violetpaw ended up with the dark fae. idk what darktail is in this situation – maybe he takes over local dark fae government and wants to rule everyone, but all the fae band together and stop him? anyway shes probably some kind of wood or tree spirit, because skyclan. 

[soundonreadings]

Sound On InstaReadings Series Volume 3 with Amber Dawn, Amy Leblanc & Nancy Lee

Welcome to Sound on InstaReadings Series. Our second installment features readers Amber Dawn, Amy Leblanc & Nancy Lee and is hosted by Dina Del Bucchia and David Ly. Posted here for your enjoyment are the bios of our fine readers and the text of their readings. Thanks!

Amber Dawn is the author of five books and the editor of three anthologies. Her sophomore poetry collection, My Art Is Killing Me and Other Poems, launched in March 2020.

Reading text:

fountainhead 

Sure, I’ve tossed three pennies over my left shoulder into Trevi 

Fountain in Rome, but the mermaid fountain in Piazza Sannazaro

Napoli is my favourite. Napoli is a city of mermaids. I lost count 

of mermaids. Two tailed and bathing in cracked frescos. Marble 

reliefs carved into arched doorways. Mermaid faces on old coins. 

I almost bought myself a tears of Parthenope necklace. A gold 

chain hung with two blue teardrop shaped Swarovski crystals. 

Parthenope and her sisters swam (or flew, myth shows sirens as half 

bird or half fish. Either femme beast works) to Ulysses’ ship to curse 

him with their song, but Ulysses tied himself to the mast, stopped 

his ears with wax and withstood. The entire crew of men survived

simply by not listening, so the story goes and goes. The defeated 

mermaids wept at their failure and filled the bay of Naples. 

Parthenope died from the shame and was swept ashore. Her blonde hair 

turned to sand and her body, stone. A beach I myself have walked along. 

I audibly sobbed before the gorgeous baroque blood of Artemisia

Gentileschi’s famous Judith Slaying Holoferneson, on permanent 

display at the Uffizi. A man my father’s age asked me nine 

times to leave the gallery with him. One of the only Italian 

expressions I know so well that my subconscious has spoken 

it back to me in dreams is lasciami stare. It means leave me be. 

I drank too much at the strip club in Pescara, Abruzzo as a topless dancer 

listed the times homophobia nearly killed her. I understood her perfectly

when she asked what Canada is like. Is there libertà per lesbi in Canada? 

I furiously recorded the words that I misunderstood in a notebook 

as if I might one day retroactively follow meaning. I couldn’t call 

upon language fast enough to console her in real time. I couldn’t say 

fuck this shit, I’m sorry or chin up, tits out, you know or you

deserve better, femme. I’ve come to associate speaking half a language

or less than half, a tender handful of comprehension, with being 

a survivor of sexual violence. My body has breath and spasm where it

should have words. My body can picture ease and desire, but is forever 

learning how to say what it wants. I’ve spent a humbple lifetime looking 

for others who labour to live inside their skin  My kink is to loudly love those 

who’ve been told to keep quiet. Erotic boom. I want outlaster’s love. Against-

all-odds love. I, finally, want myself, and slick fluency in this desire.  

While in Napoli I wrongly read a museum label to say that Parthenope 

wished to marry Circe the sorceress. I read queer determination, and imagine 

how that beach might feel if my mistranslation was an origin story.  

Image if the grounds we walk were build from queer love? What song

would our queer scion sing six thousand years from now? What shape 

would story take? If our bodies were fluid loose, waxy and loud 

and fluent in our madrelingue, in a kin spit, in the looped vernaculars 

we have long deserved, then imagine what words we’d know so well 

that even our subconscious could speak this love back to us in our dreams 

tragic interview

An anagram for “creative writing” is “tragic interview”

We will ask you if it is true

We will ask you how true it is 

We will ask you where you’re from

We will ask you to verify you belong

We will ask you about vice and god 

We will ask you to legitimize blood 

We will ask for a pathos worthy childhood

We will ask you about your thronged body 

We will ask why you inhabit both and many 

We will ask if your kin tolerates such veracity 

We will ask if you’ve told the whole story

We will ask if you are attracted to danger

We will ask you if your shame overlingers 

We will ask for trauma to be in past tense

We will ask you to narratively arc triumph 

We will ask you to lip service progress 

We will ask you about free speech 

We will ask to contract your name 

We will ask you to trouble in stereotypes 

We will ask you stroke those fleshy ethics 

We will ask how outsiders may write about you

We will ask you for your blanket endorsement 

We will ask you wax widespread as hot and now

We will ask you attest to your own exceptionalism

We will ask to couch your fine ass in the theoretical 

We will ask you to table round with your enemies  

We will ask that you prove pain makes great art 

We will ask you to represent en masse

We will ask you to do it for less 

We will ask for your free consultation 

We will ask you to recommend your own

We will ask where do you find the time

We will ask you to exalt your labour 

We will ask if your success is a surprise 

We will ask if you’re surprised to be alive

We will ask you to front face as the hero

We will ask you exhibit the future possible

We will ask how the next gen will fathom and ken

We will ask for a kind offering to the institution 

We will ask you for the ever positive spin 

We will ask you cleave homage and imitation 

We will ask your craft for credible dimension 

We will ask if the work appears to be uneven

We will ask you to trial your live version  

We will ask you how true it is 

We will ask you if it is true

Dear IncorrectName: found and redacted from my inbox

Please allow me to introduce myself as the OfficialTitle at the College_University_ GovernmentFundedInstitution. At my InstitutionalPlaceOfEmployment we are Studying_OtheringtheLivingHellOutof Prostitution in Canada_FeministViews
on Prostitution_ProstitutionExploitationTrafficking_and other topics related                       to your “hellish existence.”

Your book How Poetry Saved My Life is on my students’ critical book review list alongside TextsbyFeministsWhoHateYou and UnethicalResearchers. I feel strong- ly that your perspective would contribute to my students’ learning. Sorry
for the ridiculously late notice, but I want to invite you to visit our class
next Friday. I do not have funds for guest speakers, but I would be happy to offer
a $50 honorarium from my own SalarythatIsFourTimesWhatyouEarnedLastYear and parking permit for the day. Please let me know if this would work for you.

Dear IncorrectName

I am writing on behalf of the AcademicConferenceWithA$200+FeePerAttendee. Part of this year’s goal is to include a performance “cabaret” [erroneous use
of quotation marks for reasons unknown] that will feature any or all varieties
of literary performance (spoken word, performance poetry, slam poetry, sound poetry, etc) with a focus on the voices of diverse populations.

Your presence at this “cabaret” would be of great value
to the conference attendees in their role as AnalyticalOnlookers.

I have heard back from the PlanningCommittee regarding finances and what we can offer you is a BelowStandardArtistFee honorarium, but we are tight so__could you accept a conference pass? We have several other authors who are only getting conference passes. So paying you is a bit of a “double standard” [substantiated use of quotation marks] and there might be hard feelings. 

I look forward to hearing from you.

Dear IncorrectName

WeAreOtherArtists. We’d love if you would come to OurSHOW and read
your work_talk about your work_talk about your life_talk about the state of our community_talk about doing work in community. No hard hitting talk_just talk talk_casual talk. You would be fabulous. Our stage is yours
for one hour. We expect around 150 guests.

This is your opportunity to reach a large crowd.

We don’t offer you an appearance fee, but you will see OurVision is VeryInnovative.

Dear Amber Dawn
I  am a Writer_Artist_BodyThatisHoldingStory.

I have always loved &admired your work &it would be an honour to have your feedback. It would be awesome if you could read my ScriptCollectionNovelOutlineTreatise &give me some honest &brutal feedback. Read it whenever you want! I hope I see
you in person soon! I can come by your office. Do you still work at ArtsCommunityJob_ FrontLineSupport_DropIn_HeathCentre_CollegeUniversity?

I am HoldingaStory &it is PAINFUL. How did you write your first book?

I have always wanted to be             a writer. 

Did it feel                    like a relief
to get that first book out?

How do you read in front of all those people &do interviews &does your mom 

still speak to you? I’m afraid                    of my parents
&hometown &people 

I used to know                             &MySurvivorsStory &what 

people will think if I                           SpeakMyTruth.

What do you like about being a writer

Amy LeBlanc is an MA student in English Literature and creative writing at the University of Calgary. She is currently non-fiction editor at filling Station magazine and will be assuming the role of Managing Editor in July. She is the author of three books: her debut poetry collection, I know something you don’t know, was published with Gordon Hill Press in March 2020. Her novella, Unlocking, will be published by the UCalgary Press in 2021. Pedlar Press will publish her short story collection, Homebodies, in 2022. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Room, PRISM International, EVENT, Prairie Fire, CV2, and the Literary Review of Canada among others. She was recently a finalist for the Minola Review Inaugural Fiction Contest judged by Heather O’Neill.

Reading Text:

Wintering

 He torched the skin that I’m still in. 

Counting Januarys— 

I hold my hair

to sing psalms

and semi vowels.

The wasps bloat with 

my belly in December, 

gashing panty lines

and pot holes.

The burnt space will tear from my hips.

I am a calamity

asking for armistice. 

   The storied life of Grace Poole

         She dangled striated

         scarves from the window

         rattling her head as I

         held her waist.

 He told me to keep her

quiet, to keep her safe, compliant—

this significant

paranoia

that she might be

         vaulting

         purging

         dancing

         like red fiber from rafters.

          She tells me

         my hair reminds her

         of a fox. My brush is

         a signal to enemy lines:

         her lips parting

         on a stolen glass

         of honey soaked wine.

 She and I

watch the tree,

as it splits and succumbs

in the orchard, a slit

where the tree was licked

with a voltage charged tongue.

 She says that it will never

be the same again.  

 We are both behind

the lock and chain, but

I can abscond

to the halls and gates.

         She lingers behind

         the latch—

         her fingers

         entwined in a lock

         of my red hair.

 We are curious bedfellows

with sweetness on our thighs,

         the topographical curving

         of bones and banks.

She is hers and I am mine.

 I will never ask

for more than the chill

of her hands that cool me

until I drown.  

         She won’t jump with someone

         to hush the light.

   Girls reading in red coats

– For Paula Jean Welden

 She tucked a book

into the folds of her red coat 

when she left her room.

 She felt the spine against her ribs,

and the edges of paper wrapping

around her skin:

a pair of legs in a claw foot tub

a little birth with a belly full of rocks.

 The book would last her

the better part of three days.

 She buttoned a scarf to her throat

and picked bloodroot and ate carrots,

nine almonds a day with a glass of water.

 She expected to wander and to find an altar

in the trees, in the wasps, in moist roots

and the mud that caught her heels.

 She freed insects from jars that never held water

and heard a rattling sound

in her bone marrow,

in her ears eyes hands and teeth.

 They searched and searched,

but she stayed hidden at her altar

or the meeting point

of her own sternum and her spine.

 She read her book

in her red buttoned coat.

 She thought about ivy

and garden walls,

moths that bleed cyanide,

women in turtlenecks,

wine and cake and uncomfortable pantyhose.

 Her coat, red as pomegranate seeds

trailed behind her, moist and well-watered.

 Her exposed belly could cut open letters

and bloodroot was the bedrock of her spine.

 Her book had moistened in the rain,

so she made an herbarium

and slept in the vines.

 Stripping the moths of their poison,

she dripped them over a porringer

and encouraged them to dry.

 When her fingernails rooted to the paper,

she swallowed herself whole. 

The brief reincarnation of Mary Webster on the Amtrak from Boston to New York

Leaves clung to the woman’s shoe


and hair hung from the sides of her face.

 It had rained for a week.

 She’d eaten a biscuit,


then fell asleep on the train

to the hissing until the low whistle sang.

 The man across the aisle

was watching her sleep.

 He pretended to read his newspaper

licked his inked fingers,


smudged editorials, blurred black

and white photos with spit on his hands.

 She dreamt about being a cat, a fox,

an apple hanging from a tree.                         

 She opened her eyes and found


the man had moved to sit beside her.

 He’d been so silent,


she’d hardly felt the air move.

 He held out a cigarette


which she placed between her lips.

 When his hand shifted closer to her hip,

she put her bag between them


and asked if he had ever played scrabble:

 He played cart,


she played cruel,


he played slick,

she played sway,


he played cyan,


she won by adding an i and a d and an e.

 She sent him back to his side

of the train with a biscuit

wrapped in a napkin

and a half-drunk mug of tea.

 She returned to her dream of the hanging fruit,

felt her small body sway in the breeze

until the train arrived in New York.

   Hereafter

He says that she’s unattractive, but the subtext is that he doesn’t like girls who are more comfortable in their skin than he is

with his masculinity. He made me realize I can stop apologizing to the mannequins I run into—stop slipping confession notes into the books

I read for whomever needs them after me. I don’t apologize to the boy who left his gum between my knees, because my arteries continue

to pump and my feet fit into my shoes without him. The amassment of buildings and bodies and dealmakers and white men tells me that I don’t

need to rip eyelashes out for wishes. I’ve learned that the squeaky wheel gets taken away. The arbiter of wineries, golf clubs, mortgages,

window frames, casinos, finds that these are grasping at the ceiling, fingers spread into spider webs. In this bottom-less wanting,

unnecessary roughness earns you a slap on the shoulder and an extra hour of locker room talk. We learn to grab back (if sex happens before

you wanted it) with chemicals between our fingers. I burn my throat on oatmeal and my skin turns to scales– my pages are dog-eared

from turning corners too soon. In this one hundred and forty character locale, I’ll blast out a constant reminder that

this mimeograph heart won’t be stopping any time soon.

Nancy Lee is the author of two critically acclaimed works of fiction, Dead Girls and The Age, and a new poetry collection, What Hurts Going Down (McClelland & Stewart). Her poems have recently appeared in Ploughshares, The Adroit Journal, The Puritan, Arc Poetry Magazine and The Malahat Review. She teaches at the University of British Columbia and lives in Steveston, BC with her husband, the author John Vigna, and their jerk of a dog, Rudy the cardigan welsh corgi.

Reading Text: 

four-eyed girls 

I’m sitting at the bar with Mary Katherine Gallagher watching prospects grind hope into anything blond. 

I’ve peeled off wool tights so my pleated skirt flashes white cotton panties when I cross and uncross. No one notices. 

For fun, we switch eyeglasses. In hers, I drown. Fish wriggle and shimmer, groove beyond my reach. She says, 

Through these glasses everyone looks thinner. She says, Why aren’t there more girls like us in movies? I tell her 

there are plenty, floating in rivers, folded in dumpsters, naked, nameless. She says, It’s time for another shooter. 

Something to clean the sink, something the bartender will set on fire, something that hurts going down. 

no place for a heart 

Start a fire with women’s bodies; stack them deep for heat. What keeps a kind girl alive in the wild? The men in town are crapshoots, sawbucks, coins striking heads and tails. They post naked snaps of her on 4chan, ferry fifteen-year- olds across state lines, weigh options like: hands up her skirt, hands around her throat. She’s ready for a chorus of frogs, a convent timeshare, ready to train a dildo to mow the lawn. Abandon romance. This one’s for mothers who catch their boyfriends fingering their daughters. Here’s to bff date rape in the old man’s sedan. Today a high school football coach showed cheerleaders the glory of his half- hard penis in a hot dog bun, tomorrow a man will cram his wife into a Naugahyde suitcase and drag her to the river. It’s so fucking hot inside; she isn’t surprised. 

alphas 

i. At three a.m., lip gloss and crop tops wasted in empty clubs, only you are brave enough for new terrain. We hunt at a crawl, every gin joint gated, marquee dim. On the boulevard, we roll down windows to watch a coyote lope, head bowed. A bloody rabbit swings from his jaw. I tell you he’s my first. 

ii. Alphas beside the car. Caps pulled, track suits baggy, shoulders rolling, chests sunk, a lazy jog with beer cans, sidewalk be damned. The pack must get hungry at three a.m. They stare through glass, blow their liquored smoke. I say, Ask where they’re going. You shake your head. The night is wild with them. 

iii. Once, in a town on the coast you chose celibacy over the hazard of ocean men, woodsmen, mountain men, unwashed hair in pelts. Men with thick paws, bark faces, who stank of wood chip, coal dust, fish. When they entered your bed tangled in nets and splinters snuffled wet muzzles to your neck, you played dead. 

iv. Now you raise two hatchlings in a sanctuary. You pound fence posts, lay tripwire, stock bear bangs, kneel at the water to check muddy ground for tracks. Satellites beam our hushed talk of coyotes, mangy middle-aged cheeks, half-eaten carcasses, how they chew old wounds, cut and run. We forget their feral cologne, teeth and charm, until they startle us from the stupor of married sleep. 

daughters 

i. Tell the daughters we were heartless, crouched behind trees with rusted wire. That flanks bucked as we bled the bodies on beds of pine, stabbed with flint blades and the ends of spoons from a grandmother’s hope chest. Eyes whaled white, pupils drained of ink. One by one in the fog of morning, we scrubbed them from our petticoats. 

ii. Stretched and sticky in the sourdough starter, shovels scraping the stable floor, scouring water in the tin tub, sewing flecked with blood. A childhood bridled, saddled, stung with lye, hung to cure in salt and sun. No one believed what their eyes didn’t see, what gnawed through a girl, rustled her work-worn body in the brush. 

iii. Did they even want daughters? Sons so adored, rut-hungry, bottle-weak, sloppy work with a scythe. Who didn’t know his charm, the lanolin musk of his wool? And what if all daughters turned to ghosts? Whale bone, sadness, smoke. Tell them, it was kill or be killed. Tell them, we shivered for days beside their cribs, then stood to answer our own prayers.   

wife at the end of the world 

Fever on the streets as our planet swings closer to the sun, as ocean levels rise, biohazard atomizes, nuclear runoff seeps. Lives mundane 

with disaster. At the store, we snipe over which canned soup has more nutrition, chunky or creamy, which shattered pack of crackers 

has mice. A stock boy with peeling palms counts water bottles, while outside, men in lab coats debate timelines of extinction. 

I climb into a shelf for the last box of oats, and a woman in full makeup, French twist, purse dangling from a charmed wrist, stretches 

on tanned legs to help my husband reach a can of waxed beans. Her fingers pulse his biceps. His eyes finish her like a meal. 

My T-shirt smells of dead guinea pig, and I wish for one last bolt of catastrophe: a fissure, a sinkhole in the dry goods aisle. 

So that weeks from now, it will be my hair unravelled, flecked with debris, my ash-smeared skin in a strappy slip as I lie beside a naked man 

whose name I do not ask. Too busy tracking diseased dogs with my night scope and rifle, too busy brewing carboys of anti-toxin, 

wielding my flamethrower against mutant spiders, too busy calculating orbit-altering supernovas to settle for repopulating the earth.