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The Conversation
one phone call, unexpected. two faces, mama and dada. three questions, and i am thinking– where is the line between keeping myself whole and stringing out pieces to tie me to my parents? how much do these bindings hold us, how much will i pay for them, what is the cost? it all happens so quickly that when i look back, i remember only the little pebbles that got caught in my tight throat, triggering an earthquake in my voice. a slight tremor and it’s all do you know who you are yet? my father says he cannot look me in the eye, he says why are you getting defensive,…
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Pistachio Meditation
—–Hymns – i found god in lonesomeness glory in solitude i go hours without speaking and equally as many without shutting up – i pray into my kitchen cabinets as i make myself lunch at four thirty i tell them about my imaginings and have conversations with nobody – i dip my hands in flat diet coke and cross myself i allow myself to give in to the dizziness and listen to the hymn that my blood pumps through my brain. — — —– Red There was a red car. Parked. Red like those cinnamon hearts my grandma used to let me try, the ones that made my tongue burn.…
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A Slim Chance
“Excited about your day-off, babe?” “Yeap, work’s been crazy since our wedding last month.” “I know you work hard, babe. Let’s keep going until we can retire early together. It’s a blessing how I found someone with identical life-goals.” Joanne nodded meekly at Josh while sipping her lukewarm instant coffee. It tasted like steeped cigarette but she really didn’t want to respond. “So, Rocky Point Park, right? Sorry babe I can’t go– got a meeting.” “No worries. Yep, my go-to place since high school.” As Joanne pulled out of their West-End townhouse, Josh waved his hand and blew a kiss. She looked at her husband, their practically rent-free abode thanks…
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Viaticum
The car was not good in the hills. It popped! and sputtered as it wrestled its way along the rough terrain of the narrow, winding roads cut from the Spanish countryside. As it neared the summit, it pulled off to the roadside where it was quiet but for the steam coming off the hood. The midday sun bathed the dry and patchy sloping hills of the valley. Whitewashed outcrops dotted the landscape, and above in the sky floated a few clouds, but not many. The man went around to open the hood while the woman walked to the cliff side and overlooked the valley. Across the valley was a small…
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Champagne
Champagne was awful. There was no other way to describe the unpleasant taste on Finley’s tongue. Maybe she wasn’t educated enough on the finer things in life or elegance, but it didn’t change the way the sparkles assaulted her taste buds. And yet, she braved another sip of the foul liquid because it was the obligatory New Year’s Eve drink. The party was in full swing, well, at least Erin thought five people constituted a party. There were only a few more hours until midnight. Finley wasn’t sure all her mates were going to make it that far. Trashy 2000s pop music filled her ears as she made her way…
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The 1
A slice of cake flew across the room. It was absolute chaos. This was supposed to be a simple rehearsal dinner for Kate and Ryan’s wedding, and it only took one comment about Kate’s short, off-white dress from Ryan’s mom to prompt an argument from Kate’s mom, which then became a full-blown war. Someone pulled someone’s hair, someone tripped someone else, and that’s when the first cookie was chucked across the room like a frisbee, hitting the maid of honour. Kate’s anxiety engulfed her, leaving her a mess in the corner of the room where Ryan had left her to separate the two parties. Kate’s body was tense and felt…
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Big Brother Bends the Universe
Christmas is generally a joyous, festive time, if somewhat stressful and chaotic. But for those of us who lost loved ones this year, or were separated from family due to Covid-19, or have traumatic holiday memories or negative family relationships or for a million other reasons, the holidays can be a very challenging time. I’ve had my fair share of terrible Christmases, but this was simultaneously the worst, and strangely, the best, in my 22 years of life so far (given the circumstances). A bit of backstory: I’m the youngest sibling in a very large, branching, complicated family. I grew up with seven siblings, but for the…
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The Funeral of a Friend
It was an odd thing to say at the beginning of an eulogy. I knew that the next time I saw her, it was going to be at her funeral. How do I explain that she told me that herself? The last time I saw her, we sat side by side on the bench outside of a coffee shop on the university campus. Spring was just about to end, but the last of the winds passing through the city would bite at any bared skin. Our elbows were separated by my hoodie and her black hand-knit sweater. The days were getting longer, but the sun was, nevertheless, setting behind us.…
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The Sky, Today
On bad days, William wore pink socks. Now there wasn’t particularly anything wrong with that morning, except when he had opened his eyes the sky had been all kinds of red, clouds of spun sugar and salmon guts. If he could reach out and grab some he was certain it would become a sticky mass between his hands, clumpy, some mucilaginous substance. Half-dry molasses. It wasn’t even that early either—7:30 on a frosty February morning. He didn’t usually sleep in this late and even still the sun was painting the sky psychedelic. The sky was not supposed to be that colour. So, before breakfast, he put on pink socks. He’d…
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Blue Eyes
Once upon a time there lived a girl who loved a prince. Princes, as she well knew, marry princesses. But she fell in love regardless and adored him with the stubbornness and mystery of a first love. Whenever he rode hunting in the forest, her eyes followed boldly as his figure flashed past her window. Snow fell, flowers blossomed, and they both grew older. The King and Queen decided it was time for the prince to fall in love – or at any rate to marry – so they could retire and relax and do more important things at night than stare at the ceiling of their six-poster bed, thinking…
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In Fair Verona
I find myself in the same interrogation room I had been before. Hands cuffed, in an orange jumpsuit, waiting for my one and only visitor. I recite to myself what has now become a comfort poem by Bob Kaufman, Someone whom I am is no one. / Something I have done is nothing. / Someplace I have been is nowhere. / I am not me. Enter Carlos Williams. He’s become older since the last time I saw him. He takes the seat across of me, taking his time, making me wait. He motions for the guard to go, a gesture I have seen him perform a dozen times before and…
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Serendipity
when the world has gone crazy and the waltz playing in your head is too fast take my hand and lets dance sway with me like the roses in the garden touch my shoulder and smile like i am the warmth and comfort the umbrella that will shield you from the storm i feel your face because something tells me that everything will be alright if i just kiss you ___ This poem by A. February is posted in submission for the ESA’s 2022 Short Story Competition.
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Exotic Fish
It is a starved town. Bone-white houses pave the beach like conches and oysters, although these oysters are bereft of pearls. Towards the edge of the town most distant from the beach, a thin train track etches its way through the sand to a run-down station and a dosing ticket-taker. The metal rails of the track are faded and frail, like the ribs of cattle skeletons that warn of a desert’s heat. Trains pass by the town infrequently, billowing out waves of smoke and silt which mix with the sand and vanish in minutes. Boats lie, grounded, anywhere between the beach and the station, some boarded up and full of…
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i am pretty and i do not long for your approval
in front of the fruits there stands a girl of sixteen, maybe less. she’s in a pretty blue dress and shiny black boots and she feels like the loveliest thing in the world. powder and ruffles curled, soft sky, buttons shy on pale skin, hair of velvet cream and a pin brooch from grandmother’s glass jewelry bin. sleeves of dream’s crêpe, high collar above champagne silver locket, hung with frail chain. she wonders, standing in the supermarket city, if mother will let her borrow rose blossom blush again. she thinks perhaps she likes this feeling of looking pretty. – but she does not like how they stare, eyes of oil…
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Applications for the ESA Annual Colloquium 2022
EDIT: Both deadlines have been pushed back to January 30 2022 at 11:59 PM! The English Students’ Association is now calling for submissions to our seventh annual conference, the Colloquium! The conference features presentations from English undergraduate students, graduate students, and faculty members, and will be held on March 11, 2022, with more details to be announced closer to the date. Our paper submission deadline is currently Sunday, January 23rd, 2022 at 11:59 pm. If you don’t have a paper to submit but still want to get involved, you can also apply to be an editor! The deadline for editor applications is Thursday, January 20th, 2022 at 11:59 pm. Please note…
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“There can never come much happiness to me from loving … I wish I could make myself a world outside it, as men do”: Sympathy and Femininity in George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss
“You have known Maggie a long while, and need to be told, not her characteristics, but her history … For the tragedy of our lives is not created entirely from within.” (Eliot 409) George Eliot, one of the biggest names in Victorian literature, was known for her realistic storytelling and her continuous goal to write literature with psychological insight and empathetic understanding. The Mill on the Floss, one of Eliot’s classic works, is the chronicling of the complete life of Maggie Tulliver as she progresses through a rebellious childhood, a painful middle period, and into the culmination of her adulthood through a difficult choice she must make between family and…
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“The old way of love seemed a dreadful bondage”: Homoromanticism and Identity in D.H Lawrence’s Women in Love
“‘You can’t have two kinds of love. Why should you!’ ‘It seems as if I can’t,’ he said. ‘Yet I wanted it.’” (Lawrence 481) D. H. Lawrence’s Women in Love tells the story of love and tragedy between two women struggling with their own circumstantial love affairs. However, separate from the changing values of modernist heterosexual romance, Lawrence’s classic novel, lauded for its portrayal of modernist attitudes as one of the best works of literature in the 20th century, explores a complicated homosexual love affair between Birkin and Gerald. The two male leads are contrasted against one another and in intimate duality with each other, breaching an ascension beyond the…
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Gender Formation and Queer Love in Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 20”
The young man, the subject of Shakespeare’s first 126 sonnets, is an ambiguous presence. Despite being written about extensively, he is never described in full. His gender, interestingly, is neither easily identifiable nor stable. In sonnet 20, the young man’s gender is confusingly put into focus and blurred. Either as a means of correcting Nature’s queer feelings or as a mistake, the young man ends up with a penis. By hypercorrecting—I adopt this linguistics term to mean mistakenly correcting something to avoid the nonstandard—her queer love, Nature ultimately perpetuates it and reveals the insignificance of gender as it relates to love. The young man is immediately a gender-bending force.…
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The Fourth Annual Colloquium: Presenters and Abstracts
The English Students’ Association is excited to present the fourth annual Colloquium! This conference features presentations from English undergraduate students, graduate students, and faculty members. The Colloquium offers the opportunity to share your work and discuss ideas with other students and faculty members in the English Department. Everyone is welcome to attend! When: 12 – 4 PM on Saturday, January 20, 2018 Where: Dodson Room (3rd Floor), Irving K. Barber Learning Centre The Colloquium is free and will include a catered lunch with vegetarian options available. RSVP on our Facebook page and reserve a spot through Eventbrite! Faculty Presenters Ray Hsu is Faculty Supervisor at the Emerging Media Lab. Author of two award-winning books,…
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The Discussion of Race on Television Over Three Decades
Race: an arbitrary subject which some have the privilege to ignore while most do not. The popular narrative of a group of white people struggling to “make it” is often the way life in North America has been depicted on television. This narrative fails to capture reality, as it does not acknowledge the challenges and obstacles of people who are not white and middle class. To explore how the conversations about race have changed on television, I am going to analyze the way race is discussed in three popular shows: Friends which takes place in the 90’s, The Office which takes place in the 2000’s, and Master of None which…
